SLAM PRO WRESTLING CANBERRA - 12 AUGUST 2023 Review

This show was a bit of a make-or-break for SLAM Pro. It was their first time running a bigger room (Southern Cross Club in Woden instead of their usual Ainslie Football Club booking), it was their first time running a livestream of their show, and it was the last show prior to their bold decision to run a December show at the National Convention Centre promising to be the ‘biggest local Australian wrestling event of all time’.

This show was, by all accounts, a misfire.

Not in ticket sales of course - they broke their record with a claimed attendance of over 700 (though I saw rows of empty seats around me during the entire night, so take it with a grain of salt). But it was a failure to put their best foot forward, and to capitalise on the opportunities they’d created for themselves.

I’m sure those who disagree with me will be able to find ways to rationalise the quality of the show.

“It was the night of the Matildas vs France, the audience was distracted”
“This room was bigger and didn’t carry sound as well, so it just sounded like the crowd were more quiet than usual”.

These may both be true, but don’t tell the full story.

Firstly, yes, Australia was a bit preoccupied with a national cultural sporting moment on that night and multiple audience members didn’t enter the event until nearly halfway through (and others were watching the game on their phones during the show). But other factors were at play.

The move to the Southern Cross Club in Woden makes sense on paper - you’ve been selling out every show at Ainslie, and there might be an infrastructure advantage between venues in terms of the livestream attempt. But this created a few problems. There were definite acoustic issues - in the rare instances the crowd cared, very little of that sound seemed to carry to the ringside area (where I was seated). This is a promotion that’s gained a reputation for molten hot crowds every show, and here the crowd sounded flaccid and disinterested most of the night (though the mic-ing seems to have mitigated this somewhat on the livestream).

Secondly, while a number of loyal fans did make the trip to the other side of town, it was clear a large number of people in attendance were unfamiliar with the promotion or characters, and this show made no effort to introduce them or show them why they should care.

But the biggest issue I had with the night is one that I had not encountered in SLAM before, and one I didn’t expect to occur with this promotion - there was an obvious lack of effort across the card. It’s hard to complain about a disinterested crowd when they weren’t presented with anything worth reacting to. Multiple matches were clunky and had miscommunications in key moments, the overall pace was slow, and even reliable workers looked bored and went through the motions.

I can forgive technical issues. I can forgive logistics failing to work out in a new environment. I can forgive timing conflicts.

I can’t forgive presenting a show on cruise control - especially when it’s such a high-stakes show being delivered to a mass audience for the first time, and your last sales pitch for a now misguided-seeming marquee event in December.

This was the first time I’d walked out of a SLAM show where the general mood from fans in the foyer/lobby area was of disappointment. I hope this isn’t repeated.

Match #1 – Slex vs Dan Archer

Dan Archer is easily the best local talent on this roster, and of the regular interstate imports Slex (comma The Business) is also right up there. So it would be reasonable to expect pretty great things out of this match, a match that was previously postponed due to a minor injury to Slex. This had the potential to put on SLAM’s first real notebook match.

You can understand my disappointment that these two guys went out there and had a completely paint-by-numbers, unmemorable match. The work was fairly crisp, save for one or two uncharacteristic miscommunications in the final few minutes. But this match never really peaked out of first gear - just two professionals filling 10 minutes doing the basics.

As a side note, if you’re going to watch this on livestream, it appears there’s audio issues throughout and the commentary only kicks in about halfway through - and then dips in and out all night. However, based on the commentary when it does actually work, that’s not a positive development.

This was ultimately fine if no more than that. Unfortunately (spoiler alert), this ended up being the best match of the night. Slex gets the win with the Slexecution (cyclone kick) in 9 minutes and 35 seconds.

3 stars – A decent enough match by two guys who could’ve done so much better. Match of the Night.

Match #2 – Lena Kross vs Frankie B

This is the main show debut of both of these wrestlers SLAM, coming in at very different experience levels.

Frankie is quite green, having less than 30 matches to her name, whereas Lena Kross has 6 years of experience and works all over, including frequent trips in Japan where she worked promotions like Sendai Girls and AJPW.

It’s easy to tell from the get-go that Frankie is a product of the PWA system - working their house style of slaptick and shtick-heavy pseudo comedy for the cheap carnival show pops. She would be a perfect fit for NXT (not a compliment).

I was surprised by Lena here, whose strikes consistently were miles off-target, and generally worked so slow that she seemed lost and distracted from 30 seconds in. This was only highlighted further by Frankie actually showing some flashes of nice tight strikes and a solid sense of urgency and intention during her shine sequences.

Lena was meant to be the veteran here, but came off looking on the same level as the literal amateur across the ring from her.

Lena gets the win by reversing a rollup into a pin while holding the ropes in 8 minutes and 58 seconds.

1.5 stars – A match between not-yet good workers which didn’t do much to make you care about them as new characters.

Match #3 – Ricky South vs Lee Morrow

Ricky South, despite being the Ace of PWA over the last few years, has really struggled to find his footing in Slam. His matches have always been marred by timing issues, odd booking decisions (a heel turn in a Rumble that had its focus pulled to the point where half the audience didn’t realise the turn has even happened), and a general sense that he’s mailing in his efforts.

Lee’s place in Slam is almost the opposite. An underused low-carder in Sydney promotions, he struck a chord with the Slam audience (who love their working class babyface characters), and has become a staple of the promotion despite next to no buzz and, frankly, middling in-ring talent.

This was worked at a snail’s pace, the whole match feeling like a simmer-down heel control period building to a shine sequence that never came. Of course, you had to get Morrow’s audience participation gimmickry in, complete with using a child as a weapon (which was amusing the first time, but has since become a stale punchline).

Ricky wins with a piledriver out of nowhere in a slow yawn of a match in 7 minutes and 45 seconds.

2.25 stars - An okay first showing for Jessie, but slowed the night’s momentum down.

Match #4 – The Natural Classics vs Mick Moretti & Jimmy Townsend - SLAM Pro Tag Team Championship

Compared to much of what we’ve seen so far in the show, this was a bit entertaining, but it played into the worst instincts of each of these wrestlers to do lowbrow slapstick. If you like nipple twisting comedy spots, then boy is this the match for you.

The Natural Classics are usually the most hated heels on the planet to the Slam audience and here their heat was tepid at best. Moretti’s fascination with cheap parlour tricks and halfhearted selling instead of the workrate he’s capable of was underwhelming but not unexpected - but I hoped for more from Townsend, who I think has legitimate upside as a future top star, but is bogged down his comedic pairing and his gap year gimmick.

But, meta-complaints aside, this did build to a well worked match towards the end when the wrestler in the ring - shock and gasp - actually did moves not focused on comedy, played their roles and y’know, wrestled.

Unfortunately the finish was meant to be more comedy drudge featuring a sleeping bag, but they couldn’t get it open. It was a miscommunication and they pretended it actually happened, and had Townsend lay down for practically nothing. One step forward, three steps back with this show.

2.75 stars – The first flashes of actually decent wrestling since the opener, hidden in a haze of bad comedy.

Match #5 - Tommy Knight vs Tuckman

This match was originally meant to be Tommy Knight vs Kai Drake, the latter of whom unfortunately got injured prior to this show. This is a shame, as I feel Kai is generally underrated as a hard hitting striker and would have been a a fun stylistic matchup for Knight.

Kai’s replacement was Tuckman, who is a fairly green wrestler from the PWA Academy system, who has been getting some reps and a pretty decent push for a beginner in Sydney (are you seeing a running theme in the background of people that underperform in Slam? Hm).

This was a squash. Tuckman seemed particularly awkward in the ring. Completely understandable given his lack of experience, but it detracted nonetheless. Knight seemed a bit ticked off that this match was nothing more.

Knight wins with a stack powerbomb in 6 minutes and 6 seconds.

2.75 stars – Tommy is always class, but this was not the best use of him.

Match #6 – Hugh Beauty vs King Vance

These are two trainees from the Slam Academy, and was the debut (and first public match ever from what I can tell) of Vance. Vance was the first person to get legit feeling heat from the crowd in the room, but it helps that he threw in a number of hyper-specific local references. Otherwise, he seems to be running a bog-standard heel king gimmick.

This was short, which is a good thing for two wrestlers in the earliest stages of their careers. You can definitely tell this is Vance’s first match, but Beauty (the marginally more experienced) creates a good throughline. While this will never touch the notebook, at least it had two wrestlers go out there, play well-defined face and heel characters, build heat, and pull off an in-ring story rather than chasing cheap laughs or filling time to avoid bumps. Most of all, these two look like they actually care. Good on ya rookies, keep at it.

Hugh Beauty wins in 5 minutes 55 seconds with an Indian Deathlock.

2.5 stars – A completely standard, middle of the road match by 2 promising trainees.

Match #7 - Mikey Broderick & Vinnie Bronson vs Crofty & Luke Watts

This was a clear “how do we pad out these storylines” to extend to the Luke/Mikey and Vinnie/Crofty programs blowing off at the December show. The match was worked like a WWE house show match, where everyone is just half-assing their secondary-tier spots and trying not to get injured or fill up their bump card.

The Slam intelligentsia (or lack thereof) was on full display in this one, with the most unified chant of the night being “We Want Tables” repeatedly during the meat of the match. This is a great example of how they’d managed to train their audience over time at Ainslie, but have reset to square one by moving to the other side of town in Woden.

The match wasn’t on this card for the match itself, but more the angle to set up the Loser Leaves Slam stipulation for Crofty/Vinnie and the cage match stipulation for Luke/Mikey. I get it, but after an already lackluster show, you could’ve still achieved those stipulations with a segment and put on a worthwhile main event to make at least some of the ticket price worthwhile.

Mikey accidentally hits Vinnie with the world title belt, leading to Watts landing a Shooting Star Press onto Vinnie for the win in 13 minutes and 45 seconds.

2.5 stars – Nothing memorable, nothing terrible. The main event equivalent of paint drying.

AVERAGE RATING: 2.46 of 5 stars (or 4.92 of 10)
SUMMARY: For a show that was poised to usher in SLAM’s evolutionary next stage, it instead served as a frustrating backward step in momentum and quality. Terrible stuff, not worth your time.