GCW Joey Janela’s Spring Break 9 (4.18.25) review 

 

I ran a poll on Twitter and this won, so I guess we’re reviewing it. I should let you know I only received one “you have to review this” text all weekend and it was for the main event of this show, so yeah, let’s fucking gooooo. We’re in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Pearl Theater. Like everywhere in Vegas, it’s a casino. What’s the worst that could happen here? 3h37m run time. JOEY. I keep telling you, man, over 3 hours is unacceptable Mania weekend. Hopefully there’s an intermission. Dave Prazak & Jordan Castle on commentary.  

 

GCW Tag Team Championship 

Violence is Forever (c) vs. Alec Price & Jordan Oliver 

Ku & Garrini arrive to “Zombie”, a catchy pop song about the IRA killing children. It’s easy to sing along to though. Price is the first, and surely not last, man to dive off the stage in here. This is the kind of match that demonstrates how decimated the Indies are at the moment. Dom Garrini probably had a shot at the big time but that’s gone. He doesn’t have the required look or technique. Price is a skinny boi who does strikes that don’t look right. Oliver, meanwhile, tore his ACL in July and this is his comeback match. “He hasn’t lost a step” says Castle. I mean, that’s accurate but I don’t think it’s a compliment.  

 

Before we carry on. I judge wrestling on simple things. Timing, execution, difficulty, emotional resonance. Things like that. At this level of wrestling, you barely get one of those right. Here the timing is a little off, the difficulty is medium, and the execution isn’t spot on. Where you can correct, at this level especially, is either laying it in or connecting to the crowd. You can just about give them the second one. Oliver barely does anything and they double team for the belts. Eh, we move on. 

 

To be positive, I’m glad this was less than 7 minutes long. It leaves us more time for a lengthy Atticus Cogar vs Fuego del Sul video, detailing their feud.  

 

The prospect of watching 3 hours of Indies in 2025 made me go to the pub. I had eight pints and a lovely time (and a curry). It’s what Joey Janela would have wanted. Now, let’s continue.  

 

Wagner Family (Dr Wagner Jr, El Hijo del Dr Wagner Jr & Galeno del Mal) vs. Arez, Gringo Loco & Jack Cartwheel 

I was blown away by Galeno del Mal a few years ago. He has that chunkiness that I like but is also very agile. Lucha is a dancey style, so I’ve never gotten along with it. I much prefer hybrid where lucha influences certain aspects of the in-ring. When it comes to trios matches all I want is flippy shit. They try and get characters over here and it does connect with the crowd.  

 

Most of the match is just ugly. The only things that land are big high spots. It’s like watching NXT. El Hijo del Dr Wagner Jr could go on NXT next week and look like a star. Mainly because he can do Eddie Guerrero’s spots competently. Dr Wagner Jr rolls up Cartwheel for the win with La Majistral. This was way too long. Cut out the first ten minutes and it might have been a good laugh. Appreciate they’ve given Wagner Jr the respectful ‘go as long as you want’ time though. 

 

Veda Scott replaces Jordan Castle on comms here.  

 

Bozilla vs. Megan Bayne 

Bozilla may be German but her whole career has been in Japan. Don’t go googling her wXw matches because there aren’t any. I got my first look at Megan Bayne a year ago and I thought she was good but lacking reps. She’s been good all year, apparently. To put Bayne into perspective, for WWE fans reading, she’s an inch taller than Charlotte Flair. Bayne has presence, aura and can actually take a good bump. Anyone who can do a tope is good in my book. On the flipside of things; anyone who does a bearhug is usually bad.  

 

*cough* 

 

Bozilla has some real issues with how she initiates contact and how she moves around the ring. Especially when it comes to selling. It’s all tentative and lacking confidence. Like she’s not quite sure if what she’s about to do is right or not. When they start unloading BOMBS Bozilla starts to come into her own. She’s clearly used to being the Boss Hoss. Bayne has some issues around Bozilla’s size. The F5 in particular. Tombstone finishes for Bayne and she was mostly impressive here. Bozilla is clearly not used to having to take spots like this. Megan Bayne remains one to watch. **¾ 

 

1 Called Manders vs. Zack Sabre Jr 

While I’ve been away Sabre has won the IWGP title and lost it.  

Manders has won 16 Carat Gold. Both solid achievements. Two contrasting talents here. Sabre with his ground game, Manders with his stand up striking. Sabre goes after the arm to eliminate the lariat but unfortunately Manders is hugely inconsistent in his selling. I do like him switching arms for offence but even after the early abuse he’s throwing chops with his bad hand. 

 

He persistently does it too. Which ruins the whole approach of Sabre and renders the bulk of the match useless. Don’t get me wrong; I do love a big old lariat and would hate to be denied it but that’s the whole point of Sabre’s approach. Then he just wins with a cheeky roll up anyway. This a prime example of how two brilliant wrestlers can have a match that amounts to nothing at all. Both men did excellent work but didn’t do it for the greater good of the match.  

 

Career vs Mask 

Atticus Cogar vs. Fuego del Sol 

The fucking door promotion coming into its own here with a grudge match between two of their regular jamokes. Comms calling Atticus the “most violent professional wrestler” in a world where Big Japan exists is a borderline insult to those crazy bastards. Cogar goes after Fuego with a pair of scissors and Fuego just sits there and takes it.  

 

The trouble with having a big blood feud match is that you need to land all the big spots. An Air Raid Crash through a table is, in theory, great. What it ends up being here is a double stomp through a door and gently landing your mate on the remains of it after your feet have taken the entire bump. Just as the match is starting to get some traction the run ins begin. Unfortunately, this means Sam Stackhouse. There is a bare minimum for mobility in wrestling and he’s way under it. 

 

The run ins disrupt the flow of the match and ideally you’d want your seconds to set spots up, so you don’t have to, but they don’t. They create some disturbing visuals with the skewers and gusset plates before Cogar finishes with the Brain Haemorrhage off the top onto a bin. This was a big old mess, and the fans weren’t exactly supportive of Fuego and his mask loss. Only occasionally landed how they wanted it to.  

 

Fuego is a bitch afterwards too. Unmasking and giving the mask to Cogar, despite Cogar cheating to win. They tried hard; I’ll give them that much.  

 

Matt Tremont vs. Minoru Suzuki 

Suzuki looked on his last legs a year ago. I can’t imagine 12 months has improved the situation.  

Suzuki is having a nice laugh here until Tremont headbutts him. Two dudes with good strikes and no mobility means they can get by on chops and shit.  

Oh, no, don’t flip off Suzuki. Don’t you watch wrestling Matthew? Suzuki works a lot softer now than he used to and he generously doesn’t pound the business out of Tremont. As they continue to leather each other it makes me wonder what this would have been like five years ago, when MiSu still hit people hard.  

 

The finish is also wank. Suzuki keeps shoving the referee and eventually gets annoyed with him and hits the Gotch Piledriver. Other officials pile in and it’s a no contest. A NO CONTEST? In GCW? I can only assume they want to run this back on another show with no holds barred or falls count anywhere or something. Anyway, it was pretty good considering. **½ 

 

JCW Championship 

Masha Slamovich (c) vs. Suzu Suzuki  

Two wrestlers I like having a rock-solid match up in the midcard. It’s perfectly fine. The crowd don’t care at all, but every match has felt loaded up until this point. It’s the kind of match that didn’t need to be on an overstuffed card. It gets better towards the finish and the White Knight Driver finishes for Masha. Call it **½  

 

Gabe Kidd vs. Mance Warner 

Despite occasionally sounding like his brain has fallen out, Kidd is a solid hand in the ring. Ol’ Mancer is fine. Given their previous match ending in a non-finish, you would hope for some good old-fashioned brawling here. Kidd takes Mancer’s screwdriver off him and jabs him in the head with it.  

I don’t know if you can tell from this still, but Warner has blood GUSHING from his forehead. It’s like he’s turned on a blood tap. IT’S SPRAYING OUT OF HIS HEAD. It gets to the point where I can’t tell if Kidd is busted open because Mance bleeds so much onto him. That will require a tetanus shot. There is a lot of overselling, which I can almost forgive because of the bloodshed. They end up slugging each other until Mancer can’t stand anymore and that’s the match. *** 

 

I’ll give them some props here. The match lives or dies on the blood. You don’t get some serious claret, and it doesn’t make sense. Fair play to Warner for tapping an artery. It is SCARY when you see blood squirting out of the body like that. That’s some Mass Transit shit right there.  

 

Senior Scramble 

Ricky Morton (68) vs. Action Mike Jackson (75) vs. George South (62) vs. Damien 666 (63) vs. Robert Gibson (66) 

A reminder that Mike Jackson once tagged with Tojo Yamamoto and Bearcat Brown. He wrestled Ric Flair in 1981. Anyway, Kerry Morton comes out here to complain about this, so they all kick his ass instead. DUD 

 

No Rope Barbed Wire Match 

Sabu vs. Joey Janela 

Sabu hasn’t wrestled in four years. Having just made fun of old wrestlers, the main event features a 60-year-old. To give you an idea of how into Sabu I used to be…I once gaffer taped a tea towel to my head and tried to single leg people when they came into my local pub. Some alcohol may have been involved and lots of pointing at the ceiling.  

HOMICIDAL. SUICIDAL. GENOCIDAL. MANIAC. SABUUUUUUUUU! 

 

The dude can barely walk. I’m not sure this is a good idea. Especially given Janela’s tendencies when he gets to wrestle one of his heroes. Sabu keeps stopping off to have chats with people. Emil Jay, a guy in the front row, Scarlett Donovan. FONZIE IS HERE! Bill Alphonso with that damn whistle.  

 

This match has a lot of the same issues that previous Janela main events have. He’s more mobile than his opponent but due to his respectful approach, he doesn’t use that. Instead allowing someone, like Sabu, to beat him up….slowly. The difference here is that Sabu is prepared to mutilate himself in the name of the business. Which I wasn’t expecting. I guess they paid him a bonus for every time he jumped into barbed wire.  

 

The bumps this motherfucker was prepared to take. The back bump through the board TO THE FLOOR was INSANE. This cunt is SIXTY YEARS OLD. We start getting run ins and poor Fonzie gets murdered through a barbed wire board. LIGHTS OUT. SANDMAN? What is happening?  

Sabu, covered in his own blood, hobbling around the ring, going ONE LAST TIME here is pretty epic without all the bullshit. They had to kill time somehow. Janela takes a few horrible looking bumps into barbed wire. Sabu seems to completely lose the plot and offers a hug in the middle of a chair duel. Joey has no idea what’s going on. Arabian facebuster finishes.  

 

It was cool to see Sabu going out by taking THAT bump to the floor. The match was a colossal mess but was also wildly entertaining. If you’re going to go out at 60 then fuck it, let’s do this. There is no tomorrow.  

 

The 411: 

You won’t see a lot of snowflakes on this show but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. It was a variety show with lucha, death matches, women’s hoss fights, technical wrestling, storyline stuff, slugfests, bloodshed and ultimately nostalgia. And almost all of it landed. Nothing is worth going out of your way for if you like seeing “good” matches but it was a good show. If that makes sense.