wXw 16 Carat Gold N1 (3.8.24)  

 

March 8, 2024 

 

We’re in Oberhausen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany for night one of 2024’s 16 Carat Gold. It’s been a year since I last watched wXw and I do miss it. It’s one of the few promotions that actively make me want to come back to wrestling regularly. I’ve never cancelled my subscription on YouTube either, so I have been paying for it for the past year. I hope they appreciate the gesture. Consider it a thanks for all the great memories of trips past. 

 

One Called Manders vs. Luke Jacobs 

Two big boys to kick things off. Unless stated all tonight’s matches are 16 Carat Gold R1 matches. Initially they don’t lay it in but then we switch to chops and we’re off and running. Jacobs’s chest is already cut up. They struggle a little, perhaps communication is off, and Luke charges slowly into the corner with Manders moving. It didn’t look right, and they’ve had a few moments like that. Where the match excells is them just belting each other. I like that the finish is a stiff lariat, not any of the ‘spots’ that create near falls leading to the finish. The strength of the match was the hard-hitting elements and that had to be the finish too. **¾. If the whole match leaned into the harder hitting elements, it was a banger. They started too slowly and deviated from that path too often for this to rank any higher. 

 

Aigle Blanc vs. Lio Rush 

Blanc is quick enough to keep up with Lio’s early speed offence and counters but he feels a bit awkward at times. Something I’ve always felt about him. They do dives and such. It’s a fun match because they keep the speed going but also innovate and get creative in the countering. It’s not just spot, spot, spot. There’s psychology in there too with Lio wanting to nail showcase offence to go through in style and Blanc more interested in just winning. Also, Blanc has clearly got Lio’s high spots scouted and seems more capable of countering the big moves. The biggest compliment I can pay the match is that the 10:00 flies by at a belting pace. It’s a fun little match and I dug it. ***¼. Aigle Blanc still has room for improvement, but he’s improved a lot in the last year. 

 

Icarus vs. Stephanie Maze 

In my head, when I saw the line up to this show, I figured Icarus would make the final. The gatekeeper for Dreissker’s title. Someone would have to beat him to get to Dreissker. Plus, Icarus is a fantastic wrestler, capable of main eventing the biggest show of the year. He immediately ruins that with thigh slapping nonsense. If you’re going to slap your thigh, please, please, for the love of fucking god almighty, be subtle about it. If my eye is drawn to it, you’re doing something wrong. I feel bad for Maze but it’s Icarus that ruins the match. It’s an awful performance from him from start to finish and a real disappointment. The disjointed match ambles towards a conclusion and Maze wins with a roundhouse out of nowhere. Easily the worst match of the night so far. By some distance. I hate thigh slapping. It drives me nuts and it completely took me out of this contest.  

 

Oskar vs. Laurence Roman 

Roman tells Dreissker he doesn’t need any help. But mate, you’re two foot shorter than Oskar! You can see why Dreissker is concerned! Given Icarus’ departure, I would 100% have Oskar bully Roman out of the tournament too. Make it about an Amboss implosion. Oskar is so big that the simplest moves, like a scoop slam, look like they do enormous damage. Roman is smart and works Oskar’s leg. Realistically, you need to negate the size difference. It only works if Oskar sells it, and Oskar is smart enough to know that. Unfortunately, his youthful exuberance means it’s very inconsistent. Roman ends up taking it with a Frogsplash, with Oskar incapacitated. Oskar is young, raw and has enormous potential. When you’re 6’7”, and starting to fill out, the world is your oyster. He’s not awkward with his size either. He feels at home in that big frame. It’s exciting to see someone like Oskar and get in on the ground floor.  

 

Mike D. Vecchio vs. Gringo Loco 

This starts out with a lot of stupid flips for no purpose. Bullshit posturing. Mike D then infuriates me with a silly top rope spot on the back of a thigh slap. The opening five minutes of the match are not good. Mike D then misses a suicide dive that breaks two first row chairs in half. All is forgiven!  

 

The match is a little odd as it plays out like Gringo Loco’s sick fantasies turned real. Like the Electric Chair into a powerbomb on the apron. Like, why? The whole match feels tremendously hit or miss. To set up some spots there’s a lot of fumbling around but then there’s a big wow at the end of it. The Vikingo Effect.  

 

Mike D reminds me of Mike Awesome. In that he’s not polished and a lot of his transitional work sucks but holy shit, his high spots rule so much that it’s easy to overlook the flaws. The super rana into the superbomb from Gringo Loco is SICKENING. They fumble around ahead of a poison super rana and Mike D finishes with a Shooting Star Press. This is the kind of match that fans of “cool shit” will enjoy. I’ll give it a bump for sheer entertainment reasons but there was some clunky fucking transitional stuff in here. ***½  

 

wXw Shotgun Championship 

Rotation (c) vs. Levaniel vs. Maggot  

Rotation has come a long way since the first time I saw him and made fun of his hair, gear and name. It helps that he’s such a nice chap but his in ring has improved so much.  

Levaniel has a lot to prove here. He’s not got a good reputation thanks to an underwhelming run with the big belt. As with most Levaniel business, it’s a sluggish character-driven match. There’s a lot of posing and stare downs, where the crowd just aren’t invested. I feel bad for Rotation because he tries hard and this is his time to shine but the structure of the match doesn’t help him at all. He has all the best spots but they’re so throwaway. Maggot’s presence in this is almost an afterthought. My favourite spot is when Maggot has Levaniel pinned with a cutter and Rotation comes off the top, with reckless abandon, to break it up. Levaniel ends up winning after shenanigans involving Robin Fohrwerk, a manager who’s been trying to recruit Maggot. This was patchy as hell, but Rotation comes out of it looking decent. He may have lost the belt, but he doesn’t feel out of place on a big show.  

 

Elijah Blum vs. Masato Tanaka 

This feels like a waste of Tanaka, but he is very old. To be fair wXw has done things like this, successfully, over the years. Where they bring in an outside talent and use that outside talent to get a local guy over. Blum is fine but I would prefer someone a bit more intense for this match. Tanaka finds himself waiting for Blum quite often. I don’t want to blame anyone, but the match is clearly a failure. The strikes don’t work. The superplex is all fumbled. Blum manages to cut his leg open somehow.  

 

The narrative here is that Masato Tanaka has never had a “big moment” in Europe. What about when he beat Steve Corino in an ECW Rules match for 1PW? Or teamed with two dodgy types for FCP against Moustache Mountain and Dan Moloney? Ok, I guess winning Carat would be quite far above those two. Tanaka wins with an elbow shot, which felt like an audible call to cover for Blum’s injury. A poor match with Tanaka barely showing up. I’ve seen him perform at a way higher level than this. Tanaka is the kind of guy who will show up if you push him.  

 

Peter Tihanyi vs. El Hijo del Dr Wagner Jr 

I’m somewhat surprised to learn that Jr is the GHC champion. I have not watched NOAH in quite a long time. The inmates sing “happy birthday” to Tihanyi. Aww. That’s sweet of them. This is a test for Tihanyi. To see if he can hang with a top tier competitor. The match suffers from lucha libre looseness. Lucha can click beautifully with other wrestling styles but sometimes it just doesn’t. Jr is better off when he’s treating Peter like a little bitch. It gives Tihanyi a hill to climb.  

 

While both guys have good movement around the ring, they make some poor choices. Namely no selling big moves and then hitting something and then lying around doing nothing. They start into a story about Jr’s arm being hurt and then he just gets counted out. Either jobberitis or NOAH stopped that match having a finish. It wasn’t very good anyway, so I don’t think we lost an all-timer due to politics. 

 

Joseph Fenech Jr vs. Michael Oku 

Fenech is Senza Volto. He stops off to argue, at length, with Snowboiii on his way to the ring. Is this because Snowboiii has like 2k more followers on Twitter?  

Fenech Jr does a lot of stalling. Which might have worked if it had followed something nuts like Mike D earlier. Calm it all down before we switch it up again. Some antics on the outside take us up to 10:00. They’ve not done much here. I have an issue with main events (NJPW ones usually) where they do nothing for ages and then start hitting finishers. That’s what we’re doing here. 

 

The referee has a good match though. At one point overselling for Oku after a spot into the chairs and telling Fenech he doesn’t have a pin because the shoulders aren’t down, moments after I shouted “his shoulders aren’t down” at the screen. Oku sneaks in some thigh slaps and generally he floats around looking very lightweight. Oku does take some great bumps and they use that.  

 

Fenech Jr has the better match. His spots look better and less pre-prepared. Even the springboard cutter feels organic. It feels like there are multiple chances for Fenech Jr to win this and Oku to come out of it looking ok. Like the low blow into a roll up. I’m not sure I’ve ever understood wXw’s thing about people turning heel and then getting dumped out of the biggest tournament of the year in the first round, but this isn’t the first time they’ve done it. Which is what happens here when Oku taps Fenech Jr out with the half crab. Call it **¾. Not bad or anything but not as epic as I’m sure they were gunning for.  

 

The 411: 

Not the N1 I was hoping for. Mike D had a great time, again, although the more they run his matches like this, the more obvious his faults are going to appear. There was some nice variety on the show. From meat slapping (Manders-Jacobs) to fast-paced stuff (Blanc-Rush) to strategy based combat (Roman-Oskar) to shooting for epic (the last couple of matches). It worked with varying degrees of success. Vecchio-Loco was MOTN for me. There were several alarmingly poor performances. None worse than Icarus in the Stephanie Maze match. That was infuriating.