Big night for West Midlands Revolution Pro wrestlers in Epic Encounter 2019
It was a momentous night for West Midlands-based pro-wrestlers at York Hall, as Epic Encounters saw Wolverhampton's El Phantasmo and Aussie Open finally secure victories to claim championship gold and end their longstanding rivalries with the champions.
El Phantasmo moved to the UK from Canada in early 2017 to train with Fight Club: PRO in the West Midlands and raise his profile through wrestling across England. Since he arrived in the country, he has failed to beat David Starr in Revolution Pro-Wrestling.
The two wrestled in El Phantasmo’s debut in the promotion, and have since had three further matches, for the British Cruiserweight Title that Starr won at last year’s Epic Encounter. Starr’s victories usually involved him cheating, often by using his championship belt to knock his challenger out.
To avoid that happening again, this match was a ladder match, with a newly redesigned title belt was suspended above the ring, with the winner being the first person to grab the belt being the winner. This was a brutal match, with both men taking tremendous punishment as they used tables, ladders, chairs and even drawing pins to punish their opponent.
Starr would bleed badly from midway through the match, leaving a pool of his blood in the corner of the ring at one point.
Despite this, the champion came very close to retaining, managing to force El Phantasmo off the ladders by throwing drawing pins at his face. However El Phantasmo grabbed Starr’s old championship belt, using it to knock Starr off the ladder, before claiming the new title belt, to become champion for the first time.
It was a strong end to perhaps the best week of El Phantasmo’s career, with him having made his New Japan Pro-Wrestling debut the Saturday before. He will now fly back to Japan, where he will represent Revolution Pro-Wrestling in New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s forthcoming cruiserweight tournament.
In the co-main event, his housemate in Wolverhampton, Mark Davis, also secured championship gold, as alongside Kyle Fletcher they avenged their loss in November to Zack Sabre Junior and Minoru Suzuki to add the British Tag Team Titles to their groaning trophy cabinet.
This was another excellent match, which flew by, despite going over twenty minutes. Suzuki is a genuine combat sports legend, being both one of the great pro-wrestlers of all time, and one of the earliest fighters in what ultimately became mixed martial arts.
He was one of the hardest strikers in pro-wrestlers, and he landed hard punches and palm strikes on both Australians. They however managed to withstand the onslaught, with Davis finally being able to hit his sit-down piledriver on Sabre to secure the victory and the tag titles.
It may have been a two-match show in terms of hype, but when both matches live up to the hype like these two did, nobody can complain.
Epic Encounter will shortly be available to watch through video on demand through rpwondemand.com
Report by Will Cooling
