By Liam Byrne @tvtimelimit
It was a sizeable Shotgun this week as two huge tag team contests took center stage: Killer Kelly teaming with Toni Storm to take on LuFisto and Melanie Gray, whilst the main event saw WALTER and Ilja Dragunov join forces to face Alexander James and Absolute Andy. Unsurprisingly, it was a strong three quarters of an hour of wrestling action as we were teased with potential future match ups, most importantly as Andy and Dragunov found time to meet each other in the middle of the ring.
Dragunov had proclaimed the team with WALTER to be UNBESIEGBAR, and that is what they seemed like in the early going as they outbrawled the heels before the first chops from both men sought to redden up James’ chest. A double back elbow and a Dragunov senton were followed up by a WALTER slam, with Andy getting knocked off of the apron with a forearm shortly afterwards. Even when Andy got in the ring to try and help James by chopping WALTER whilst the big Austrian applied a Boston crab, it had little to no effect on him.
However, it did distract WALTER long enough for James to hit a knee from behind, before Andy maximised the effect of the sneak attack by attacking him at ringside. WALTER would become the face in peril as the heels worked well to keep him in their corner: James utilised a bridging Indian deathlock to halt a tag attempt, whilst Andy would trip Dragunov off of the apron as WALTER got within inches of respite later on. Both James and Andy would use the proximity to the corner to reapply an abdominal stretch three times as WALTER tried to fight out of it, yet when he finally did, WALTER landed two hiptosses and finally made the tag to Dragunov.
After Dragunov unleashed punches and a dropkick as he was the proverbial house on fire, the champion would take out James with two corner lariats and a crucifix bomb. This gave us the first real Andy/Dragunov exchange, with Dragunov escaping the A Klasse and eventually landing the Torpedo Moscow on his soon to be challenger. A beautiful floatover neckbreaker by James lead to a sequence which saw all men down after an Andy superkick on WALTER and our second Andy/Dragunov exchange, with strikes fired back and forth before a pumphandle bomb earned Dragunov a two count. After being crotched on the top rope, Dragunov would roll through a top rope frankensteiner only to run into a spinebuster that was quickly turned into a sharpshooter. Ever a creative man, WALTER would help his partner break the hold by powerbombing James onto Andy.
WALTER would end up getting tagged back in, but a powerbomb attempt saw Andy tag out to James. This didn’t work out for the heels as a roll-up led to James getting kicked into a Torpedo Moscow, Dragunov wiping Andy out with a suicide dive and WALTER winning the match for his team with a powerbomb. An action packed contest that also gave fans a chance to see Dragunov and Andy go at it in the ring in a sequence of exchanges that implied that Dragunov has Andy’s number – what will the 16 Carat Gold Winner need to do to change that situation?
The Women’s Tag Team match was similarly full of action, with the match starting in a similar vein with a face-won brawl that also saw Kelly use her ‘Shades of Ronaldo’ PKs off of the apron on both opponents. As the fight at ringside continued, LuFisto and Melanie Gray brawled their way back into the contest, particularly managing to isolate Kelly when the match ended up back between the ropes. The narrative of the match at this point was fun, as Kelly’s desire to hit one more move saw her pass up some opportunities to tag that threatened to cost her team the match: after a sleeper by Gray saw Kelly hit a jawbreaker, she hit the ropes and ended up getting speared by Gray; cravat knees to LuFisto had Kelly then go for ‘Shades of Shibata’, only to miss and get nailed with a corner cannonball for her sins.
This cannonball would see Toni Storm break the pin at two and after LuFisto ended up getting bounced between punches from the two faces, a Kelly back suplex finally saw the tag to the wXw Women’s Champion. After a DDT blocked a Gray swinging slam, Storm and Kelly hit stereo corner dropkicks/hip attacks following stereo German suplexes, though Storm’s attempt at Strong Zero would be turned into a rollup by Gray for two. Another attempted Strong Zero saw Gray counter once more, this time utilising the swingout slam and setting up Storm for a knee in the corner, a LuFisto facewash and a kick to the back of the head from the apron by Gray. Just as it looked like LuFisto and Gray had the match in hand, a choke into a cradle DDT scoring two, Gray would get crotched on the top rope, LuFisto would get blasted with a Kelly step up enziguri and a Storm Strong Zero for the three count. The only concern I have with this is that it might impact upon the likelihood of a LuFisto title shot, but I guess we will see where the booking takes that in the long term.
The backstage segments this week saw Monster Consulting and RISE both at a loss as to what to do about JayFK. Monster Consulting take their complaints to Christian Michael Jakobi, with some back and forth about which one of the men in the room is a fool. Having finally got their frustrations out, Jakobi reminded Consulting that they had defeated JayFK four times – if they needed to get things done, they needed to get in the ring and don’t worry about a lawyer. WALTER had similar suggestions for RISE, telling Pete Bouncer and Ivan Kiev that they should get in the ring and sort out their problems just like they know how.
Outside of Marius Al-Ani and Killer Kelly discussing their plans for the break over a bag of Haribo (Al-Ani to Spain; Kelly to Portugal, if you’d like to know), we also saw a Smoke Break with Bobby Gunns in which he ran down all of the four men left in the #1 Shotgun Championship Contender tournament. Whilst laughing at Al-Ani’s embarrassing body building comparable to other real bodybuilders out there, he finds an opportunity to bash TKO for being a Bavarian rapper, Veit Muller for coming from Hamburg, and Lucky Kid for trying to be a German Hiromu Takahashi. As things seemed to be drawing to a close, a man walks across the front of Gunns, earning himself a match the following week as Gunns promises to teach him a lesson.
Finally, the saga of Dirty Dragan continued, as he chatted to Sebastian Hollmichel about the loss to Emil Sitoci. Dragan is very self-deprecating as always, making it clear that he felt Sitoci is a better wrestler than he is so was always going to get the victory. Hollmichel is unhappy with this defeatist attitude, storming out after reiterating that Dragan needs to see a therapist.
With such a stacked card for their weekly show, it is unsurprising that this was an eminently watchable episode of Shotgun. Both matches delivered, whilst also serving up tantalising morsels of what is yet to come as we enter the second half of the year.
