A Turmoil 310 Review By, Paul Pugh!

S-Cup Intro/Emp’s magnum opus

S-Cup intro was excellent stuff. It got me plenty interested in seeing the matches and that’s a win in my book. I can’t praise it highly enough, the puppet thing was a fun touch. I hate that stupid Emp.

 

Spider nonsense

Fine set up promo, Spider is such well-trodden ground and this point and I honestly couldn’t care less. 5 spits for an enemy. I hate that stupid Emp.

 

S-Cup Moore vs Marisa **½

Ashley been consistently looking like a star for as long as I can remember, no difference here in the intros. Marisa’s entrance is cool but she walks like she’s been programmed by Boston Dynamics. She needs to relax those shoulders. The match itself started with a flavour pin and then… the flavour evaporated. This was a video game match, which I’m not saying is good or bad, I'm just saying I didn’t get into it at all. Mercifully quick and had a rancid ending, but this will happen when there are title opportunities on the line I guess. I’ve seen both have better.

 

Karmine

I don’t like it when Jim Black is humanised, I don’t care about his wife or kids, I care about his INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM… which he’s always terrible at. Karmine is one step ahead of the caller. Shows he’s an experienced champion, making sure that he doesn’t get himself into any wacky situations - good solid stuff. Slightly drops the mask at the end with some anxiety - and intrigue built, let's see what comes next.

 

Limo rides

Nice promo, lots of work went into it, although the only person it sorta gets over is Aries? This leads into something later so…

 

BAE

Nothing makes me angrier than vagueness. Fuck BAE

 

Reese-Note

I do so enjoy the big entrance to walk 2 feet and crane your neck up at a massive screen. Walk to the ring, and get the same effect without introducing a right angle into your vertebrae. Mark doing his babyface schtick which is solid enough, tees up C-Note. I don’t know if the first part of this actually tells the story C-Note wants it to. If you’re showing a guy getting pinned a couple times, you setting up two potential things out of your eventual match. One, you pinned Mark Reese and who cares because you’ve shown him to be a loser, therefore what does it do for you? Two - and the worst one, if Mark Reese beats you, it shows you can’t beat a loser and then what? Anywho, well put together generally, would’ve liked the text to be on the screen a tad longer, but the content is solid. Although again, spent a lot of time talking about other people and their discord fun and not building heat for this match. I hope Reese brains this animal.

 

Owen teaser

Could’ve done with this being a tad shorter, WWE used to do these and they’d be like… 30 seconds-a minute. Mike said it in twitch chat “guess we’re seeing the whole match” and he’s right I think. Editing is hard when you’re trying to get a story across. Well put together though.

 

PERL

Oh Perl, that Bash is no good. Fine little promo COULD’VE BEEN ON AMBITION JAMES, WHICH WAS ON ACTUAL V-DAY but I digress. Solid promo, keeping things chugging along for Perl

 

BAE vs Surfing man ***

Tsunami has all the personality of the cinderblock C-Note was swinging around earlier this season. BAE is an idiot - his handler knows how to build an annoying prick, so he’s doing his job. Match itself, Adam doing Adam things with the incredibly poised low superkick when he was crawling. Both clearly good at the game, with lots of back and forth, but as it wore on, Johnny had it. Stupid BAE

 

Flojo/Dragana

Friendship building? Sure. Substance when Flojo has called her shot? Absolutely not. You need to be doing more than this if you’re going to be World Champion, period. Premise is fine, but…

 

River

Nice length, well put together, sense of intrigue. Can’t argue with it, although nobody actually wants to be like water because he stinks

 

John / Mass Effect

There are bits of this promo that kinda don’t make sense and are hard to read, so that’s my first note - I was lost on the roads thing because it was all over the place. The promo itself suffered from a similar thing, idk. There are lots of moving parts but addressing them all at the same time made it a lot of words for not a lot of impact in my estimation. It only got worse when Chance showed up. Confusing. Nobody did anything particularly bad, you're just missing some KISS to bring focus.

 

Marisa/MDD

Didn’t need the make-up artist part at all, could’ve started with MDD belching in all honesty. Less is more sometimes. Days of our lives stuff, not for me personally but I appreciate the effort of those involved. 

 

Sheldon Promo

It’s well written but suffers from the “real people don’t talk this way” thing for me. Also from a logical point, who is he talking to, who is filming him, and what’s going on here? Maybe reference Kasstianity, Owen has in his promos.  He’s a dude on a bench yelling at the sky. Let’s get some more info in there so we can get the image right in our minds for something like this. Advances the story, so that’s good stuff, just offering some tips on how I think it could be better. Maybe we get to see the match for true next time.

 

Plex vs Belle ***¼ 

I enjoy Sue’s entrance, its very jumpy - likewise Belles. Both of them you can imagine fans getting behind and thats very good. Belle needs some kneepads because she’s 87lbs and those legs will snap like toothpicks if she keeps up. Nice back and forth, Belle is really easy to get behind, don’t you dare Mad Mike. Enjoyable match, definitely an improvement on the opener.

 

C-Note Thing

Nope. Again. Not for me, doesn’t serve a match/feud in a good way, appreciate the effort, on we roll.

 

Parca/Dillinger

Now for me to be a hypocrite. I actually like Dillinger not talking like a normal human being, because he’s a smarmy fuck and this is how smarmy fucks speak. Parca feels like a bit of a… second fiddle character when these two get together, and it’s the dynamic, I get it, I just like my world champions world champion-y. The feud started pretty good though, so can’t argue with where we’re going, especially where Maxx takes it later

 

Shianne

Shianne’s voice sounds like it was lifted out of the Golden Girls, you can hear the lisp and the loose dentures rattling throughout. The style of the video was nice and unique which is good, but I don’t think I gelled with the AI voice style at all here. The content was fine, the delivery was abysmal - this could’ve happily been a text promo and it would’ve had much more impact for me. They did do the “looking up at the screen” thing right though, so kudos there!

 

Perfect Storm/Emp/Spider

Fun promo, can see they all had a good time writing this. Gets us going in the direction of something so that’s good. I don’t believe for one second any of these yahoos can solve a Rubix cube without removing stickers though. I hate that stupid Emp

 

Samsin vs Devon ***

DNS getting a glow up is good times, they’ve looked horrendous for too long. Devon showing here why he’s one of the standouts of this season. When you’re going toe to toe with DM Punk and his rotten moves, you’ve gotta come correct because there’s always the chance that he’ll catch you. Thankfully, Devon was alive to the threat. OK back and forth, Samsin needs better, more sensible moves. The ending was great, count to 100, that Worm ain’t got nothing left to feed on.

 

Dupree/Emp

I hope Dupree has good dental coverage, no one man should have all that maple. They’ve been doing this style of chaos for about 6 years and it still pops folks, so more of the same here. Decent, advances stuff. I’m on board. I hate that stupid Emp.

Owen

So. Firstly, this took a lot of effort, and I appreciate that. There is a lot of content packed into these 5 minutes. Lots of it I felt could’ve been dumped and you could’ve still hit all the same plot points. I get it, you’re really into your feud and your history, but there’s a point where that gets boring for a viewer, and we clicked into that territory here. I watched this on 1.5x speed in the end, and it made it a lot more watchable for sure. That could be down to my own lack of attention span, but I can’t believe I’m the only one. As I say, great effort, would’ve taken a lot of time to source stuff, edit it etc but… could’ve easily been a text promo and got the same message across.

 

The Lobby

We’re great 👍

 

Hifumi vs Emp ***½ 

I like Hifumi, she’s got a “girl from The Ring” vibe to her that I can really get behind. I don’t like Emp, she stinks, but I do like her caution tape attire. Both of these characters feel fleshed out and that will often drag me into a match more than anything else. I enjoyed this match a lot, both handlers always dig it out of the bag and putting them together is a great time. Thought that Hifumi might have it but it's Emp, and Emp is a doodoo head. I hate that stupid Emp.

 

Wrex/Harvey

“Make like a tree and fuck off” popped me because I am a stickler for swearing. Does a good job of setting the scene and advancing what they’re doing. I’m glad Harvey finally learned to skip the erotica, maybe he’s gunning for RP’er of the year once more…

 

Burn Book

The problem with this is the same problem C-Note had earlier in the night. The more you talk blanket smack, the more likely it is that you’re going to undermine your character going forward. Burying people who might beat you, you look dumb when they beat you. Burying people that you’re gonna beat - then who did you just beat? Always respect your (potential) opponent’s ability in OCW, because you’ll look a twat when they pull your pants down otherwise.

 

Maxx

We start in the ring - EDITING! LESS IS MORE! Voice delivery is much better here, subtitles, nice. The feelings stuff is very AEW of y’all but it’s done pretty well here. It’s not too melodramatic, and it's brought back to pro wrestling much better than we’ve seen in the rest of the show. It advanced the story without losing my interest, so a big tick achieved in my opinion.

 

Hagen/Heather

Do the parenthesis indicate he’s whispering or that someone forgot to edit the promo? I presume the latter. More melodrama, it’s the handler’s signature sauce. It’s a pure simp promo. Not a fan of it myself, but he’s basically acting as a TMZ interviewer, so it allows Heather to talk a little. Fuck heather.

 

Heather vs Kameyo ***¼ 

I enjoyed this match the most of the night, might be because I had fun calling it so I’m remembering it fondly. As I said, random titles on TV has been Jay’s kryptonite, so not a huge fan of that. Heather beat the life out of Kameyo but each time there was a glimmer of hope for a comeback so I bought into it big. Very watchable, but Heather was in a different mindset than Kameyo here. Out in the streets, they call it murder. 

 

The S-Cup matches were solid on the whole tonight, barring me not enjoying the first one. Overall it was a decent show, there were a few glaring omissions, but it did give the S-Cup the space to shine which is probably for the best, since thats the focus of the company right now.

 

There are a few situations on the show where less is more would’ve been fantastic - heck, even DNS did some less is more this week after spraying themselves all over everything last week. We have some nice feuds brewing that’ll take us into the new season, and most of the content on the show did a good job of serving said feuds. Fun show.