Coronavirus has shut down a lot of major sporting and cultural events. Not least, the year’s biggest American wrestling show, WrestleMania is set to be aired from a closed-set at the Performance Center. But the impact on the independent wrestling scene is immeasurable with not just performers but promoters, camerapeople, and all number of behind-the-scenes people left out of pocket with shows left no option but to cancel for public health. With that in mind, Will Ospreay and WrestleTalk collaborated to bring us an empty warehouse featuring some of the best up-and-coming talent of the UK scene and Connor Mills. Let’s find out what happened:

Paul Robinson vs OJMO

OJMO, the current RevPro Cruiserweight Champion and a Knucklelocks graduate, was on typically fine form here, playing well to the crowd, even though there wasn’t one. Robinson, a 16-year veteran and current Progress Proteus Champion wasn’t as bad as he has been. The problem I have with Robinson matches isn’t to do with what he does but more that it seems he more builds with aura by other people saying he’s a scary man than actually being a scary man. Either way, this didn’t go on long enough to become too offensive and it did feature enough OJMO dropkicking to stop me getting bored. Robinson got the pin off a curb stop, I think.

Winner: Paul Robinson

Adam Maxted vs Carlos Romo vs Chuck Cyrus vs Malik vs Paul Sayer

Chuck Cyrus has been wrestling since 2009, he was trained by Ricky and Saraya Knight and is a former SWA Heavyweight Champion. Malik has been competing since 2015 and is from Essex, hence Will got him on the show. Carlos Romo has only been wrestling for six years but has competed all over Europe, in Madrid’s Triple W wrestling he was an Absolute Champion, a three-time tag-team champion and alongside A-Kid, has won the Attack Tag-Team Championships. Adam ‘Flex’ Maxted was on Love Island, has been competing for 4 years now, was one of the few good parts of 5Star Wrestling along with Charlie Sterling and is the current OTT Gender Neutral Champion. Paul Sayer does not yet have a Cagematch page. Maxted opened with a cocky promo about how he was going to win. Try as Romo might, this wasn’t very good as the other four men were very much OK. Cyrus pinned Maxted off a Piledriver for the win. Moving on.

Winner: Chuck Cyrus

Giselle Shaw vs Mercedes Blaze

This was meant to be a three-way dance with Aleah James but a pre-match promo with Adam Blampied (Yes, that one. The sex pest) revealed James was injured so this became a singles match. And it was a pretty good one at that. Shaw has really crafted a great niche for herself, delivering a relatively unshowy but effective combination of technical and striking-based offence. Though the few more flashy spots in this match were well-delivered and all the better for not being more conservative in their usage. Blaze is someone who I’d only seen once before as enhancement talent at NXT UK at Download but here, she was very good fun, playing the ‘villain who actually does have a good point’ by applying rubber gloves before the match. The only real issue with this match was it was quite short, not lending it enough time to build any real false finishes or drama to proceedings but still, quite good fun.

Winner: Words

David Starr vs Callum Newman

Starr interrupted a pre-match promo with Newman leading to them brawling their way to the ring. Starr, a former champion in the likes of wXw, CZW, Defiant & currently in RevPro, OTT & TNT Wrestling, helped the young Newman though what turned out to be a surprisingly good match. Newman seemed like he’d be one of those generic flippy whitebois that have a few token spots and no connection between them, not helped by his tights, shooting star press and overall vibe screamed ‘early Mark Andrews’. But he managed to successfully defy my expectations putting on a classic combination of a young underdog with Starr, the veteran, bullying and battering him. Starr is an expert at injecting emotion into situations and here he made a match with nothing on the line matter off the back of a quick backstage segment more than most people have made world title matches. Really, while this was a somewhat slight encounter, I’d be interested to see this match revisited in a year or two as there seemed to be a nice dynamic here. Starr won off a Han Stansen lariat.

Winner: David Starr

Team Sin (Nathan Cruz & Lucas Steel) vs Robbie X & Scotty Davis

Originally, this was meant to involve Rampage Brown instead of Lucas Steel and Lykos II (Joe Nelson) instead of Scotty Davis but hey, card subject to change and all that. Davis is more than a worthy replacement for Nelson, not quite as flippy but bringing his own vibe and a good amount of suplexes. Robbie X is in many ways, the Matt Cross of the UK indie scene: very fast-moving, hard-hitting, been briefly on a major wrestling TV show with its own internal universe (Lucha Underground & WOS: World of Sport respectively) and quite frankly, deserves a lot better than they seem to have been given. Whenever the faces were running wild throwing everything they could at their opponents, it was pretty fun. Whenever Team Sin was in control, I lost interest. My stream cut out so I missed the finish, I’m not sure I’m bothered to go back and check what it was.

Winner: Team Sin

Kyle Fletcher vs Connor Mills

This is one of those ‘epic matches’ that feels like it lasted 40 minutes but it turns out wasn’t even 18. Both Fletcher, a former Attack, RevPro, Fight Club Pro, Defiant & Progress Tag Team Champion and Connor Mills, OJMO’s friend, are capable of putting on impressive performances but this wasn’t my sort of match, too much of a feeling of trying to say “Follow that” to the main event without ever stringing together much of a memorable sequence. move-by-move, it was fine but all put together, it never felt the sum of its parts. That said, I don’t know, the people on the live chat seemed to like it so maybe I’m wrong. Fletcher won off his Razzy Jumping Tombstone.

Winner: Kyle Fletcher

Bea Priestley vs Will Ospreay

Give these two their credit, this was a very worthy main event. There is a history of real-life couples putting on very strong intergender matches, see Sara Del Rey vs Claudio Castagnoli from Chikara or Johnny Gargano vs Candice LeRae from Smash and this match deserves mention alongside them. Ospreay works best when he’s allowed to play the de-facto heel, such as with his match wth Amazing Red last year where he was beating up Red while simultaneously geeking out over wrestling Red. Priestley, a somewhat uncompelling top heel played a very successful de-facto face here, working from underneath as Ospreay utilised his larger stature and natural instincts to be a bit of a dick on twitter to control the majority of the match. The match was full of tribute spots, kind of delivering us the New Japan Cup matches Ospreay wishes he could have had with Rainmaker teases, Priestley hitting a Kamigoye double wristlock knee strike and a Rope-mounted German suplex like Kota Ibushi. At 19 minutes, they managed keep it well-structured, restrained, not going over-the-top on the kickouts and false finishes while also giving Priestley just enough to make it not a given who was going to get the win. Ultimately, Ospreay would get the win off his Stormbreaker twisting Yokosuka Cutter. After the match, Ospreay would thank everyone for their involvement. Same time next week, yeah, Will?

Winner: Will Ospreay

Overall, this was a solid piece of work, giving us six matches with nothing unwatchable and a few pretty good matches. As a statement that we can still keep putting on entertainment even in a time like this, when really by now the venues should have been shut down instead being ‘urged’ to so that people could at least recuperate some losses, it was invaluable. The best bit being it’s all available for free so you don’t even need to take my word for it, go enjoy it and wash your damn hands, everyone.