2008 - the year so far, pt.1

OK. So I kinda fell behind on updating this place. My bad. But here today is some more Dragonic goodness (and yes, Dragonic is a word).

Seems like a good time to do one of those "Half-year" review type things. But I'm gonna do it a bit differently. I'm gonna do three of these - one on NFW, one on A1E, and one on Empire Pro, which I do still read occasionally.

But today, I wanna talk about A1E.

Wow... where to start... the tag team division seems like the best place, as it's a very undervalued part of any promotion IMO. Over in A1E, this year we've seen two teams hold the titles - JA and Big Wreck held the titles til Vengeance, and Blitz finally took the gold in a three-team elimination match also featuring the Second Coming.

If anyone wants to see how to run a tag-team division, this is a good example. After losing at Bloody New Year, Blitz took a step back and got into a series with the Natural Disaster (a good little team with a lot of potential, whilst the Second Coming stepped up in a HUGE way into a feud with JA/Big Wreck which has JUST... after six months... finished. The best thing about that feud was the Second Coming really came on as a heel tag-team - they were sneaky, playing mind-games, and Big Wreck, especially, was a fantastic foil to them. After one PPV cycle, they carried on the "Ducky Kidnap" storyline, and just before the PPV, Blitz were added in to make the match at Vengeance a three-way.

Now, that made a lot of sense - even though Blitz had lost two matches back-to-back at that point, they'd been facing top-name stars at or near the top of the card, so having the tag-team specialists going for the tag team titles made sense. It also gave a nice dynamic, since it meant, whatever happened, the Big Wreck/Second Coming story could continue post-Vengeance - the titles could (and were) moved out of the frame, and everybody still looked good. Add to that the Chronic Crimson Collizion Calling, who were never far away, and you had a nice division.

With the CCCC now gone (not for long, Leonard's gut tells him they'll be back), the end of the big Wreck/SC story, and the new Mid-West Mafia, the tag division's looking really strong. They could do with another face team if I'm honest, since right now it's three heel teams, but all in all the coming few months should be big for the division.


Storyline of the half-year, though, has to go to... Cross/Duchess.

I know some people are gonna be going "What about the Dan Ryan/A1E storyline?", and I'll get onto that in a minute, but for me, this Cross/Duchess story has something about it... both characters are really fleshing out for me, and there are some REALLY nice twists and turns which I have a feeling will carry on for a very long time. Adding Wraith was a stroke of GENIUS, and the whole Apollyon bit was a total shock. Whenever Cross and Duchess are up, I'm interested, and I've not been able to guess a single thing about it so far, so it's definitely my story of the half.

But that's not to take away from the big one - the A1E vs Dan Ryan story. That was a truly great undertaking... but, like the Lindsay Troy/Dis thing, and something else I'll talk about when I do my EPW bit, it was really predictable for me. I wasn't surprised A1E lost War Games - I knew they wouldn't end that match happily, so I was more curious as to how they'd work their way around that. I was a bit surprised when Big Dog won the title, because I thought it'd be nice to carry it into a mini invasion of EPW, with Big Dog, Blitz, Duchess, Wraith, et al doing hit and runs against EPW's guys. But this was a nicely executed story that, despite being a little predictable, told a story you don't often see any more - good winning over "evil" with some redemption thrown in (though the redemption was predictable and too sappy for my tastes).

Now, if anyone thought the BC would take it easy after that, you've missed a lot. You've got a lot of great feuds building, most of which have the legs to carry on for two, possibly three PPV arcs (Big Dog vs. HSPC, Mid-West Mafia vs. A1E, Cross/Duchess vs. Wraith, and loads of others). Chip Friendly as World Champion opens a lot of doors if the MWM are kept away for the next cycle and a half (congrats to Dan by the way, that was a helluva match and a well deserved win). The Duchess/Wraith title situation is one to watch out for, and with Troy Douglas holding gold, it's gonna be tough to dislodge him. Tag team wise, look out for the Second Coming - they've been getting better and better, and it could be their time to shine (except for the two behemoths in the way :))

I'd say more, but there's been so much that it'd take me half a year to cover everything! Stay tuned for my next post, which'll be my review of EPW.