House Slytherin EXPLODES: Wrestling Is Cool Endless Winter Review

In the TH style. You can order the delayed showing of the event at Smart Mark Video on Demand.

Highlights:

• Shenron tried a backflip move out of the corner, but he was met with a spinebuster counter and a pinfall by Mark Angelosetti.
• Chuck Taylor crotched the Lithuanian Snow Troll on the top rope and segued into the Omega Driver for the victory.
• Eric Corvis countered a Juan Francisco de Coronado rear waistlock into a backpack headlock driver to get the win.
• Missile Assault Ant duct taped Green Ant's ankles together, allowing Arctic Rescue Ant to break a snowboard over assailANT's back. He followed it up with a guillotine leg drop to give the Colony: Xtreme Force the victory.
• Drew Gulak got his knees up on an Estonian Thunder Frog frogsplash and countered into an inside cradle for the victory.
• Eddie Kingston took out Frightmare with a Sliding D and a basement Backfist to the Future.
• In a crazy main event, the Osirian Portal took out the visiting team of Pete Dunne and Mark Andrews with the Osirian Sacrament on Dunne.

General Observations:

• I ran into Jervis Cottonbelly before the show and asked him if Gentlemania ran wild. He said it ran wild sometimes, but most of the time, it tread lightly. I would buy a t-shirt with that slogan on it.
• Mark Angelosetti came in to rousing cheers, most likely due to his reconciliation with Dasher Hatfield at Wrestling Is Fun! last night. However, those plaudits would be short-lived as he yelled at a child for touching the football he spiked. In response, Shenron threw him his shirt.
• I dug Shenron, but I couldn't help but thinking that he was their version of ACH. Then I got sad thinking that ACH was never going to appear under a Chikara/Wrestling Is banner again.
  
  EDIT: Just to avoid confusion, nothing that I know of happened between ACH and Chikara/Wrestling Is. The above was just a very poorly-worded sentence on my behalf kinda speaking fears out loud over stuff based on on-screen representation. Please don't take it as concrete fact or even rumor at this point.
• That all being written, backflip handspring leaping neckbreakers? Yeah, he can gank ACH's style all he wants with aeronautics like that.
• Although Angelosetti's counter spinebuster out of Shenron's flippy shit move at the end of the match was pretty tight as well.
• After the match, the kid, named James, got a high five from referee "Handsome" Dan Yost for his troubles. Hooray!
• Chuck Taylor bailed out of the ring before introductions because of the Lithuanian Snow Troll's unorthodox movements around the ring. "Make him stop, he's weirding me out!" was the exact quote, I think.
• The Snow Troll started doing the Ziggler-spam elbow drops. After the sixth one, he paused and held his back. Before the tenth one, he went to the top like he was going to drop the elbow, Savage-style, but then just hopped off the top and did a normal elbow drop.
• Taylor played fast and loose with Yost, especially verbally assaulting him. I'd like to see him try that shit with Bryce. (Note, he probably has in fact tried that shit with Bryce in the past to great effect.)
• Taylor to the top for a moonsault: "I never miss!" After missing the moonsault: "I always miss."
• Speaking of BRYCE!, he came out to ref his first match with shades on and his collar popped.
• Beginning of the Eric Corvis/Juan Francisco de Coronado match, Corvis lands a bronco buster-type move to an upright Coronado in the corner and started landing elbows to him. Corvis went to repeat the spot, only Coronado moved, allowing Corvis to crotch himself in the corner. Coronado followed up with a neckbreaker. I think that was the point when the goons chanting "YOU CAN'T WRESTLE!" at the Ecuadorian Elite shut their faces.
• Corvis, billed as the "Engineer of Offense" before the match, grapevined Coronado in some kind of side Indian deathlock that he used standing upright as leverage for. Talk about living up to the billing...
• The two worked in a countout tease somewhere in the middle of the match, with Coronado awaiting the countout victory to come to him. Corvis used the fans to help him to get to his feet, then beat the count at like 16, to which Coronado remarked to Bryce "That's a 20 count in Ecuador."
• After Coronado countered a back elbow into a German suplex, the crowd which had chanted "You can't wrestle!" at him turned to "You can't beat him!" To Coronado's credit, this match was the best he'd looked overall, both from a nuts-and-bolts wrestling standpoint and a "engage the crowd as a heel" view.
• Missile Assault Ant did the Chris Jericho one-foot-on-the-chest-and-flex C'MAWN BABAY pin and the liontamer within three minutes of each other in the tag match, which made me wonder if he was really Y2J under the mask.
• So, seemingly out of nowhere, Missile Assault Ant broke out the duct tape and immobilized Green Ant, making duct tape now the most feared weapon in the land, until...
• Arctic Rescue Ant's snowboard BROKE over assailANT's back. Straight up snapped. Of course, the thing was probably gimmicked, but hey, I'm sure it did its job for the kids in the audience.
• Oh, we're going with no intermission today, interesting.
• The Estonian Thunder Frog brought an inflatable hammer to the ring with him, which I'm guessing was a direct result of the WiF! iPPV from last night. I heard something went down with his hammer; I just don't know what. Anyway, I do believe James got a hold of it eventually, which was way groovy.
• Both Frog and Drew Gulak went hard to the mat and probably spent more than half their match trading holds with great World of Sport influence. Even though Gulak reputedly always wrestles "his match," I still was pretty surprised not to see T-Frog work in a lot of his overt comedy.
• After Gulak won, he pointed to Thunder Frog, saying "Number one in Estonia, number one in New Jersey," pointing to himself on the latter.
• Eddie Kingston spent so much of the preface and opening of his match on the outside of the ring stalling that Frightmare started doing the "chicken" taunt. Kingston replied to it "I'm not chicken, I'm takin' my time."
• Young girl sitting just down the row from me was audibly cheering the "luchadorable" Frightmare, and Kingston took offense to it, stealing her popcorn. Thankfully, he didn't spill any of it, and Bryce was able to return the snack to the little girl without incident. After the match, Frightmare would go over and give her a hug.
• James won the Raffle-Mania, by the way. So what if his sister picked the winning ticket?
• One of the dudes in the crowd pointed out that Mark Andrews looked a lot like Draco Malfoy, making whenever he got into the ring with Ophidian pretty awkward. Y'know, since they were both alumni of Slytherin House.
• Pete Dunne really liked working over the fingers. He went back to that well at least three times during the match.
• Dunne towards the end had both Ophidian and Amasis in a simultaneously applied single crab. He may not have looked like a hoss, but bah gawd, he acted like one.

Match of the Night:Estonian Thunder Frog vs. Drew Gulak - I wasn't surprised to see that the Estonian Thunder Frog had the bona fides to go to the mat and wrestle Drew Gulak's match with him. Obviously, he was either a product of the Chikara Wrestle Factory, or he had the skills that made Chikara and himself mutually attractive to each other. I appreciated the down-to-the-mat approach too. Again, I'm a huge fan of mat wrestling, World of Sport, counterwrestling, and all that jazz.

What I was surprised at was the fact that the Frog went to the mat so readily. Every time I've seen the Thunder Frog wrestle, he's been exaggerated, over the top with his comedy. I appreciate that style too. You should know by now that I appreciate all styles of wrestling, but that's neither here nor there. Seeing him work the mat with Gulak and keep up with the mat master confirmed everything I already knew about the Chikara family.

In addition to the excellent mat work, they worked in plenty of tasty spots throughout all phases of the match. Gulak picking the Frog out of the air with a sunset flip on a typical leapfrog was probably my spot of the match, just because I'm naturally drawn to taking banal, almost commonplace spots in a match and adding on something unexpected to them. Gulak showed he could keep up with T-Frog in the hoss department with some deadlift suplex impressiveness, and the finish was very well done.

Overall Thoughts: The weather is hardly in the control of the promoters, but this time, it cooperated. However, the heat wasn't nearly as stifling, and Wrestling Is Cool for the second show in a row delivered in a big way. Each of the seven matches was at least good, and this Wrestling Is arm is building an identity for itself among the other parts of the company. In fact, I'd say that other than Wrestling Is Fun!, Cool seems to be the most like Chikara.

The venue is closest to its big-market home base of Philadelphia. The show opened with a fun opener featuring one of their newer Factory graduates against another young guy who had made it in the last year or so. The narrative of Ant vs. Ant continued. Eddie Kingston wrestled and continued to throw away all the goodwill with fans who weren't slobbering contrarians. And the main event saw a mainstay tag team take on exciting new visitors from foreign lands. About the only thing missing was a trios match or an atomico.

My favorite part of the show, by far, was how well the children were treated by the overall staff. Sure, Angelosetti and Kingston may have made a couple of kids cry, but the make-up for the heelish acts from Gavin Loudspeaker, Bryce Remsburg, Yost, Shenron, and Frightmare more than made up for it. The kids were made to feel special, and honestly, aside from being a great business decision, I've found that when the kids are able to have a good time, I'm able to enjoy myself better as well.

Wrestling Is Cool continues to deliver on an all-ages atmosphere with something for everyone. I'm glad that they've become my "local" Wrestling Is partition, and I will be looking forward to their next show in October.