Bang! Pro Wrestling Presents King’s Winter in Sendai! (2/27-2/28)

FEBRUARY 27^th, 2023: KING’S WINTER IN SENDAI, NIGHT ONE

• Bang! Conception Championship Tournament, Quarter-Final: “The Iron Idol” Riko Tsukino def. Victor “the Constrictor” Jimenez @ 15:09 by pinfall with the Sunspark (single knee facebreaker)
• Bang! Conception Championship Tournament, Quarter-Final: Ignacio el Jaguar def. Garry “Ray-Ray” Nelson @ 9:12 by pinfall with an O’Connor roll
• Bang! Conception Championship Tournament, Quarter-Final: Kazuhiro Troy def. Taka Sakaragi @ 12:09 by submission with the Heretic’s Fork (Koji clutch)
• Bang! Conception Championship Tournament, Quarter-Final: “Dinner Plate” Lord Gavin Yum, Esq. def. Lord Kurosame-sama @ 13:55 by pinfall with the Galatine Driver (inverted Michinoku driver)
• Bang! Conception Championship Tournament, Semi-Final: “The Iron Idol” Riko Tsukino def. “Dinner Plate” Lord Gavin Yum, Esq. @ 24:12 by pinfall with a hurricanrana pin
• Bang! Conception Championship Tournament, Semi-Final: Kazuhiro Troy def. Ignacio el Jaguar @ 14:08 by pinfall with the Royal Treatment (double underhook piledriver)
• Bang! Conception Championship Tournament, Finals: “The Iron Idol” Riko Tsukino def. Kazuhiro Troy @ 18:09 by pinfall with a second rope Canadian destroyer to win the title!

THE CONCEPTION TOURNAMENT
The Bang! Conception Tournament is in the books!

The first round was already a doozy, beginning with the “Iron Idol” Riko Tsukino managing to defeat her recent nemesis, Victor “the Constrictor” Jimenez. In this case, she avoided the Constrictor Coil by simply not getting caught in it at all, and caught him unaware with the Sunspark to finally take revenge on Jimenez after getting put to sleep by the dangerous submissionist twice before!

The next first round match was between the Crownless Kingdom’s Ignacio el Jaguar and the slap-happy Kentuckian, Garry “Ray-Ray” Nelson. Nelson held the size and strength advantage for much of the contest, and his slaps harried Jaguar for much of the match. However, Nelson eventually overextended his advantage, allowing Ignacio to surprise him with an O’Connor roll for the upset.

Following that, Kazuhiro Troy made his first appearance in Bang! in a one-on-one match, taking on Lord Kurosame-sama. Kurosame’s tricks were in play the entire time, frequently distracting Troy as he tried to catch the shark in one of his many dangerous maneuvers. Eventually, Kurosame’s attempt at trapping Troy in the Shark Cage got him in too much trouble, as Troy slipped out, double stomped Kurosame’s head into the canvas, and then locked in the Heretic’s Fork to force the submission.

Finally, Lord Kurosame-sama met the surprise eighth entrant in the tournament: English wrestler “Dinner Plate” Gavin Yum, Esq., wrestling out of Rapier: Battle Arts! The Lunch Lawyer is best known for being something close to a criminal in his wrestling matches and this is proven by his attempts to constantly cheat Kurosame out of the win with low blows and rope leverage pins… much to the displeasure of the crowd. Kurosame battled back, but his attempt at the Shark Cage got him in too much trouble as Yum slipped out, double stomped Kurosame’s head into the canvas, and then spiked him on his head with the Galatine Driver to pick up the victory.

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In the semi-finals, Riko Tsukino and Lord Gavin Yum, Esq. met to determine who would reach the finals for the Conception championship. Yum continued his absolutely criminal antics, making the match very one-sided for the first ten minutes, with Yum battering the Iron Idol with his many brutal submissions and cheating tactics. Tsukino was badly bloodied by the cheating and striking after a while, to the point that it was getting uncomfortable to watch. However, she battled back after ducking a superkick, and hit Yum with the Sunspark. Yum managed to fall to the outside, and Tsukino recovered long enough to continue blitzing him with her offense.

When the match reentered the ring, Yum took back his advantage with a pair of superkicks, but his attempt at the Galatine Driver is countered into a tight hurricanrana pin that shocked and defeated Yum for the win!

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The other semi-final match was much more straightforward than the high drama of the Ironhearts team kill – it was the first shot in the coming battle between Bang!’s Crownless Kingdom and DEFIANCE’s Vae Victis for the second Lucha Especial show in April. Ignacio el Jaguar, who brought out plenty of tricks that clearly never came from the Gates of Avalon considering how many of them were actually borderline illegal! Kaz himself was bloodied early in the contest, but he gave as good as he got and battled back just as viciously. The end of the match came when Iggy stunned him long enough to attempt the Twin Helix. Unfortunately, Kaz moved out of the way and while Iggy still landed on his feet, Kaz immediately booted him in the gut and hit him with the Royal Treatment to pick up the win.

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In the finals, a battered Tsukino met Kazuhiro Troy to determine who would be the first-ever Conception champion. Troy managed to quickly reopen Tsukino’s wounds from her emotional war with Sakaragi, and for a while it seemed like Tsukino had nothing left in her except the muscle memory to kick out whenever Troy landed a big shot across the bow.

The match turned around when Troy attempted to finish her with the Royal Treatment. Instead, Tsukino fought out of it and landed a Sunspark. Troy only survives by getting his foot on the ropes, and eventually dodges Tsukino’s attempt to land a moonsault by getting his knees up and landing the double underhook piledriver for a narrow near-fall.

Frustrated, Troy attempted to finish things with the Heretic’s Fork, but couldn’t quite lock it in as Tsukino blocked the leg. Rather than force the issue, Troy beats Tsukino into the corner and tries to finish her with a Royal Treatment off of the second rope, which would’ve been cataclysmic if it hit! Instead, Tsukino battled back and turned the attempt into a super Canadian Destroyer that won her the match and her first singles championship! Riko Tsukino has made history and is the new Bang! Conception champion!

While three of the Ironhearts – “Big Iron” Gorou Ichikawa, Kensuke BLACK, and a still-hobbled and recovering Bando Ichikawa – were there to celebrate, Taka Sakaragi merely watched from the curtains with a vague expression on his face before he disappeared behind the curtains.

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FEBRUARY 28^th, 2023: KING’S WINTER IN SENDAI, NIGHT TWO

• Pom Shinjoku def. Hiro Taguchi @ 3:10 by pinfall after the Great Wave off of Kanagawa (rolling front Russian legsweep)
• Ria Lockhart & Victoria McGill def. “Don of the Deathmatch” Rory Hayes & The Crimson Miracle Bloody Blood Death Homicycle @ 12:09 by pinfall after a Lock Cutter (cutter) from Lockhart to Hayes
• The Crownless Kingdom (Powerslam Anubis & Ignacio del Jaguar) def. SlapShark (Garry “Ray-Ray” Nelson & Lord Kurosame-sama) @ 10:19 by pinfall with the Scales of Dominion (fireman’s carry powerslam) from Anubis to Nelson
• Bang! With Your Friends Championship: The Kazuyagumi (“Ace of Hearts” Kazuya Fukumaru, Victor “the Constrictor” Jimenez, & “Queen of Maniacs” Fujiko Natori) © def. The Ironhearts (“Iron Idol” Riko Tsukino, “Hawkeye” Taka Sakaragi & Kensuke BLACK) @ 8:15 by submission after a Constrictor Coil from Jimenez on Tsukino to retain the title!
• Bang! With Your Partner Championship: The New World Trash (Bex Savage & Angel Quinley) © def. The Beasts of Tokyo (Seiko Serizawa & HAMAYUMI) @ 20:19 by pinfall with the Bakebrainer (heavy elbow smash) from Savage to HAMAYUMI to retain the titles!
• Bang! Hardweight Championship: Claire Merci © def. Kazuhiro Troy @ 22:59 by pinfall after the Royal Butterfly Suplex (dragon suplex) to retain the title!
• Bang! Openweight Championship: “Big Iron” Gorou Ichikawa © def. Amy Campbell @ 31:14 with the Joker’s Wild (Canadian backbreaker rack rolled into a knee strike) to retain the title!

THE TITLE PICTURE
In one of the most astonishing main events ever seen at King’s Winter, Bang! Openweight Champion “Big Iron” Gorou Ichikawa went to war with Amy Campbell in a stellar contest. Ichikawa used his size advantage and tried to overwhelm Campbell that way, but Campbell had spent an entire career dealing with being on the wrong end of the size advantage. Her air of danger was made readily apparent when she hit Ichikawa early with the Bitch Killer punt, nearly taking the champion’s head perilously early in the contest. Only by the grace of momentum did Ichikawa survive this, as Campbell unintentionally booted him out of the ring and had difficulty getting him back in before he could be counted out.

Campbell’s continued assault on Ichikawa ended when he fought back with an assortment of suplexes, but his first attempt at landing the Peacemaker was thwarted when Campbell actually backflipped with Ichikawa’s momentum, landing on all fours, and allowing her to land a short Bitch Killer. However, lining up a third failed her and got her dropped with a spinebuster.

The end of the match came when Campbell tried to finish things with Dead Aim. Instead, Ichikawa caught her in mid-air with a cutter, and he followed it up with the Joker’s Wild to pick up the hard-fought victory to keep his two-years-and-counting title reign going. After the match, the two shared a handshake before Campbell left to allow Ichikawa to talk to the crowd to send the show and tour home.

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Despite having wrestled three matches the previous night, just barely coming up short in becoming the first-ever Conception champion, Kazuhiro Troy fought the queen of the Crownless Kingdom, Claire Merci, for the Hardweight championship. Merci toyed with the battered Kaz for much of the first half of the match, using the fact that she was well-rested to her advantage. It was only in the second half of the match that Kaz found it within him to fight back, to the point that he could have seriously overcome Merci. Kaz nearly took the title when he delivered the Royal Treatment through an outside table, but was unable to capitalize fast enough to get the pinfall victory once he got her back in the ring.

Merci eventually did something rather extreme to swing momentum her way, she threw a handful of thumbtacks in Kaz’s face. Kaz managed to shield his face before anything terrible happened to his vision, but the painful distraction turned him around enough that it left him vulnerable for the Royal Butterfly Suplex. A second one sealed the deal.

After the match, Ignacio and Anubis came out to help Claire celebrate her win over Kaz. Then, what appeared to be a new challenger to the Hardweight champion appeared: Lord Gavin Yum, Esq., the “Lunch Lawyer” who made it to the second round of the Conception tournament. It was only when Yum superkicked a recovering Troy that the reason for his appearance was revealed: the fifteen-year veteran has become the fourth member of the Crownless Kingdom.

The Kingdom left Kaz where he lay as the four celebrated the new member and Claire’s win, and then departed. One thing’s for certain: Lindsay Troy would certainly not let something like that stand.

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For the Bang! With Your Partner championships, The New World Trash were on the back foot for much of their match with the Beasts of Tokyo, particularly once Quinley was left isolated after the Beasts put Savage through a table on the outside. However, Quinley kept fighting off the Beasts and countered their attempt to use their one-two punch of the Dragon’s Breath and Tiger’s Bite, until she was able to tag in Savage. Savage alone beat back the Beasts for a while, but things still looked dire until Quinley was able to eject Serizawa. When HAMAYUMI overcommitted to the Dragon’s Breath and missed, she was on the wrong end of the Bakebrainer, and it ended the Beasts’ night.

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Possibly the most shocking event that happened on this show was when the Ironhearts received their rematch for the Bang! With Your Friends championships that they lost last month, as they took on Fukumaru, Jimenez, and Natori of the Kazuyagumi. The match went as it usually should, but it was relatively early in the match when Sakaragi refused to tag into the match in Tsukino’s time of need, and instead walked out on the Ironhearts entirely. This left Kensuke BLACK and Tsukino, who was still reeling from her brutal victories in the Conception Tournament, to take the brunt of the Kazuyagumi’s assault. It wasn’t long before Jimenez, once again, trapped Tsukino in the Constrictor Coil and put her to sleep.

Sakaragi refused to explain himself afterwards. When he was confronted backstage by Ichikawa, he promptly knocked the Openweight champion’s cowboy hat off and their confrontation had to be broken up by officials in the back. It would seem that the long-simmering hatred between Tsukino and Sakaragi has finally caused Sakaragi to leave the Ironhearts entirely. What are his plans now?

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
Pom Shinjoku beat the brakes off of Hiro Taguchi in rapid succession. After admitting a level of frustration with being unable to take the Hardweight title off of Merci last month and not seeing much action on this tour, the one-eyed Shinjoku vowed to take the Sekai Saikyo Cup next month and challenge for the Openweight title.

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Ria Lockhart teamed up with Victoria McGill to take down Rory Hayes and his tag team partner, the Crimson Miracle Bloody Blood Death Homicycle. Rory, my guy… why are you still teaming with a bicycle like it’s people? Anyway, Hayes wrestled a fine handicap match, throwing the Homicycle around like a projectile the entire time. However, he ultimately fell victim to Lockhart’s Lock Cutter and took the loss. Lockhart spent a large portion of the match arguing with the referee about the illegal foreign object before being reminded – frequently – that the Homicycle was, in fact, Hayes’ tag team partner. She called the whole thing “fucking stupid”. She’s clearly not used to how Bang! works!

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Finally, the Crownless Kingdom dispatched the makeshift “SlapShark” tag team of Garry “Ray-Ray” Nelson and Lord Kurosame-sama. The match was goofy shenanigans the whole way through, with Anubis comically throwing Kurosame-sama around like a shotput much to his complaints (well, I think they’re complaints, he just screamed “SHAAARRRK!” as he was being thrown) and Nelson doing a lot of slapping and praising Dale. Ignacio seemed like the only sane person out there. Eventually, Anubis managed to land the Scales of Dominion on Nelson after Nelson accidentally slapped the paste out of the shark’s mouth to pick up the win.

Karen Nakano
RingDispatch.com