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PROGRESS Wrestling: Freedom's Road: Episode 1
Airdate: 26th January 2017
This is the first episode in a new fortnightly series from Progress, airing on Demand Progress (www.demand-progress.com). Freedom's Road focuses primarily on emerging talents with matches and vignettes taped at a much more intimate venue than usual (the 150 capacity Bedford in Balham, London). These matches were taped 14th/15th November.
The show opens with Darren Allen getting a haircut backstage. His protégé and tag partner, Earl Black Jr, is angry that Darren is focussing on trivial things like hair cuts, and not putting the effort into preparing for their upcoming match; especially as they haven't won a match as a team in months.
Chakara is in the back and Pollyanna comes in and – reminiscent of Brian Kendrick begging TJ Perkins to lose – essentially begs Chakara to let her win the match. Pollyanna had lost to Jinny in the first round of the Women's Title tournament, and this was to be her one and only chance at redemption and re-entry into the tournament.
The young tandem of Never Say Day are backstage, hyping themselves up ahead of their match with Earl Black Jr and Darrell Allen.
Never Say Die (Alex Cupid & Dillon D'Angelo) vs. The Dazzler Team (Darrell Allen & Earl Black Jr)
The rookie team of NSD show surprising fire, taking the Dazzler Team off guard. Earl tries to keep things basic but Darrell tries to get flashy, leading to him taking the pin.
Winners: Never Say Die
After the match, Earl is angry and upset with Darrell and complains about Darrell costing them the match.
Bea Priestley is in the dressing room and Chakara comes in, complaining about Pollyanna. Bea assures he it's going to be okay, and that Chakara can just do the match and win.
Pollyanna vs. Chakara
If Pollyanna wins, she gets a second chance in the Women's Title tournament. If Chakara wins, she earns herself a first round match.
After a fairly even match, with both ladies looking eager to win, Chakara comes out victorious and earns herself a spot in the tournament.
Winner: Chakara
After the match Pollyanna looks dejected, and we cut to a promo video from her, explaining how she feels she isn't good enough and maybe she needs to go away for a while.
Afterwards, the screen fades to black and a title card informs us that Pollyanna retired shortly after; a la Quantum Leap and the infamous “Dr Sam Beckett never returned home” title card.
And that was episode one of Freedom's Road. It's certainly an interesting concept and quite far removed from the more straight-forward presentation Progress normally give us. The backstage segments were presented in an almost Lucha Underground-esque way, except without the LU incidental background music. I'm not entirely convinced yet, but we have only had one 34 minute episode; so I'm interested to see where it goes from here.
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