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Here are the results from the shows.
William Regal and Matt Martlaro are your announcers for all three shows.
July 3, 2011 Episode
Match Number One: Derrick Bateman and Kenneth Cameron defeated James Bronson and Erick Rowan when Cameron got the three count with a cross body.
Match Number Two: Brad Maddox defeated Xavier Woods with a snap DDT out of a suplex position.
Lucky Cannon is shown in the back and he is incapacitated and was shivering in a room. Maxine was trying to get help for Cannon.
Byron Saxton came to the ring and before his match, he cut a promo where he says that he is about to do something he has wanted to do for a long time. He said that he wanted to deal with a fraud that has taken place over the last year. He says that Titus O’Neil has always tried to be the big shot. Saxton says that Titus is going to come out and bark and then they will play a game of exposure as he exposes the fraud.
Match Number Three: Titus O’Neil defeated Byron Saxton by disqualification.
Dean Ambrose being interviewed by Briley Pierce in the interview area. Ambrose says that there is a question burning in everyone’s mind and that is what would happen if Dean Ambrose met Seth Rollins. He says that this will happen in the ring. Ambrose says that he is a trendsetter and he does not fit into anyone’s mold. He says that Dean Ambrose will blow the door off everything in FCW.
Match Number Four: FCW Divas Champion and Queen of FCW Aksana defeated Kaitlyn with a backslide.
Bo Rotundo is sitting in the back and he sees someone walking by and he tells them that he bets their hands are cold.
Match Number Five: FCW Florida Champion Bo Rotundo defeated Damien Sandow (with Maxine) to retain the FCW Florida Title with a spear after FCW General Manager Norman Smiley restarted the match. It appeared that Damien Sandow won the FCW Title with a neck breaker after the referee was knocked out and Lucky Cannon came out and put on the referee’s shirt to make him the ‘official referee’ for the match. Right after Cannon called for the bell, FCW General Manager Norman Smiley told Cannon that he was not an FCW referee and threatened to fire Cannon if he didn’t get out of the ring. Smiley restarted the match and in the time that Smiley announced his plans, Rotundo was able to recover and as soon as a new referee came out, Rotundo hit a spear for the three count.
After the match, Cannon and Sandow attacked Rotundo and Husky Harris comes to the ring to take care of Sandow and Cannon.
July 10, 2011 Episode
Match Number One: Tito Colon and Percy Watson defeated FCW Tag Team Champions Big E Langston and Calvin Raines in a Non Title Match when Watson got a rollup.
Briley Pierce interviewed Raquel Diaz and Alexander Rusev and Diaz says that she is looking forward to getting Rusev in the ring and that they will be working together.
Match Number Two: Dean Ambrose defeated Hunico with an Air Raid Crash.
After the match, Ambrose gets on the mic and he says that Seth Rollins knows that he cannot beat him and that Rollins’ career will be meaningless until Seth can beat him.
Match Number Three: Husky Harris defeated Lucky Cannon with a back senton.
Byron Saxton is interviewed by Pierce and Saxton’s arm is in a sling after last week’s match with O’Neil. He points out that they both went to the University of Florida and they were friends. However, Titus became a success and it got to his head. Saxton says that this has only started.
Match Number Four: Johnny Curtis defeated Mason Ryan, Leakee, and Seth Rollins in a Number One Contender Match for the FCW Title when Curtis pinned Leakee after Rollins power bombed Leakee and Curtis hit a top rope leg drop on Rollins to break up the cover.
July 17, 2011 Episode
Match Number One: Richie Steamboat defeated Ricardo Rodriguez with a superkick.
Bo Rotundo is interviewed in the back and he tells Johnny Curtis that tonight is his chance and we will see what happens.
Match Number Two: FCW Tag Team Champions Big E Langston and Calvin Raines defeated Percy Watson and Tito Colon to retain the FCW Tag Titles when Langston hit the Big Ending and Raines got the three count.
Pierce interviews Sonia and Audrey Marie and they talk about their upcoming tag match against AJ Lee and Aksana.
Match Number Three: FCW Divas Champion and Queen of FCW Aksana and AJ Lee defeated Audrey Marie and Sonia when Aksana pinned Audrey after a kick to the head.
Raquel Diaz comes to the ring to introduce Alexander Rusev.
Match Number Four: Alexander Rusev defeated Mike Dalton with an Oklahoma Roll into a German suplex for the three count. (move had a similar set up to Doug Williams’ Chaos Theory where it was a continuous movement into the German suplex, but unlike Williams, Rusev releases the German suplex)
Match Number Five: FCW Florida Champion Bo Rotundo defeated Johnny Curtis with a spear.
Thoughts on the Tapings
Since I saw that Dean Ambrose made his debut last week at the house show in Tampa, I was indirectly campaigning for a Seth Rollins/Dean Ambrose feud and it looks like my wishes will be granted. I was hoping that based on the Ambrose promo during the first episode that we would get it on the second show (which airs on my birthday [and since another company has a pay per view on that night, what better birthday present]). They are both former FIP champions who never lost their titles in the ring so when this match happens in the state of Florida, they will become my unofficial FIP World Heavyweight Champion.
With what I had seen of Jon Moxley on the independent scene, I did not know how well that character would translate to FCW and the WWE umbrella. So far I would say that Dean Ambrose is a success on the mic. He cut two promos that were very close to what he did as Jon Moxley so it does not look like he is going to be neutered as much as I feared. He came off as the modern progression of Steve Austin with his attitude and he could fit that Stan Hansen/Steve Austin mold.
Based on what I saw later in the show, I think that they could set up a great tag team of Husky Harris and Dean Ambrose because they have similar characteristics.
Speaking of good teams that I think could work, I thought a team of Derrick Bateman and Brad Maddox could work. They have similar personalities while Bateman is a face and Maddox is a heel, I see a lot that can work with these guys because they both can get the crowd to react to them and they might not appear to take themselves seriously, they can do so when necessary in the ring.
After the Brad Maddox ‘reality show’ segments, I was not sure what to expect from him in the ring because I was not the biggest fan of those segments. I enjoyed his performance against Xavier Woods. I liked his finisher which as I mentioned above that he set up for a snap suplex, but he turned it into a DDT.
At FCW tapings, the promos can be hit or miss. As I have already mentioned, I was impressed with Dean Ambrose’s promos during the night because they didn’t neuter what worked with Jon Moxley. Byron Saxton’s promos were good as well. I don’t know if they are trying to recreate the Tommy Dreamer/Raven storyline with the Saxton and O’Neil being friends in college. Will we see Naomi play the Beulah role, or will they bring in someone else to finish the love triangle?
I thought Saxton was funny with his comment during the first promo when he said that O’Neil would come to the ring and bark. He did bark three times during the match. I was hoping that Saxton would have added to his promo that O’Neil would do something and then instead of finishing off his opponent, he will waste time and bark.
One of the people I was at the show with commented that it seems like they only use the same four Divas at every television taping because we had Kaitlyn and Aksana wrestle on the first show. I hope she was happy that we got to see Audrey Marie and Sonia in action on show number three. Speaking of that match, if you have followed FCW on television, AJ and Aksana were working together until Maxine manipulated the system to allow Aksana to defeat AJ to become the FCW Divas champion. AJ then split with Maxine and Aksana and AJ came to the aid of Naomi Knight on the episode of FCW that aired this past Sunday when Naomi wrestled AKSANA, the same person who AJ helped Naomi fight off. Why must this happen on a Thursday night? In case you have missed the last two weeks of Smackdown, Kaitlyn and AJ were tag team partners the last two weeks on the show so why not have them be a tag team or put Maxine in the ring with Aksana because I could have sworn that Norman Smiley told Maxine that she would have to wrestle.
Briley Pierce seemed to be a little nervous tonight doing the interviews. Other than the Brad Maddox Reality Show segments, I think this was the first time that a male has done interviews at ringside since Matt Martlaro started doing commentary.
I thought the best match of the first show was the FCW title match between Damien Sandow and Bo Rotundo. I only wish they wouldn’t have relied on the crutch finish that they used. As I mentioned above, the finish of this match was a ref bump and then Lucky Cannon came to the ring to make the three count (which was very very very fast) to crown a new FCW Champion. Norman Smiley came out to settle the situation, but instead of disqualifying Sandow for using Cannon to help him out, we had a restart. In the amount of time that Smiley restarted the match, I was able to write down in my notes that in only a matter of seconds, Rotundo would be able to fully recover and win with just one move, the spear.
I did like Husky Harris coming out to the ring to help his brother (even though he was one of the many heels to attack Bo a few weeks ago) but we did not see them reform their tag team before Harris went to NXT.
I thought Tito Colon and Percy Watson worked well as a tag team.
Since I have talked about Dean Ambrose promos already, I wanted to briefly talk about his match with Hunico. I was a bit surprised that they would have had Ambrose debut on television against Hunico, but a win over him would be a good way to establish Ambrose as a serious contender in a short period of time. I thought the match was okay, but I thought that Hunico got in a bit too much offense on Ambrose. As I mentioned above, if this is going to lead to a good feud with Seth Rollins over the FCW 15 title, do whatever it takes to get there as long as both characters stay strong.
I was surprised that after Cannon was on top for the last few months that he would have lost so easily to Husky Harris.
After a few tapings with a healthy amount of Seth Rollins and Richie Steamboat, this might have been the least I have seen them on the show.
With Rollins in a four way match, I was thinking that they would have kickstarted the Rollins/Ambrose feud to set up a match on the third show.
The Fatal Four Way match was the best match of the second show.
The Steamboat/Rodriguez match surprised me a bit. I did not expect a match that was so stiff from Rodriguez but he held his own with Steamboat. Rodriguez nailed a very nice lariat on Steamboat (and Rodriguez discussed it on his Twitter account)
I thought the non-title tag match was better than the rematch with Watson and Colon facing Langston and Raines.
I though the Rusev/Dalton match was the type of match they should have had for Dean Ambrose as well with him getting an easy victory over someone who was in the lower midcard. The finish that I described in the run down of the match was very impressive for someone of Rusev’s size.
The Curtis/Rotundo match was okay, but it felt like something was off a few minutes into the match. Rotundo was sent into the bottom turnbuckle and he went to the floor for a significant period of time. If Rotundo was okay after this match, he deserves a lot of credit for selling the way that he did, but he did look out of it for portions of the match. There were a few times in the match that I thought Curtis was going to win the match.
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