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House of Glory was live in their home venue, the NYC Arena in the borough of Queens in New York City for their "Friday The 13th" card on Premier Streaming Network, featuring some big moments, debuts and returns.
The Mane Event (Midas Black and Jay Lyons) beat back the challenge of CashFlo Inc (Ken Broadway and Encore Moore), retaining their House of Glory Tag Team titles. Moore had won the Matt Travis Battle Royal back in August for a shot at any championship he wanted, where his partner Broadway announced they would be challenging for the tag titles. This was very good tag team match. Broadway has been showing a little edge lately, harkening back to his former heel days and it's been rubbing his partner the wrong way at times. Competitive, back and forth match with Mane Event hitting their Grand Finale finish on Broadway. It was not lost on commentary (Commissioner Jason Solomon and Hillary P. Wisdom) that Broadway picked the tag titles and it was him that lost the fall. Black and Lyons put over their opponents and offer them a rematch. With just them in the ring, Broadway attacks Moore, giving him a brutal beatdown, I assume ending their tag team and cementing a Broadway heel turn.
Hoss Fight time with "The Big Bad Kaiju" O'Shay Edwards (famous from is time in Ring of Honor as part of Shane Taylor's Shane Taylor Promotion) faced HoG's resident monster, "La Sombra" Carlos Ramirez. Ramirez has had a trajectory of a West Indian Big Bubba Rogers: an unstoppable bodyguard who becomes an extremely hard to beat wrestler. Very enjoyable big man match with some big blows and slams thrown and absorbed. Ramirez puts Edwards down with a great sitdown powerbomb. Commissioner Solomon says this win will get Ramirez a shot at his former employer, Crown Jewel champion Charles Mason.
They then show a video package on a big screen of Wisdom announcing he's going to be a manager and his first charge will be the returning "Dark Star" Idris Jackson, who then defeats popular HoG star, "Sweet Cheeks" Joey Silver. The first down part of the show. First, they give Wisdom the big screen package and then he does practically the same promo in the ring. What was the point of the barely audible package? Then the match was solid but Silver is a great comedy character, an okay in ring performer so it's best to keep it relatively short and they didn't. I did like Jackson and think he has real promise as a wrestler and as a heel. The guy challenged a kid to a fight.
In a Six Way match to determine a new number one contender for the Cruiserweight title (the standard way HoG determines their number one contender), Kevin Blackwood, in his debut, got the win over Dezmond Cole, Raheem Royal, J. Bougii (of MLW's Bomaye Club), and Roachie Roach (with his young protege, Darron Richardson). This was highly entertaining. HoG has a way of making sure these matches unique from each other. This one had Richardson liberally helping Roach, essentially working as a tag team. Well put together as these tend to be with Blackwood picking up the win, making him the next challenger for the Cruiserweight title.
Cruiserweight champion "The Ghetto Samurai" Nolo Kitano successfully retained the title against Michael Fain of the Black Hand in a solid bout. Kitano's had a great year, winning the cruiserweight title as well as making appearances in Major League Wrestling and getting a huge win over "Speedball" Mike Bailey in June. Fain's gotten pretty good in the last year and looked good here. He's a bigger cruiserweight and would probably be a smoother performer if he worked like that instead of trying to match speed with smaller guys.
Kiki Van Gogh was able to beat OVW and ROH star Leila Grey by disqualification. It was okay. Van Gogh is very new but has some real promise. I don't think Grey is at the level as a young veteran who can elevate Van Gogh or hide Kiki's weaknesses. Some clever booking for a finish with Grey trying to use the Lie, Cheat, Steal gimmick to get the win but by the time the ref came around, Van Gogh had thrown the foreign object in question (Grey's fan...don't ask) back to Leila and SHE was the one laid out, causing the ref to disqualify Grey. Cute. Shaving a couple minutes off this would have helped.
In the co main event, Mike Santana, in only his third singles match since returning from injury and his return to HoG after a 4 yr absence, defeated Rocky Romero in a great match. Going nearly 20 min, they had a lot of time to build something and did a good job with Romero forcing the action and taking the larger, younger competitor into deep water and Santana having to fight from underneath a lot more than I expected going in. Spent way too much time on the floor for my taste but it didn't hurt the match too badly. Santana win with a torture rack into a sitdown powerbomb. After the match, he puts over Romero and House of Glory and challenged HoG Heavyweight champion, the "Indy God" and now self proclaimed King of New York, Matt Cardona.
In the non-title main event, Crown Jewel champion "The Root of All Evil" Charles Mason was upended by New Japan legend, Minoru Suzuki in an intense brawl between two guys who like to take punishment as much as they enjoy dishing it out. Mason has been on a near 2 yr reign of terror with Suzuki being brought in to humble him by Commissioner Solomon. Very good technical brawl with some blistering chops and forearms but with each man going for various chokes and submissions. Late in the match, Suzuki locks in a rear naked choke with Mason getting out by biting Suzuki on the arm. Suzuki reapplies and pivots into a Gotch piledriver for the win. After the match, he takes the mic and calls Mason a "great champion" and then drops an "F-- you" to a huge pop.
I thought this was a very good show and a step up from their Fallout show in September.
The Real Uncle Dave grade: B (87 out of 100)
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