UWC 102: Wrestling with Name Tags

When the major metropolitan area (Champaign/Urbana is the only growing urban area in the state of Illinois, thanks Governor Rauner) is 30 minutes away from you, a wrestling promotion has to offer stories or exceptional matches that entice fans of the genre to come out to you. Unfortunately, United Wrestling Coalition has only seen that its current audience seems to be just Homer, IL, and is basing the product around amusing them. If you want live wrestling in East Central Illinois, they just assume that audience will scour and put in the work to find them.

As I wrote in my review for UWC 101, there is a lot of potential in the booking and a handful of talent, but all that UWC 102 was was more of the same. The guys who came back seemed to be dependent on this promotion to provide them a career, and the new guys were again hindered by the horrid audio presentation. If they did not have their name’s typed on the back of their gear, you would have no idea who they were. It is bad enough that you have no idea why they were there.

Outside of Homer, I think my promotion of their UWC 101 on Twitter (@maineventzombie) and Tumblr was the most they had received. You would figure that a small town fed trying to emulate WWE might follow the social media and the McMahon’s hashtags. Or if they were a true Indie, they would at least follow the Indy Power Rankings or at least tag them in their own posts. Either way, it would take less time to see that I was writing about them than it took for me to find their social media presence.

This is being stated because UWC had a better opportunity to know how to work around their audio shortcomings than I did about hearing that UWC 103 on July 8, 2017 had become an evening show. If only the announcer would have told the audience to follow them on Facebook or Twitter instead of leaving us with “same bat bell time, same bat venue.” The audio was not that bad.

When it came to the presentation otherwise, you have to appreciate that they were trying to integrate a projector. Hopefully at 103, they will have tried a new place to put it instead of awkwardly against one of the dozen support beams at the Opera House that left the projection tilted (maybe try to work on rear projection). It will take practice to get the smooth transitions from live to tape perfected. If they want to perfect this, the promoter (who must have Saturday nights off) might want to head up to an AAW show to see how it is done.

The biggest issue with the attempt of video integration was that they did not recap the previous card to set the stage before the first match, a bout between “Xander” and “Dante” (you can only get so much readable text on your butt when you use a Gothic font [keep it to one line like Orton]), two newcomers who were trying to steal the show while maintaining a face/heel dynamic. At least I now know that I’m not the only guy watching “205 Live.” This match was way too long, and fans completely forgot about it after the context-free video package for the only angle that is running there.

UWC made the mistake of trying to have spontaneous fan interaction. This buried the opening match. When Sean the referee decided to take the microphone to interview youngsters, all they could talk about was Jimmy Karryt and how he had the best match to that point.

There are two issues here:

1. Referees only speak when explanations are needed. I have never seen Tiger Hatori or Red Shoes cut a promo. They are over because of their talent/experience (Hatori) or their talent/look (Red Shoes). Mic use is a way to compensate for ineptitude.
2. A smart wrestling fan would know that Karryt’s prematch promo made his match worthless. He buried his debuting opponent, Uriah, which is a heel tactic (Cena would put the guy over and apologize for their fate). Instead of destroying Uriah like he said, he was relying on rope breaks after taking big bumps (which you should never have been taking if you told the fans to ignore your opponent). And his promo was about chasing the UWC Internet Championship (a title for a promotion that seems to have nothing to do with the Net), instead of seeking vengeance over FKA Konrad (you definitely cannot shout in to the mics in Homer) and presenting a second angle for the promotion.

This demonstrates that UWC is only about the fans in Homer. Perhaps changing the bell time from 2 pm to 7 pm will accommodate these fans, but if you are in the CU, you need to be catered to to draw you out off The Blind Pig on a Saturday. The main angle in UWC is being well told, but who cares about the title being on the Phantom of the Homer Opera House because the township says so.

My apologies for burying Homer, but it leads me to a creative resolution to get the promotion and the angle over everywhere. UWC has just gotta reach out to me for it. But if they want the shows to be enjoyable for those in Homer to tell people outside of the city (since a search for their Facebook page to web professional two-months to find), they need to get new talent immediately involved in this angle, 102 had a lot of guys who were busting their asses (if only there were agents), but when they do not wrestle the people who were on the card last month, they’ll be forgotten.

Matt Cage versus Eye Candy Eliot and the Phabian Barbosa title win made me want to drive to 102. UWC’s 102’s outside talent on this card is still developing, so 102 could not give you a classic match and a good angle. If I want to consider getting out of work for UWC 104, that show will need to have the promise of both. UWC better follow me @maineventzombie on Twitter to let me know that is what they will bring.

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UWC 101...or was it 107?

The title kind of indicates the worst element of United Wrestling Coalition’s return to the Homer Opera House. More than most people, I appreciate Ramstein’s forgotten song from Vin Diesel’s “XXX,“ but a wrestling show is about the grapplers not the music (at least I assume that about Freelance and F1rst, working in hotels over the past four years makes it difficult to keep up on the Indie scene). If you do not hear the names and info about the performer, you can only rely on the local crowd to tell who to cheer and who to boo. When they are putting over the referee more than the competitors, you do not know how seriously you should take this promotion.

But we live in the Internet age, so UWC maybe focusing on their Internet presence. To get the names of the competitors, visit their YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/UWCgeorgetown. Too bad they do not seem to have an effective social media campaign to tell non-subscribers when they update the videos.

It may seem that I am not doing much to put over UWC, but it is a promotion that seems to have a lot of potential in spite of the middle of no where location in Homer. There seems to be a solid booking mind and they are the only kind of show that can effectively use the facility they are in. With all of the support posts holding the building up, I do not know how you can arrange seats for any other show.

For the most part, the promos were weak, but having the show center around Matt Cage’s swan song allowed him to balance out the unnecessary nonviolent storytelling. His mic work set him up to put over two babyfaces in Eye Candy Elliot and an orange-soda obsessed opponent (If only the "All That” theme song was not playing at a volume that overpowered the ring announcer. Hopefully, that song title was at least part of his nickname). Cage’s ring work cemented that his foes are worth paying attention too.

The rest of the shows bell-to-bell action could use work. Joey O'Reilly has got the talent, but he needs to lay into his offense. As for his opponent, Konrad, who was only a name and no gimmick, he seemed to have no conviction to his selling (I can relate to the flaw) or his attacks. A few snug shots from O'Reilly could have lit a fire in his opponent to remedy the latter weakness.

But Konrad’s weaknesses proved to be the strength of the pen. O'Reilly gave an on point promo (which is the most important thing to do with the mic for a company that runs every six weeks) about how Konrad needs to do something drastic to get his career going in the right direction. In the wisely placed semi-main event, Konrad turns heel to align himself with the new champion.

So if you were one of the 40 to attend the show, you have a lot to look forward to on June 10 for the next show at the Homer Opera House (which is really easy to spot, south of I-74 exit 197). Will Elliot get the title shot for beating the top name in Downstate (a possible understatement)? Does Phabian Barbosa give Jimmy Karryt a rematch, or does Karryt nip the Konrad concerns in the butt? I’d probably go with the Teddy Long solution of a “Tag Team” match, something that was lacking to change the pace of matches with wrestlers who decided to make every match look like an opening match.

United Wrestling Coalition could use a little more work on the under-card motivation and roster depth. I would nix the authority figure for the next show, but that can also be something to be improved upon. June 10 is something I am looking forward to. It is great that it is an afternoon show so you can either go back to pampering those who look down on the working class (can’t take the night off if I wanna have money for Muse in St. Louis) or catch a second rassl'n show in Chicago or St. Louis. And I thought the greater liberal sensibilities was the only thing that put East-Central Illinois. Thanks UWC for opening my eyes.