In the lead up to this year’s 16 Carat Gold Tournament we decided to take a look back at last year's tournament. With a wealth of talent from around the world and history of turning out great matches this is sure to be one hell of a ride. Match # 1 Da Mack vs Cody Rhodes So, we kick the tournament off with two men who have plied their trade in the WWE and their statuses there would show a clear favourite for this match but anything can happen once you step inside the squared circle. Not a bad opening match for the show, the crowd was super jazzed to see Cody and the bullet club chants and hand gestures were super over. Da Mack showed off some impressive high-flying one move of note from the match would be his double corner springboard cannonball senton which looks spectacular. Cody worked as the bigger man wearing Da Mack down with powerful strikes, a big powerslam and a disaster kick which got a near fall. Da Mack fought back and was close twice to pulling of his finisher but Cody managed to slip out of it the second time and straight into the Cross-Rhodes which spiked Da Mack right on his head and got the W for Cody. Rating 5.5/10 Match # 2 JT Dunn vs Marius Al-Ani Our next match pits one half of the tag team champions in Al-Ani against the protege of Chris Hero, being the smaller man does JT Dunn have the power behind his strikes to put Al-Ani away? JT Dunn nearly pulls off an upset by hitting a roaring elbow in the opening seconds for a near fall. Dunn truly started this match off as a house of fire not letting Al-Ani clear the cobwebs from that early knockdown, hitting delicious chops and hard strikes but when Al-Ani turned it around he took firm control of the match. Al-Ani stands at 5’9 but looks a lot taller and his dropkick is a thing of beauty very similar to that of Kazuchika Okada and he used it to good effect multiple times in this match. In the end Al-Ani countered Dunn’s third attempt at a rolling cutter and then came off the top with a huge frog splash to get the win and advance in the tournament. Rating - 5.5/10 Match # 3 Koji Kanemoto vs Timothy Thatcher One half of Ringkampf takes on the third incarnation of Tiger Mask and the innovator of the Koji clutch a legendary Jr heavyweight in Koji Kanemoto, what will win out here Koji’s vast experience advantage or Thatcher’s unrelenting will to win? A slower more shoot style kind of match, with Kanemoto focusing his attacks on Thatcher’s legs and Thatcher focusing his assault on Kanemoto’s arms. Kanemoto threw some really quick strike combos and even got Thatcher in the corner for his patented face washes, Thatcher came up after that bleeding from the nose. Kanemoto locked in two ankle locks and it looked for all the world that Thatcher was done but he managed to transition out into an inverted armbar then transitioned to the other arm before clutching both and rolling Kanemoto onto his shoulders for the 3. Slower match and less hard hitting but a very respectable display from Kanemoto who at the time had just recently hit 50 years of age. Rating - 5/10 Match # 4 Ilja Dragunov vs Robert Dreissker After Ilja’s ousting from Cerberus he gets his hands-on Robert Dreissker his former tag partner in what is certain to be a hotly contested contest. Ilja is super over with the crowd thoroughly behind him and this is by far the match of the first round so far. Ilja comes out like a man possessed and hits the torpedo Moscow as the first move of the match. As this is former tag partners duking it out it's a hard-hitting match with both Ilja and Dreissker taking control on the outside for a time. Back inside Dreissker goes to the middle rope but Ilja cuts him off and carries the much larger man to the middle of the ring before hitting a Saito suplex. As Ilja goes to the top rope to finish Dreissker Adam Polak gets involved on the apron spitting pills into his face which allows Dreissker to cut him off and hit a cannonball in the corner but Ilja wills his way out of the pin fall and eventually hits a huge tornado lariat followed by the torpedo Moscow for the win. I love Ilja’s style of pro wrestling he oozes his character and without listening to a single promo you can see exactly who he is and why he does what he does. Rating - 6.5/10 Match # 5 Donovan Dijak vs Matt Riddle An all American affair here as the man currently signed to NXT takes on one of the hottest names on the independent circuit today former UFC fighter Matt Riddle. Dijak impressed a lot in this match for a man of his size his high flying is all the more impressive, Riddle looked strong hurling Dijak into lifts with ease despite giving away height and weight to his opponent. This match built to the two reversing out of the others finisher into their own Riddle flipped out of Dijak’s Feast your eyes and into position for a Bro to Sleep but Dijak flipped out of that and hurled Riddle up to hit Feast your eyes and the only thing that saved Riddle was his position in the ring allowing him to get a foot on the rope as the ref was about to count 3. Dijak spent some time lamenting his lack of ring awareness before deciding to go for a top rope moonsault to finish Riddle but Riddle moved out of the way and with Dijak on the ground Riddle was in his element and able to lock in the Rings of Saturn for the submission victory. Rating - 5.5/10 Match # 6 Bad Bones vs Paul London Up next a personal favourite of mine takes on a man I’ve seen very little of, back in the day Paul London was my favourite wrestler in the WWE cruiserweight division and was also the marquee star on the first independent show I went to but can he overcome the larger more physically imposing Bad Bones John Klinger? London gets the better of the opening of this match including hitting a brutal looking baseball slide as Bad Bones was hung upside down in the ropes, so he took a boot right to the kisser. London also uses a cool over the top rope cradle combo to a prone Bad Bones that I honestly can’t recall seeing before, it’s always a cool thing when you see a variation of a move for the first time. Around the mid-point of this match these two turned it on, I was beginning to wonder if maybe they just weren’t going to stylistically click but boy the finishing sequence elevated this match. It all started after Bad Bones murdered London with a suicide dive, he threw him back in the ring and London super kicked him as he went to the top rope and dragged him down into a Death Valley Driver and from there it was big move after big move. Bad Bones hit a 2nd rope code breaker that made London do a full rotation in the air and London hit a 2nd rope shooting star followed by a top rope shooting star that the whole crowd was sure would finish Bad Bones but alas he kicked out at the last nanosecond. In the end Bad Bones hit a lovely super kick and then drove London into the turnbuckles with the shotgun knees and dragged his carcass to the middle of the ring for the pin fall victory. Took a while to get going but these guys delivered a better match than I was expecting. Rating - 6.5/10 Match # 7 ‘Speedball’ Mike Bailey vs ACH A renowned Taekwondo practitioner pitted against a speedy highflyer this match may well come down to who can get around the other’s strengths. If Bailey can get in some leg kicks early it could slow his opponent and take away some his high-flying arsenal but to do so he will most likely have to get ACH in a corner and not let him escape. The match started out with ACH bowing to the will of the crowd and dancing to their chants, Bailey also attempted to dance for the crowd and it seemed the two of them weren’t taking this first round match particularly seriously. We then got some nice chain wrestling and a couple of traded near falls as the feeling out process began. Bailey took control with his flurry of kicks followed by an enziguri and a beautiful inside out moonsault. ACH answer back in the ring with a big chop and a huge lariat which turned Bailey inside out. Bailey tried to recover on the outside but ACH followed him out and nearly took his head off with a PK from the apron. He slung Speedball back inside but had to expend extra time moving him away from the ropes and it only garnered a two count. Momentum shifted back and forth a few times and ACH hit a sick brainbuster that looked to drop Bailey right on the top of his head but he wouldn’t be kept down. Eventually after missing an attempt from one side of the ring Bailey wore his opponent down to his knees and delivered a stiff Shooting Star Knee drop to the small of the back and crushed ACH for the 3 count. I’ve seen both have better matches but you felt that perhaps as this is the first round of a tournament they were weary of going 100% and tiring themselves out for later in the tournament. Rating - 6/10 Match # 8 Shotgun Champion David Starr vs WALTER The current Shotgun champion appears next to take on the man mountain from Austria WALTER, for my money one of the most charismatic and crisp wrestlers on the circuit today takes on the man whose hands should be legally classified as weapons, if WALTER gets ahold of you there's a good chance you’re going to get your chest caved in. However, David Starr didn’t win the title on charisma points and this is sure to be a fascinating contest. Every time WALTER takes hold of David Starr in this match you honestly believe he could snap him in two with little effort. It's like a scene in a movie where a character goes to prison and decides to prove himself he needs to go after the biggest, baddest man in there, that man is WALTER. David Starr put up a really valiant fight and at times his sheer refusal to give up seemed to rock WALTER but he took all that David could throw at him and just kept coming. There were some really impressive feats of strength from Starr like getting WALTER up for a brain buster on the knee and his two suicide dives to the outside followed by a top rope plancha that had WALTER floored on the outside. Out of desperation Starr begged the ref to count but at a count of 9 WALTER rose like a great beast from the floor and threw himself through the ropes. The finish came when WALTER German’d Starr on his head, then took his head off with a lariat and locked on the sleeper hold. Starr looked like he was going to get to a corner to possibly get a rope break but WALTER simply shifted slightly and hit a sick half and half suplex again dropping Starr on his head and then locked on the sleeper hold again this time taking it to the floor, the ref raised Starr’s hand once, twice and for a moment as his hand dropped the third time it seemed like a twitch of fight was still left in him but ultimately his hand hit the canvas and the ref had to call a stop to it and declare WALTER the winner and the final man to advance to the next round. Really solid match that made WALTER look like an unstoppable monster while Starr also looked good for lasting as long as he did. The match of the first round and with that night one came to a close. Rating - 7/10 So that was night one of wXw 16 Carat Gold 2017 and it is well worth a watch; especially to get yourself in the mood for this year’s tournament which is coming up on the 9th of March. You can find the show on wXw now as well as all the other marque events from 2017 and the weekly Shotgun broadcast (wxwnow.de) Written by Josh Lyons (@Juliejwl777)
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