Xtreme Pro Wrestling: Killafornia Deathmatch Wrestling Review!
XPW (Xtreme Pro Wrestling) has a very colourful history, mainly down to the promoter, Rob Black. A lot has been covered in the Dark Side of the Ring documentary series, and all of it is past and closed. Which makes it all so amusing when internet fans still bleat and raise opinions nowadays. I think nearly every wrestling promoter has a history that could raise eyebrows. Wrestling has had a dirty story. A lot of household names hide darkness, believe me. Yeah, these days, the big leagues are far cleaner in some ways, but I’m a territory days fan, I love the close-up raw and nasty style. The family feel of brothers and sisters raising hell to entertain moderate crowds that don’t go off bickering like bitches on the internet. Ah well, it makes them feel important, I guess. Ooooh, the internet says that I shouldn’t like it, so I don’t. Gotta love individuality.
Anyway, rant over! On Severed Cinema I make a point of reviewing deathmatch wrestling. Why? Because my earliest wrestling memories happens to be crimson masked monsters like Abdullah the Butcher, Bruiser Brody, and The Sheepherders. I like horror movie scenes in a squared circle, I like the straightforward storyline of pride, betrayal, and above all the will to achieve no matter how much blood you spill. My Partner in Gore, Willow, she gets dissatisfaction in herself if a match doesn’t at least draw a little bit of colour, so we’re the perfect union in our adoration of backwoods sawdust trash can garbage mud show shows.
So XPW made a huge return after well over a decade or so, and the first huge PPV was Killafornia, in April last year. You can tell they were just finding their feet this time. Since then, there’s big some huge spots and matches, especially this year. Rob Black pulled out a classic roster of people who can take pain plus dish it out. The massive return of the legendary Necro Butcher (I covered his story in my last deathmatch review) the controversial Shlak — more in that guy soon, Masada — one of the most decorated wrestlers in this genre, Eric Ryan, plus so many more.
Okay so like my last review in this field, as per the up above link, I’m going to avoid the non-tournament matches, because this is to crown the King of Death Matches, so, like many events, the participants must go level to level — semi-finals, etcetera, until colliding in a grand finale. Combat Zone Wrestling and IWA have done this for decades now to great success. Hell, you could be wrestling three times in one evening, covered in your own blood and shit throughout!
The first round matches are altogether rather non entities. XPW were just starting up again, testing the waters, see what the area was like — this isn’t going to be a gore drenched splatter fest like some GCW (Game Changer Wrestling: Nick Gage Invitational 2) and ICW: No Holds Barred Vol 6 (see review for example) spectacles, yet the ridiculous commentator is almost pissing his pants and screaming at the sight of a drop of red. He’s so frikkin irritating. It’s his job to be the hype man, but c’mon, a smash through a sheet of glass or a cut open forehead shouldn’t bring forth a blustering froth mouthed cluster fuck of excitement this way! He needs to watch some other companies and promotions, see what happens. Fucking hell, Kriss Kloss! “My God this is brutality!” In actually it’s a light tube smashing over a cranium, standard fare.
The fourth match into the tournament brings some joys as an eerie Ronny McDonald nasty lookin’ dude, Dirty Ron, is up against the before mentioned Shlak. It’s a bloody back and forth bout, could have gone either way, the crowd are starting to feel it now. Shlak is a huge mountain, and he looks evil. Early days you’d see him getting abused by hooks courtesy of CZW creator, Zandig and, every time I’d see him, he’d be back to the mat eating the pin. In the last few years, though, Shlak has become a dominant monster and rightfully so. In fact, his alter ego, El Shlako, delivered to my hungry eyes the greatest laugh out loud moments I’ve witnessed in wrestling – check the last match for GCW’s Backyard Wrestling 2 from 2020. Ignore the YouTube version of the match, try and see the actual official release. Fireworks, and a car stunt which pissed a lot of people off at the time due to news stories and the chance for haters to pin something else on Shlak.
Eeeeh, I’ll pause a bit and explain why Shlak has been so tarnished and soiled. See, many years ago as a youthful runt, he was photographed alongside a lot of Neo-nazi supporters. Now he’s older, a successful grappler, tattoo artist and vocalist, he has admitted to doing a lot of things in the past that he isn’t proud of, however, so called fans, such as they did with Rob Black, like to call upon days of old with great gusto and glee. So, the car moment, a fantastic (if fucking stupid) dangerous and memorable few seconds, then was seen as Shlak imitating cars hitting Black Lives Matter supporters. It was an outdoors event, so anything is used. I dunno, maybe I’m wrong, but a guy with that much heat about his past which he has left behind, would he knowingly ape a tense moment in the media that was being played around? For the record, I was part of the BLM gatherings in my home city, and I didn’t have a knee jerk reaction to this!
Back to the XPW at hand, Pagano and Shane Mercer square up, but after the Ron vs Shlak brutality, it kind of went limp, not for Kriss Kloss, dickhead is still cumming in his pants over someone simply dropping onto broken glass or whatever. By this time, me and Willow are kind of flaking off. I know there’s so much to come over more recent events, but this is about as exciting as watching a snail wrestle a piece of wood.
Out strides Necro Butcher, and he’s against someone I hadn’t seen before, Hoodfoot. Nearly twenty minutes of violence, Necro Butcher is barefoot and throwing punches like the old school has arrived to annihilate the new kids. Hoodfoot is brilliant, a good wrestler who happens to be able to throw himself into death matches as well. He’s an ideal opponent for Necro, who was just finding his way back into all of this after years away. Masada (a credible non-DM grappler by the way) does his thing afterwards, and then out comes the UK’s own tank like wrecking ball, Big FN Joe! A beard bigger than a child, and ring attire that is somewhat vomit inducing, he has a knack of making it look easy. We absolutely love hearing his accent among all the Americans.
The second round has Sage Sin Supreme, the Pumpkin Queen going further and advancing into what would become almost certain death (as we shall see) and Shlak squashed Eric Ryan slick, fast and violently whilst also biting chunks off a light tube. Then comes Big FN Joe against Necro Butcher. This is a short but meaningful display. Joe takes his shoes and socks off to match Necro, then the fists fly. This is a passing of the torch, as Willow said. Both men are dominant. Currently, whilst I’m writing this, my Facebook feed is full of awesome pictures as Necro Butcher fights again in Japan alongside his close pal, Mad Man Pondo (read the review of his book: Memoirs of a Madman) after many long years.
The rest of the matches kind of speed up, getting shorter, and bloodier — Masada takes it into the crowd more than once, he and the Joker looking Pagano have fluid chemistry together and execute some thrilling move sets. Poor Sage Sin Supreme finds herself face to face with a rather angry Shlak. She puts up a hell of a battle though. The no ropes barbed wire finale has all the classic ingredients as two ragged bruised and gory survivors collide for nearly fifteen minutes. There’s no big OMG moments, nothing too over the top, just extreme battering all around.
The FITE TV stream runs over six hours, loads of this is simply the cleaning and re organizing of the ring — especially for the main event. Actual matches run approximately 2 hours 30 minutes altogether. The cover I found, a promo poster, has a couple of folks who didn’t appear, but it looks awesome.
All in all, Xtreme Pro Wrestling: Killafornia isn’t fantastic as a complete run but has very gripping and fun moments. It’s historic and has earned its place for fans being the first official XPW event in so long, plus the first big return for Necro Butcher since his battle with cancer. Regardless of what people think, it looks like Rob Black and his carnival of oddities are here to stay for a while. Lately, another troubled wrestler, G Raver and the future of deathmatch as a whole, Atticus Cougar have both arrived at the folds to great applause from death match lovers, and huge hatred from those who dismiss it all whilst simply studying Jim Cornette and reading quick internet articles.
In the ever-growing world of deathmatch wrestling, it doesn’t matter who you are, if you can take the pain, you’re in.
Produced by: Rob Black
Music by: Various
Cast: Necro Butcher, Shlak, Eric Ryan, Sage Sin Supreme, Hoodfoot, Masada, Dirty Ron, Big FN Joe, Lucky 13, Terex, Pagano
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 6h 42min
Studio: Xtreme Pro Wrestling
