ICW Saturday Night Showdown #19 - By Daz
Illinois Championship Wrestling - ICW Saturday Night Showdown #19 (2h 15m)

Entrance Way: The entranceway was simply a curtain behind a row of boxes with the ICW logo. 3/5

Ring: The ICW ring was simply two stacked mattresses with carpet around the edges. A table and a gym horse were placed around for "top rope" moves. 2.5/5

Arena: The "arena" was inside a large shed giving a lot of room to move and for a small crowd, 3/5

Match Quality: The wrestling skill was reasonably good. 3/5

Match Pace: A steady pace was set through most matches with no real slowdowns. 3.5/5

Match Safety: No reckless moves or anything dangerous. Any move that required some form of padding was performed on the mattresses, while the general brawling was conducted around the mattresses on the carpet. 3/5

Wrestler Variety: Many of the wrestlers had names that were derived from pro wrestlers such as Y2G, Justin Sane and Big Tim Bigalow as a few examples. 2.5/5

Wrestler Charisma: Most seemed very similar with just different names, or similar to a speciac pro wrestler. An example was a bible basher character who dressed very similar to Steven Richards from Right To Sensor in the WWF. 3/5

Wrestler Costumes: All wore street clothes, but a few had street clothes specifically as their wrestling costume. 2.5/5

Wrestler Mic Skills: The mic work was reasonable. 3.5/5

Storyline Quality: Many of the storylines seemed to be very similar to storylines in the WWF and WCW. An example is the Lance Storm changing the names of various title belts and the whole Canada vs the US. This storyline focused mainly on Y2G and his Canadian team. 2/5

Storyline Originality: The Canada vs. USA storyline was just one of the storylines, the other involved a feud involving a group trying to take over the ICW. It reminded me of the NWO feud from WCW's past. 2.5/5

Commentary Conversation: The commentary was quite good and worth listening to. 3.5/5

Commentary Topics: The topics ranged from what happened in previous shows to explain the continuing story to what was happening in the match. Very good over all. 3.5/5

Commentary Move Calling: The calling of moves was good and accurate. 4/5

Commentary Coordination: Coordination was quite good. 3/5

FINAL SCORE: 2.8 out of 5.

With more emphasis on original storylines and not direct copies of the pros, ICW would be a lot better. Being original is not always easy, but with a bit of thought it could be vastly improved.


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