DeadEffect

Debut show for a promotion in Adelaide, Australia. Main event of Jonah Rock vs Hideki Suzuki is very good. Also, AJ Istria has an excellent match with Adam Brooks. Istria I think would appeal to those on this board who are fans of Drew Gulak, Tim Thatcher, Fred Yehi and such.

There was all the attention on the WWE show in town obviously, but in all honesty the MCW show in Melbourne the night before was one of the best indy shows of the year. He copped a lot of a shit for his one off appearance at Wrestlekingdom earlier this year, but Gino Gambino is a fantastic pro wrestler, his title defense against Robbie Eagles had the hottest crowd of any indy show i've seen anywhere this year.

That's from the Herald Sun, which is a garbage newspaper anyway. If they're not talking about football or pushing Rupert Murdoch's political agenda they're barely interested.

I find it funny that punching Ronnie Radke makes a guy a heel. Punching that piece of shit in the face makes me want to cheer the guy, shit band and he's a shit person. Fuck Falling In Reverse.

More Australian indy stuff, a relatively small fed in one of the most remote cities on Earth gets an amazing match later this year with Jonah Rock vs Low Ki.

Haha, XXXX is pretty hideous as well. It does make me laugh seeing hipsters loving Melbourne Bitter too. Any time I go to see a band in the city it's the beer of choice.

I believe so. One of my friends is a Manga/Anime superfan and lost it for Naito's shirt choice. And yeah, VB is pretty rubbish. It's one of those beers that were always cheap and working class folks drank and now hipster folks seem to like. Those little throwdown bottles do have a bit of a kick to them though.

Also, Naito drinking VB after the show (Australia's shitty beer) makes me laugh way too much.

Been a pretty big week or so in Australia's indy scene. Last weekend, PWA had their 11th Anniversary show in Sydney, in front of a packed house. Robbie Eagles vs Will Ospreay was the best match i've seen either have and the best match i've ever seen live, a lot of crazy moves and dives as you'd expect, but really story driven and violent as well. After the match, Will presented Robbie the Japanese flag off his gear, insinuating that Robbie might be headed to New Japan very soon. Also, the main event of Jonah Rock vs Caveman Ugg in a cage for the heavyweight title was a violent, old school war between two 300+ lb monsters. The whole show is up on www.pwaplay.com and was really strong from top to bottom and well worth a look for $10 Australian (so like $7.30 USD). Last night, Melbourne City Wrestling ran their 100th and biggest ever show, drawing around 1200 people to a venue in Olympic Park. Solid card top to bottom, the main event of Jonah Rock vs Naito was as good as you'd expect it to be and the undercard had a lot of variety too.

Yeah, he's just a freakishly strong guy. I don't live in Sydney anymore so i've missed most of their feud, but Ugg vs Jonah in a cage in a few weeks is a match that's worth flying back to Sydney for a weekend for.

Since some folks seemed a bit interested in the Australian indy scene, thought i'd post a few recent matches from some of the bigger promotions here, some guys that are known to some fans outside Australia and some guys that stick to their own country and in some cases just wrestle in their own city, but are awesome all the same. Bit of variety in the feds and the matches. The Ugg vs Jonah Rock match in particular is really good if you ignore the commentary and that it was before PWA stepped up their production. Ugg is one of those guys that just wins crowds over, the character is a little silly, but he doesn't really play it for laughs either. Just a crazy athletic 300+ lb monster.

For anyone interested in seeing more stuff from Australia.

So, my local indy of choice is going pretty big for their 100th show. It's a relatively big step up in venue size for them, but hopefully they can come close to filling it. Pretty insane that in the space of three years indy shows in Australia have gone from thinking a crowd of 500 was a huge effort to now a lot of feds average those numbers and some are running venues where 1000+ is an achievable goal.

The Eagles clan are all great. Ryan Eagles doesn't wrestle much anymore, but he's still a guy who could kill it on any indy fed, shame the most exposure he ever got outside of Australia was a cup of coffee in CZW a while back.

Robbie's a really interesting guy, he's been one of the top guys in Australia for the last 7 or 8 years now, he's mostly known here for being the underdog high flying babyface, but he can mat wrestle and brawl really well and as a heel he's an awesome irritating little shit.

From a local indy in Melbourne, Australia. Blood, violence, hate, feuds ending in a cage. All good things about pro wrestling.

Progress had the second night of their Australia/NZ tour in Melbourne last night. Great show and the 6 Progress reps brought their best. Pete Dunne embracing his inner Regal and/or Finlay and just torturing Mike Burr by tying him up in knots before having Burr fire back with throwing strikes like his life depended on it was good pro wrestling. Main event was the best Travis Banks match i've seen on a Progress show in a bit. When it was the 3 way with JXT as the third man it was pretty good, but once JXT was eliminated and it came down to Banks against Elliot Sexton the match went from quite good to fucking great in a hurry, Sexton is a guy that I think would be a fave of this board. Big guy (6'4-6'5) and built like a brick shithouse who hits hard, talks shit and is just nasty in what he does, he's kind of like a more flamboyant, Australian version of WALTER in a way.

The New Japan tour that was cross promoted with some Australian indies had what will probably be the biggest night of the tour in Melbourne last night. Minoru Suzuki vs Jonah Rock was everything you'd expect it to be, a violent fight. I'd say a few Australian indy guys may have gotten themselves New Japan jobs from this tour.

Nothing has been announced, but I wouldn't be surprised. All the feds they are working with here are constant in filming and releasing things.

Not sure whether this was to be posted in the Japan folder or here, but this is the match that seems to be generating the most hype for the New Japan Australian tour next week.

Should be fun, PWA in Sydney were my local indy for a good decade until I moved to Melbourne last year. Some of their guys fall into the Chikara skinny guys doing comedy bullshit, but a lot of their roster is great. MCW is my local indy now and currently, probably the best promotion in Australia, have a lot of good violent wrestling which is always welcome, also they're the promotion that have had the biggest part in the New Japan expansion into Australia too. EPW Perth is a great fed, on the other side of the country but their Video On Demand service is excellent. They have an old school storytelling feel to their shows and aren't afraid to do blood and violence on their cards either.

The live video got them a lot of praise in Australian music media this year. The second track posted is probably my fave sleepmakeswaves song. Australia has a very strong post rock/prog rock/prog metal scene, lots of different scenes bleeding into each other. Two other bands that had strong years were Voyager from Western Australia and Toehider from Melbourne.

They are very much an acquired taste. I think a lot of my love of the record comes from seeing them live and seeing how those songs work in a live setting. Thanks for listening anyway though!

Awesome, it's been good reading this topic and broadening my musical horizons too. A few things I automatically love like Converge, but stuff outside my normal tastes too. Variety is nice.

Not sure if you're still taking submissions, but I am genuinely curious what people would think of my fave record of 2017. It's named Made Of Breath Only and is by a band from my hometown of Sydney named sleepmakeswaves. I saw them open for Devin Townsend earlier this year and this they've been on pretty constant rotation ever since.