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All Pro Wrestling “We Out Here”
Daly City, California
Report by Dot Net Staffer John Moore
1. Karl Fredericks & The Classic Connection defeated Chicano Flame & Matt Carlos & Bison Braddock. Standard opening match. The Classic Connection guys wore In-and-out logos on their chest.
2. Adam Thornstowe defeated War Pig Jody Kristofferson. Jody is the son of actor Kris Kristofferson and a former NXT wrestler. Thornstowne had an impressive look to him but was very green.
3. The Berkeley Brawler defeated Stardust (Joey Ryan). A lot of people expected Cody to come out but instead it was Joey Ryan wearing the Stardust jumpsuit and a star in marker in on his face. Joey actually did a good job doing most if not all of Cody’s stardust moveset in the match. Joey Ryan still does that spot where he flips people using his dick. I believe The Berkeley Brawler is a guest from Hoodslam, and I think his gimmick is that he’s from UC Berkeley and suburban (I don’t think all UCB students look like that? That’s more of a Stanford look! But of course I’m Berkeley Biased! Go Bears!). Ryan went for CrossRhodes but it was blocked and the Berkeley Brawler won.
4. Jeff Cobb & Jacob Fatu defeated Black Armada. The last time I saw Jeff Cobb (unmasked) that guy looked body-wise like Ryback and Brian Cage did the fusion dance. He was ridiculously ripped. He seems to have slimmed down about 20-ish pounds and he moves around much better. It’s a better look for him too. Jacob Fatu is the Cousin of the Usos. What’s weird is Fatu is doing a copycat job of the Usos babyface act. It works with the local crowd though at least. The Black Armada guys were heels and they were huge, like 300 lbs a piece. Cobb picked up the win with the deadlift German Suplex with a bridge (It would have been impressive if he could have done Wrath of the Gods, but there’s no way he was lifting one of those guys into a flip powerslam).
5. Luster The Legend defeated J.R. Kratos via submission. I missed the first half of the match and what I saw wasn’t that great. Kratos seems to be the guy that APW gave a push to in the past, but he isn’t very smooth in the ring at all and his offense looked ugly. Luster The Legend looked pretty good on his end though and managed to overcome the badness of Kratos. The winner of this match faces MVP for the Universal Championship at an upcoming show.
6. Vinnie Massaro defeated Jungle Boy. Vinnie Massaro is the guy who eats pizza and farts on Lucha Underground. He’s one of the jobbers of Lucha Underground who got his arm broke by Pentagon Jr. This was the first meaningful match of the night because this is where we saw Jungle Boy win the crowd over in a huge way. Jungle Boy is tall, but he’s skinny and his face looks like he is a 12 year old boy. He did do a nice job with sweet huracanranas and bulldogs. Massaro won with power moves but Jungle Boy showed that he has a good future if he keeps it up, and maybe finds a way to cover up his 12 year old boy face.
7. Lion Power (Will Hobbs & Marcus Lewis) defeated Boyce LeGrande & Rik Luxury to retain the APW Tag Team Championship. This was a solid tag team match. Mostly when Will Hobbs was in the ring because he could sell like crazy and could give one hell of an enzuigiri. Hobbs also appeared on WWE Raw as the Clay Thompson ripoff who went against Braun Strowman.
8. Will Cuevas defeated Zack Sabre Jr. to retain the APW Internet Championship: This was the point of the show where you could feel we were hitting the “next level” type of matches. Zack Sabre Jr. is an absolute professional and he needs the support of the promotion to get his matches over. It does take a little bit of time because he works a really slow style built all around submissions. What makes him cool though (especially if you saw the CWC) is that he can turn any counter into a submission move. Think Bryan Danielson at his prime on the independents. What pushed Danielson over the top was his striking, so I hope Sabre develops a signature kick or elbow sequence. Cuevas was a nice choice as he didn’t look like a scrub at all. After Cuevas won, he called Sabre the best wrestler in the world and dedicated his win to Bay Area indie legend Mike Modest who he asked to join him in the ring. Modest then turned heel on Cuevas and did a post match beatdown telling Cuevas that he wasn’t retired yet. This set up a match between Cuevas and Modest at the big APW Cow Palace show on May 6 for the Internet Championship.
9. Cody Rhodes defeated Pentagon Jr. Pentagon now goes under the name “Penta El Zero Miedo”. This was a really fun match and may be one of the best Cody matches I’ve seen in recent memory. Aside from spitting Pepsi in the face of Pentagon, Cody and Pentagon both worked full on babyface in the the match. Pentagon has a pattern in his matches with Sling Blades and chops, but that pattern works with the crowd. Pentagon Jr received the biggest pop of the night so far because California loves chanting “Cero Miedo”. I have seen bigger pops with less people in So Cal but it was still strong for Pentagon. There were plenty of kicking out of finishers in this one. Pentagon hit Cody with CrossRhodes and Cody hit Pentagon with the Package Piledriver. There was also a fun (yet clunky) Canadian Destroyer sequence. The match ended with a ref bump. Joey Ryan interfered, this time wearing jeans, and cost Pentagon the match. Cody hit CrossRhodes for the win. After the match Pentagon kicked Joey Ryan away. Ryan tried to join Cody, but Cody threatened to beat up Ryan, which made him run to the back. Rhodes cut a promo about his father Dusty Rhodes telling him that his favorite wrestler was Ray “The Crippler” Stevens and how the Cow Palace was one of his favorite places to work. Cody set up a match between him and Joey Ryan for the Cow Palace show on May 6. Cody then stuck around to high five and take pictures with the fans at ringside. He was in total babyface mode and the crowd popped huge for the May 6 announcement. That promo sold some tickets.
Final Thoughts: Good job by the promoters for booking several strong cards in a row while drawing sellouts. The amount of people at this show seemed to be around 700 or more. They did sell out on merch and Cody was there at the merch table to sell it. APW has been drawing by using the Lucha Underground talent that they’ve produced such as Willie Mack and Kobra Moon, and also by having huge main event draws like Broken Matt Hardy or Pentagon Jr. It also doesn’t hurt that they have regular access to Cody Rhodes.
The show sounds fun.
I live in Fremont, CA and have been thinking of going across the bridge to check this out. Planning to head to the May show now