Fifth Anniversary Show of RAINFALL Pro Wrestling, my L2G promotion, has concluded!
RAINFALL Pro Wrestling has celebrated its fifth anniversary with its self-explanatory Fifth Anniversary show, with all the gold in company on the line alongside some personal rivalries coming to ahead within 2,5 hours of pure action! Broadcasted on IndependentWrestling.TV and newly formed RAINFALL Network, the show attracted 5.773 fans on the Idaho Central Arena.
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In the pre-show, most of the big stars, alongside the Young Lions of RAINFALL's roster have demonstrated their skills in front of the fans only present in the arena who made up the biggest crowd the company has seen to date, all earning their Anniversary Show paychecks. Performances of the young lion Rachel Tanner, Xena, Michael Oku, newly turned heel Schaff and veteran YAMATO has garnered the most acclaim in their respective matches.
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When the cameras have opened and the show properly started, the acting General Manager Christian Cage has opened the show, welcoming everyone to the Fifth Anniversary Show, second Anniversary show under his reign and no doubt a success even grander than the previous one. He ran down the card and announced that a new championship belt, called RAINFALL Westside Championship, would find it's owner in RAINFALL 57 the next month in December in a big Battle Royale! He got interrupted by the owner of RAINFALL Pro Wrestling and its previous General Manager: Jimmy Jacobs. Jacobs congratulated Christian and they popped a champagne together.
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The opening match brought a former RAINFALL Women's Champion Hyan and the former NXT star Lainey Reid against each other in the latest installment of their rivalry. Lainey had made her debut by constantly antagonizing Hyan, calling her old and soft who lost her previous villainous edge after giving birth. With their first encounter ending with Lainey intentionally getting herself disqualified to beat Hyan further, proving a point to her, the rivalry only grew further after Lainey took their second match-up by using a foreign object. This time however, Hyan finally got her win back after Lainey's cheating attempt by thwarted by Hyan's day-one frenemy Vertvixen. Is this going to be the end of the rivalry or will Lainey have more to say?
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Then we cut to our backstage interviewer Lulu Pencil, who interviewed Motor City Machine Guns, who have made their RAINFALL debuts last month after defeating The Bollywood Boyz to qualify for the Fatal 4 Way Tag Team Title match for the Anniversary Show. The Guns iterated that they wrestled around the world and won around the world. They promised that RAINFALL will be no exception.
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The former tag team partners of Wild Hunt faced each other in the second match, Ricky Knight Jr. who had exploded the former RAINFALL Tag Team Champion tandem by turning on Artemis Spencer after their loss to The High Rollers Table in the qualifying match. Knight Jr. took this one home after a very good match, blasting Artemis with a chair-shot to pick up the win.
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The next interview belonged to our current RAINFALL Women's Champion Nicole Matthews, who has only recently won her title after defeating the previous champion Yuki Kamifuku first in a non-title match, then in a title match and then in a title defense. Matthews says that her opponent today, Syuri, is the toughest challenge anyone can dream of in RAINFALL. She has never beaten Syuri before but there is a first time for everything.
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Speaking of Yuki Kamifuku, it was time for her to finally face off against her former House of Vanity underling in Viva Van. Viva Van and her stablemate Raychell Rose's collective faults have led to Yuki Kamifuku's support system collapsing and her dropping three straight matches and title to Nicole Matthews. But only Viva got the blame and when Viva tried to stand her ground, Raychell Rose also joined Kamiyu in assaulting their former friend.
This culminated in a one-on-one match where Raychell Rose's attempt at spraying Viva Van backfired after Van ducked and Kamiyu got the brunt of the attack. Van picked up the pin after that to defeat her former leader!
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The former RAINFALL World Champion El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. came down to the ring, reminds us that he promised he'd honor the Anniversary Show with an open challenge. His challenge was answered by Jimmy Uso, who had made his RAINFALL debut last month in a failed effort to aid his cousin Roman Reigns in a tag team contest against Kevin Blackwood and his debuting partner WALTER.
Jimmy Uso brought one hell of a challenge against the former champion in a match that surpassed way beyond expectations to being one of RAINFALL's best matches in it's 5-year history, but still ended up falling short once more with the Mexican picking up the victory against the cousin of a man who has ended his world title reign.
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The RAINFALL Tag Team Championships had a turbulent time lately. The champions Midnight Heat (Ricky Gibson & Eddie Pearl) had lost the titles to The High Rollers Table (Zicky Dice & Ricky South) with Pearl's foot being on the ropes by the time Dice pinned him with the referee Chris Wiggins missing the detail. Midnight Heat and their manager Maryse's attempts at arguing the referee had yielded no result, but acting GM Christian Cage decided that it was a controversial finish and vacated the titles, declaring that a new champion would be crowned in the Anniversary Show in a 4-way tag match, with every single team in the match having to earn their way through with a qualifying match.
We have already stated the paths of Motor City Machine Guns and The High Rollers Table, while Midnight Heat had defeated Peacekeepers (Yuki Iino & Shotaro Ashino) and TMDK (Zack Sabre Jr. & Kosei Fujita) easily dispatched The Amerikan Gunz (Ethan HD & Mike Santiago) in their own qualifying matches.
The four teams faced in a fast-paced and action-filled match, with Zack Sabre Jr. tapping out Eddie Pearl to bring TMDK their first ever RAINFALL Tag Team title gold!
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The bout for the RAINFALL Women's Championship brought two former rivals together once again, with Nicole Matthews taking on Syuri, with the roles of face champion and heel challenger having switched since their last affair.
Matthews won her title by besting Yuki Kamifuku, not once but twice and then defended it by doing it a third time. Meanwhile, Syuri has teamed up with Zara Zakher to win the first ever Tag Wars Tournament for women, only to have to face her in a Contendership match after both women chose to go with the 'Steal' route at the end of the tournament's infamous Split/Steal gambit segment.
Syuri barely survived Zakher and eked out the victory with a roll-up to secure this match, which also proved to be a struggle for the former champion, yet she managed to beat Matthews once more and became the first ever two-times RAINFALL Women's Champion ... only for her celebrations to get cut short by Zakher, who attacked the new champion and proved that she is nowhere near finished with Syuri.
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And then, it was time for the main event. The undefeated RAINFALL World Champion Roman Reigns faced a day-one RAINFALL star and a former RAINFALL World Champion himself in Kevin Blackwood, a match that also served as a rematch from Fourth Anniversary Show, where Roman Reigns has overcame Blackwood, trying to establish an early dominance in RAINFALL's landscape by beating its former world champions. That dominance have only grew as the Tribal Chief made himself the number one contender to then champion El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. before their first match went to a 30-minute time limit draw. Their rematch saw Reigns take the title in a brutal Last Man Standing match before stabilizing his reign by defeating his Luchador opponent in a 60-minute Iron Man match with a score of 3 to 2, that took him a last minute low blow and a Spear to secure. He tried to inflict further punishment on the former champion after the match but got stopped by Kevin Blackwood, who officially turned face for the first time in years by stopping Roman.
Blackwood had his own dirty chapters in RAINFALL's history, after losing his chance at being the first ever RAINFALL World Champion to the brutal brawler Schaff, he found the solution in turning heel and joining forces with the then tyrannical authority figure Jimmy Jacobs. After a lengthy world title reign that span across nearly 2 years, he has dropped his title to JAIDEN at Third Anniversary Show and remained in upper mid-card purgatory until it was time to turn into a good guy once again and defend the company he had been since day one against Roman. They faced each other in a tag match in last month's RAINFALL show that ended with Blackwood's side victorious, so the question of if Blackwood can make Roman taste his first defeat remained in everyone's minds.
The match was near perfect, considered RAINFALL's best ever up until this point, building up slowly to a perfect crescendo at the endUnfortunately, Roman Reigns and his cheating ways have prevailed once again as a ref bump led to Roman blasting Blackwood with the ring bell before pinning his opponent just before the 30-minute time limit had hit. The Tribal Chief closed the show with his hand raised and under scrutiny after another of RAINFALL's heroes had fallen at his feet, bringing the Fifth Anniversary Show to an unforgettable end!