With the format firmly established, it was time for the last round of preliminary qualifiers in TNA’s British Boot Camp II. This time, the judges took to London’s York Hall to see what the capital’s wrestlers had to offer – James Milin-Ashmore reviews…
I’ll be honest. The first three weeks of British Boot Camp have been boring and repetitive, but it was necessary. It was almost like checking in before a holiday in the sun, as the show trudged along toward a supposed promised land of wrestling goodness. It was just going to take a while to get there. (Roughly three hours with adverts.)
The London edition had a strong showing from start to finish, adding nine wrestlers to the final roster for the next round. Each had something different to offer.
Dave Mastiff moves with a grace that belies his size, Martin Stone was good enough to be picked up by the WWE developmental team, and the Owens (identical) twins were willing to split up to give the other a chance to go through, though both eventually qualified.
R J Singh is a British Asian deputy head, Richard Parliament is basically a knock-off William Regal (but entertaining nonetheless), Joel Redman looks like an Olympic swimmer, and Sha Samuels represented the East End well, with a menacing performance throughout.
Grado also returned (I would’ve never guessed) and he soon became the focal point of the show, with a decent match-up against Samuels during the second round of testing. He showed an in-ring ability that matched his character, with a decent burst of speed at the end after he seemed tanked (he’s a natural actor), while Samuels played the role of the bully well.
It was an easy decision for Al Snow in the end as he put all of them through to the matches, shown next week. Interestingly, Al seems to have morphed into the head judge over the past few weeks, and he used Grado to continue his hot-streak of putdowns, but it mostly felt like filler as time started to drag on towards the end.
As the card rundown of the 16 hopefuls was shown at the end, it all came together with a real moment of magic. Every match looks interesting, but that’s for next week…
• El Ligero v Noam Dar
• Joel Redman & Martin Stone v Richard Parliament & R J Singh
• Mark Andrews v Chris Travis
• Nikki Storm v Kay Lee Ray v Owens Twins (Four-way match)
• Dave Mastiff v Rampage Brown
• Sha Samuels v Grado
If I didn’t sit through the first three weeks, then the matches wouldn’t matter as much, if at all, so they really were necessary. Hopefully they’ll live up to the hype.