It was a long time ago and a galaxy far far away when MTV announced they were picking up a new show called Wrestling Society X produced by Big Vision Entertainment. The show debuted with a bang on January 26th of this year but went out with a whimper just a little under two months later on March 13th. Ten episodes were produced in all but only nine ever aired on television, four of which all aired in one night in a blowout TV marathon. What happened to this promising promotion? Some say it was the format of the shows. Each half hour episode contained high-octane wrestling and live musical performances, and to some it seemed to be much too much in too short an amount of time. Some say it was the fact the wrestlers were virtual unknowns in the mainstream. Sure to readers of this website or followers of independent promotions like Ring of Honor names like Jack Evans, Tyler Black, Human Tornado and Matt Cross may have seemed entirely familiar, but to jaded WWE pro wrestling fans they might not have come off as "stars." Some say it was MTV's fault for never fully investing in the promotion, doing a poor job of establishing it once it WAS on the air, and then hanging the show and the producers out to dry when the ratings were (unsurprisingly) too low for their tastes. Still others say a wrestling promotion on MTV was doomed from the start and that if Big Vision Entertainment had dealt with a better network the show might still be on the air today. After all when you consider how much of a mismatch ECW and the Sci-Fi Network are and the fact that show is still on the air, it hardly seems like MTV was ever the right venue for pro wrestling. Whatever the cause fans of this short-lived, adrenaline packed and (literally) explosive wrestling show were left high and dry as the promised "piranha deathmatch and exploding steel cage timebomb deathmatch" season finale never aired.
Contracts expired and the producers of the show moved on to other projects, but the rights to the entire season and the unaired episode still remained in the vaults of Big Vision Entertainment. Big Vision clearly did not spend all the time and money to have an "exploding steel cage timebomb deathmatch" and never have the public see it AMIRITE? With the release of "Wrestling Society X - The Complete First (and Last) Season" the rest of the story can finally be told. This mammoth 4-disc DVD set not only includes everything you got to see if you tuned in when it was still on TV but everything you DIDN'T get to see. This means that bonus "WSXtra" episodes created strictly for On Demand and internet broadcast can now be watched in full-screen DVD glory. This means that alternate commentary you never heard and wrestler promos that never aired are now yours to enjoy. This means the true tenth and final episode of WSX is now available in all of its glory for you to enjoy. OH MY BROTHER, TESTIFY.
Hold up, wait! Perhaps there are some among you out there reading this review (I'm looking at you, you, and you over there with the Triple H shirt on) who don't know why you would waste your time and money buying a DVD set for a short-lived wrestling promotion that was an admitted television flop. The first reason would be the price - you can purchase the entire season of WSX for under $20, which is a lot less than you'd pay for one TNA or WWE PPV DVD. This is really staggering when you break down the dollar to minutes average as there are over TEN HOURS OF MATERIALS counting all four discs together, meaning you can get a wrestling fix for only $2 per hour OR LESS! Aside from a clearance bin full of Taboo Tuesday DVD's and those infamous "Grand Masters of Wrestling" DVD's at Wal*Mart, when have you ever seen a value like this?
The naysayers among you are all undoubtedly assuming that it could only be dirt cheap if it was really bad. The short response to that is YOU COULDN'T BE MORE WRONG. When this promotion folded a large percentage of the wrestlers in it were immediately signed to deals with WWE, TNA and ROH. You can argue whether or not MTV is a garbage network, you can even argue about whether the format of WSX was any good, but you'd be sincerely hard-pressed to argue these were not the cream of the crop wrestlers that WSX could get that weren't already under contract to WWE. For ten episodes worth of shows the men and women of WSX busted their ass putting on crazy, insane, high-flying and often surprisingly technical and scientifically grounded exhibitions of pro wrestling. Wrestling Society X was a little bit catch-as-catch-can, a little bit lucha libre, a little bit X-Division, a little bit puroresu and North American showmanship and A WHOLE LOT OF FUN. This series was the best 30 minutes of pro wrestling on TV every single week during its all too short network run.
There are many ways to play "Wrestling Society X - The Complete First (and Last) Season." The first disc takes you through an extended uncut version of the animation that used to open each week's show before giving you six different options: Play All TV Episodes, Play All WSXtra Episodes, Select An Episode, Select A WSXtra Episode, Marathon Mode or Alternate Commentary. Even this is not the end of your selection choices, because you can actually break down individual episodes by chapter, even the WSXtra shows if you like - an option that was certainly never available on the internet or On Demand. For those who had their gripes about the format of WSX, whether they didn't like the opening musical performances, the over-the-top ring introductions by Fabian Kaelin, or the fact everything on the WSX set seems to explode when touched... well I can't do anything about the last part but you're certainly welcome to fast forward or chapter through the first two if you like. For my money though an entire episode of WSX goes by so fast (especially without MTV's commercials) that there's not much reason to skip anything. Quite frankly it's some of the unapologetically campy parts of WSX that made it so damn appealing to watch. WSX was for better and worse a GENUINE ALTERNATIVE to WWE and TNA, as their show had no designs on being what Raw is or what Nitro used to be.
It wouldn't be fair of me to put over Wrestling Society X this strongly without offering some genuine criticism of the product as well. Even though WSX was a fun product and almost completely inoffensive at only a half hour per week, there were definitely issues with the way the product was filmed and edited to FIT that half hour. If you've ever been frustrated by bad camera angles or useless shots of people in the crowd that miss the action in the ring you've either watched a TNA PPV or an episode of WSX. This is partly the fault of who the show was being produced for, as Big Vision undoubtedly intended WSX to be "pro wrestling on crack" to fit the MTV lineup. "Pro wrestling on crack" comes complete with cameras that never stand still to focus on the wrestling, not to mention they randomly zoom in and out on the action for no reason whatsoever. It may help to drink a few cans of Jolt cola before watching these shows, just so you're as wired as the director was putting it together. Big Vision and MTV were also going for the "underground fight club" look for WSX, so a lot of the time the action is not well lit. Direct DVD transfers of these episodes definitely help, and you can adjust the brightness of your own television set accordingly while watching. I find these rather minor complaints next to how much fun it is to relive the WSX experience, not to mention see all the things I never got to see before.
AND SPEAKING OF NEVER SEEN BEFORE you're probably wondering about that tenth and unaired episode of Wrestling Society X referred to so many times here and elsewhere. I could say that I don't want to spoil it for you, but to be honest it's equally true that I don't want to recap the entire show in this review. Having watched it for this review though I can honestly say that you need to buy, rent or borrow (hopefully not pirate or steal) this DVD set just to see the WSX season finale. What surprised me about this tenth episode the most was not the piranha deathmatch between Los Pochos Guapos and The Cartel or the exploding cage timebomb match starring The Filth & The Fury v. Team Dragon Gate. Both matches lived up to the hype by being just as over the top and insane as their descriptions would have you believe. The REAL surprise is that one of the chapters of episode ten is referred to as "season two build" and features Scorpio Sky getting into a wild brawl with Vampiro... and that's only the BEGINNING of the segment, not to mention they hint at what would have been a SECOND WSX title belt never seen on TV. It's fascinating to see what another season of WSX might have been like had MTV not pulled the plug and Big Vision moved on.
The fourth and final disc is packed full of extra features - casting tapes, music videos, "more" of Lizzy and Lacey, and even some trailers for other Big Vision projects - and it rounds out this set nicely. If you've been waiting for Wrestling Society X to come out on DVD ever since it went off the air, you won't be in any way disappointed by this collection. If you WEREN'T waiting for "The Complete First (and Last) Season" of Wrestling Society X, that's probably because you never got a chance to see it on MTV in the first place. WSX was the most unique pro wrestling product to get onto mainstream cable television in ages, and the sad footnote to this DVD set is that it may well be the first AND last TV show to offer a wrestling alternative to WWE and TNA in 2007. Since WSX had a guaranteed season of shows and no PPV to build towards or buyrate to worry about, they could afford to go out and throw balls to the wall on every single show, and if that's not fun to watch I don't know what fun is. Wrestling fans should NOT hesitate to pick up this set at retail wherever they can find it.