KPW Arena 25: Odkupienie
Odkupienie (Absolution) was an event by Kombat Pro Wrestling. It took place on Friday, May 17th 2024, in Klub Nowy Harem in Gdynia.
The poster for this event strongly referenced the Hitman series of games. On a red background, we see the back of a bald man's head. The head presumably belongs to Chemik, and has a barcode tattoed over it. By reading it with an appriopriate app, we can discover it's a CODE128 barcode, encoding text that reads "Chemik". The font choice is also similar to the game covers. However, while the game protagonist is indeed bald and has a barcode, none of the game covers show the back of his head.
Foreign wrestlers performing at this event were:
- Austrian wrestler Martn Pain, in his second appearance for KPW. He has another connection to the Polish wrestling scene: two matches in PTW's Austrian sister promotion, one of them against Puncher.
- English wrestler Louis Basham, competing for Coventry-based UKPW and other British organizations.
- Hungarian heavyweight Gulyas Öcsi. While this is his first match in Poland, he already faced against some Polish wrestlers on the German and Hungarian scenes, though none from KPW.
Build-up and stories leading to the event
- Back in 2020, Austrian wrestler Martn Pain unsuccessfully challenged champion David Oliwa for the KPW OldTown belt. A second loss is not in the cards for him.
- David Oliwa keeps losing his matches, and keeps blaming it on everyone else. His latest chance to redeem himself is in a match against British up-and-comer Louis Basham.
- A hoss fight is coming: between the huge Gulyas Öcsi and equally massive Eryk Lesak. Both are billed as brawlers with nothing to lose and much to prove.
- Greg needs another victory before he can think of reclaiming the KPW Championship belt, after he failed to defeat Robert Dreissker. So far, the Fux brothers managed to defeat his minions. Can Filip defeat him?
Card
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Recap
- After announcer Kinga finished the event introductions, Chemik enters the ring, dressed in a suit, black leather gloves, red tie and sunglasses - the Hitman look. He begins his promo by asking fans "Are you ready?" - "No, it seems you didn't understand me - ARE YOU READY?". This is Arkadiusz "Pan" Pawłowski's signature intro. Pawłowski used to be ring announcer for KPW until 2019, before leaving to create PTW. He then continues with "... to hear the truth about Fux Brothers" and proceeds to cut a promo on them.
- David Oliwa and Louis Basham square off in a classic wrestling match. Dawid finally manages to break his losing streak.
- Greg enters in his signature papal robes, without his Gregorian Branch stable members, to chants of "Papież Polak" (Polish Pope) which he seems to enjoy. At one point in the match, fans sing Barka (The Barge). Unusually for him, the fight is fairly clean, but Filip takes the win.
- After the match, Filip takes the mic, and tells the audience he's been undefeated in singles matches for 2 years now. His last singles loss was against Greg at Tattoo Konwent.
- Martn Pain enters, jumps into the ring. Speaking German, cuts an angry promo about how he's had to wait four years before returning for a rematch, insults the audience and his opponent. Then, less aggressively, repeats the same in English for the benefit of the audience (and maybe also the Fightbox TV cameras).
- Gulyas Öcsi vs Lesak is mostly a hoss fight, but Ocsi surprises with a dive to the outside at one point.
- Zefir enters with his signature fire breathing show.
- The main event starts with the babyfaces cooperating to take out the heels, then shaking hands and proceeding to fight each other. Excellent aerial action from both Lato and Zefir.
At one point, Lato leaps into Rosetti to drop him with a codebreaker, but Rosetti stays upright. This allows Chemik to deliver a codebreaker to the still-in-codebreaker position Lato.
The fight spills to outside the ring, and to the mezzanine level, with Rosetti throwing Zefir over the guardrails, but he manages to hold and defend.
A similar spot was done here years ago, at Arena 6, in a multi-man fight where it was Greg who dropped Ostrowski onto the floor below.
- The two faces manage to pin Chemik simultaneously, and ref counts to three. However he is unable to name the winner, so the fight continues, but now with some animosity between Lato and Zefir.
- In a twist finale, with Rosetti close to winning, Chemik low-blows and rolls him to take the win. This was unexpected, as both are members of the same stable.
- Post-match, Greg and Lesak walk out to the ring to congratulate Chemik. An angry Rosetti tries to attack, but is stopped by Greg, possibly setting up a new story for Rosetti.
References