PWU Wrestling – Mandela Hall

Sunday night saw PWU – the hard working folks at Belfast’s answer to the WWE – bring an 18+ wrestling show to the Mandela hall as part of fresher’s week. We were at the front drink in hand to witness the action live. The first thing that struck me was how professional it all looked as soon as you walked in, the 20ft x 20ft (WWE sized) ring looked fairly at home in the Mandela hall and it was flanked on either side by massive video screens. The stage was flush with the ring also making an excellent entrance form the back. On the technical side of things, the sound and lighting we excellent also.

UTV sports announcer Colm McAlinden is our in ring announcer and definitely lends an air of professionalism and quality to the proceedings. He starts by announcing that tonight we’ll be having a platinum ticket tournament, which is basically a tournament to see who the new number 1 contender is to the PWU heavy weight champion – the 7ft Tron. Later we see Colm do an interview with the challenger Tucker which Tron interrupts. Ultimately in this encounter Tucker gets the better of his lager foe, it beautifully sets us up for the main event later on. The matches are top notch, well timed and varied. We get 1 on 1’s, 3 ways and tag team matches and we also saw new Tag Champs crowned.

The action was fast and furious and occasionally spilled out into the crowd, at one point I looked up to see a guy jumping off the balcony to the ground below. The crowd who are on top form as well started chanting “Holy shit! Holy shit!” There’s really nothing else to chant at that point! It all culminated in a bloody and vicious knock-down drag ‘em out 1 on 1 between the current PWU champion Tron and the crowd favourite Tucker. This was everything you could want from a David vs Goliath confrontation. The crowd were on fire and the match was epic but alas our hero Tucker came up short. Sure there’s always next time.

This really was show to be proud of and it seems every time I catch the PWU guys they are improving. I think this was a great setting for a show and would like to see more regular shows in the Mandela hall to compliment they’re more family friendly ones they hold every month.