After a recap of the previous week’s episode, highlighted by the elimination of Tiffany from Team Beefcake, the second episode begins with everyone meeting in a lounge the next day moaning and grunt in pain. They’ve just experienced firsthand what it is like to be a wrestler and they’ve all start to give it a little more respect.

Almost right away, though, Erin starts to open her mouth and openly criticize why Team Nasty won and Team Beefcake lost. Her analysis of everyone on her team hitting all the moves is clearly a farfetched reason why the result was such, which immediately gets under Danny’s skin. Danny snaps back and verbally puts her down to tears even when the judges show up. It took Eric some time to finally get everyone’s attention.

The judges take the celebrities into a gym for a gut check challenge, which is to leap off a thirty foot platform onto a giant air bag. With height becoming a major component in wrestling nowadays, it is felt that the celebrities need to overcome any fear of it in order to progress further in wrestling. Everyone does the dive, some of them managing to conquer fears in the process, except for Frank. Frank makes it clear he suffers from acrophobia and can’t seem to defeat it any time soon, which clearly upsets Knobbs to the point of frustration.

Bischoff then announces the next three moves to be learned and incorporated into the next night’s matches. Headlock take down, schoolboy, and shoulder tackle. The celebrities note that the moves are not get easier as they’re getting more technical. The teams split off, only Team Beefcake find themselves into a bit of a predicament. Apparently unlike everyone else, Danny has a regular job as a radio show host. Commitments he can’t break from. The producers are obviously fine with him heading off to do his show and then come back, otherwise he wouldn’t have been on CCW in the first place.

It does leave Team Beefcake worried that Danny might might behind. Danny comes back later and manages to learn all three moves a lot faster than everyone expected, so now they have little to worry about.

Later in training, the trainers decide to start planning for the matches. Team Beefcake will have Danny and Trishelle as heels against Butterbean and Todd as faces. Team Nasty will have Dustin and Erin as heels against Dennis and Nikki as faces with Frank in their corner. Erin and Nikki are having trouble getting their training down with Erin learning too slow to Knobbs’ liking, not to mention complaining about getting in pain, and Nikki having one too many giggling fits.

As Team Nasty goes through the motions of putting together their matches, Knobbs decides to have Dennis do the top rope clothesline again. Turns out to be a bad move as Dennis injured his arm upon connecting with Knobbs and is immediately examined by the medical staff. After a check up, he’s been advised not to wrestle, which is something Knobbs did not want to hear. He has no choice but to switch Dennis and Frank’s roles with Frank now teaming with Nikki and Dennis as their manager.

Before the matches on the next night, Hogan gives each team a pep talk in the hopes of pumping them up and performing better than the last time. Most of the celebrities seem to take it to heart, save for Nikki who is spending more time making sure her make up is applied correctly than concerned about how the match itself will go.

Team Beefcake is up first, and there’s definitely a fire of determination in Danny’s eyes. I guess he wants to win badly enough to put Erin down some more. He’s in the right role and with the right opponent to do it as he and Butterbean are coming together quite well. These guys could have some interesting singles matches together. Todd and Trishelle get some in-ring time, Trishelle proving my point in that last review that she works better as heel. Todd is determined to show that he can do stuff that he’s moving a little too fast at times, but still performs the moves nicely.

This match turns out to be the best one thus far in the series as all four really excelled in their roles and performed what they’ve learned so far just right. The finish sees Trishelle pushing Butterbean into getting rolled up by Danny for a schoolboy pin. Didn’t look pretty, but then you try learning to schoolboy someone as big as Butterbean when you’re Danny’s size. The post-match affair saw a frustrated Butterbean pick up Danny and gorilla press him out onto the floor ontop of waiting security guys. Great visual to end the run on and Danny took the bump well.

Team Nasty is next. Despite being sidelined by the injury, Dennis has enough knowledge to know that a manager is still a role in a performance and he has no trouble playing up to being someone who wants in there to help his team. With Dennis out, that gives Dustin the opening to really excell and attempt to out-perform everyone. He does a very good job, not to mention he fits so naturally in the heel role. Everyone else has problems. Frank sells pretty well, but he tends to oversell a little and his actual offenses aren’t all that polished. The girls are just as bad as they take too long to remember what they’re supposed to do next.

To me, it seems like they ended up forgetting to hit one of the three assigned moves after the blind hit into unconscious cover finish. I may have to watch again, but I think they missed doing a shoulder tackle. Guess Erin forgot why she thought her team won the last time. It didn’t help that the match came off more chaotic than Team Beefcake.

The judges are obviously very impressed with Team Beefcake and they’re easily the winning team and safe from elimination. Dustin and Dennis get the pass, Dustin being praised for stepping up and being the ring general of his team while Dennis showed how he could still be effective despite his role and injury. Nikki gets a pass, leaving Erin and Frank the choices for elimination. Hulk gives them a little praise, but he obviously wasn’t impressed with either of them overall.

Then he says that Frank is a jabroni and to get the hell out of his ring.

Frank feels sad for leaving and understands that he just wasn’t performing well enough, but is happy to have had the experience. The usual stuff spoken by someone eliminated on reality shows.

Next week sees the celebrities look into developing characters, but Bischoff isn’t too pleased with the initial results. A highlight sees Danny go to the top rope and go for a flying crossbody. We’ll see how that turns out.

Overview: Team Beefcake needed to step up and they did so in a big way with a pretty darn good match given they are celebrities with barely a few days worth of wrestling training. Danny really wants that belt and he’s found a great opponent to work off of in Butterbean. The two could actually make a go in singles after a year or so of hard training.

Team Nasty doesn’t look so hot, though Dustin took advantage of an open opportunity to shine and launched himself further. Dennis is still the favorite despite the injury. The girls really need to pick things up if they have any hope of going far. If anything, the Team Beefcake match really gave some potential for this series to emerge as something more than just simple entertainment.

Episode Verdict: Thumbs Up

Dan Short
dan@ifight365.com