EVOLVE 41 4/17/15 Review

ER: Show starts with the Premier Athlete Brand (Nese, Conley, SoCal Val, Andrea, Su Yung) coming out, and Nese running down Yung for his losses at the WM weekend shows, even though she wasn't there. Val is always amusing in her chief bitch role, but this can't really go anywhere that interesting to me. Are we building to a Yung/Andrea feud? Is the payoff going to be Yung triumphantly leaving the team to go stand ringside for a different team?

1. Anthony Nese vs. Martin Stone

ER: I liked this more than I thought I would. Martin Stone is a guy I hadn't seen much and I came away really wanting to see more. His dedication to little things means his matches have a higher floor than most matches. When you fly into everything, cut low on clotheslines, have a snug side headlock,  hit firm shoulderblocks, miss like you mean it, take opponents' offense great, etc. I will want to see more of you. Stone seems like a guy that would match up great with Busick/Thatcher/Gulak and I'd be excited for any combo of that. Nese is...trickier. I don't think he's bad, and a lot of things he does has a nice crispness to it. The guy is very athletic (if you didn't notice that on your own, just wait a minute and you're bound to hear the announcers fawn all over his body. Their affections play as if they learned commentary from listening to Kal Rudman call Tony Garea matches. "Look at the body on Nese. These aren't just 'show muscles' either, they're functional. The fucking camera lens steamed up at one point.) and has a similar snap to his stuff as Stone. But it's when he reverts back to his old life as "athletic indie wrestler" that he starts kind of sucking. If he was just a grounded asskicker who worked more like a black trunks young boy, I like that guy. A mean dropkick and a wrenched half crab, sure, gimme that shit. It's when we get into those stupid athleticism for the sake of athleticism spots that plague your workrate indies that makes me not like him, so we'll occasionally get a springboard moonsault that overshoots and sees his arms barely graze his opponent. He seems to be getting away from that mumbo jumbo and has been better for it. He's moving in the right direction. But yes, I enjoyed this. Nice tight work from Stone, no overkill, mostly good performance from Nese, fine opener.

2. Caleb Konley vs. Rey Horus

ER: Well this one didn't do much for me, especially with the time allotted. It was not bad. But it went too long and neither guy's offense is something I'm into. I've seen Horus look better, I've seen Konley look worse. A lot of Horus' offense kind of reeked of dated early 2000s indy lucha spots, a lot of "hold my hand while I scale on the ropes and then bounce on them a bit before my armdrag!" or both guys going up top for a move but at a certain point they're just standing up there for way too long trying to help the other guy get balanced, instead of actually looking like guys that want to fight. I mentally prepared for Konley to have to hold himself balanced over the middle rope while Horus did a legdrop, but it never came. Horus needs to watch some more Scoot Andrews tapes. Konley throws a nice left elbow but both guys kind of get a little too cute with a lot of spots. Konley is part of the new wave of do-si-do indy workers, where so many of their reversals and reversals of reversals and scouting of the opponent is so up inside their own ass that it no longer resembles wrestling at a certain point, it looks more like pairs square dancing. Just hooking elbows and do-si-doing around each other.

3. TJ Perkins vs. Biff Busick

PAS: Perkins is a fun addition to the grappler EVOLVE crew. He throws in a really luchaish vibe to the matwork, lots of cool headscissors, and cartwheel counters out of Busick takedowns. Perkins is just silky smooth, really reminds me of El Hijo Del Santo in the effortlessness of his movements. Busick is a bulldozer as usual, he really has some cool throws and shots when he could get his hands on Perkins, finish was very cool as TJP avoids and avoids until he slaps on a cross armbreaker with heel kicks to get the tap. Makes me excited to watch Perkins v. Gulak and Thatcher.

ER: Perkins is a guy I've been seeing live since at least 2001. One weekend in 2007 we saw him in 4 matches in 3 days for 4 different feds while working 4 different gimmicks. He is a guy I'm quite familiar with. He's also arguably one of the most hit and miss workers that I watch semi-regularly. It is never a shock to see him in a meh match, just as it is never a shock to see him in a really really good match. I saw him live twice WM weekend, on an Evolve show and on the WWN show and did not think he looked great in either match. He looked better in the WWN match. I was disappointed in the Gulak match. So I tell Phil how I was disappointed in Gulak/Perkins and Phil is bummed because he liked the sound of that on paper. And now we have this match where Perkins looks really great and now Phil thinks I'm just a liar. Phil thinks many awful things about me, but he normally doesn't think I'm a liar. Perkins flaws are tough to work out, because they can also be his strengths. Sometimes I think he tries to do too many styles: lucha, workrate indy, grappling, faux-mma stuff, etc. Sometimes all those things jammed into a match doesn't work. Sometimes the execution isn't there. And then there's a match like this where he gels wonderfully with Busick and it's precisely because of his different styles. The opening was a really great mixture of Perkins' lucha mat stuff with Busick's more stretching style. At one point Perkins went for an armdrag and Busick rolled through and flawlessly rolled into a hammerlock. It looked outstanding, like something you could try and do several more times to make it look so natural and just never be able to. Both men managed to do a reversal style of wrestling without making things seemed rehearsed to the extreme. Little sequences like Busick blocking a kick, throwing an uppercut that gets caught into a backslide attempt, which Busick reversed into his great side headlock came off so naturally, these two just really gelled together. Ending was even cooler than Phil described it as Perkins rolled through into an armbar with Busick trying to reverse, so Perkins hammers down on Busicks face with his calf and heel until Busick starts to go out, his arm flopping on the mat, and the ref stops the match. Busick immediately comes to and has no idea why the match ended, as he didn't tap. Sometimes the MMA winks can get a little too cute, but I thought this finish was a cool use of it.

4. Ethan Page vs. Rich Swann

ER: You have never heard a quieter crowd than during Ethan Page's entrance. Even the crowd at WM weekend when he turned on Gargano was not this quiet. That weekend was my first time seeing Page, and I did not love what I saw. Nothing he does ticks any of my boxes in what I look for in wrestling. Swann I like more, but like him more in tags than singles. This match had a couple moments I liked, but didn't really care for the structure and pacing. So lets hit the things I liked: I liked Page's low angle leap Ace Crushers, starting from low and leaping up into it, delivering more of a spike. I loved Swann reversing one of them by hooking his feet on the ropes, sending Page crashing. It looked kind of freaky, but plausible. I also dug Swann's no hands pop up rana when Page went to the top. So those are some good things. The rest? I didn't care for the looooong Page control section, just stomping and slowly controlling Swann. Swann came out swinging before the bell with some nice punches, but from there the action slowed waaaaay down. All of Swann's comebacks came after taking some theoretically rough stuff, like a Gotch piledriver on the floor. We even went one worse than the standard forearm exchange portion, as instead we get a trade off of kicks to the head. The finish run seemed false with the tacked on long control stuff. If big kickouts were what they wanted they kind of wasted their time and everybody's time by having Swann sell so much so early. He sold far more when he was taking meager stomps from Page than when he was taking finishers. Overall just didn't work for me.

5. Davey Richards vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: For reasons none of us will ever know or understand, 22 minutes of my feed for this show were missing.

6. 2/3 Falls: Timothy Thatcher vs. Roderick Strong

ER: Thatcher has been my boy for quite a few years as he was a nice little well kept secret out here in the Bay Area. So seeing him get gigantic reactions WM weekend was super exciting. That Hero match really felt like it took him from crowd favorite to big star, and it was such a great moment seeing him win while the people who he came up training with were screaming their heads off across the aisle from me. This guy is way over now and it's exciting. I don't get to be in on the "ground floor" of many things, people.

This was a really really good match, my favorite on the show. Strong is a guy I kinda put in the same bucket as AJ Styles, as he's a guy I like, who is also sometimes trapped in a bad promotional style which leads to matches I don't care for. There always seem to be Strong matches that I dig, but also long stretches where he's working a certain style or certain opponents that I don't care for at all. But I think it's safe to say that the last 6 months of Roderick have been the best of his career. All of his cute offense has been dropped and now he's all about mat work struggle, nasty knees and elbows, and logical nearfalls. The first fall was almost all mat stuff and it ranked up there with any of the best Busick/Thatcher/Gulak stuff we've seen so far. I loved little things like Thatcher holding a go behind and trying to shift his hips to toss Thatcher over, but Thatcher just dropping down and widening his base to prevent it. Strong wins Fall 1 with a nice crucifix roll up, which sprang nicely from Thatcher going after Strong's arm with the blinders on. There was a nice moment where Thatcher uses Strong's leverage against him to grab the arm in the first place, but Strong uses it right back to hold onto the snug crucifix. 2nd and 3rd see us move into some nasty strikes. Strong throws some mean elbows and his leaping knee from a standing position is one of the best things in wrestling today. Outside Strong chops a post and even though it's a spot that gets used more now, the sound of a hand clanking off a metal pole always makes me gasp. Thatcher smells blood on that arm and it sets up the eventual armbar finish for the 2nd. We get some nice near falls in the 3rd. You know that leaping knee I mentioned as being one of the best things in wrestling? Well, Thatcher's momentum cutoff headbutt is even better. I never see it coming and it always looks great. Here Strong nails a pick left, spins around for a roaring back elbow, only to be met with a short thrust headbutt to the chin. Strong goes down great, and Thatcher drops to his butt. The whole match was filled with all sorts of awesome struggle. These two went great together, awesome stuff.

PAS: Very good match, I am concurring with Eric about how good Strong has looked lately, he really puts weight into everything he throws, he just lands some crushing looking stomps, elbows and knees here. Watching Roderick stomp Thatcher in the chest might have been one of my favorite spots in wrestling all year. The chopping the post spot in the second fall was great as Thatcher possums him in and has this great shit eating grin on his face when he slides down and Strong cracks the ring post. Thatcher did some nasty hand work right after that, although it got forgotten later in the match. Third fall was good too, although it got a little indy wrestling at the end for me with big moves and two counts. I also thought the ending was bit sudden which is strange for a match that went this long. Still all over a great match and a nice addition to both guys resumes for 2015.


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