Brian Kendrick With Your Fists So Tight

Brian Kendrick/Drew Gulak/Tony Nese vs. Cedric Alexander/Rich Swann/TJ Perkins (WWE Raw 10/17/16) - FUN

ER: Fun stuff, a real Gulak/Kendrick showcase. Cedric looked good too, but he had Kendrick and Gulak flopping and flying around for him soooo. Kendrick is a real fun ringleader of goons in this, with Nese as his musclehead goon and Gulak as his snake pit goon, letting them do the dirty work while he makes blind tags to capitalize, and every time he's in just sees him getting bumped in big ways. Gulak's fast sequences with Cedric were good, and loved him eating that slingshot kick from TJ on the floor. Kendrick was an awesome focused Teddy Hart here, bumping early to the floor and selling a knee, cutting the ring off on Cedric only to take a big backdrop, vulturing that Nese 450 with his choke; the match was put on in the ultimate dead zone, after a 1 minute tag match but before the big Goldberg appearance, and they somehow manage to get some good crowd reactions. Crowd popped for Swann's nice headscissors and reacted to some characters they really haven't been given tons of reasons to react to. That feels like a win.

Brian Kendrick vs. Rich Swann (WWE Raw 10/24/16) - REALLY GOOD

ER: This was a fun episode of Raw in terms of hot Worldwide matches. We got a 3 minute Bo Dallas/Curtis Axel match which was could have been a total throwaway but they went out and beat the hell out of each other, throwing lariats to backs of heads, throwing big knees, finding cool reversals of those knees; we got a fun 3 minute Golden Truth/Shining Stars match; and then we get this cool match with Swann working like gangbusters and Kendrick scrambling the whole time to keep up. Swann works crazy fast here and their sequences threaten to fly off the rails at any point but never do. They do tons of complicated stuff and it all looks good. Swann blasts him with some dropkicks, Kendrick armdrags him into the ropes while Swann holds on and flips through, Kendrick repays him by holding onto a different armdrag that sees him fly to the floor and snap Swann over the bottom rope. Kendrick throws big elbows, Swann throws a great mule kick, and I kinda like Swann going over clean. People can cry parity, but Kendrick going over TJ and Swann going over Kendrick right before the former's title match feels more territorial to me, in the way territories would set up immediate challengers. I think it makes a lot of sense within the division, and I'm cool as long as little matches like this keep happening.

Brian Kendrick vs. TJ Perkins (WWE Raw 10/31/16) - SKIPPABLE

ER: Not much to this, mostly angle. It does get a couple of minutes, dominated by Perkins. I like how Kendrick takes dropkicks to the back, he does an amusing comic jump onto his stomach. Perkins did his crazy top rope rana to the floor and both guys spilled out pretty dangerously. I expected some kind of shenanigans finish going into this one, and Kendrick holding onto his title while in the fetal position was amusing, but these two have crossed paths a few times now, no need to make this match the one you seek out.


COMPLETE & ACCURATE BRIAN KENDRICK