2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Lorcan v. Burch

50. Oney Lorcan v. Danny Burch NXT 6/23 (Aired 7/19/17)

PAS: Four minute Locan sprints are some of the most consistently entertaining wrestling around. This felt like they were trying to do Regal v. Finlay, and while this wasn't that, it was still damn fun. I am still not sold on Burch, he had some stuff which didn't hit cleanly, but when Locan nearly beheads him with his diving European it gets gruesome. Burch starts bleeding from the bridge of his nose and they start slapping the shit out of each other. Four minutes of shitstorm and hellfire.

ER: Lorcan really seems like a guy who is regularly aiming for "Legendary WCW Saturday Night" match level, and those kind of guys always seem to worm their way up my list of personal favorites; the guys who see that they have 4 minutes to work a match, and don't view that as a negative, and instead think of what they can fit in to make it memorable. Finlay had that act down pat, never letting the length of a match dictate the quality of a match. 90 seconds? No problem, here's a 90 second short story. 15 minutes? Sure, here's a longer story. Lorcan gets 4 minutes here and both men make the most of them. I'm typically higher on Burch than Phil is, and thought he looked good here: nice haymakers, short and sharp elbow strikes, doesn't skimp on stomach kicks, leaned into Lorcan's most brutal stuff and dished it right back. You need two to tango if you're going to work a 4 minute war, and Burch was right there. Lorcan - like Finlay - makes offense look good as well as delivering great offense, and here he was always there to take the war to the next level. He nearly flings himself through the ring ropes delivering an unhinged European uppercut, he takes a wild bump for a huge Burch lariat, and after eating a kick to the chops he straight up grabs Burch by the mandible and wakes Burch up with slaps. The powerbomb was a great nearfall, and both men came off like total savages here.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST