MLW Worth Watching: Reed! Cade! Guevara! LA Park's Kid! Samoans! CARAMEL COLOSSUS!!

Jason Cade vs. Myron Reed  MLW Fusion #24 9/6 (Aired 9/28/18)

ER: Wasn't expecting to be writing this one up, although Cade has a much better shot at making one of these than his former partner Yuta. This match has flaws, and plenty of big moves get ignored, but this is getting written up due to the splendid style of the master of the cutter, Myron Reed. Reed is super young and already quite advanced. His nickname is Hot Fire, which is damn appropriate. This is the second time we've seen him in MLW, and he's surprised both times, and I love what they're doing with him. First match he had was against Kotto Brazil, and in what I thought was going to be a Brazil showcase, Reed ended up getting a great chance to shine. And now again I think we're going to get a Cade showcase coming off his split with Yuta, and we end up getting another instance of Reed outshining his opponent. I'll give credit to Brazil and Cade for being so generous in their coming out matches, but Reed is just too much fun. I really don't care about the negatives in this match, all I want to do is see Reed hit cutter variations for days. Reed hits 4 or 5 awesome versions here and none of them have implausible set ups. He makes cool use of his opponents location in the ring and hits a bunch of wild springboard variations that finish with great snap. Some get blocked, others land, all look great. This was on the same show as the WarGames, and at one point Reed does a bonkers high jump leap over the double ropes joining the rings and smashes Cade with a cutter (the slo mo replay is sick), and later he tops that by flying to the floor with a cutter that crashes all of them through Cade's boy Rhett Giddins. Cade is good. He's a guy working a modern indy "execution over substance" style, but he's better at it than many. But Reed is seeming like the guy with major potential, and I'm glad MLW isn't just using him as cannon fodder.

El Hijo de LA Park vs. Sammy Guevara  MLW #27 10/4 (Aired by 10/19/18)

ER: Totally coconuts spotfest that makes up for some of its precision problems with a lot of imagination, and a lot of fearlessness. Park hits a wild dive that sends him into the crowd, rolls Guevara back in the ring and like a second later Guevara blindsides him into the guardrail with an unhinged top con hilo. The two crashed hard into the rail and send it and them flying up onto fans, and Park also hits a fun sloppy '96 ECW style moonsault off the middle buckle to the floor. You know that kind of ECW moonsault where guys who probably shouldn't be doing moonsaults to the floor started doing them anyway because the ECW atmosphere kind of encouraged it? And also the bad lighting. Park's felt like that. Park crashed both of them into the guardrail on a dive late in the match too, we always got great dive visuals of one of them momentarily suspending upside down into his opponent. Guevara has several fun ways to fling his body at his opponent, and he's good at making Park's ranas look good, decent at working spots off the apron. The finish was sick as Park just spikes him with a great over the shoulder piledriver. It looked like a piledriver that damn sure should end a match.

Samoan Island Tribe (Samu/Lance Anoa'i) vs. Smash N Dash Connection (Barrington Hughes/Kotto Brazil)

ER: Well damn did this one exceed expectations. Hughes I adore but he clearly hasn't been put in actual matches for a reason, though he did work a lot of WarGames and was directly involved in the finish so they're clearly giving him more trust. And Samu is 55 years old and hasn't been a full time wrestler in 25 years. But this match was awesome and really shows what a badass Samu is, having this involved a performance mere weeks before a cancer diagnosis. Samu is super fun here, not only from the apron, but throwing great punches, bumping big on a clothesline and missile dropkick, still working barefoot (!) and really blasting Brazil with a lariat. It suddenly made me want to go back and do a Complete & Accurate Headshrinkers. I don't think I'd seen Lance before, but he was a good new Samoan, had a couple nice superkicks (in one of my favorite moments of the match he superkicks Hughes, who winds up slumped and tangled in the ropes; it looked like King Kong stuck in a giant spider web), throws some headbutts with his daddy, and commits to a big missed splash at an important turning point in the match. We also got a great moment where Brazil leaps for a hot tag but gets caught midair by Lance into a hard Samoan drop. Awesome cut off spot. Brazil takes a big beating but fires back impressively, especially loved an impactful missile dropkick he had. The Hughes hot tag is fun with Hughes barreling in with nice right hands, and elbow, fat avalanche, and a fun double team finisher ending with him flattening Lance with a splash. This was a super fun old school feeling tag match, all guys impressed. Here's hoping Samu recovers strong and gets a cool final Samoan family WWE run.