MLW Worth Watching: Yehi! Holliday! Hart Foundation! Stud Stable! PCO! King!

Fred Yehi vs. Richard Holliday  MLW Fusion #21 7/19 (Aired 9/7/18)

ER: This works as both a cool showcase for Yehi, and a nice introduction to Holliday, of whom I know nothing about. Yehi doesn't squash him but never feels in trouble, and Holliday has a nice undeserved smugness to him, like a guy who would make sense teaming with MJF but taking all the pinfalls; a good entitled stooge. Yehi blocks a lot of his shots in fun ways, hits a hard shoulderblock, stomps his hand, does a couple leg sweeps that nobody else does, the kind of stuff you want to see Yehi doing. Holliday bumped around and acted perplexed by all of it, but still nicely worked in a couple pieces of offense; I really liked Yehi grabbing him with the trapped arm kicks to the chest and pushing him off, put Holliday blazing back off the ropes with an elbow. Holliday showed his egotistical charisma while clearly on the losing end, and I love a big mouthed jobber. Yehi grabs that Koji Clutch and Holliday starts tapping the second Yehi starts throwing shots. Nice touch.

The New Hart Foundation vs. The Stud Stable  MLW Fusion #23 9/6 (Aired 9/21/18)

ER: I would have liked to see this twice as long, but what we got was as good as I hoped it would be. Teddy Hart has been so great everywhere he's turned up this year, that right hand is just lighting everyone up. Pillman is green as hell but a good lackey for Davey Boy and Teddy, and I dug them basically using him as a way to distract Parrow, basically throwing him to the wolves so they can get in their licks. Parrow took a nice Nestea plunge bump off the apron into the Blondes and Hart hit a huge moonsault off the top onto all of them on the floor. Both Blondes take big suplexes well for big dudes (and Patrick takes a brutal Saito suplex from Davey) and they both throw out some nice offense. I'll pretty much be completely in the boat (is that a phrase? I don't know what the fuck I'm doing) for any tag team that does a tandem elbow drop, that kind where both guys are dropping elbows one after the other. It always looks great, and it looks ever greater when it's two guys (like the Blondes) with great elbow drops. We get a kind of goofus finish with Parrow wanting the pinfall all for himself, but Pillman breaks it up and Parrow gets pinned like right after. Blondes were each up on the top rope when Parrow opted to go for the pin, and I really wanted to see what the heck they were going to do. But afterwards they give Parrow a beatdown, and I kinda just want them to start getting actual tag matches. We've already wasted time feuding them with the already broken up Team TBD, now they're starting up something with Parrow, but they still don't feel established. Just give these guys a run already.

PCO vs. Brody King  MLW Fusion #23 9/6 (Aired 9/21/18)

ER: Phil pointed out that one of the keys to successful PCO matches is to keep the pace fast, and the more we see of him we realize another key is keeping things short. There's a set amount of material, and that material is fantastic at 10 minutes or under. Brody King is kind of similar, so you give these two 5 minutes to lace into each other and pull out some crazy nonsense? Then that's absolutely going to be something worth taking time out of your day to see. These are two big dudes who have no problem sending shivers to the jaw, and taking man size spills that aren't typical of guys their size. The whole match was filled with hard elbows, big clotheslines, headbutts, and hard knees. That alone would have been enough to make this good, but PCO breaks out a huge and impressive dive early, King drops him with a brainbuster, launches him into the buckles with a backdrop, misses a rolling senton that lands him on his head, PCO hits a big powerbomb and running knee; the match is just packed with cool stuff and hard shots. King pie faces the ref when he gets in the way of two adults beating each other's ass, and we get an awesome postmatch melee with other officials running out to separate, and PCO hits a flat out GREAT moonsault off the top to the floor, crashing through everybody. This is exactly what this match should have been.