WWE BIG 3: Gulak, Gallagher, & Lorcan, 6/30 - 7/6

Jack Gallagher/Oney Lorcan/Tony Nese vs. Drew Gulak/Ariya Daivari/Mike Kanellis 205 Live 7/2

PAS: We get all of our guys in one surprisingly long match. Given this much time (I think it was close to 20 minutes), we get a bunch of different sections with each guy, with pretty variable quality. Gallagher was probably the highlight for me, he broke out the Nasty Russ cannonball, a crazy dive to the floor with the umbrella, and a great looking double headbutt with Gulak. Nese was obviously a focus of the match leading into his title shot, and looked pretty bad. His hot tag was embarrassing video game wrestling. I really liked the post match brawl, felt chaotic and exciting, a little more of that and a couple of cuts during the match would have improved it a lot. Still got to love these guys gettin so much time.

ER: This was disappointing. This got just about 20 minutes, and they worked the first part of this like they almost had too much time to work with. The second half picked things up considerably, but the first half felt a lot like killing time for the second half. The pairings made sense as they all built off recent happenings: Gallagher beat Kanellis last week, Daivari laid a beating on Lorcan to get DQ'd a couple weeks ago, and Gulak won the title from Nese. But none of those feuds really felt like they were acknowledged in many ways during the match, other than determining who's on what side of the ring. I will say I didn't mind Nese as much as Phil. I'm no Nese guy, but he missed a 450 with conviction, was involved in the first awesome highspot when he goes up for a moonsault and gets shoved over the top to the floor, hits a cool high speed Fosbury Flop dive onto everyone, and even his poor hot tag was an actual benefit to the match: Crowd was very silent up to that point, and while Nese running in with played out 2008 indy combos didn't look great, it livened the mood and snapped  the crowd to attention. The dive train was a genuinely great one, with Lorcan's great unhinged tope con giro, Nese's aforementioned Fosbury Flop, and Gallagher going coo coo with his fantastic umbrella butt drop and then back into the ring for a big falling meteor. Gulak and Lorcan hit hard throughout (Gulak crunches Nese with a lariat and Lorcan knocks Kanellis to the floor in notable moments), and the whole thing finished overall good, but really felt like it should have been better. What's cruel, is we get an excellent 2 minute post match ass kicking that is more awesome than anything in the long match proper. If they worked an 8 minute match with the same energy level and intensity as the "We're out of time!" brawl after the match, this thing would have been list for damn sure.