WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 8/25 - 8/31

205 Live 8/27

Oney Lorcan vs. Humberto Carrillo

PAS: I thought this was a warming up to be a great match which kind of fell by the wayside. Loved Lorcan's early aggression. He hits this brutal uppercut to Carrillo's spine as Carrillo is springboarding into him, totally looked like a thing which would send Carrillo to the chiropractor for weeks. He then does some focused nasty work on the back and the ribs, including a great looking bodyscissors. If the match had just been Carrillo fight his way out of that, hitting some flashy moves and winning it would have been great, but it had some real bloat as now 205 Live matches have to be 25+ minutes long. Carillo could use an editor, some of his stuff looks cool, but a lot of it has an extra backflip or two for no real reason. I imagine a shorter PPV match with Gulak might be better than this as it won't have as much time to kill.

ER: Another week, another amusingly Too Long 205 Live match. I am constantly torn between "It is awesome that 15+ minute cruiserweight singles matches are playing out weekly in front of WWE crowds" and "Man this match would have been much better if it was 9 minutes". It's cool letting these guys work and stretch out and fill time however they want, really puts the onus on the workers to have an interesting match, nobody can complain "well if they had more time..." But at the same time not everybody needs more time. This was a fun style clash that could have been pretty tight with half the runtime. Carrillo has a lot of ideas and a lot of offense that needs positioning and setting up, and some of that had too many seams showing. But I think in general the live pre-Smackdown crowd doesn't care as much about that, so I get why he's going out there and showing off his cool stuff. I think he has potential to be more than a Tony Nese though, and parts veered into Nese territory. But there were a lot of cool ideas and big spots. Carrillo hit a couple dives, a big tope con giro that splatted him on the floor after Lorcan's catch came up a little short, and later a twisting moonsault to the floor (similar to the in ring moonsault that won him the match); Lorcan hit his wild flip dive to the floor that I love, and does cool things like his uppercut to Carrillo's back when Carrillo was trying a tope en reversa, and I always love body vices. But a lot of this felt like a series of moments and spots, without actually building to anything. There didn't feel like there was much natural progression, and while Carrillo was clearly working face I think this would have benefitted from Lorcan working overt heel. He didn't really work heel at all...and yet didn't have nearly as much as his usual high impact babyface energy. Lorcan's babyface intensity is one of his best features, and we didn't really get that due to it being Carrillo's showcase. I would have been more excited for another PPV level Gulak/Lorcan match, but I'm still very interested in seeing how Gulak works with him.