2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Gallagher vs. Gibson

51. Jack Gallagher vs. Zack Gibson ICW 7/29

PAS: Gallagher returns from the US to Europe with a triumphant homecoming. It feels like the excursion to the US has made him a bigger deal. This has a neat structure with Gallagher tooling Gibson with really perfectly executed Johnny Saint style counters with Gibson getting more and more frustrated, so he chucks Gallagher into the ringpost and starts working over his shoulder.  Match has some fun back and forth, with Gallagher being just as adept and a more violent style then he was with the fancier stuff. Loved the finish too, with Gibson trying to get tricky, slipping and eating a huge corner dropkick.

ER: Ever since Gallagher joined WWE he's remained one of my favorites, but I don't think I've actually gone back and watched ANY of his pre-WWE career. It's as if he did the Cruiserweight Classic and I went "cool!" and just waited around for new stuff. And now it's nearly 4 years later, he improbably has an action figure, and he works one of the weirder schedules in WWE (very few house shows and none this year, 30-40 matches per year), and I got the urge to just go back and see what he was like pre-WWE. At this point I've seen 10x the WWE Gallagher as I have UK indy Gallagher, and I saw Phil had done this draft closer to when this show happened, and here I am tapping in that alley oop several years later. And it's impressive how little of his act Gallagher has changed from his UK indy days to his WWE run. The only difference that really stands out is that he doesn't take as many big bumps now, but other than that he's the same man. 

And the match is a good story, with Gallagher confounding Gibson with horseplay and annoying Johnny Saint offense until he snaps, and that's when we get Gallagher the bump king and the most interesting version of Gibson. Gallagher takes the crazy Cassandro bump around the ringpost, and this one is even crazier because the ringside area is not very big, and on his way down he manages to hit his head on the guardrail and a chair. Later Gibson hits a chestbreaker and it looks like Gallagher takes it vertically on his damn face. There were some very clever twists here, like Gibson going for a big missile dropkick only for Gallagher to perfectly time it and catch his ankle, or a strike exchange that ends with Gallagher downing Gibson with his big headbutt, but Gibson goes down so violently that his foot kicks up into Gallagher's balls. That's a spot that looked totally natural, like somebody at a work picnic getting tossed a soda when they weren't paying attention and taking it to the groin. And the finish is even more fun as Gibson goes to run up the turnbuckles the way Nigel used to but slips off the middle buckle; while the fans are laughing and he's about to respond he eats Gallagher's nasty dropkick in the corner and Gallagher wins. It was so well done, the way an expert like Chris Hamrick could fit a fake blown spot seamlessly into the match and manipulate a series of reactions. Doing it for the finish is bold and I've seen it not work, but this was maybe the best I've seen that kind of moment done.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST