WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 3/1-3/7/20

Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish NXT 3/4

ER: I thought the first minute of this was pretty dumb, one of those four man strike exchanges where someone hits a chop and the others all stand around reeling until someone else hits a forearm and the other three stand around reeling. They mixed up that kind of thing more interestingly than it typically looks, but when the ceiling of a spot is "pretty dumb" you're just throwing good money after bad. But once O'Reilly and Fish spilled to the floor and Lorcan hit a double blockbuster off the ring steps, I was into this the rest of the way. We built to an early and good Burch hot tag, and some of Burch's best work is on quick hot tags (Lorcan rubbing off on him?), and I like the twist of a hot tag leading to Burch getting separated from Lorcan. Burch hits hard on straight rights and uppercuts, and I dug Fish and O'Reilly holding him back with bullshit. O'Reilly would get on him and just slap and palm strike him, drop short knees, nothing that was going to finish him but just slowly grind him down at the farthest spot from his corner. Fish was really good from the apron, great little moment with him hooking Burch by the trunks and yanking him back to their corner. Of course we built to Lorcan's big hot tag, him flying horizontally with uppercuts, hitting the blockbuster, throwing heavy chops, hitting a big tope con giro on both guys at once. I like how we got to see Lorcan taking on both guys throughout the match with moves he usually only hits on one guy, and then moments later it's over. I was really satisfied with the sudden finish, as we had seen Lorcan going up against both men at once and having nothing but success, and it made sense that luck would run out. Back in the ring post-tope Lorcan was running buckle to buckle with elbows, and just like that he was taken out by a legsweep/elbow combo. I could have stood a couple more minutes of this, but like how the finish played out.


Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Tony Nese/Mike Kanellis 205 Live 3/6

ER: We've been getting a lot of Burch/Lorcan tags on TV lately, often getting two per week so far in 2020, and I like how they rarely feel the same. Lorcan and Burch always mix up who is hot tag and who gets heat (and really the way to mix up their matches at this point would be to have them as the team in control), and this was another fun pairing. Lorcan and Burch work a lot of atomic drops, and work in cool spots like sending a Nese tope right into Kanellis on the floor (basically sidestepping Nese in ring and sending him matadoring into Kanellis). Nese may be at his best as part of a heel tag team, and now that 205 Live is 30 minutes we likely won't get any more 18 minute Nese epics. Nese and Kanellis together on paper didn't do much for me, but the execution was much more interesting, and Kanellis is a good odd couple pairing. The two of them don't have similar movesets in the least, but they complement each other well. Kanellis looked really good here, with a great straight right, some buckled knee selling on multiple atomic drops (there were both inverted and regular atomic drops here, which made me realize how seldom those are used anymore), and it's clear that he's a real good hand who has been underutilized. I'm here for the 2020 Kanellisance. Nese straight up dunks Lorcan's throat over the top rope, and I dug Lorcan's staggered sell across the length of ring ropes after Nese missed the follow up moonsault. Kanellis and Nese take Burch's DDT really well, and I love their finisher: Nese holding Burch up for a powerslam, Kanellis leaping off the middle buckle with a knee right to Burch's head, into the Nese powerslam. I wouldn't mind seeing a series with these teams, which is not something I expected to find myself typing about a Tony Nese match.