WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 3/15-3/21/20

Drew Gulak/Daniel Bryan vs. Cesaro/Shinsuke Nakamura WWE Smackdown 3/20/20

ER: There's a chance this match was as long as every Smackdown match, combined, Gulak has been in since "leaving" 205 Live last year. This was good, but it felt like Nakamura was throwing the timing off a bit. I know why they didn't have Sami Zayn in the match, as they were building to a Bryan/Zayn singles match and part of me appreciates the distance that comes with having Zayn hold the belt, but Zayn in Nakamura's place would have fit so much stronger. Nak isn't someone who is going to go out and work hard every show (or, well, most shows), and you put him out there with no audience to play off? Yeah, he's not likely to show up. He barely showed up on Bryan's tope, leaning as far out of that thing as possible without moving entirely out of Bryan's way. He's better when it's just simply keeping Bryan away from Gulak, and that happens when Cesaro catches Bryan on a top rope crossbody and slams him with a backbreaker, drops him with a couple suplexes, and I like it more when Gulak and Nakamura get back in with each other. Cesaro and Nak working over Gulak was good, especially dug Cesaro's big flapjack into an uppercut. Nak actually takes a German from Gulak and we get a fun spot of Nakamura going for a triangle out of the Gu-Lock (but submission trading in WWE is almost guaranteed to come off underwhelming after I watched the entire WXW Ambition show yesterday), and I liked Gulak's discus lariat on him. The finish felt abrupt, with Bryan tagging in and getting a sunset flip on Cesaro, but I can't complain too much. Gulak is in an actual cool program and he couldn't be associated with anyone better than Bryan.

Oney Lorcan vs. Isaiah Scott 205 Live 3/20/20

ER: This was good, but really any Lorcan match given 10 minutes is going to be good. I was hoping this was going to be mostly Lorcan forcing Scott into working a Lorcan match, but Lorcan is too generous so I knew we would build to a long run of Scott match. So, it was going to be up to how well mapped out Scott's offense was and how nicely Lorcan ran into it. But I do get a little of what I want, as Lorcan grounds Scott in cool ways for the first long stretch. Lorcan can do a lot of interesting things around driving his knee into pressure points, fires off some nice chops and back elbows (I liked how Scott recoiled from the chops, turning his body away from them so that Lorcan had to open that chest back up to smack him more), and Lorcan starts focusing on the knee, starting with a mean dragon screw while Scott was coming back through the ropes. Now, there's obviously a problem when you opt to do focused limb work in an Isaiah Scott match, because there is next to zero chance that he will acknowledge that limb work in any way once he goes into Scott offense. And once Scott did start going on offense - and this is a problem I have with Scott matches in general - there's always a sense of inevitability. He's not great at making it look like his opponent is still in the match, he merely endures some offense until it's time to go into full Swerve mode. Lorcan upends himself on a Scott lariat, flies to the floor on a superkick, takes a Flatliner nicely, you know all the things that Lorcan is clearly great at doing. I wish things didn't feel so inevitable halfway through, but  just like that Gulak match up above, I can't complain about 10 minute Oney Lorcan matches.