WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 4/5-4/11/20

Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Ricochet/Cedric Alexander WWE Raw 4/6

ER: This was a fun surprise, the first ever Raw appearances of Lorcan and Burch. If you live in Tampa, you're on Raw! was the theme of this show, but give me a fun Burch/Lorcan sprint and whatever. Match was under 4 minutes, but it was worked like they were trying to fit as much into 210 seconds as possible. Lorcan and Burch weren't winning, but I'm glad that they weren't treated as cannon fodder and were instead treated as equals. There's no reason they shouldn't be equals, but I wasn't expecting it. Burch especially got to really lace into Alexander, absorbing some kicks from Cedric to be close enough to throw a couple of great punches, a headbutt, and some uppercuts. It's fun seeing Lorcan and Burch cut Alexander off from tags. They weirdly gave Apollo Crews a half hour to work, probably more time on Raw than he's had combined in two years, so at this point I got excited that we might be getting a stretched out Lorcan tag classic. Well, things went downhill pretty quickly for them once Ricochet finally tagged in. Once that happened it was a pretty quick Cedric/Ricochet show, with every Lorcan/Burch move being evaded, Burch tossed to the floor, and Lorcan eating a nice atomic drop/enziguiri double team before getting downed by the shooting star. I would have loved to see this get even two more minutes, but it was a nice surprise seeing Lorcan on Raw.


9. Jack Gallagher vs. Oney Lorcan 205 Live 4/10/20

ER: First time EVER singles match between these two, no clue what took them so long. Last week they talked about Gallagher's new vicious side while he was not doing any vicious offense. Well, this week the new side came out in full, as he pummeled Lorcan's body nearly the entire runtime. Before we get to the pummeling we start with some cool matwork, because we're in the weird era of WWE where guys here now have cooler matwork than guys on the indies or Japan (with a couple notable exceptions). All of Gallagher's traps and set-ups were great, loved him tightly wrapping his legs around Lorcan's legs to force pressure on Lorcan's joints, and these are guys who are also clearly going to be great at headscissors escapes. Gallagher really focuses his attacks afterward on Lorcan's body, big open hand shots that he kept landing and landing, finding gaps. He even kicks Lorcan across the ring with nice shots to the ribs. Lorcan showed he can hit with more power, but Gallagher was the one absorbing a big shot to land 3 shots to the body, even egging Lorcan on. Lorcan reddened Gallagher's chest with chops, which made his clipper ship tattoo look like it was heading off into the sunset. I hadn't seen Gallagher utilize his headbutt since starting on his new vicious side, but here he makes up for all of that by throwing out a dozen: A couple big wind-up shots, and a bunch of short thrusting blows to Lorcan's ribs, neck, and chest while trapping him in the corner. Lorcan pays Gallagher back with big running attacks and big throws, having given up on trading with him. Lorcan's running back elbow was an all timer here, his half nelson looked like it was going to bounce Gallagher off his ear, and he threw a short powerful clothesline that whipped Gallagher inside out so quickly that I had to rewind to see just what the hell happened. The finish of this was dumb, with Tony Nese being a doofus cop breaking up two teens making out in a car, just the worst possible timing. But up until the Neseing this was everything you wanted from 2/3 of the Big 3 throwing down.

PAS: This was really dope up until the turd ending. It is weird that these guys have been circling each other for years now, but have never matched up before and of course it is great. Gallagher seems to be going straight shootstyle with his new gimmick, which is a weird choice, but totally awesome. He was amazing in that first Tetsujin show, and it is really cool to watch him drop the WOS stuff and just focus on vicious body shots, Ikeda headbutts, and leglocks. Lorcan is a perfect antagonist for this. He isn't going to have that same level of skill on the mat, but he is going to totally match the intensity, I loved him trying to forcibly remove Gallagher's tattoo with his chops. Tony Nese is such a blight, why can't he be sensibly concerned about his health and stay home.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST