Unicorn Gimmick Matches - Fight Pit!

Timothy Thatcher vs. Matt Riddle NXT 5/27

ER: I appreciate this kind of creativity during a less than ideal period for pro wrestling. Give us a unicorn gimmick match that allows two tough dudes to grind each other to a pulp in slightly new ways. The Fight Pit structure is a combination of other cool gimmicks, part Lions Den part scaffold match (although the structure might have benefitted from a being a bit shorter, as there's no great way to organically get up on a 9' platform). Riddle leaps off the top right away and roll attacks into Thatcher, and before long Riddle is treating this thing like a game of Tony Hawk, giving us what I assume is our only WWE commentary mention of Anthony "Showtime" Pettis when he springs up the cage and whips a kick into Thatcher's mouth. We get some fine Grand Guignol with Thatcher rising from the mat with a bloody mouth, and then actually looking around for teeth! Maybe this is like when someone plans on getting a haircut anyway, so they lose a hair match. But damn the teeth looked like molars, and a good molar bridge will set him back $7,000, really should have taken more skin out of Riddle to get his mouth's worth. I liked Riddle's snap German and all of the sentons looked really hard (plus lead to a great moment of Riddle missing a senton up on the surrounding platform), and a lot of the grappling utilized the cage. I wish we got even more of the two of them bullying into around around the cage, as it's a unique form of grappling that we haven't seen among former Catch Point WWE guys.

I thought the weak part of the match was getting onto the surrounding scaffold, as Riddle picks up Thatcher in a big double leg, but confusingly tries to place him up on the ledge, so after a bit it looks like a buddy helping his friend get over a tall fence, and then that friend kicks him in the face. There had to have been a better way up there, because none of what Riddle did to get the action up there made sense. Up top he really pasted Thatcher with elbows, dug the ankle lock with Riddle hanging over the side, and I actually thought they were nutty enough to go through with the butterfly suplex off the top. Riddle's corkscrew senton was cool enough, and I loved his wild animal thrashing once Thatcher hooked in the read naked, trying to shake him by running into the cage and taking that one final desperation attempt to shake him by just landing on him. WWE needs to be getting more outside the box during this whole mess, and this was a cool kind of box.

PAS: I am surprised Eric liked this as much as he did, I thought this was basically a failure. You have this set up, like this was a cage fight not a cage match, and instead of trying something different it was basically a WWE highspot cage match in a different cage. I thought the bloody mouth thing came off obviously fake and sort of silly, and the early half hearted attempts at shootstyle made the match neither fish nor foul. It picked up when they abandoned all of the pretense and just started doing spots, and I loved the rear naked choke finish, really made Thatcher look like a killer. Still they should have picked a lane and stayed in it.