On Brand Segunda Caida: 2019 Kassius Ohno

Kassius Ohno vs. Ashton Smith NXT UK 2/22 (Aired 3/20/19)

ER: This was Ohno's NXT UK debut, so this will likely be the quickest of his UK matches. Watching every Ohno match in NXT UK will be a fun way for me to gauge whether or not there are other guys on this brand worth following. There are a couple I follow now, several that I am not interested in, and some people like Ashton Smith who I have never watched before. Smith had a couple off moments, timing spots that needed tighter timing, but had a couple kicks and elbows that played well and looked good enough to hang with Ohno. One of Smith's kicks lead to Ohno flying fast through the ropes to the floor and landing on his feet, a super impressive bump for a guy his size. And as always I love when Ohno uses his size, dug his almost running vertical suplex, and I hope in one of these matches he just wins by hitting eight or so straight sentons. He hit two nice ones here, and I always want more. Also liked his stunned frozen sell when Smith caught him with a fully extended kick to the face a couple times. Smith's Samoan drop looked impressive, but Ohno's brutal match finishing elbow to the back of Smith's head looked far better. That's a killshot finisher right there.


Kassius Ohno vs. KUSHIDA WWE NXT 4/10 (Aired 5/1/19)

ER: This didn't totally work for me, as I couldn't buy into most of Kushida's offense actually toppling Ohno. I've seen Ohno agaisnt plenty of small British guys, and they almost always step up their strikes and landings and Ohno is always able to make them look credible. And I don't think there was anything Kushida did here that looked like it would put away Kassius Ohno. Kushida went through the freaking dojo system, he should be absolutely able to slap the taste across Ohno's face. Ohno had plenty of killer moments, so things were still plenty watchable. Ohno broke out some tricks I haven't seen and it sucks that they kind of felt wasted on this match. He had a super cool headlock takeover, and he catches a cravat off a Kushida Asai moonsault, from his back. That's something I've not seen and it could have come off silly, instead came off like Ohno was a master of positioning. There's an amusing moment where Ohno does a long Hector Garza on his knees handshake request, everyone obviously knowing it's a trap, and Ohno pays it off by yanking Kushida's handshake right into a big ass boot. Kushida seems to exist solely to put in weak performances against my favorite guys.


20 Man Battle Royal feat. Kassius Ohno ROW 4/13/19

ER: This felt like some wrestling brand from another dimension. I have never watched any of Booker T's Texas-based Reality of Wrestling promotion, but I saw Ohno was in this battle royal so I figured that would be a good way of seeing if there are any guys in the fed worth seeking out. After a lengthy royal rumble style battle royal I'm not really sure that I've found any worth seeking, but I certainly got a sense of specific ways his students are trained. Outside of Jacob Fatu and Kassius Ohno, this match was filled with 18 other guys who all got reactions from the crowd and all inspired excited exclamations from the announce team, 18 guys with established reputations and championship reigns...and I've never heard anyone mention a single one of them. It felt like a private Texas City brand of excitement, 18 fully formed stars who are created exclusively for Texas City, and nobody outside of Texas City is allowed to mention them. The announcers called this rumble with a certain David McLane enthusiasm, where everyone was a star but it all had that feeling of none of them being a star and they were all just fake wrestlers created for a TV product that may not actually exist, announced to us like they were implanted memories of things that had never happened. "It's E. Snow! I can't believe we're seeing the return of the 3 time champion E. Snow!" "Erik Lockhart is back! The Lockhart cousins, Erik Lockhart and 'All Day' Will Lockhart, are running wild!" Everybody was a multi time former tag champ, TV champ, World champ, with an established nickname, and the crowd was actually responding to these guys as if they were indeed stars.

From this battle royal it felt like Booker's training room must be covered in posters that say ENERGY, because nearly every one of these guys all entered the ring with that same kind of hot tag energy. Heel, babyface, doesn't matter, because all of these guys had energy! They also all took good bumps while getting eliminated, so the pluses were: energy, and nice bumps to the floor. That's probably enough of a floor to turn someone into a pretty decent worker. A lot of these guys were real same-y so I couldn't get much of a feel for who was best. My favorite (non Ohno/Fatu division) was probably Brendan Steen? He was kind of like if Kidman had worked more like Danny Doring, except I mean that as a compliment? Gino was a guy with great swoopy dickhead hair who threw a lot of big hangtime spinkicks; Terrale Tempo had nice leapfrogs and I bet he'll have a good shoulderblock or right hand shortly; Ayden Cristiano had more polish than a lot of the guys and came off like Chavo Guerrero Jr. had he started his career as more of a heel. Kassius Ohno was the big name in the match and was treated as such, and in a match filled with guys trying to throw striking offense above their level (looking at you, "Axton Lowe") it was fun seeing Ohno get a ton of time to showcase his strike repertoire. They saved a lot of eliminations for him, and since all of the ROW are somehow very good at taking elimination bumps to the floor, we got all sorts of Ohno throwing big kicks or tornado elbows followed by guys flying 8 feet off the apron. You get at least 20 good minutes of Ohno in this, as he's one of the final 3 (along with Fatu and Ryan Davidson, a man who felt like Jack Swagger working more like low budget Rhino), and it was at minimum fun to watch him ping pong guys around the ring with strikes.