I Spent All Those Nights Just Trying to Take Gulak Home

Drew Gulak vs. Lince Dorado WWE Main Event 5/5/17 - GREAT

ER: "It's great to be here in the wonderful capital of California: San Francisco!" Gulak says to the Sacramento crowd, and that's the kind of stupid heel work I can always get behind. It's even better when you flip flop interchangeable Bay Area cities like San Leandro and San Lorenzo, but this is some good base level annoying stuff. This match played out like WWE was giving a tryout to some Chikara regulars, a 5 minute showcase for a contract. Gulak is an excellent base for Dorado, takes all of his armdrags and headscissors effortlessly, including a flawless knucklelock that ended with Dorado kneeling on Gulak's shoulders into a slick sunset flip. It looked as good as the first time I saw Rey do that same sunset flip, and Gulak is a great levelheaded Psicosis. 

One of the best things about Gulak's basing are his facials as he's clearly about to take an armdrag. As he's getting Dorado onto his shoulders, his face is the face of a man 100% confident that he's about to pull off his fireman's carry slam, then a face of utter shock as Dorado spins out of it. You never see the far off look of a man who is preparing to take a spot, and it's a layer that makes Gulak one of the best. Gulak's control is simple, hardly even throwing a strike, mostly just knocking him down and keeping him there with stomps. Dorado goes for a moonsault and Gulak catches him with a perfectly timed pair of boots, and for a spot you've now seen in nearly every Mistico or Volador match it sure looked great here. Gulak timed the thrust on his kick right as Dorado's chin was nearing his boots, and Dorado pinballed diagonally across the ring. But the very best thing in the match was Gulak setting up his match winning dragon sleeper. When Bill Dundee would lock on his sleeper, he'd use a nasty clothesline and just wrap his arm around the neck; Gulak does the inverse, running at Dorado with a back elbow that then hooks his arm snugly around Dorado's neck, then dropping to his back in the sleeper and sinking in the hooks. This might be the best set-up/execution of that dragon sleeper, sick stuff.

Drew Gulak vs. Akira Tozawa WWE Main Event 10/21/21 - FUN

ER: Drew Gulak piles up Ls against nearly every single person on the roster, but every few months he gets to have a fun 5 minute match and beat Akira Tozawa. I've written about at least four Gulak/Tozawa matches, and they haven't had a true banger yet, but they've settled nicely into doing 5 minutes of cool shit and I always like seeing them do cool shit against each other. Gulak always starts these matches off nice and smug, grinning as he locks in a tight headlock and throws a couple stiff elbow smashes, and getting brought back down to earth a bit when he lands a thudding chop and Tozawa hits him back with one just as hard. Gulak is always good at getting knocked down a peg, and I love how he angrily held his mouth and jaw after running into a high kick. Gulak sweeps Tozawa's legs off the top rope and locks in a sick crossface chickenwing (a really underused submission these days, and I'm sure there aren't many who can lock one in as well as Gulak does here). Gulak is good at taking all of Tozawa's offense, and I especially loved how pretzeled he got on Tozawa's extremely sunk in octopus. Tozawa is at his most fun when he's allowed to dig a little deeper into his offense bag, and I dug him hitting a Koshinaka-esque hip attack off the top and a front spin kick, two things he typically doesn't have room to use. Since Gulak is often on the losing end of things, I fully bit on a nearfall when Tozawa rolled through a bodyslam attempt. It would be very Gulak to get angry, try to throw a bodyslam in disgust, and get rolled up. But he obliterates Tozawa with a hard clothesline after Tozawa builds momentum off the ropes, and finishes him off with the old Kanyon Cutter. I'll still hold out hope for them getting a fully gelled classic, but I'll always be entertained by them finding new ways to fill 5 minutes. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DREW GULAK

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There's a Tone That Rises Gently with Drew Gulak

Drew Gulak vs. Akira Tozawa WWE Main Event 4/7/17 - GREAT

ER: I'm not sure if Tozawa or Alexander is Gulak's most frequent opponent in WWE, but I like how he and Tozawa work together. This was early in their time on the roster, in the middle of Gulak's No Fly Zone gimmick. A cruiserweight heel who intentionally grounds things feels like it would have played much better in early 2000s east coast indies, but it's still fun to watch Gulak work tight headlocks during standing exchanges and yank on Tozawa's jaw on the ground. This was a good balance of Gulak's snug work and fun personality, not as over the top with the gimmick as it would get. I liked when he saw a Tozawa dive coming, ran halfway down the ramp, and egged him on from 30 feet away. "I'll catch you, come on!" I also like that Gulak did a running elbow smash, and it was treated like something that could lay a man out. It's so weird to me how unavoidable standing elbow exchanges are in modern wrestler, and yet hardly anyone uses a simple running Misawa-style elbow smash. Gulak plays into Tozawa's offense well, including his comedy spots, and that lead to the crowd reacting louder than they typically reacted for cruiser matches during this era. I really appreciate how much Gulak adds to fast cruiser exchanges, because his missed strikes always look like a missed strike, never like a planned part of the sequence. His missed clothesline to set up Tozawa's nice finishing bridging German looked like something that would have decapitated Tozawa, thrown fast and low and believably spinning him into the German. When you can make a sequence look like something that an opponent just capitalized on, and this quickly, you've done really well. 

Drew Gulak vs. Mustafa Ali 205 Live 6/27/17 - GREAT

ER: I loved the first 2/3 of this because it had a real vicious Gulak performance. Gulak came off like WCW Finlay, confidently punishing Ali. After getting caught early by armdrags and winding up in a couple Ali headscissors he just punches Ali in the face. I mean, the kind of punch that could have plausibly finished the match 30 seconds in. If they wanted to give a wrestler a KO punch gimmick, and this was the first punch to show that KO punch, people would buy it. Gulak kicks Ali in the stomach to block a crossbody, hits some heavy stomps to the chest, then really starts laying it in. He bodyslams Ali legs first into the ropes and then hits a planted leg clothesline that Ali bumps by literally looking like he caught his chin on a clothesline. A tight cravat and snug side headlock, followed with a suplex into the buckles, and I swear during a couple of those stretches it genuinely looked like Gulak was "doing" Finlay. I don't think Ali's comeback is strong enough considering how punishing Gulak looked, and he had this habit of looking around grinning too much in between every move he hit, including a floaty cutter that Gulak had to stand around for. Match ends with a comedy payoff of Gulak's "No Fly Zone" gimmick, as he winds up seated on the top rope and then gets it in his brain that maybe flying would be okay, this once. He does a long build of missing a splash, legs shaking on the ropes the entire time, and predictably loses. I really didn't want his front half vicious performance to wind up in comedy, but his work before Ali's eventual comeback was among the best I've seen from him and that says a lot. 

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Wading in the Water, Gulak's Trying Not to Crack

Drew Gulak vs. Lince Dorado WWE Main Event 4/22/21 - GREAT

ER: The week before this Gulak had maybe my least favorite match of his this year, and definitely the only match of his this year where it seemed like he wasn't as sure how to fill time. And then this, a week later, is one of his absolute strongest showings of the year. Maybe you can give credit to his long history with Dorado, but whatever the reason, I love what they did here. Gulak was excellent at being into position for every Lince strike or piece of offense, and in between all that he went after Dorado's joints. I love how Gulak doesn't treat any small piece of offense as merely a transition. Sometimes his nastiest stuff comes off a move that many other wrestlers treat as a means to get to something more flashy. Here Gulak hits a drop toehold early in the match that looked like Inoki unprofessionally hacking at a fake Russian judoka's knee. They work some cool knucklelocks, Gulak has some nice bridge work, Dorado gets Gulak down by pushing his knee into Gulak's arm, all cool stuff. Gulak always seems to bring different offense to each match, things you won't see him do for the rest of the year. He hits a great spinning side slam (looked like he was corkscrewing Lince into the mat) and a nice sitout powerbomb, and I like how he slowed things down with a nice joint-stretching Gory special. 

It's difficult for a masked guy to sell a Gory special well, since all their limbs are tied up and most of their face is obscured, so Gulak knows he has to pick up the slack to keep it engaging. The shot of Gulak hunched down in a squat - aiming to tear Dorado's quads and wreck his shoulders - was completely badass, and Dorado's arm drag to break the Gory special was excellent. My favorite Gulak moment (in a match filled with them) saw him duck a Dorado superkick and seamlessly get him into an electric chair faceslam that moves immediately into the Gulock, and no part of it looked like Dorado was intentionally missing the superkick *just* to get into position for the electric chair. It was a very complicated spot that they made look as natural as a bodyslam. I really dislike the trend of guys being able to survive the Gulock, as the prior week saw Garza spend 90 seconds working to the ropes, and here Dorado lasts 25 seconds before forcing Gulak to break with a roll up. They went to the Dorado win way too easily for how the match had been going, essentially letting Dorado survive Gulak's finisher and tons of punishing and then go right to the superkick/shooting star for the win, but I'm not going to let that ruin an otherwise great match. 

Drew Gulak vs. Akira Tozawa WWE Main Event 4/29/21 - GREAT 

ER: Great work from both in a match that got a few more minutes than either usually get. Gulak is great at  slowing down sequences you might recognize, make his opponent work for something that can be more perfunctory. Here he controls Tozawa with a nice top wristlock, holds on to headlocks, breaks Tozawa's reversals with a snug headscissors, drops to a knee to neutralize a Tozawa headlock, uses his leverage to block a Tozawa armdrag, it's all a cool way to do some flashy aggressive grappling with a bunch of twists on familiar exchanges. Gulak gets kicked to the floor and Tozawa hits a fantastic tope, just a flawless headbutt torpedo that nails Gulak in the chest. But it's an interesting note about the match story, as Gulak shows he is prepared for Tozawa and has counters for a lot of Tozawa's offense. Tozawa may be able to surprise him with a perfect headbutt, but anything short of perfection Gulak will be there with something mean. 

He elbows his way out of a fireman's carry and blasts him with a clothesline, chokes him over the bottom rope with his boot and then wedges Tozawa's face between steel rope cable and boot, just standing on Tozawa's head over that rope. Gulak drapes him over his back and holds onto only Tozawa's jaw, like a Gory special if you want to rip a guy's head off, then makes things even more painful by twisting Tozawa like Volk Han would. Gulak locks in that dope Volk Han special inverted STF, and the immediacy that Tozawa went rolling for the ropes made an already devastating sub look even more dangerous. Tozawa's flying seems to be his only in, as he's landed a few nice punches but every time he tosses a limb at Gulak that limb seems to get eventually caught, so he nails a cannonball off the top (to a standing Gulak, love how it looked) and appears to be rolling, until Gulak shifts perfectly to catch Tozawa's senton in a match finishing Gulock. Excellent stuff throughout, a dominant Gulak performance that ends with him looking still dominant, and a very fun Tozawa performance. A lesser wrestler would have looked like they got steamrolled by Gulak, but Tozawa knew how to get his while also getting beat. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DREW GULAK

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Far Away, Gulak, There's a Black Sun Risin' Overhead

Drew Gulak vs. Akira Tozawa WWE Main Event 3/25/21 - FUN

ER: It's cool seeing one of these matches that start with Gulak torturing somebody, actually end in Gulak defeating somebody. This match starts a bit slow and then suddenly explodes when Tozawa hits a crazy cannonball off the apron that could have sent him into the second row. We always get some Gulak body punishment, and here he drops a nice elbowdrop on Tozawa's chest, hits a hard backbreaker, hard bodyslam, and generally ties up Tozawa's neck and arm on the mat. This is around the time in Gulak's matches where the flier makes his comeback and Gulak loses, and when Tozawa snaps off a smooth rana and plasters Gulak with a shining wizard, it certainly appears to be heading that way. Tozawa hits a great cannonball off the top into a standing Gulak and gets him in the octopus...and then Gulak breaks the octopus hold by just powering up out of it and smashing Tozawa with a torture rack neckbreaker for the win! What a kick ass way to reverse an octopus hold and win a match. And when Gulak won this match his face actually looked like the face of a man who hasn't tasted victory in awhile. It's those little touches that matter, and Gulak looked like a guy treating this win as the start of a snowball. Even if it's not (it isn't) those smaller character moments elevate things. 

Drew Gulak vs. Humberto Carrillo WWE Main Event 4/1/21 - FUN

ER: I remember this match got talked up a bit when it happened, but despite getting more time than a typical Gulak Main Event match, this felt like pretty ground floor stuff for a Gulak match. There was a bit of a story with Carrillo finding openings both times Gulak went to the top rope (catching him in a Spanish Fly the first time, reversing a back suplex into a crossbody the next time), but the Spanish Fly was one of the things I thought didn't quite work within the match. I'm not really a fan of guys having moves that require their opponent to do something out of character (unless it involves every single person trying to sunset flip Super Porky), and since I have no clue what offense Gulak was thinking of flying off the top to do (considering for most of his time in WWE it was a trademark thing he Does Not Do) it comes off a bit silly. Sillier, however, is Carrillo giving the ref a shocked "ONLY A 2 COUNT!?" face while holding up his fingers, as if that Spanish Fly didn't happen barely 2 minutes into the match. Gulak is a great base for Carrillo, but this match didn't have enough basing, and it didn't have enough Gulak torture. It's not a bad match at all, but I'm used to seeing Gulak craft unique 2-5 minute matches. Seeing him have a Very Normal 8 minute match that somehow contains less cool stuff than his 3 minute matches just sits strangely with me. I really liked Gulak catching Carrillo's whipping kick off the ropes and turning it into a nice ankle lock, then an even better STF, and Carrillo blocking the majistral into his own cradle was a neat finish, but I think they have a much more interesting match in them. This was fine, but most of the time it felt like it should be better. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DREW GULAK

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Drew Gulak is Lost on His Sea Again

 Drew Gulak vs. Mansoor WWE Main Event 2/25/21 - GREAT

ER: It hit me during this match that Gulak is probably the closest thing we have to a Barry Houston in WWF, and it's cool to see a mature Barry Houston style worker on WWE TV in 2021. He is great with any kind of opponent, hits honestly on shoulderblocks and elbows, throws his whole arm into lariats and clotheslines, and locks in convincing headlocks and holds. It's the kind of style that does work with any other style, but Gulak is also smart about changing little things and integrating any kind of size or opponent. Mansoor is coming along well, quietly improving faster than others in WWE working his same kind of style. It's perhaps notable that I think Mansoor has been better at his kind of matches this year than guys like Humberto Carrillo or Gran Metalik have been at their similar matches. Gulak really takes some stiff strikes to Mansoor, you get that Finlay sense of "I have 5 minutes on this Thunder episode, I'm going to grab someone by their jaw, and hit the hardest safe lariat I possibly can." Mansoor's sequences looked smooth, he's maybe the only guy in the fed who actually lands atomic drops, and I thought while Gulak bumped well for Mansoor's flash and set it up nicely, that Mansoor delivered his end. He was where he needed to be, and outside of maybe the slingshot neckbreaker at the finish, I don't think Gulak ever looked like he was waiting on him. Gulak has a great way of getting from one thing to the next, someone who knows how to fill time well. He can expertly turn an O'Connor roll into a match finish worthy rear naked choke, or convincingly sock you across the ring. He doesn't really win much, but I like him in his current role. I just like that him, and his role, are on TV. 

PAS: Gulak is buried as deep as you get in the WWE (is this deeper than NXT UK?) and it really doesn't matter as he is having these very cool "if a tree falls in the forest" matches. Gulak is a perfect person to pair with a green guy who is basically learning to wrestle on TV. He trained guys for so long, that he is a master of not only making all of his stuff look really good, but making sure his opponent looks great too. Not sure if Mansoor has a great atomic drop, or Gulak is amazing at taking atomic drops, but that might have been the best atomic drop in decades. Gulak gets a moment or two to shine on his own, the corner lariat was teeth rattling, but he was there to put over Mansoor and make him look good and he did both excellently.

Drew Gulak vs. Mansoor WWE Main Event 3/4/21 - FUN

ER: I love how Main Event gives these guys the opportunity to have minor feuds that carry over week to week. They don't necessarily get storylines (in the way that there are actual storylines and promos on 205 Live), but they get a chance to build off results and actions from prior Main Event matches and that gives it more of a Worldwide or WCW Pro feel. In other words, they freely acknowledge a wrestler's history with their opponent, without adding any additional story to why they are wrestling. Gulak is going to be someone who is good at having in-ring feuds with, and Mansoor is benefitting heavily from working with him, showing a lot of improvement over the past year. This was evenly paced and had a few moments where it looked like Gulak could get his win back. 

I'm really getting into watching Gulak lose, as - unlike every time they've ever done a losing streak gimmick - I am actually really getting excited to see a Gulak win these days. They're always way too obvious about their losing streak gimmicks, there's never any nuance and it's always screamed at you that the guy is losing a lot. I don't think they're working that angle with Gulak, he just happens to be a guy who loses a lot. He's 5-40 over the last two years, which would make him the worst baseball team in history. But wins do happen, and I love watching for them. I like how he takes Mansoor's offense, like a neat upside down springboard armdrag that took a twist I wasn't expecting, and he makes Mansoor's already painful atomic drop/spinebuster even more painful. Gulak really crunches Mansoor with a German suplex, and they have a cool battle over a Gulak O'Connor roll that turns into a Mansoor rear naked choke. All of it is great, and I still think Gulak might get him if they pair up 7 or 8 more times. 

PAS: I liked how Gulak came out more aggressive in this match, two really nasty German suplexes and then going for a top rope reverse suplex, he seemed like a guy who wanted his win back. I didn't think Mansoor looked as good in this match, there was a performative aspect to his offense which I didn't notice as much the previous week, and he made some really silly faces. The reversal of the O'Connor roll into a choke is a cool spot, but both Mansoor's choke and his body scissors were pretty loose. Gulak was great though, loved how he ate the top rope body press, leaping into and taking it as a big bump on the back, but still I thought this showed the seams a bit more.

Drew Gulak/Akira Tozawa vs. Ricochet/Mansoor WWE Main Event 3/11/21 - GREAT

ER: This Gulak/Mansoor feud has been one of the low key best things going in TV wrestling this year. This is just another awesome example of Gulak working as a WCW Saturday Night Finlay, and brother that's my favorite wrestling to watch. Gulak kicks the door in when he tags in, laying Mansoor out with full arm clothesline, then picks him up and bodyslams him legs first into the ropes. It's clear he's been watching his Finlay Orlando Studios tapes. Mansoor has a good moveset, filled with smooth spots he pulls off well (like his ropes feint armdrag) plus strong nearfall stuff like his excellent atomic drop/spinebuster combo. Gulak is always the best at taking offense, so I love when he chooses to shine by doing "small" things like work a half crab or stomp Ricochet's back. Gulak is a pro wrestler like Chris Hero, someone who understands the nuances and can deliver joy with elite execution on "simple" moves. Seeing him work a cutoff spot with a timed headbutt to the chest is a cool thing to still see in wrestling. 

It's good for Tozawa to work with someone like Gulak. He's been mired in the comedy ninja gimmick for quite awhile now and it's easy to forget what a great worker he was during some of those 205 Live years everyone has memory-holed. Working with Gulak allows him to up his game and show why he's remained employed for an improbable near 5 years. He's been a unique presence on Main Event for 2 years now, weirdly existing in this vacuum. He's a guy who will really benefit from the return of crowds, and it will be fascinating to see which guys blossom when that happens. The finish tricked me into thinking Gulak was going to get the win again, with his nice pinning powerbomb followed up with Tozawa's big senton. But Mansoor is unbeatable. Loved this tag, some inspired work on a C-show. 

PAS: This was a nifty little TV bout, showing some real chemistry between old Chikara guys Gulak and Ricochet (I wonder if there is a Helios vs. Solider Ant match out there worth watching). Ricochet puts some pop in his moves, and Gulak works pretty stiff. Best thing in this match was probably his back elbow to break out of a fireman's carry. I still feel like Mansoor is the odd man out. Gulak, Ricochet and Tozawa are such polished pros that Mansoor almost feels like a celebrity wrestler, like this is how Bad Bunny would work if he decided to go wrestle on Main Event. Still these are guys who can work around a celebrity wrestler in a tag match, and it was good stuff.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DREW GULAK

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: 205 Live Street Fight

52. Drew Gulak/Jack Gallagher vs. Akira Tozawa/Brian Kendrick 205 Live 12/18 (Aired 12/19/18)

PAS: No idea why it took us early two years to watch this match, these are the four best 205 Live guys, and they get a long time to work a street fight.  Gulak and Gallagher look awesome coming in with their fists taped wearing suits. It takes a bit to get going, the first couple of minutes have a lot of WWE street fight spots with brooms and garbage cans, but as soon as Gulak breaks out the bungee cords it gets really great. Gulak fishooks Kendrick with the bungee cord hook which is super nasty looking, and we get a really great finish run with a bunch of cool near falls and big spots. Tozawa ends up hitting his awesome tope right into a garbage can, Gallagher locks in some cool submissions and he ends up leaving himself open to getting smashed. I really dug the battle on the top rope between Gallagher and Kendrick, a lot of times punches on the top rope look bad, but they were really cracking each other including Gallagher punching Kendrick right in the back of the head.

ER: 205 Live loved having good (or bad, I guess) 18 minute matches that could have been fire 10 minute matches. They also never quite mastered blowoff matches or big stipulation matches. Even though this would have been tighter with a shorter runtime, this is one of the best stips matches in the brand's history. It's easier to have a good long match when you send the best 4 in the division (at the time) out there and let them fill the time. Part of the long match era felt like one of those weird WWE self-serving deals where they let guys they don't care about go out and hang themselves, and crowds weren't typically too jazzed to sit through PPV main event length cruiser matches with minimal story build. The better ones found ways to get the crowd into it, and this crowd wakes up about midway and stays with it. I appreciated them starting with hard fists and cranked necks, but we're 20 years removed from ECW and I don't need Singapore cane shots to trash cans. Gulak uses the old Mick Foley trick of clonking Tozawa a few times with a live mic, and the crowds get involved just from the perfectly silly mic shots (makes you wonder why any guys go through the trouble of bumping hard on the apron and floor and taking stiff punches to the head).

We do get a mix of violence added to the sillier spots, like Kendrick suplexing Gallagher into an announcer's chair that Gulak was already seated in, or Gallagher in that same chair getting rolled into a hard Tozawa dropkick. I loved Tozawa working in his big spots on partner saves, crushing Gallagher with his senton to break up an Indian deathlock, or spinning around Gallagher with an octopus hold to get him away from Kendrick. He also gets a great reaction hitting his surprise right hand on Drew and later hitting an insane tope into a trashcan (swung by Drew). Kendrick is really great staggering around ringside taking punches, and Gulak fishhooking Kendrick with a bungee cord hook was one of the greatest things I've seen during a WWE (or anywhere, really) street fight. Gulak really looked like he was tearing at Kendrick's face (strong selling from Kendrick too) and I loved how Tozawa broke it up by jamming his hand into Gulak's mouth to let him know how a fishhook feels. This kind of bummed me out when it was over, as 2 years later we have Gulak mostly doing commentary, Kendrick disappearing for months at a time, Tozawa being a ninja who rarely wrestles, and Gallagher the only sex pest who they didn't attempt to make excuses for. Shit has changed in two years, shit has changed in two months.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 5/3-5/9/20

Jack Gallagher vs. Akira Tozawa NXT 5/6

ER: Pretty meager stuff right here. These two have matched up several times over the past couple of years and this was easily the weakest of those matches, but their other matches at least had some time. This was under 4 minutes, and not one of Tozawa's best performances. He seemed off for a lot of this, never quite grabbing Gallagher the right way, missing beats on sequences, not landing his actual offense flush. He lets Gallagher slip on a samoan drop, flies too far past him on his top rope senton, loses his grip and makes Gallagher basically DDT himself on the apron, and some of his strikes had the accuracy of someone throwing their their eyes closed. Gallagher did his best, took a killer folding bump on a German suplex, and had a cool sequence where he held onto Tozawa's right arm like arm kept working offense from that short distance, showing a few cool things he could quickly pull off all while holding that arm, just by using it as leverage. But Gallagher wasn't going to be able to turn this into a good match.


Drew Gulak/Daniel Bryan/Otis vs. Cesaro/Baron Corbin/Shinsuke Nakamura WWE Smackdown 5/8

ER: This ruled, the kind of fast paced action trading match that it seems like WWE used to be really great at, until the focus switched to fast paced phony reversal wrestling. This was fast paced wrestling with consequences. Moves weren't thrown with the intention of being reversed, moves were thrown to hit (and did!) and thrown with such enthusiasm that the reversals were due to misses leaving guys exposed. I really loved the style of constant partner tradeoffs, where you could have big moments with several different dance partner combinations without feeling like anything was being shrugged off. Gulak has been on a real tear in 2020, and he was the major standout in this match for me, showing how great he is at taking unique bumps from different offense. Early on he took a great uppercut from Corbin and bumped it really cool, with a diagonal staggered bump instead of the played out back bump; later he was shoved off the top by Nakamura headlong into a Cesaro uppercut, and after that ate a kick to the back of the head from Nakamura. He took all of this different offense with bumps that read more like Futen than WWE to me, and it added to the feel of the match greatly.

I think Gulak was the standout, but everyone brought something different and never felt like those awful modern wrestling trios where it feels like everyone is trying to wrestle the exact same style instead of just playing to individual strengths. Otis had some cool stiff arm lariats and always seemed to be getting Gulak out of jams by running his belly into people, Bryan played more crowd control and would come in with a nice dropkick to the knee or a big running knee of his own, Cesaro was an excellent foil for Gulak (including taking a bunch of killer Gulak strikes and stomps in the corner) and I loved how he powered up and out of a Gulak chickenwing/jaw hold, and I like the way Corbin came in and got the win after others put in far more work. It feels like they're actually building some sort of Gulak/Corbin program that will lead to a dominant Gulak win, but that's just me buying into old school logical feud building.

PAS: I enjoyed this, although I think it fell short of a MOTY list level match. These quarantine matches for the most part are failures, and in the few cases that it has worked, it is when the wrestlers have acknowledged that they need to work differently. I usually enjoy Otis, but him working all of his crowd response comedy spots to silence was rough to watch. That worm elbow in an empty arena, oof. It is crazy that Gulak has somehow gotten to the main event of WWE TV, and he was the star of this match, taking a big beating and locking in some cool moves. Corbin is a nice foil too, and his big finishing slam looked great. I think I needed another couple of momentum shifts at the end, I do like this kind of WWE spots trios, but it is tough to build that momentum in silence.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak FINAL 2019 Catch-Up

ER: This is exciting, because it is a post that signifies the successful completion of a project. Last year we set out to review every match from Lorcan, Gallagher, and Gulak, and we did. We started halfway through 2019, and I've been going back and filling in the blanks with matches I missed, and this is the last of them. It's been one of my favorite regular projects, just because I love watching these three work. I have obviously been continuing it in 2020, but so far we haven't even seen Gallagher on TV in 2020


Oney Lorcan vs. Brian Kendrick vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Ariya Daivari vs. Mike Kanellis 205 Live 5/21/19

ER: This was disjointed, bad, too long, poorly laid out, poorly agented, made none of the 5 looks any better than the other 4, and was home to everything I dislike about multiman wrestling. WWE is usually a fed that can throw together an interesting main event multiman, and this was a far shout from that. Two minutes into a 16 minutes match, all 5 participants were lying on the mat as if they had all been through a real war. I knew then that this was going to be awful. There were stretches of this match where (I believe) every single participant completely disappeared for 5 minutes at a time. After the first two minutes with everyone chaotically fighting for space in the ring, we went through 80% of the match worked as a series of singles matches, three men either lying out of the way tired or off camera selling, and the layout just flat out stunk. There was no rhythm to this, just a bad series of match vignettes with nobody really standing out. Kendrick probably came off the best of anyone, and the early part of the match with Kendrick locking in and fighting for the Captains Hook, then fighting his balance while fighting out of a Kanellis sub, before getting pushed off into a Lorcan uppercut, was probably the most interesting sequence here. Lorcan hits a flip dive, he and Daivari repeat a couple things from their singles match a month prior (which I might not have noticed had I not watched them the same day), Daivari takes a big thankless splat bump to the floor and gets his ear busted open, Kanellis hits a nice spinebuster and takes a freaking German suplex on the ring apron (in this match! Why??), but this whole thing felt like it added up to nothing and kept purposely resetting itself. The finish was a total mockery, as we had spent 15 minutes with many of these guys lying dead on the mat, and you can tell the second they all get the go home signal, as they all spring to their feet and start do-si-doing into each other's finishers. I hated it.

Drew Gulak vs. Akira Tozawa 205 Live 6/4/19

ER: Gulak had been on a one month NXT sojourn feuding with Kushida, and he made the best possible return to 205 Live by saving the crowd and myself from a show opening Noam Dar match. Gulak jumps Dar in the aisle and spends the next couple minutes beating Dar around ringside, never to be seen again on 205 Live. The match itself doesn't quite catch fire, but these two are familiar opponents and are going to do plenty of things great. The pace was a little slow, which I don't mind, but I don't think the early slow pace was really needed. I still liked how we got a story about Tozawa going for his big babyface spots, and Gulak having every one of them scouted. I really loved Tozawa inching to lock on his octopus hold, with Gulak just tearing free and throwing Tozawa off him. Gulak tosses Tozawa around a few times, with a super memorable snap strength gutwrench and a bone rattling superplex that leads right to the finish. They worked some fun bits around Gulak running away from a tope, then running away from a pescado, before getting nailed with the cannonball. Tozawa's later tope is a great highspot, and Gulak plays it really well so it looks like it blindsides him, Tozawa crashing so hard into him that Gulak flies backwards over the announce table. Tozawa sent Gulak back so fast that it looked like Gulak was sucked out of an airplane. The fans got quiet at points but did stay into Tozawa, really getting behind his last big offense run and staying and responding to his fireman's carry squat lift routine. I think they have a better match in them. They've had several singles matches that all happened on 205 Live, during that couple year stretch when I wasn't watching it, so that great match might be out there as I type this.

Oney Lorcan vs. Ariya Daivari 205 Live 6/4/19

ER: These two matched up in late April, and it's notable how much cooler they look in this match than they looked just six weeks before. Daivari was wearing a black tank top then, and here he's just in black pants with a newly shaved head and stitches and a scar on his ear; Lorcan has grown in his beard and has the great black and gold gear. I like both of these guys (I mean we have a whole feature about Lorcan) but I don't think they have a good long match against each other. They don't have natural chemistry, so even when I like what both are doing it doesn't always work within the match. Lorcan's big comebacks are the best part of the match, with his great uppercuts always playing big to crowds, he also throws Daivari with a cool northern lights and then looks to rip his head off with one of his all time best blockbusters. There is something satisfying about Daivari's simple attack, as I'd much rather see someone using swinging neckbreakers and hard lariats than what makes up the offense of most main carders, but they get just too much time to tell their story. Now, what sets them apart from others - and I think this is very important - is that they had a 100% completely different match than they had six weeks prior. True, I didn't love this match or that match, but I appreciated that the main set pieces of that prior match didn't show up in any way in the return bout. That's cool, and it's an extra step they didn't really need to take. This match had cool parts to it, of course it was going to, but it felt like it should have been more. If they had stuck with the opening minute viciousness of Lorcan, where he ripped at Daivari's fresh stitches, this could have been special. They went a different way, and I like that they're still trying for that thing that will really work.

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Late But Not Bad: WWE Survivor Series 11/24/19 Blog

Luke Gallows/Karl Anderson vs. The Revival vs. Wesley Blake/Steve Cutler vs. Bobby Roode/Dolph Ziggler vs. Montez Ford/Angelo Dawkins vs. Curt Hawkins/Zack Ryder vs. Tyler Breeze/Fandango vs. Gran Metalik/Lince Dorado vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. Otis/Tucker

ER: Oh man this is exactly the kind of thing I love to start a show. Gimme a big colorful 20 man battle royal with a long as hell entrance time, every single team getting a separate entrance but an abbreviated one. I'm not kidding here, I was into this from the second I heard there was a 10 team battle royal to start this PPV. I do prefer when BOTH members of a team have to be eliminated, it makes more openings for different psychology scenarios. And this was a good battle royal! I would have changed the order of several eliminations, and you bet your ass the first team eliminated would have been the team that won the damn thing. Wait, do I like this match? I would have rather seen any of these 9 teams win than Ziggler/Roode, so I can't like this match too much. But the work within the match was above average for battle royals. There were plenty of quick glimpses of nice battle royal close quarters striking; Gallows would punch Otis in the head, grateful to be here Curt Hawkins would throw a couple decent punches, people busied themselves well. We did get too much awful Ziggler 1996 HBK cosplay. Too much. How the hell is he allowed to do such hammy tribute? But guys really threw themselves into their eliminations, I was crushed when Otis had his Caterpillar interrupted before the elbowdrop, Aichner should have absolutely slaughtered  Ziggler while he was dangling over the top rope for the zillionth time. Worst possible team won, match was still fun.

Kalisto vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Lio Rush

ER: This was plenty fun, some nice go go go, kept the spotlight shifting to each of the three guys without ever feeling like an exhibition or outright showcase, a weirdly natural way for these three to show their specific skills. This had the feeling of a Amazing Red trainee match, in a good way, with Rush being one of the best post-2000s Red combo of fast precise bumps and great inventive kicks. Tozawa is always a great cog in these cruiser three ways, even when it feels like he's nowhere close to the focus. He's clearly good at helping direct these things, he winds up in good ones too often for that to be false. Kalisto gets all Fenix on us in cool ways, and I dug the Salida del Sol attempts and successes. We get Tozawa's big senton and one of the better sliding kicks in the company, Rush throws the nicest kicks of the match and his frog splash looked tremendous, just a fun match that left the party at just the right time.

Big E/Kofi Kingston vs. Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish vs. Viking Raiders

ER: So far it feels like everything has been given a lot of time, guys getting time to try some new things and stretch out in some ways. This match felt longer than it needed to be, yet came with an absolute superstar performance from Ivar, a guy who has been improving every year for the past few years. This was one of my favorite performances of his, a total wrecking ball, looking bigger than I think I've ever seen him but still flattening with crossbodies, flipping over that top rope like a he was prime Berzerker, working this super fast lengthy hot tag where he just nailed every single mark. Big E takes a big bump on his missed spear to the floor, throws some big belly to bellies, then takes an even bigger bump when he hits his spear to the floor. Viking Raiders are so cool, really a team that was always fun and just keeps finding ways to improve, keeps tinkering with and tightening up offense, evolving. How did they never do a Vikings vs. Harper/Rowan match? What a colossal fuck up. But this was all fun.

Sasha Banks/Lacey Evans/Nikki Cross/Dana Brooke/Carmella vs. Asuka/Kairi Sane/Sarah Logan/Charlotte/Natalya vs. Bianca Belair/Rhea Ripley/Io Shirai/Toni Storm/Candice LeRae

ER: This really did feel closer to some of the overstuffed Survivor Series tags from 30 years ago, though it was also rife with some bizarre character contradictions (Charlotte is just never going to be the likable one in any situation, it does not work), Lacey Evans shunted WAY too far into the background and coming off like nothing (unfair for how far she's come over this year), I have no idea why Candice and Shirai's big plan was just to let their team almost get beat but then run out, and we got a weird tentative performance from Ripley literally one night after she was this Braveheart leader against the odds in War Games. Made no sense. Asuka is still popular than any woman in this match, Kairi Sane came off like the cool smallest/craziest member of a team, Belair should have been made the sole survivor of this and then shot to the top, but her star will be undeniable soon. Her 450 is so rock solid and she knew how to work team bragging better than most here. Carmella deserves a lot of credit for her genuinely good Survivor Series throwback performance, bringing levity but fine execution to all her segments. Dana Brooke also made the most of her actual airtime, thought she took some risks she normally doesn't. I didn't agree with some of the eliminations (Natalya should not be getting the better of her feud with Evans), and it felt like their attempt to keep at least 8 of them even stevens, wish they would have let someone come off more dominant while being confident.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Roderick Strong vs. AJ Styles

ER: This one had moments but was a little long in the tooth. I mentioned earlier how it felt like some people were allowed to stretch out on this show, but I could use a little editing at this point. This one had peaks and valleys, but did come into the peaks nicely. It's hard for me not to like Strong getting this kind of showcase; the guy might not be a trendy wrestler to like, but he's had a real phenomenal decade while still feeling underappreciated. Styles was really good at running into offense face first, and it was either all AJ or Nakamura was also throwing some of his nicest kicks in recent memory. Roddy had some big cool version of backbreakers, Nakamura is basically Japanese Randy Orton as it's annoying how good they can be sometimes while noticeably holding back on things. Styles has a brighter performance than he's been turning in lately, and this flows relatively smoothly for a 3 way. And I must say I LOVE Strong going over, even if it was of disputable means. A overall nice delivery.

Pete Dunne vs. Adam Cole

ER: This was a lot of what I didn't really want to see. This is a long show, too many matches, but this was the first one I wanted to skip past. Dunne is kind of a frustrating guy for me, and let's just say the Adam Cole Championship era is not something I am enjoying, or looking to more of. Both do a lot of Offense I Don't Like and this was filled with it, like a nightmare 2005 indy match that grew up watching 1999 offense and did it more dangerously in stupid evolved variations. So here we are growing up from doing a Burning Hammer onto a picnic table on an amusing Dateline special, you're a couple of dudes breaking out a flipping piledriver on the apron, in a company where the piledriver is a banned move. But we'll always have a bunch of close ups on derpy faces after unexpected kickouts. I will thank them for keeping this (barely) under 15 minutes, but I don't have to like it. This was not the match to work after War Games, and these two wouldn't realize that.

Daniel Bryan vs. The Fiend

ER: Man this PPV has run into a ditch and I am really hoping we right this rig before blowing a tire. The Fiend is just slow crawling death, the light is bad, and Bryan almost made this into something interesting. Bryan was interesting! Bryan worked with what he had, and it wasn't much, but he somehow got the fans semi-involved in something that The Fiends was actively trying to not court. Bryan's plancha looked great and was filmed great, Fiend did have a couple nice moments of catching Bryan in mid air and dispatching him, punching him out of the sky or just catching him with a slam. But Bryan was flying into any of that (and into the ringpost) like someone desperately trying to make lemons out of lemonade, and it just did not work. This may have been the worst match on the show, and that should never be the case with a Bryan match.

Roman Reigns/Braun Strowman/Chad Gable/Baron Corbin/Ali vs. Drew McIntyre/Ricochet/Randy Orton/Kevin Owens/Seth Rollins vs. Matt Riddle/Tommaso Ciampa/WALTER/Keith Lee/Damian Priest

ER: So, I did not like a lot of this. This PPV has turned into my own personal nightmare as time has slowed way down and this feels like I will never not be writing about the happenings of this show. Braun got to run ham on people on the floor leading to a big Lee collision, and the home stretch Roman/Lee battle felt like a real Clash of the Titans that SHOULD really elevate Lee. Lee got given a moment, and he made the moment. And there were good moments. But this took a long damn time and just felt hollow and incorrect for much of the runtime. Riddle got what looked like a big moment, and maybe it leads to an Orton feud that he wins, but Riddle is someone that fans are ready to get behind in the biggest way, a guy clearly primed to make the huge crossover jump from NXT. WALTER went out quick and that's really dumb. Rollins is someone I dread at this point. Gable got tricked into looking like a goof, sounding like a goof, and getting treated like a goof. Priest looked like a goof. This was just no good. This has been bad.

Rey Mysterio vs. Brock Lesnar

ER: We know this was going one way or another, and it went the way nobody wanted it to go. I was genuinely excited about this match. We knew Brock was going to destroy Rey. Obviously he was going to snap him in two. But with the added No Holds Barred stip I was expecting Rey to make WAY more inroads than he made. Rey got steamrolled. Rey looked great getting steamrolled, but this was a real flattening. You want to see Brock destruction, but Brock is one of the great selling monsters, so you get more excited to see how small old Rey is going to take a pipe to Brock's balls and maybe somebody gets shoot busted open somehow and Brock ends up beating Dominic with a chain. We get the destruction; Brock throws cruel short arm clotheslines and big Germans and Rey gets ragdolled unprofessionally over the table and into the barricade, but the comeback that comes is just a blink, and comes off more like Barry Horowitz ducking an Undertaker lariat and landing a couple punches before shitting his pants when his luck runs out. We knew this was a possibility, but the thought of the great possibilities was too intriguing.

Bayley vs. Shayna Baszler vs. Becky Lynch

ER: I cannot get over how bad Bayley's haircut is. It is so dated on arrival, the worst kind of late 2000s mom framing, and the battle of The Man vs. The Mom cannot interest me. And they did not do much in this match to interest me. This goes WAY too long - the central theme of almost this entire show - and is just total Dullsville. I thought this was fairly interminable at times, and early this year there was nobody hotter in the company than Becky Lynch and a former MMA crossover star. Now Lynch feels ice cold and Baszler has gone from being a super aggressive asskicker in her 2018 matches to just hanging so far back in the mix in 2019 that it almost feels like she's injured and working 50%. The story was Baszler dominating Bayley but I don't think it came off great other than the nice hanging choke over the apron. This needed to be a real statement and it feels like this just continues a trend of bad main event women's trios. Now the main takeaway - the fair takeaway - is that 3 WAY MATCHES ARE ALMOST ALWAYS TERRIBLE. In some ways the women have been completely upended by these dismal main event PPV 3 ways. But it's only because they won't commit to one or two women that we keep getting these main event 3 ways and multimans that just blow. This never shifted into 2nd gear, and I'm not sure it's they're fault. None of them feel like they're being put in a position to succeed.


ER: This show started promising and had some on paper goodwill, but it just wasn't happening for me. I like some of the wins given to NXT, but a lot of this felt like a flop. And it's tough to sit still during such a long show that also feels like a flop.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 9/7 - 9/14

205 Live 9/10/19

Jack Gallagher/KUSHIDA vs. Brian Kendrick/Akira Tozawa

ER: We're back to appropriate match length on 205, and this was a bunch of fun. I thought everything in this was great...up until KUSHIDA's hot tag. The opening scramble with Kendrick/KUSHIDA was really cool, and filled with little things that make me love Kendrick: blocked headlock takeovers, refusing to go down on a drop toehold until forced, clasping his hands on a hiptoss armbar until KUSHIDA starts throwing fists at his hands, even doing a leapfrog much more like he was jumping a hurdle in competitive track so that he lands in a more advantageous position. Kendrick is a great logic  wrestler and I love seeing his tricks. Gallagher and Tozawa are always fun together, and I dug what Kendrick did with a blind tag as Tozawa baseball slides to the floor making Gallagher think he had been too much for him, only to turn around and take a nasty posting from Kendrick. Tozawa trotting by on the floor and rustling Gallagher's hair while he was still hung around the post was an excellent touch. I loved Tozawa's short punch, and seeing Kendrick and Tozawa corner and isolate Gallagher was great stuff, but it all built to a KUSHIDA hot tag that I didn't think was very good. I don't think KUSHIDA's stuff looks very good when he rushes through things, as he's a guy who always looks like he's thinking too hard about the next part of the sequence, so all of his strikes looked more like someone practicing a sequence than actually doing the sequence. We still get Gallagher spilling to the floor and Tozawa pasting him with his cannonball off the apron (Gallagher always seems like the guy who gets smooshed into the barricade with that, and it always looks great), but overall I think things wrapped up way to neatly once KUSHIDA came back in, match could have used another twist or two.

PAS: I thought this was really good, I am not a New Japan guy, so my KUSHIDA experience was his not very good Gulak matches from NXT. I think he may be better suited as a tag worker, where he can do some cool opening mat scrambles, let his tag partner do the majority of the actual in ring work, and then tag back in for a hot tag. Gallagher was pretty great in this taking a huge bump into the ringpost, and taking a pasting from Kendrick and Tozawa. Kendrick has been a bit of forgotten man in 205 lately, but man is he great, I loved him escalating the violence, and his smaller stuff is about as good as it gets in wrestling. I thought KUSHIDA's finishing armbar was pretty great looking and the coolness of that allowed me to forgive some of his awkward moments.

Drew Gulak/Ariya Daivari/Tony Nese vs. Humberto Carrillo/Gran Metalik/Lince Dorado

PAS: This was a long trios match with some cool moments, but some real stinkers too. Nese is really bad in this, at one point he puts on maybe the loosest crappiest chinlock I have even seen, he might not have even been touching Dorado's body. Lince Dorado being shoehorned into the PPV title match is really weird. He isn't even a top 10 2008 Chikara roster member (Hero, Claudio, Quack, Colin Delaney, Brodie Lee, Whatever Ant Tracey Williams Was, Tim Donst, Jigsaw, Mitch Ryder and Kingston for sure would have a better match with Gulak) and the third best guy in his stable. Watching both him and Metalik in this match, it is even weirder that they are pushing Dorado. Apparently WWE bought the Dorado gimmick from Chikara, which is amazing. How much could they have possibly paid? It can't be more then a 100 bucks. I just imagine Quackenbush buttonholing Helmsley after Quack's training center gig "You know Hunter technically we own the Lince Dorado IP, you really should buy it from us, if you are going to use it on TV." and Helmsley just handing him whatever he had in his pockets "I got 67 dollars and a GMC gift card with an unknown amount on it, take it or leave it."

Gulak was good as usual, the crowd was clearly not paying attention to the match and chanting for a baby in the crowd. Gulak starts rocking Dorada like a baby as a taunt to get the crowd back in the match. Total pro move.

ER: I was hoping Phil hadn't noticed Gulak's extremely pro as hell reaction to distracted fans, because I was more blown away by that than anything that actually happened in the match and wanted something to talk about. Can't be much more of a bummer for wrestlers than a fully distracted crowd, and Gulak improvising and rocking Metalik like a little baby to instantly get all eyes on him was one of the more brilliant things I've seen. I mean, Tony Nese lost their attention like 12 seconds later, but I'm not letting Gulak get dragged down just because Tony Nese sucks. I really like Phil's 2008 Lince vs. Chikara exercise, and you can easily add Hallowicked, Sara Del Ray, Cheech AND Cloudy, Pantera, Larry Sweeney, Drake Younger, really Lince is nowhere close to 2008 Chikara top 10. He's a guy battling to get on the 25 man roster.

The match itself was too long, though the length did give it more time for nice moments, and there were plenty of nice moments. I don't think the whole added up to much, but you stick a couple interesting guys in an 18 minute match and something decent will shoot out the other side. There was some fun stuff on the floor, Metalik always breaks out a couple of impressive flips, Carrillo had a couple big dives, Metalik had an outright awesome rana leaping over the ropes to the floor, and Daivari took a fast splat bump off that rana. But there was also a lot of really awkward shifting into position for offense, lotta messy stuff, and Phil didn't even mention Nese's awkward loose body vice. I will say, that I think these guys are all at least trying to have bangers out there, and that counts for something. That enthusiasm can help lift up matches and I hope the show goes on a good run.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 8/18 - 8/24

205 Live 8/20

Drew Gulak/Ariya Daivari/Angel Garza/Mike Kanellis/Tony Nese vs. Oney Lorcan/Jack Gallagher/Akira Tozawa/Humberto Carrillo/Isaiah Scott

PAS: 205 Live is such a weird show, some random Tuesday they just run a 50 minute 10 man elimination match where they place a ton of focus on a guy who hadn’t even been on the show before. I don’t get it, but I dig it. I am not sure if anyone is watching this show, but this felt like a star making performance for Angel Garza. I was a big Hector Garza fan and Angel really felt like he was channeling his Uncle, just a rudo masterclass, big bumps, great basing for high flyers and some great smarmy cheap shots. I also continue to really enjoy Davari as he is committed to being a wholly unlikeable prick. Gallagher had more of a cameo in this match, I dug the opening spot with him passing out umbrellas for his teammates to do dives, but otherwise he goes out early. We get lots of Lorcan and Gulak including some cool interactions with each other, Lorcan throws maybe the nastiest back elbow I can remember to Gulak, and Gulak snapping and working over Lorcan with the chair was really well done. I also dug both guys apron work, hyping up the rest of their team. This did have a Nese vs. Swerve Scott section which was about as bad as it appears on paper, but mainly this was a super cool idea, and I am glad it exists.

ER: I am fully embracing the weirdness of 205 Live, it's really a show I've come to get excited for again. I've been on quite a rollercoaster with the whole 205 Live run. I loved the first tournament, was excited when it became a weekly show (and we even intended to write up the show every week, but it was uninteresting enough that the idea only lasted 3 episodes), then I didn't watch it at all for like a year (probably some nice gems scattered throughout that first year or so), then began watching scattered looking for the occasional Gulak match, and now here I am back to being excited to see it weekly again. They keep giving guys a different platform and really let them stretch out. I think they let them stretch out too much some of the time, but there's no doubt it's an awesome learning tool and has created some of the coolest matches of the year. Now we get a show long match that's longer than most guys have ever worked on WWE TV.

And I didn't even really love the match. It had some great segments, it had some awful segments, but damn did I love having it on while I ate a late lunch on a Saturday. This played out like a cool wrestling mixtape, something that would interest casual fans, something that would play well at a bar in that way that some bars throw on a weird movie with the sound turned off while the band is playing, or something that would be nice to have on while friends are over and most of the people are more interested in talking than watching wrestling (but like looking up and commenting when a cool spot catches their eye). It's like when NOAH was running those Captain's Fall Elimination matches, and it yielded some classics, and at minimum always yielded a match that was fun to have on in the background. So while I didn't love this, it's something that would be awesome to know is a possibility.

Hell, WWE should just run a 1 hour weekly show called Wrestling Mixtape, and just let whatever combination of guys want to work an hour long match, work that match. Seriously, make 8 spots available for each week's match, and let whatever 8 guys wanted to work the match, work the match. It would be a cool way to get TV time, but with the caveat that you might have to be one of the guys in the match for 45+ minutes. Maybe there are guys on the roster who would want the exposure, but wouldn't want to risk being exposed in a long match. Presumably more than 8 guys would want to sign up, so you'd have a bunch of guys to rotate through and keep the match-ups fresh. WWE's Wrestling Mixtape is an idea I am selling myself on even more the longer I type about it.

And this was a cool wrestling mixtape! It would have been much better if you switched around the order of eliminations (if there's a 50 minute match, I don't want Gallagher or Tozawa going out first when Tony Nese and Isaiah Scott are in there). The Swerve/Nese stuff was as awful as I was expected to be, hot garbage Marvel final battle wrestling. Scott has a lot of ideas, and that's cool, except for a bunch of ideas of his that involve a guy doing something out of the ordinary and then holding position for too long waiting for Scott to splat onto them after breakdancing. His stuff can look pretty, and be innovative, but man do I hate how he sets a lot of it up. But how do you hate a match that's so neat and weird that in only his third TV match with the company, here's Angel Garza working a freaking 50 minute match. They really gave a showcase to the Garza brood - maybe too much of one, as I think Carrillo is still best in briefer sequences - but damn it is great to have practically a clone of Hector Garza on TV. Hector Garza was maybe my favorite TV wrestling in the world around 2006/2007, and that's saying something since Fit Finlay had just made a totally unexpected "I assume booked specifically for Eric Ritz" return to working featured TV matches. Some of his act comes off a bit more rehearsed and doesn't quite have that same insanely charming sparkle that Hector was working with (watching him fall all over women at ringside while bumping is true pro wrestling joy), but the star potential is there. We don't get nearly enough Gallagher (though do get a nice headbutt and the amusing group umbrella spot), but we get typically great stuff from Gulak and Lorcan, and the weirdness of WWE running a 50 minute cruiserweight match kept the smiles easy.

WWE Wrestling Mixtape. Book it.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 8/4-8/17

So we got thrown off schedule by none of these guys having a match one week, and then a TakeOver happening last week, so we doubled up the weeks to bring you KING SIZE post worthy of these badasses.

205 Live 8/6

Oney Lorcan vs. Jack Gallagher vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Kalisto vs. Ariya Daivari vs. Tony Nese

ER: WWE is usually as good or better than most companies at doing fast paced juniors multimans, but I don't think this one came off as natural or organic as their best ones. This one had a lot of guys shimmying into position and some of the set ups looked off, but with some of the guys involved obviously there was going to be some gold. This was all about getting Oney to Summerslam (in the first match on the pre show no doubt), and here he looked like a guy who should obviously be at Summerslam. This had the regular problems of multimans, where we would get a great spot followed almost immediately by some kind of gaffe. We got a tandem submission where Lorcan basically had to hold his legs in place while nobody was holding them, but the spots were all a bunch of fun. Kalisto took a nasty bump PAST the announce table when then other 5 chucked him, Daivari was a fun opportunist and Gallagher bumped huge for him into the barricade, we got a dive train where Lorcan's unhinged flip dive was the star (and as is a rule in multimans, 4-5 people were entirely unable to catch Nese or Gallagher on their dives), Gallagher wasted Nese with a headbutt (but terrible agenting meant that Nese kicked out of it when there were literally 4 guys who could have broken up this pin instead), Nese athletically stumbled through this whole thing and it would have been much more interesting as a 4 man, but the whole thing would make an excellent 4 minute highlight package and that's not nothing. The important thing is Oney looking like a star while keeping guys like Gallagher and Tozawa still strong enough, and I thought this match succeeded in that.

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, although pretty flawed. Nese Nese'd it up for parts of this, just flipping and flopping around and setting up his dance moves. But I liked everyone else in this. This type of match doesn't work to Gallagher's strengths, but he had some fun multiman spots, and took a couple of nasty bumps on his head: that German suplex into the turnbuckles was way too sick for a spot which didn't mean anything in the match. Davari was almost Buddy Landelish in his stooging and cheap shotting and Kalisto and Tozawa had fun flying spots and move with real grace. I agree with Eric that there was enough awkward stuff to stop this from being a highly recommended match, but I enjoyed watching it.

Summerslam 8/11

42. Drew Gulak vs. Oney Lorcan

ER: Yes sir. This was what got me excited for this card. And there is nothing else that can happen on this card that will take this match away from me. This ruled, and was a killer showcase for both men. We were so excited seeing TAKA Michinoku doing quebradas on WWF TV 20 years ago, so excited for cruiserweight wrestling on our TVs, and now we have evolved to TV cruiserweight wrestling being two guys ripping at beards and punching throats. Look at the things we as a people can do. This was an unhurried unsanitized version of what these two can do, and it got to happen on (the undercard of) one of the biggest shows of the year, and that's a very cool thing. It was a tidy 9 minutes filled with a dozen cool ideas, and just made me want to see them match up a dozen more times. Gulak slams Lorcan into the ropes in a flat out sinister way, and is practically inventing cruel subs to try to trap him in. Lorcan's aggression is his double edged sword. He flies into everything with abandon, which allowed him to come so close to beating Gulak, but it also meant he lost to Gulak. These guys made me buy into everything they did, moves had consequences, actions lead to finishes. Gulak took on the persona of a big brother who picked on his little brother too long and accidentally pushed him over the edge, and it was great. The look on Gulak's face as Lorcan is grabbing him by the fucking beard and muzzle and slapping him was classic. Both read naked choke spots were great, with the first looking like a genuine finish as Lorcan is not close to the ropes, and Gulak drags the arm closest to the ropes back across Lorcan's throat. That they went back to it soon after and created an organic Lorcan false win showed they understand their characters and the match they were having 100%. I loved Lorcan flipping out of that rear naked and almost getting the "fluke" pin, everything they had done made that finish an absolute possibility. Lorcan's flying uppercuts are a thing of beauty, and I'm not sure I've seen someone just lean into them standing the way Gulak did. It's one of those spots that somehow made both men look tougher, Lorcan flying into Gulak and Gulak absorbing the shots but refusing to show ass. And the finish was great, with Gulak being drug into the ring holding onto the ring skirt for dead life, then at the earliest opening just punching Lorcan in the throat and hitting the neckbreaker. Lorcan's sell of his throat was palpable, and I just want to see these guys continue to crush every opportunity they're given.

PAS: This was really great and vicious, and very different from the matches these guys were having on the indies 4 years ago. I loved how nasty they have made the Gu-Lock, every time Gulak goes for it, it is fought like death. I was watching Nate Diaz fight tonight, and I loved how Gulak's striking near the end of this match resembled that, he would throw these flurries of sharp quick punches, and slaps looking for little openings to land something hard and solid, I loved how he overwhelmed the harder hitter with volume. Finish was great with Gulak looking like he was in deep waters, only to crack Lorcan right in the throat and finish him off, it looked like a fatality in a kung fu movie.

205 Live 8/13

Jack Gallagher vs. Akira Tozawa

ER: Just another typical WWE juniors match. You know, cool matwork, two guys landing stiff shots, and one of them busting open his head doing a nutso bump off the ringpost. That kind of WWE juniors match. And it was cool as all hell. Gallagher had some of his coolest transitions in this one, and I especially loved his slick escape from an early headscissors into an Indian deathlock variation. Gallagher's placement and timing were impeccable here, he always knew the right distance to throw his great dropkick, knew right where he had to be to properly counter Tozawa. Tozawa took a wild bump to the floor after getting booted over the top, hitting his head on the ringpost and then the steps and getting a cut on his head from it. Gallagher kept his attack simple, and I liked how Gallagher kept using his nice strikes to create distance for bigger moves (really liked him using that headbutt to the stomach a couple times to knock Tozawa back on his heels). Tozawa's tope was real nice, a true classic tope where he lead with his head, and I like that Tozawa has a couple of really cool great looking signature punches. The finish appeared to be setting something up with Kendrick (they haven't crossed paths in a year and obviously that's a match up I'd love to get more TV time), but did take away from what they had been doing: Gallagher went for a superplex and Tozawa reversed to a nice front suplex, hit the senton, Gallagher got his foot on the ropes, and Kendrick plausibly accidentally knocked it off. We'll see where it leads, but even in a vacuum I loved what they did in this match.

PAS:  I really liked this, Tozawa has really great looking offense, one of the better non luchadore topes in the world, killer senton, awesome Tenryu jab. He doesn't always have the best structure to his matches, so it is great when he has a maestro like Gallagher to work with. The crazy bump Tozawa takes to the floor where he busts his head open on the ringpost, was really cool looking, but the long ref stoppage to try to clean the blood did funky up the momentum of the match a bit. I get why that is their policy I suppose but it is hard to keep a pace. Gallagher always seems to have interesting finishes to his matches, and I liked the ambiguity of Kendrick knocking his foot off, leads to some interesting business in the future.

22. Drew Gulak vs. Oney Lorcan

ER: Let's just continue giving these two as much TV time as possible, and I guarantee they will become popular names off their work alone. This match is completely different from the match they had a couple days prior at Summerslam, opting to build directly off the finish of that match into this match. Gulak really came off like a modern day Finlay here, sadistically attacking Lorcan's throat after winning their last match with a punch right to the throat. Lorcan is really great at flying into things, so here he is crazily flying neck first into ropes and buckles and the announce table, with Gulak even pulling out a Finlay staple by slamming Lorcan's throat into the edge of the ring apron (not throat related, but I also like how Gulak uses another Finlay staple, bodyslamming Lorcan leg first into the ropes to weaken him). Gulak kept attacking with hard lariats to the neck, and by the end of this I was wondering if any WWE match had more lariats this year. Lorcan is an extremely exciting "working from behind" guy, and all of his comebacks were scorching. I liked how hot he came out the gates, dumping Gulak with a half nelson suplex and hitting his great cannonball dive to the floor, flying into Gulak with uppercuts, really showing his wealth of babyface charisma. It honestly felt like Lorcan was going to keep maniacally running headlong into Gulak until he either won or could no longer run, and that kind of die hard babyface is missing from wrestling, or bogged down in shitty wide eyed heavy breathing play acting. Lorcan's huge suplex from the top was an awesome moment, and I love how him throwing Gulak so far across the ring ended up benefitting Gulak, as he got launched close to the ropes a Lorcan had to struggle to get over to him. The finish is a slick variation on learned behavior, with Gulak using a chaos theory to instead roll into a dragon sleeper. Lorcan has now cleanly lost his two singles matches against Gulak, yet due to his behavior in these losses comes out looking as strong and threatening as ever. Time to keep this feud going, to our benefit.

PAS: This was totally killer, glad we get to see this guys match up in the era of weirdly long TV main events for cruiserweights. And these are two guys who can fill 20+ minutes together.  The opening burst by Lorcan was great, and I totally bought Gulak having to get nasty with the throat shots. The simple throw into the announce table was so much cooler with the pre-existing injury and Lorcan's selling. That top rope suplex was a huge near fall, and I thought Lorcan had the match. I loved the call back to the first match with Lorcan forcing Gulak to turtle up and eat strikes to the body, as opposed to what happened earlier in the week. Finish was really cool and Lorcan looks like a total badass passing out rather then tapping. I want Gulak to have this belt forever, he is just great at putting together cool unique championship matches.


ER: Well this was pretty great for a couple week's selection of matches, with both Gulak/Lorcan matches landing on our 2019 Ongoing MOTY List. I'm with Phil, Gulak as Champ Forever.

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EVOLVE 131: 10th Anniversary Special 7/13/19 Live Blog!

This is weird! But I'm home alone on a Saturday night, and there's no way I'm going to miss Eddie Damn Kingston's debut on the WWE Network.

Josh Briggs vs. Anthony Greene

ER: I've gone out of my way a couple times to watch Greene, because he's been getting talked up a lot lately, but I watched him have a lame match with Stevie Richards and I pretty much wrote him off at that point. I dug Briggs/Chris Dickinson from earlier this year, but even in that match Briggs came off like "Test on an above average night". And this match started off plenty fun, but it was really same-y and started to feel like 2 minutes for every 1 minute that passed. Greene has a nice straight right hand that he used several times (and even a nice straight left that he used once), and I think his offense looks good but a lot of it is tied together with combos, which I kind of hate. I liked the stuff worked on the apron, thought it was cool when Briggs got knocked down to a knee and to the floor, dug Briggs catching a tope and chokeslamming Greene on the apron. They work some fun stuff out of the corner, with Briggs getting caught with a kick charging in, but kicking Greene in the chest anyway and then hitting a follow up yakuza, and plenty of things looked cool (Briggs' chokeslam into a powerbomb was killer, his release suplex looked dangerous but was safe), but around the 7 minute mark they started going into the "He can't believe it!" shocked pinfall faces and more learned behavior stuff, and then I just wanted it to stop. This wasn't bad, though with the tools each guy brings they could have laid this out in a more interesting way.


We get an Eddie Kingston promo on the Network, and I'm a happy man. There is nobody in modern wrestling close to Kingston when it comes to promos, no clear second place.

Sean Maluta vs. Curt Stallion vs. Stephen Wolf vs. Harlem Bravado

ER: Harlem Bravado is such a goofy dude, like if Adam Driver lost 30 pounds and got a tech job. And I thought this mostly stunk. We got a dive train spot where Wolf shot a couple feet past everyone on a tope con giro, then Maluta shot only one foot past everyone with his tope con giro, then Stallion at least hit a decent Fosbury Flop. Bravado is bad at setting up offense, doing some silly bad missed clotheslines; Maluta threw a bunch of superkicks, and some of them looked good; Stallion would throw a nice big boot and then do a blatant thigh slap knee. It boiled down to a fairly dumb strike exchange between Wolf and Stallion that had a total of one nice strike (a cool rolling elbow by Wolf). The brief finishing run was hot and had a couple finishers chained together nicely, but I couldn't wait for this one to end.

Arturo Ruas vs. Anthony Henry

ER: I've never actually seen Ruas before, and this is kind of exciting! I don't actually know if his amateur credentials are a work or not, but he's a guy my age doing cool body scissor takedowns on WWE TV so I'm ready to buy in. And this match was a really great change of pace after that last clunker. It comes out of the gates looking like it's going to be a 4 minute match, worked like something off that awesome Tetsujin Shoot Style show from 2015. And I think this would have benefitted from being 4 minutes. It was a good 10 minute match, but it felt like it could have been a classic 4 minute match. Ruas brings some unique takedowns and strikes, coming off like a capoeira guy trying jiu jitsu, going for scissor takedowns and armbars, throwing kicks at ankles and chest, a fun replacement for my boy Jaka (who disappeared in January). I'll typically be into any Evolve guy who would fit into Check Point. Henry is a pro, and I liked how these guys scrambled, though again I do wish we cut the time and kept some of the mystery. Once it crept past 6 minutes or so it got a lot more pro style, which I didn't find as interesting. But that still had some gold, like Henry trying to burst Ruas's gallbladder with a gross stomp off the top, and the finish was great with Ruas surprising Henry with a gorgeous sweeping high kick. I dug this and would love to see more Ruas. Hell, tell Ruas to cut a few pounds so I can see Gallagher/Ruas, or bring back Gulak as a special challenge opponent.

No DQ: Brandi Lauren vs. Shotzi Blackheart

ER: Really it didn't matter what happened in this one, as Shotzi wound up hitting one of the nastier crazier bumps we've seen, and this alone is going to be GIFed to eternity. She had several crazy moments, but this was another match that felt too long at 10 minutes. Since this was No DQ Lauren had Natalia Markova work this like a handicap match, but Shotzi did away with her in barely 2 minutes, which is odd as I'm not sure why Markova bailed. Shotzi appeared to bust open her nose delivering a missile dropkick, and she comes off as a kind of unathletic Darby Allin, willing to take some absolutely dumb reckless bumps, but without Allin's landing ability. Lauren hits a killer baseball slide dropkick to the floor, sending a hard chairshot into Shotzi's face, and you'd think that would end up being the most violent spot in the match. Ha. Shotzi sets up a bunch of chairs, Lauren and Greene wind up in them, but by the time Shotzi's tope gets to them nobody is home. Shotzi crashed so damn ugly through several set up chairs, looking like 6 different chair backs hit her in 6 painful spots before she hit the ground. Absolutely nutso spot, in a match where she had already fallen onto the apron and floor. I liked Lauren beating her senseless with a kendo stick for the finish, but this felt like it would be more effective as a short wild violent brawl.

Colby Corino vs. Babatunde

ER: Hell yes. Gimme that absolute Reis/Juventud energy baby. I've not seen Babatunde (probably not going back to check out the Greatest Royal Rumble), but I'm down for any new 350 pounder. Colby at least actually looks like a wrestler now and not like a little kid (which he did as of like 2 years ago), and really he just looks the same as his dad in the late 90s. Babatunde doesn't have tons to offer yet besides size and presence, but that's fine. We get a couple great spots in this one, the best being Corino hitting a springboard swanton right onto the back of the kneeling Babatunde, but close second was Corino getting caught off the top with a huge chokeslam. This was only a couple minutes, but a welcome breather.

Eddie Kingston/Joe Gacy vs. AR Fox/Leon Ruff

ER: This was a ton of fun, starting with a ton of dives and not really letting up. Fox and Ruff hit dives to start (Fox flying into the front row) and then do it again on different sides of the ring, Gacy accidentally hits Kingston with a dive, letting Ruff hit another. Good god guys. Fox does his wild inverted cannonball to the floor and basically crashes right through everyone to pavement. And I think this got pretty great once we moved into Kingston and Gacy's double teams, as they have a bunch of mean stuff. Gacy hits a hard elbow while Kingston dumps Fox on his head with a back suplex, Kingston hits a superplex into a Gacy powerbomb on Ruff, a big damn time Gacy lariat into Kingston german suplexing Ruff across the ring, Kingston hits a great powerslam off the middle rope, they both throw big chops, they're a team I'd love to see do more of their thing. They really packed some cool stuff into the run time, thought Ruff hitting a tope con giro over the turnbuckles to put Gacy threw a table looked spectacular, thought Fox's pop up Spanish Fly on Kingston was suitably crazy. I obviously didn't want to see Kingston lose, and it felt like Ruff took too much of a beating to instantly come back from, but these guys were fun opposite each other.

PAS: I didn’t like this as much as Eric. I am a Kingston super fan, and this kind of spotfest isn’t really going to use him to his best. This felt like a 12 minute match jammed into 5, and we never got to see Kingston and Gacy really take it to anyone outside of some work on Ruff which he kind of shrugged off. Gacy also had some of the worst “ONLY TWOOOOOOO” faces I have seen in a long while. Fox and Ruff really looked dancey when they were stringing spots together, I have been watching a lot of AIW tag spotfests and that set a bar Fox and Ruff couldn’t live up to. There were some cool dives, and I did like some of the Unwanted’s double teams, but I was hoping for more from the Mad King on the Network.

Matt Riddle vs. Drew Gulak

ER: Gulak gets Catch Point druids!!! As a match I think this underperformed and never felt like anything new. This felt like kind of a greatest hits collection from both guys without some of the drama that their best matches have. It felt like a slightly sanitized version of a match they would have had a couple years ago. The good news is that I happen to love the greatest hits from these two. We get a pair of cool belly to belly superplexes (Riddle getting the worst of it), both guys throw hard shots to the body (which were weirdly maybe my favorite thing about this), big Riddle senton, both throw hard uppercuts, Gulak always cutting in for single legs, it's them doing things that I like to watch them do. But this kind of felt like the recent run of 205 Live main events, where good workers are given 20 minutes to do their thing and it doesn't totally live up to the time. There were obviously hot stretches of this, and the Riddle corkscrew senton into Gulak's rear naked choke felt like a cool spot to end things. They didn't end it there, with Riddle simply picking Gulak up and hitting Bro Derek that didn't look finisher worthy. It really just looked like Gulak taking a heavier than normal slam, didn't read as a piledriver at all. This match was going to have a high floor - both guys are great - but it felt like we only bumped our head against their ceiling a couple times.


So I'm pretty in the dark on large patches of Evolve, but Leonard says that Bryan Idol was involved in "maybe the most important match in Evolve history"? Did I mishear that? Is that correct? Was there a really important Earl Cooter match that I need to see?

Austin Theory vs. JD Drake

ER: Well hey, this had some good moments in the first half and hit nothing but "this isn't wrestling I enjoy" down the back stretch. They would do cool things and not go back to them at all, like Theory cracking his elbow on the ringpost really early on, then never once hesitating to throw elbows the entire match. I hate when they burn a cool spot like that when the match would otherwise be the same. Theory is a guy who works like a dickhead Finn Balor, and that's not something I wanted. He has stuff I like: his elbows in the corner to Drake looked really good, and that running elbow to Drake's kidneys was really great. I need more of that guy. That guy rules. The guy doing a doofy pose before hitting a very normal standing moonsault? I don't want that guy. Drake is super hard for me to pin down. Half the time he's a fat guy doing things I enjoy fat guys doing, the other half he's working like a 50 year old never was doing recognizable spots on a minor league baseball show. And to be clear, written out that probably sounds something that I would actually write a couple themed posts about, but Drake would be the bad version of that. Sometimes he's throwing hands, throwing clubbing blows, landing a great fat guy dropkick, great second rope leg lariat, hitting a Vader bomb, making me go "oh yeah I do like this guy" and then before long he's doing a derpy Stunner (and you know Theory is a guy who is going to take a Stunner like a real bouncy idiot), and overshooting a rickety moonsault the exact same way he always overshoots his moonsault, and I'm like "THAT'S why I don't like that guy!" They're doing the "exhausted and holding each other up" just 12 minutes in, and the back stretch has a dumb on our knees elbow exchange. Drake gets hit and plainly says "You can't hit me harder than life has," came off like a pretty flimsy line. Eddie Kingston could make that line work. JD Drake couldn't. They knew exactly what kind of cherry I wanted on this sundae, too, because Theory did some hilarious overblown pump handle slam finisher that landed Drake 100% on top of Theory. I am not familiar with Theory's signature offense, so I genuinely thought Drake had reversed something. Nope! Austin Theory won the title by strategically throwing a larger man onto his own chest. Hey WWE Network, This Is Indy Wrestling!

Akira Tozawa vs. Adam Cole

ER: I wound up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would, and I gotta give a lot of that credit to Tozawa. Tozawa has always been a guy I've liked, but this year I really realized I had been underrating him. I don't think he's wrestling any differently this year than he did last year or the year before, I just now appreciate him the correct amount. He really turned an interesting match out of a guy I don't like. I didn't think Cole was as annoying in this one as he is in his interminable NXT main events that I now dread. You read it here: Tozawa is good enough that he takes the dread out of Adam Cole main events. I really like what he throws behind his strikes, they look good and they look his own. He comes off like a guy who takes cool risks, and his matches benefit from that. Cole, for his part, worked an actual good side headlock. That might sound like a putdown, but a good side headlock is a pretty important thing to me. His was better than I thought it would be. Tozawa's offense is always explosive, his dive always looks like it's going to punch both guys through the barricade, he throws a great spinning heel kick, great low dropkick, bumps big and fast, etc. He's a 1999 Taka Michinoku in 2019 and that's great. I think Tozawa winning would have actually been good for NXT, interject a new and credible opponent into the mix, wouldn't seem like a demotion. Really the only thing I didn't like about this was the finish, and that's because Adam Cole has arguably my least favorite finish in wrestling. That bunny hop flipping piledriver looks so damn silly, and then he pulls his kneepad off his scrawny little knee and hits a low end "2002 indy guy working a shining wizard he just saw on a tape into his moveset" vibe to it, more like a sliding leg lariat to the back of the head which is...well it just didn't do it for me.


ER: No breakout classics on this one, and it wasn't one of the better Evolve shows I've seen - and there are a lot of great Evolve shows - but there was plenty of stuff I enjoyed. I liked several individual performances, thought the Kingston tag was a fun style clash, and I dug seeing Ruas for the first time. Plus, that Shotzi bump made me jump forward in my seat, and seat jumping moments are always special.

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WWE BIG 3: Gulak, Gallagher, & Lorcan, 6/23 - 6/29

Drew Gulak vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Tony Nese Stomping Grounds 6/23

ER: This definitely starts out as Gulak and Tozawa working a Tony Nese match, which I understand that's how this was likely to go. Nese is the champ, you work the champ's stupid match. I'd much rather see them just running a Tozawa/Gulak match, or Nese vs. Gulak, or Nese vs. Tozawa, but we get the worst option and it's fine. Gulak and Tozawa are GOOD at working a Tony Nese match, so it works. Nese even wears 205 Live colored gear which...feels like I hate Tony Nese. But after they got the early dance party out of their system, this settled into a really exciting 3 way. Pretty much from the moment Tozawa hit his great high impact cannonball off the apron into Gulak, I was on board. It was very "I hit this guy into that guy and that guy winds up suplexing me into the first guy" but I thought they were mostly good at avoiding dumb waiting around set-ups. This got into some pure fire territory when Gulak sunk in a nasty dragon sleeper on Nese, with his ankles locked tight in a rough body vice. Nese kept breaking out in various ways forcing Gulak to adjust the hold as his own limbs would break free, totally great way to advance drama throughout one submission. And then, with the absolutely best exclamation point, Tozawa flew from out of nowhere with a heavy as hell senton off the top, right into Nese, with Gulak underneath. Great involvement of all three guys. Tozawa was really fun here, and really he always is. He's a guy I hope lingers under the radar on the roster for a decade, like Funaki. He's already almost 3 years in! His solo stuff with Gulak is fun, loved his exchange with Nese that ended with him popping Nese in the jaw with a right, he took a cool backwards bump falling off the apron, just a great guy to put in matches like this. I wish they let Gulak tee off on Nese a little more, but I'm too genuinely excited for Drew Gulak: Cruiserweight Champion to much care. Gulak has been nothing but great during his WWE run, and I'm so happy that it will presumably start paying off with more feature matches. This match got better the longer it went, I thought, as we started feeling like a 6 minute rush job and we instead got a fun 12 minute fireworks show.

PAS: This was really fun stuff, and considering we have this feature now I hope Gulak has a long reign. Nese is what he is, not my favorite guy for sure, but at least he hits hard, those running knees are really brutal looking. Loved all of the chucking of guys into other guys; if you are going to have a three way, you might as well throw people into each other. The out of nowhere Tozawa senton was one of my favorite spots of the year, great camera angle, love when people fly in out of nowhere like that. I did think the finish was a bit abrupt, but Gulak winning is such a crowd pleasing moment for the one man crowd in my living room. Hope we get to see Gulak defend against the other two of the Big 3.

Jack Gallagher vs. Mike Kanellis 205 Live 6/25

ER: This is not going to stand out at the end of the year as one of the better Gallagher matches, but it was a fun TV match against an opponent who I hadn't thought about him matching up with. I mean,  really, I hadn't thought about Kanellis at all, let alone as a Gallagher opponent, and I'm not sure I even  remember the last time I saw a Mike Kanellis match (and it's probably been upwards of two years). But at this point I'm convinced Gallagher can have a fun match with anyone, and I still think Kanellis's music is hilarious and I enjoy his and Maria's act. He's not going to work the mat with Gallagher, but they work some decent mat comedy with Gallagher eventually running a race on Kanellis's chin while Kanellis is trying to stretch his arms. Gallagher is great at setting things up for him, and he might be one of the few guys able to convincingly leap off the top rope and eat boots, really flying into Kanellis's feet far more convincingly than you usually see that spot. We got some cool stuff on the floor, with Gallagher turning to throw Kanellis into the barricade but stopping when Maria gets in the way, allowing Kanellis to smack the back of Gallagher's head into the ringpost and then hit a nasty almost-brainbuster on the floor. I was also pleasantly surprised by a great Kanellis right hand during a punch exchange. He wouldn't strike me as someone with a nice punch in his repertoire, but it's a good one. The finish was a little too cute, with Kanellis arguing for way too long about the ref stopping a count due to some held tights, but I'm never going to complain about Gallagher finishing a match with his headbutt.

PAS: This was pretty nifty, I had completely forgotten Mike Kanellis existed and if you had told me yesterday he was in the WWE I would have called you a liar. He is pretty basic, but his basic stuff looks OK, he had a nice straight punch, and the suplex on the floor was nasty. I enjoyed the Gallagher World of Sport comedy stuff at the beginning, and he sold all of Kanellis's offense well. I do think the finish was a bit OTT and I am not invested in the Kanellis vs. Drake Maverick feud at all, but Gallagher has got to have one of the highest floors of anyone in wrestling.

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WWE Stomping Grounds Live Blog 6/23/19

ER: I don't know a ton about this card, only know the early online "WWE is dying and putting on terrible cards!" vulture chat. I write up all these damn things, and usually it's these kind of under the radar cards that end up delivering, whether its because of the low expectations of me the viewer or the wrestlers themselves knowing there are low expectations. Either way, let's hope for some good wrestling to kill time with until I gotta watch Meryl Streep's weird ass fake teeth.

Akira Tozawa vs. Drew Gulak vs. Tony Nese

ER: This definitely starts out as Gulak and Tozawa working a Tony Nese match, which I understand that's how this was likely to go. Nese is the champ, you work the champ's stupid match. I'd much rather see them just running a Tozawa/Gulak match, or Nese vs. Gulak, or Nese vs. Tozawa, but we get the worst option and it's fine. Gulak and Tozawa are GOOD at working a Tony Nese match, so it works. Nese even wears 205 Live colored gear which...feels like I hate Tony Nese. But after they got the early dance party out of their system, this settled into a really exciting 3 way. Pretty much from the moment Tozawa hit his great high impact cannonball off the apron into Gulak, I was on board. It was very "I hit this guy into that guy and that guy winds up suplexing me into the first guy" but I thought they were mostly good at avoiding dumb waiting around set-ups. This got into some pure fire territory when Gulak sunk in a nasty dragon sleeper on Nese, with his ankles locked tight in a rough body vice. Nese kept breaking out in various ways forcing Gulak to adjust the hold as his own limbs would break free, totally great way to advance drama throughout one submission. And then, with the absolutely best exclamation point, Tozawa flew from out of nowhere with a heavy ass hell senton off the top, right into Nese, with Gulak underneath. Great involvement of all three guys. Tozawa was really fun here, and really he always is. He's a guy I hope lingers under the radar on the roster for a decade, like Funaki. He's already almost 3 years in! His solo stuff with Gulak is fun, loved his exchange with Nese that ended with him popping Nese in the jaw with a right, he took a cool backwards bump falling off the apron, just a great guy to put in matches like this. I wish they let Gulak tee off on Nese a little more, but I'm too genuinely excited for Drew Gulak: Cruiserweight Champion to much care. Gulak has been nothing but great during his WWE run, and I'm so happy that it will presumably start paying off with more feature matches. This match got better the longer it went, I thought, as we started feeling like a 6 minute rush job and we instead got a fun 12 minute fireworks show.

Becky Lynch vs. Lacey Evans

ER: This was messy, but in a way that I think benefitted the match. Lacey doesn't have great application on everything, but the story of her just attacking Lynch's stomach was more than enough, as Lacey was really good on every single shot she threw to the stomach. When a match has a ton of someone punching and kicking at someone's stomach, that's a cool thing I'm going to enjoy. I think it was also a really smart way to get around having Lacey do more complicated offense, just have her able to cut off Lynch with a low punch to the gut or wrapping her around a ringpost or jamming her boot in Lynch's ribs. I liked Lacey fighting to get out of the Disarm-her, and like how Lynch would throw her around (although Lynch did a few of her really dumb extended Woody Allen reactions after an Evans kickout, sitting there and doing this stupid stammering "Um well, yes, I guess, um, well, you see, I thought that would, gulp, thought that would get the, heh, you see, the pin" face. It's awful). They really push the pace in this too, and so the kind of messy moments combined with the fast pace gave this a cool runaway train vibe. I wish Lynch would have paid more lip service to her worked over stomach, but I liked this.

Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens vs. Big E/Xavier Woods

ER: They're keeping everything on this show at 10-12 minutes so far, and I think that benefits everyone. No guarantee we keep it that way, but three matches in and it's turned this into a fun, quick moving card. We get a long FIP segment from Woods, with both Zayn and Owens being really fun in their roles of taunting Big E on the apron. Owens especially would stomp on Woods' face, then look over at E holding his face and mocking him. But I also like how Owens and Zayn went for quick pinfalls right out of the gate, throwing out superkicks and sentons and cannonballs and a big Owens top rope splash. Obviously the Big E hot tag was going to be great, he's always been awesome and running through people in quick order, with Zayn right in the line of belly to belly suplex fire. Nothing on this show has hit next level, but it has made the show highly watchable, and that's really all I care about in the end.

Ricochet vs. Samoa Joe

ER: We've hardly seen any Joe vs. Ricochet, almost all of their matches have been on house shows, so this has a cool fresh feeling to it. This match really felt like they gave people the match they would want to see. It got tons of time, and both guys did their cool stuff against a new opponent, and Ricochet got a big ol' clean win! This is all crowd pleasing stuff! And, perhaps not surprisingly, the crowd has been making genuine noise all damn night. That's a good sign! They also threw in a bunch of slo mo replays, so it gave parts of the match a "AJPW 1995 Comm Tape" feel to it that I will always love. Ricochet taking a uranage on his shoulders? Great. Seeing an All Japan sweat flying off bodies slo mo replay? Impossibly better. Joe hitting a hard elbow? Awesome. All Japan slo mo of floppy haired Joe channeling floppy haired Misawa and crushing Ricochet with an elbow while sweat flies off? Impossibly better. This was what I assume everyone wanted. Joe hitting all of his classic Joe offense in classic fashion (really loved him hitting a big German suplex and turning around and laying him out with a lariat), Ricochet landing his flying moves where they were supposed to land (though he kind of whiffed on a springboard elbow). I do think they really front-loaded the Joe offense as Ricochet felt a little bit too Superman coming back after all of this beating. I wish they could have kept him a little more in this over the length of the match.

Heavy Machinery vs. Daniel Bryan/Erick Rowan

ER: Fans going nuts for home state boy Bryan is fun to see, and continues the trend of the crowd starting loud for this show and getting louder. I am far more excited for this match than I should be, as Bryan vs. Otis is a match-up I can't help but get excited for. Otis is someone I'm really happy is on the roster, the type of shape that just hasn't been around enough lately (I mean his shape is plenty around, but you know what I mean). Otis' arms are shaped exactly like his legs, he has cool strength, and he seems like a great unique partner for Bryan. And I'm not wrong, as the Otis/Bryan moments are incredibly fun. The whole match is incredibly fun! This is another fresh match and it leads to a ton of new cool stuff. I could watch Bryan kick away at Otis's pork barrel chest all damn day, and Bryan throws more kicks on Otis in this match than any match this year, and Otis hits a big damn press slam, big powerslam on Rowan, big capture suplex on Bryan, the big high angle sitout powerbomb on Bryan was awesome, he passes off a vertical suplex to Tucker, and  - even though the fans are booing Heavy Machinery the whole match (and I loved that Otis was somehow getting the most heat of the night so far) - he still did that damn worm. Tucker showed a ton of agility I didn't realize he had, there was this killer early moment where he somersaulted over Bryan to get into position to lariat him out of his boots, and later he missed a big moonsault, took a big bump over the top to the floor, and was a part of a neat double team powerslam on Bryan. I do wish they would have made slight alterations to the match structure once it was so obvious that the crowd was going to treat Bryan like the face and HM like the heels, it made things a little silly when Tucker was fighting to the Otis hot tag while the crowd booed. Still Otis clearly knew what was going on and made a bunch of faces to show that he was just rubbing it in to the fans. His dorky chunkster hype movements while Bryan was lacing kicks into his chest made me laugh, and I just thought the pairing was insanely entertaining the whole match.

Alexa Bliss vs. Bayley

ER: This one didn't do much for me. Bliss worked too long and too dry a control segment, and Bayley's comebacks often leave me flat as they can look clumsy and revolve way too much around her opponent getting into an unnatural series of positions to take her specifically ordered offense. There were good moments, dug Bayley taking out Cross with a dive, dug Bliss hitting knees on the rotating splash, but this was pretty dry overall. This was the first match on the card I couldn't get into.

Drew McIntyre vs. Roman Reigns

ER: This show appears to be dying fast after a legitimately fun and exciting first couple hours, as this is filled to the brim with Shane interference, none of which is interesting. It really chumps McIntyre when he not only can't put Roman away, but has to also get out of the way while Shane does his thing, and still can't beat Roman. It's not a very satisfying match structure. Just like the prior match, there were some exciting moments: Roman hit one of those big Undertaker no hands dive (and he gets nutso height), but this all felt too predictable, and it spent too much time propping up a feud I have no interest in.


ER: And with that, I'm sad to say that I have already filled my life's quota of Dolph Ziggler/Kofi Kingston matches. We've been seeing 10 minute + singles matches from these two for literally a decade, sometimes enduring stretches of TV where they were happening every other week, and they do not have anything new to add to their match story. And there is no chance I'm going to sit through a Seth Rollins main event when I can be watching a bananas new season of Luther. I had a great time with the stuff I liked, and I pulled the plug by using common wrestling sense. Bless.

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