Matches from EVOLVE 127 5/10/19

Josh Briggs vs. Adrian Jaoude

ER: This was fun, as it felt like a modern version of a good Sunday Night Heat Test/Steve Blackman match. It's a brisk 5 minutes, and even 2 minutes in it felt like they had done a ton. Jaoude (later Arturo Ruas) is a guy I like who might not have been good at this point, plus I don't think capoeira ever works very well in a wrestling setting. The timing of the strikes almost always makes opponents look kind of silly while waiting to be hit. But I think this might have been the match where his strikes started looking good, and there was an awesome sequence where he blocked two big Briggs strikes and countered with two of the best strikes I've seen from him. What helped is that it all looked way less sequenced than normal - even though it was - with Briggs throwing to hit instead of throwing to be blocked. That's a super important difference between modern wrestling done effectively and modern wrestling looking terrible. Jaoude was fun going after Briggs' hip, arm, hand, grabbing a choke, and Briggs had some nice quick power stuff to counter. I'm not sure I remember the last time someone got a reaction from me just grabbing for a chokeslam, but Briggs violently reaching out for that choke ruled.

Babatunde vs. Adrian Alanis

ER: Babatunde is the current Commander Azeez in WWE, getting actual ring time in Evolve. I liked Babatunde as a green Evolve giant because it's cool seeing huge guys wrestle, no matter their development level. I don't need to see him as a fake underground fighter, don't need to see him as a non-wrestling military dictator, just let me see a wrestling giant. Here he is wearing preposterous checkered tights (one leg black, one leg checkered) and he looks like the world's largest tallest ska saxophonist. Throw him together with prime pork pie hat Mr. Hughes and call them Skankin Muscle. This is only about 3 minutes, a Babatunde showcase. Alanis hits three hard rolling lariats that barely budge Babatunde, then Babatunde gets to show off his big man speed. He doesn't have a lot of stuff that looks great at this point, but it's fine because he's near 7' tall so just making connection with a guy is going to have something behind it. But I like his sloppy standing splashes and the way he catches Alanis with a choke. On commentary we learn that apparently the WWE trainers think Babatunde is the most explosive and powerful guy in developmental, so that explains why we've gotten to see him wrestle on TV twice since this show 28 months ago. 

Anthony Henry vs. Juntai

ER: This was only a couple years ago and I gotta say, Juntai is pretty far under my radar. I did not remember a Juntai wrestling on three Evolve shows in 2019, and it feels like Evolve was one of the indies I watched most. This was his only Evolve singles match and I liked it quite a bit. It was a mostly vicious Henry match with Juntai able to show a lot of cool tricks. The match had probably a couple too many tricks, but much more good than bad. Part of the problem is the layout, as Henry knocks Juntai out of the match a couple minutes in, and it's always kind of annoying when a guy is nearly taken out of a match and commentary is yelling about how the match may not even continue, but Juntai still had to get all of his cool offense in. I think you can shift the events of the match around into a much more palatable order and get to a great match, but we're still left with a cool match as is. 

Henry was working really mean with Juntai, and the match almost needing to be stopped came when Henry double stomped Juntai in the chest while the latter was bent back over the apron. Henry followed it up with a double stomp to the chest off the apron, then hit a brutal running kick all the way from the entrance. It was a believable enough series of moves to take a guy out of a match. But I'm glad we got to see Juntai get some shine. We don't get a ton of martial arts monk gimmicks. Low Ki and Jinsei Shinzaki kind of bullseyed the vibe of that gimmick for the past 30 years ago and nobody else gave it a shot. But Juntai does it really well. He has a ton of super slick movement, hits a cool spinning heel kick with his hands clasped behind his back, pays Henry back with his own flying kick to the jaw, and finds a ton of cool ways to roll and flip into position, and has some real precise kicks. Henry dished out a stiff beating and Juntai leaned into all of it, and was a strong salesman. Things eventually veered into some trading that I didn't love, but this was a cool presentation. 

Kassius Ohno/Harlem Bravado vs. AR Fox/Leon Ruff 

ER: I'm going to watch any Ohno match I've never seen before, but this tag match was inexplicably 30 minutes long and I have absolutely zero idea why. Ohno teaming with Bravado is like that one show every All Japan tour where Stan Hansen would team with the weakest gaijin on that tour on a gymnasium show, a man who everyone in the building knows is getting pinned. And because this thing is a half hour long, we get far too much Harlem Bravado, a man with almost exclusively terrible strikes teaming with a man with among the best strikes in wrestling. I suppose that makes them complementary partners? AR Fox doesn't have good strikes either, and 30 minutes allows for a TON of time for Bravado and Fox to get several sections of terrible strikes. Ohno mocking Ruff and cutting him off any time the kid made headway was what kept this match bearable, and after seeing Bravado and Fox make timing mistakes for a half hour, seeing Ohno always exactly where the match needs him to be is a marvel. Ruff getting cut off from Fox was satisfying but Fox can't deliver the payoff the hot tag needs. There were great big moments, because any single Ohno/Hero match in existence is capable of having some great big moments. I loved him hitting a tope con giro onto AR Fox and the rest of the Skulk, Ruff hitting a rolling plancha off Bravado's shoulder and right into an Ohno crane kick, or just the sheer that comes with a series of fat Ohno sentons. This could have easily been a compelling 15 minute match with Ruff separated from Fox and showing on his own, but dragging this all the way out to 30 was completely unnecessary and did favors for nobody. Sometimes you accidentally watch a 30 minute Harlem Bravado match and at the end are left only with memories of the person you were before you knew such a thing existed. 

Eddie Kingston vs. Curt Stallion

ER: Stallion really didn't work for me in this match, and I hated his lack of transitions when going on offense. The match really felt like Kingston trying to gamely fill time (and occupying time with some cool stuff), Stallion nearly being put away several times, and then merely deciding to go back on offense when it suited him. Stallion's big plus in this match was having skin that gets nice shades of red and purple in response to Kingston chopping his chest, throwing palms at his back, or slapping Stallion in the stomach. Stallion jumped Kingston the second he got into the ring, and I like how Kingston kept rolling out to compose himself whenever he was disadvantaged, knowing Stallion would take the bait and roll out, giving Kingston the advantage. Kingston's brawling looked good, but it was like he kept trying to play off an energy that Stallion kept refusing to give. For a guy who came rushing into the match, Stallion gave this whole match a pretty sleepy vibe. He wasn't putting anything into kickouts and again, kept lazily going back to offense after close kickouts, and I don't buy a lot of his signature offense against Kingston. A good wrestler should be able to switch up his moveset depending on opponent, and the foot stomp/pull opponent into suplex doesn't work as well with a larger guy like King. I liked the way Kingston would annoyingly nudge Stallion into position with his knees, loved his heavy throws and big chops, but I could not get into Stallion's approach to this match. 

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Matches from EVOLVE 140 11/10/19

Colby Corino/Sean Maluta vs. Kekoa/Mike Verna

ER: I was into this one because I really like Corino and Maluta has made a lot of jumps since teaming with Kingston, and this was those two against two guys who recently impressed at an Evolve tryout. So I was expected The Unwanted to just destroy them and instead they basically worked a competitive 50/50 match with two guys who worked like they had recently won a tryout competition. I was surprised to see both Kekoa and Verna have close to a decade of experience because both looked tentative and felt like rookies who were figuring things out. Verna is a muscle guy who they played off as a BIG muscle guy, and he does big muscle guy Brian Cage offense, but he's clearly Candido size. So you have a 5'9" 220 lb. guy out there doing slingshot suplexes walking to all sides of the ring and getting Maluta and Corino placed on him for tandem powerslams, but he barely looks like the biggest guy in the match. It was weird. Kekoa had a couple of nice strike combos, but had a hesitance to a lot of it and it felt like Corino and Maluta were waiting around longer than they should have been. I loved all the parts of The Unwanted on offense, so that's what makes the match worth watching. Maluta has some strikes that I wished he would use even more, because he really knows how to punch through an elbow strike, great form, and I like a lot of his double teams with Corino. 

Corino is wisely looking at Jimmy Jacobs as his ceiling, and I think he's a really good Jimmy Jacobs. He makes the most of his size and throws himself hard into every piece of offense, the way Spike Dudley would throw his whole body into his battering ram headbutt. Corino looks like a guy who shouldn't hit hard, but he's got great elbows and kicks and is awesome at recklessly throwing his body around. There's one sequence that kept threatening to turn into the kind of indy wrestling sequence that I hate, where Corino and Verna kept running across the ring hitting each other. So Corino would hit him and take off across the ring, followed immediately by Verna who hits him and takes off, followed immediately by Corino, etc. Those sequences are almost always trash, but Corino decks him with an elbow, mixes it up with a wicked yakuza kick, and instead of continuing the sequence he flings himself over the ropes into Kekoa, doing a sloppily effective tope con hilo. It always feels like Corino is throwing as much of himself as possible into his offense, and it makes everything he does read so much better.


Babatunde vs. Brandon Taggart

ER: Well this wasn't very good, filled with tons of moments I wouldn't want from a hoss fight (as they called it on commentary). I've seen Taggart around but its always in scramble matches, feels like a good time to really see what he can bring is in a match like this. And I did not like most of what he brought. He's got a look that really screams Backyard, with super distressed jeans and Murderface hair. I know he was in IWA Mid-South a lot and he wrestles like the only training he got there was "How to have the precisely exact bad body as Ian Rotten", just a pale pinkish lumpy bod. He looks like his entrance theme should be Also Sprach Keratosis Pilaris. There are several sections of really shitty "reversal striking" where they go through these tedious block dance sequences. Taggart throws a blocked back elbow which spins him around into a blocked forearm smash which spins him back around into a mule kick, which spins him back the other way into a tornado clothesline. It all looks awful, and they need to take that shit back to their Wednesday night square dancing class and keep it the fuck away from a hoss fight. Taggart also clearly struggles to get himself up to the 2nd set of turnbuckles. Babatunde has workable tools, like how his missed big splashes land where the opponent actually was, forcing Taggart to really roll far out of the way or still get hit. Babatunde also had a series of running shoulderblocks in the corner, first ramming Taggart in the guy, then backing up, running into his body, backing up farther and running in harder, etc. Babatunde feels like a guy who Shinya Hashimoto could have had a great match against. Brandon Taggart felt like a guy who paid to be on an Evolve show.


Anthony Gutierrez vs. Donovan

ER: This was literally one minute long, but it was a good minute. Donovan throws a bunch of strikes, rushes in and gets got by Sharkbait's one man Spanish Fly, and then immediately tapped with an armbar. But Donovan showed me a lot with his strikes, throwing great body shots and a couple nice elbow smashes, definitely seems like a cool guy to have as the flunky in Eddie Kingston's stable.


120. Eddie Kingston vs. Arturo Ruas

PAS: Kingston's run as the modern day Inoki continues as he takes on Ruas, a Capoeira and BJJ fighter who is in the WWE system for some reason. Ruas has some fun body shots and kicks and Kingston is a guy who can work a match around body shots and kicks. I really liked Ruas's scissors kick takedown and it was a fun precursor to Kingston banging him in the eye with a wrench for the DQ. Seemed a bit weird for Kingston to look for the way out, when he was more than competitive,  and it was a bit of a flat finish. But I really enjoy these minor key Eddie matches and I grabbed a WWN Live sub just to watch him work green Performance Center guys.

ER: Kingston really is great as a modern Inoki, and I'm sure there isn't anyone currently as good at being totally overwhelmed by someone's fighting style, getting his bearings, and storming through with his own style. That's what makes Kingston so great, right? His stubborn hardheadedness that allows him to rush into attacks, eat shots that could have been avoided with a stronger game plan, and still come out the other side swinging. Kingston makes the best befuddled faces as Ruas is picking him apart, getting King to bite on one strike before sneaking in hard body shots, and nobody is better than Kingston at selling a stitch in his side. I don't love Ruas's offense, and maybe it's happened but I don't think we've seen someone make capoeira work in a pro wrestling setting, but Kingston is really the perfect foil for all of it. He's great at bumbling and getting his timing thrown off while Ruas is dinking around in a handstand or something. Kingston really laces into Ruas when he finally gets hold of him, my favorite shot when King just grabs him by the dome and clonks him with a headbutt. I liked the DQ finish, but it's a disappointing finish that Kingston can do really well. Even though he was clearly landing as many shots as Ruas, I like him just bashing a guy in the eye with a wrench because "fuck it this ain't worth it". Ruas catching that flying body scissors and requiring Kingston to quickly work for a rope break was the line Ruas caught, Kingston deciding this guy is too problematic so let's find the quickest way to leave this party.


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Matches from EVOLVE 139 11/9/19

Colby Corino vs. AR Fox

ER: This had some problems, but it also had some things that made it very much worth my time. A lot of the problems I had were with Fox, because he's one of the flat out most uninteresting salesman in Evolve. He sells almost every move he takes the same way he sells moves that he delivers, and it makes his matches look like we're all just waiting around for something serious to happen. Delivers a cutter, stands up and does a little hyphy dance; takes a cutter, stands up and sells like a later step in that same hyphy dance. He sells "about to deliver a move" and "just got kicked" like a guy who is just figuring out he ate some bad whitefish. Oh, until the end, where instead of selling indifference, he sold being knocked out cold on a kick that looked like it missed. So he either sells a couple of kicks to the face by doing handstands a moment later, or he sells a kick near his face like Kurisu was his debut match opponent. But that's cool, because after that KO and great false finish he managed to get up and hit a 450 just fine. So Fox worked a match where Corino was competitive the whole time and genuinely looked like he might pull off an upset, and the way he shrugged through every part of the match really lessened the impact of Corino's performance. Corino had a couple off moments, but way more strong as hell moments. He looked like he flinched on that missed kick at the end, and I get it because he probably didn't want to cave in Fox's face (spot was Fox leaping off the top by Corino sidestepping and upkicking like he was Kawada). But he does so many little things well, like not skimping on less severe kicks (his kicks to the stomach are straight thrusts, and his super kicks have great full extension and actually look like he slides into it to increase impact), and he starts the match with my favorite lock up I've seen in months. He really goes in hard on the lock up, keeping low to shore up his gravity, and believably bulls the larger Fox across the ring. He has a couple of great logical reversals out of sequences, like a really nice ace crusher that came out of a fine battle over a vertical suplex, or the way he just starts punching Fox in the back of the head immediately after a Fox kickout, or how he snapmares Fox into a turnbuckle. This didn't need a ton to be a really good match, really all it would have taken was some extra effort from Fox, but this is just more proof of how good Corino is getting.


97. Sean Maluta/Joe Gacy vs. Anthony Gutierrez/Arturo Ruas

ER: Great way to work a match like this, just have the two different fight guys come in and do their tricks, have the heel team cheat like assholes, have both teams work funky double teams with a couple of stiff pinfall saves, and get the hell out of there before it all blows up. Gutierrez is great in matches like these, all fast kicks that land heel to gallbladder, a willingness to take some nasty spills, and a surprise tope con hilo onto both The Unwanted. Non-pro wrestler athletes are a glorious goldmine early on in their wrestling career, and if Gutierrez sticks to this I seriously doubt we'll see him trying loose but effective (and dangerous) stuff like that tope. It doesn't have any of the slickness that someone like Ricochet brings to the move, and it benefits from that, as it just looks like a guy winging his body best he can into two men larger than him. Maluta has great chops and a nice right, and uses both of those effectively here. Gacy cuts out BS handspring offense and instead sticks to lariating Ruas in the back of the head (to set up a Maluta chestbreaker), and his 360 lariat is perfectly used as the final killshot after Maluta punts Gutierrez in the balls FROM BEHIND! Everyone moved quick and didn't linger on anything, Gacy and Maluta constantly either getting overwhelmed by weird fighting styles while also finding fun ways to stay ahead of those fighting styles. Not everything is going to land (I still don't love Gutierrez's corkscrew shooting star that never quite lands, and some of Ruas's strikes can look silly), but this was a kick ass style clash.

PAS: This was fun stuff. Maluta and Gacy are a really good hard hitting team, and they make the beat down look good and really let the face team shine. I liked all of the double teams in this match, they all made sense, and looked good. I am all in on Gacy if he is going to limit his offense to hard clubs and nasty lariats. The announcers said that "Joe Gacy can do anything" but I really want him to just do one thing. Gutierrez is two steps forward, one step back, but the steps forward are fun steps, and I love wrestlers going to the body. Unwanted versus the Performance Center is a fun feud, and pretty much always delivers.


32. Eddie Kingston vs. Babatunde

ER: We wanted to watch Kingston against green Performance Center guys, and we are getting just that. Kingston vs. Giant isn't a match we get a lot, and there's a ton of joy to be had watching Kingston get ragdolled around while trying to rip a man's ear off. There's a Burt Reynolds movie I really love called Heat, and in it he gets hired to teach self defense to Peter MacNicol. Burt immediately takes things up to 10 and suggests in his first lesson that his go to move is ripping a man's ear off. "It's surprisingly easy to do, only held on by a little cartilage. Showing a man his own ear is a good way to get his attention." Kingston as down and out Las Vegas degenerate bouncer going after the ears of tough guys is my kind of Kingston. We're starting to get a real glut of "Big Man Launching Tiny Man" matches, what with AEW running at least two per week, so watching a big man try and throw someone who can land with actual size and sell those throws in unique ways, gives us a welcome twist. We get the old Vader/Cactus Jack spot where Kingston is hanging off Babatunde like a backpack, and Babatunde just takes a back bump to crush Kingston. Kingston's outstretched, frozen arm is a great sell for someone afraid to move because of damage incurred. Kingston keeps going to the ear, even after eating a big vertical suplex he rolls over and just grabs that damn ear. I like how Kingston takes big power offense, like the torture rack neckbreaker, or the pop up chop, but I like even more when Kingston just kicks Babatunde right in the balls. The match was "Relaxed Rules" and really outside of that ball shot and Kingston stealing and attempting to use the ref's belt, there wasn't much done that wouldn't have been allowed under Agitated Rules. But Kingston brought a ton of color to a big man battle, and scanning the Evolve roster I don't see anyone who could have given him a more fun match than the King.

PAS: I thought this was totally awesome, loved every second of it. Babatunde is aways away, but Eddie made all of his offense look great and really went after him with unhinged viciousness. There are so many great flavors of Eddie Kingston, nasty unprofessional asshole is one of them, this felt like him beating on Shane Storm. All of the ear attacks looked great, were really simple and made a ton of sense fighting a huge guy like Babatunde. Eric made a good point about how great Eddie is at taking huge power throws. He doesn't bounce, he thuds. I also loved his big German suplex, you could really see him using all of his leverage and strength to get Babatunde over. I can't imagine this match being worked better, what a performance by the King.


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