EVOLVE 76 Live Blog

Wife and baby are asleep, so I figured I would check this out

Jaka v. Peter Kassa

I like Jaka a fair amount, although not enough to enjoy a longish Peter Kassa singles match. Jaka has some nice headbuts and works a grinding style which I enjoy, everything he does has some sting to it. Kassa has some nice athleticism, but his simple stuff looks bad (although that has gotten Okada pretty far). Match falls apart at the end when Kassa tries a second rope moonsault and the ring breaks dumping him on his head. Jaka finishes it quick and we have a delay as they try to fix it. Might be a short live blog.

Chris Dickinson v. Darby Allin

Fun match, this is the Dickinson I really dig, less of a fighting spirit babyface, more like a dipship meathead bully. Allin is a great underdog, he doesn't take as many insane bumps in this match, but does die on some in ring bumps. I especially loved Dickinsons dead lift German suplexes where he would snatch him right from the ground and dead lift. Allin kept avoiding the lawn dart, including countering it into a armdrag, and Allin gets the with with a roll up. Really fun compact match, with both guys performing their roles well.

DUSTIN v. Jason Kincaid

I really enjoyed Kincaid's hillbilly WOS of sport stuff, he wrestles like Checkmake Tony Charles impregnated an Arkansas ring rat during a WCCW tour. Early part of this match was fun with DUSTIN getting aggravated by Kincaids shtick, and say what you will about DUSTIN, he does a punchable douche face. This goes a bit long, although Kincaid has enough fun stuff to keep me engaged. Right guy went over, although it felt like DUSTIN needing to get a bunch of stuff in if he was laying down.

Zach Sabre Jr. v. Ethan Page

This is a grudge match, with ZSJ trying to get revenge on Page for convincing Gabe to put him over Sabre last year. I liked parts of this, as ZSJ torturing Page with submission holds was good fun, I especially liked the finish as ZSJ was DQ'ed for not releasing a triangle choke. Still grudge match means lots of strike exchanges and these are two guys you don't want to see exchange shots with each other.

ACH v. Matt Riddle

I liked this a fair amount, ACH is debuting and this was worked very much like an indy dream match. In many ways I am liking Riddle less as he gets more experience, early in his career he had this unique style, sort of crowbarish, kind of awesomely awkward, as he gets more polished he tends to work in more a indy workrate style, which isn't my thing. Still there was a lot to like here, especially when Riddle broke from modern wrestling convention. There was this point where ACH was running through all of these fancy counters and Riddle just upkicks him in the mouth and knees him in the jaw. I also loved him overwhelming ACH at the end, as a back and forth strike exchange turned into Riddle swamping him and KOing him. I didn't get a huge sense of what ACH brings to the table, but Riddle was well worth watching

Jeff Cobb/Timothy Thatcher v. Fred Yehi/Tracey Williams

This was a bunch of fun. Cobb and Thatcher remind me a lot of the Miracle Violence Connection, a little grinding, a little deliberate, but super powerful and violent. Yehi is one of the most fun guys in the world to watch wrestle, he comes at such odd angles and weird speeds, and I really like watching him counter Thatchers slow down style with bursts of energy. Cobb was great too wandering in and wrecking people with huge throws and big shots. Finish was pretty great with Yehi getting the surprise win over the champ, I really hope we get a big Yehi v. Thatcher title match if Cobb doesn't win tomorrow night.

Chris Hero v. Keith Lee

PAS: About two minutes into this match my stream dies, making that two straight EVOLVE shows I have tried to stream that have conked out during the main event. Totally lame, and it makes me regret the money I spent on this service. Totally bush league. Hopefully they put this up quick and I can watch this match this weekend.

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Select Matches from EVOLVE 75 12/11/16

1. Jeff Cobb vs. Fred Yehi

ER: Love these two and they worked a real fun 10 minute match, but it never really felt like there were any consequences. It was felt a little too rehearsed and set in stone. Everything in it looked good (although Yehi was too clappy on his dropkicks). The grappling was predictably cool, with Cobb reversing a go behind by grabbing a cravate, and Yehi going for a backpack choke which Cobb escapes by bending Yehi's wrist. There were a couple of really cool moments of Cobb catching a limb to block something, one where he blocked a Yehi forearm, and another late in the match where he blocked an octopus choke by grabbing Yehi's leg before it crossed his throat. Real cool visuals. Both men snapped off some impressive throws (shock!), with Cobb launching him on a pumphandle and Yehi snapping two low angle Germans. Match was quick and to the point and didn't doddle, but again it felt a little more like an exhibition than a dramatic 10 minute match. But I like the shit these two exhibit so NBD.

2. Chris Dickinson/Jaka vs. Darby Allin/Peter Kaasa

ER: A kind of messy but fun tag match. Props to Kaasa for rocking the 1993 Scott Steiner mullet. I don't love his feathery-soft-but-athetically-gifted offense, but I could see him getting better. Allin is a guy I've really started to love, feels like an early 2000s indy guy like Dixie, a dude with good selling and some quirky offense who will absolutely die on bumps. Phil is a big fan of creep mode Dickinson, and I still can't totally get a feel for Jaka but he and Dickinson make sense as a team. This had some cool stuff but also had some clunky "take a move and then plan my bump" kind of delays. Allin's standing-on-opponent senton is sick and I loved the ending of him doing his tope en reversa with Dickinson catching him. With more focus (they kept getting stuck with wanting a spotfest vs. wanting Jaka/Chris working an Andersons cut off the ring match) this could have been more, but as is it was decent.

3. Dick Togo vs. Ethan Page

PAS: Togo has wrestled random Italian crusierweights, DDT comedy scrubs,  and untrained Bolivians, but his greatest challenge might have been to get a match this solid out of the "Inexplicable" Ethan Page. Togo had the crowd behind him, as they seemed to be as irritated with this match being booked as I was. Dick was kind of a fun disrespectful babyface, he no sold one of Page's crappy punches, flipped him off, spit in his face. I did like how both guys did some cool counter wrestling, Togo caught Page's RKO attempt with an RKO of his own, and Ethan kept evading Togo's senton. Pretty entertaining match with Togo looking great. Didn't love the finish with Page hitting his rock bottom and pinning Togo clean, continuing the Ethan Page super push. Did Gabe see Owens with the WWE belt and decide to overpush his own Tubby Canadian with crap facial hair? Is this like when Russo tried to make Booker T the Rock? I did like how the Gatekeeper took the pedigree and senton, it felt like Togo v. Gatekeeper would have been the better match.

ER: "Inexplicable" Ethan Page is the perfect nickname, and would actually make him FAR more interesting as a worker. Just give him a self-aware "overpushed" gimmick. To me it feels more like Heyman pushing Justin Credible. Gabe's even celebrating the 20th anniversary of Credible beating Sasuke twice by bringing in another M-Pro legend to put over his own version. But this was good! Ethan can look fairly unathletic at times but sometimes it benefits the match, like when he sandbagged Togo on a backdrop to the floor, it instead made it look like Togo was really muscling him over, and then Page clunked nastily on the apron and into the railing. Page can throw some decent haymakers, and also some clunkers, and Togo was wise about picking and choosing which punches to treat like a big deal, and I liked the way they kept avoiding each other's finish. Togo hits a crazy delayed slingshot senton and splats Page with a tornado DDT on the floor, and I really liked a couple of Page's slams. Smart layout, still inexplicable why it was booked.

4. Chris Hero vs. DUSTIN

ER: A look into a text conversation between me and Phil:

Phil: Did you finish watching EVOLVE 75?
Eric: Need to watch Riddle match and curious what Hero can do with DUSTIN
Eric: I'm not going to watch the near 40 minute Gulak/Williams match though
Eric: If people were talking it up maybe, but I've seen them work enough good 15 minute matches
Phil: You are going to watch a DUSTIN match, and not a Gulak match
Phil: ?
Eric: Dustin match 11 minutes, Gulak match 36 minutes
Eric: And the match has Hero
Phil: Dustin match has Dustin
Phil: That match is Gulak's EVOLVE swan song, the climax of the Catch Point movement, the passing of the torch
Eric: Oh you watched it?
Phil: Fuck no, it's 36 minutes long

I love Phil, you guys. But yeah, it's true that Dustin was in this match. I don't care how much Dustin tries to look like Buster Posey, he still wrestles like serious Chuck Taylor. The problem with this match was that they worked things on equal terms, as if Dustin's strikes were just as powerful as Hero's. Hero sold the same for Dustin as Dustin sold for Hero. That's silly. We've seen a couple dozen Hero matches this year alone where he beats the shit out of someone who actually returns the stiff strikes. And now I have to believe that Dustin's strikes are hurting him? Dustin's clubbing shots to the back are some of the worst I've seen. I could just never by Hero being damaged by any of the strikes. But there were fun moments, because Hero got to find fun ways to hit Dustin. Hero threw a couple killer right hands, some great kicks, and awesome short knee, that nasty snap piledriver; it's Hero, the strikes will look good. Spot of the match: Hero gets a boot up in the corner and Dustin stops himself from running into it. Dustin laughs and makes a "that's your big plan?" gesture at Hero, and Hero immediately punches him. Match went the right length, just can't buy Dustin as any kind of threat to Hero. The moments that worked were Dustin trying to cheat to win, and really if this had been worked more like Akiyama/Inoue I could have seen myself loving it. Dustin is not Masao Inoue though.

5. Matt Riddle vs. Ricochet

PAS: I was looking forward to this on paper, but it didn't really deliver. This felt like Ricochet dragging Riddle into a Ricochet match, instead of Riddle getting Ricochet to work a Riddle match. There was enough cool stuff in there to make it worth watching, I really liked Riddle catching Ricochet's moonsault in a triangle choke, and the finish was neat. Unfortunately, most of this felt like dosey-do dance wrestling, with Ricochet sort of mailing it in. Disappointing.

ER: Yeah this really wasn't the match I wanted. This was sexy dance fighting. Both guys are good sexy dance fighters, and the way Ricochet strings together some sequences is really impressive, but sexy dance fighting isn't going to be the best use of either man's talents. The moonsault into the triangle was really cool, but that sequence in the middle where they were essentially running in circles taking turns kicking each other in different ways? You could hear the crowd get silent in the middle of it. My least favorite Riddle match :(

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Matches from EVOLVE 66 8/19/16

Phil went to this show with his 8.5 months pregnant wife and has been (rightly) on my case for me to watch Thatcher/Riddle ever since. There were a couple other matches on the card that interested me, so I figured I'd skip around and you know, not bother writing up Ethan Page/DUSTIN.

Tracy Williams/Fred Yehi vs. Jigsaw/Peter Kaasa

ER: I really dug this one. Phil had told me Jigsaw looked really bad live, but I thought he looked quite good in this. There was one moment that was too 2000 indy (Yehi having to be draped over the middle rope while Jigsaw went up to hit a dropkick), but he matched up especially well with Williams and liked the way he took offense. He was kind of the guy overmatched by Catch Point, and I thought he got that over nicely. I liked their grappling, Jigsaw had a fun little wristlock counter, some fun leg stuff. Jigsaw was also fun with Yehi, dug him tossing some stiff kicks before one got caught, leading to Yehi straight up punching him in the foot bones! But this match was really the Tracy Williams show, one of his best outings, and he was in it a lot. A lot of this was Williams/Jigsaw, which was cool. Yehi hung back more than usual, coming in occasionally to stomp some limbs and drop Jigsaw with a couple of big germans. Kaasa didn't make it in a lot either but hit his big space flying tiger drop and some fast power moves. He has an impressive high bridge on his northern lights, and I loved his flying shoulderblock in the corner. But this worked as a super fun Jigsaw/Williams show. Really wouldn't mind a singles match between them, or more Jigsaw in Evolve.

No Holds Barred: Timothy Thatcher vs. Matt Riddle

PAS: I was at this match live, loved it, and I may have loved it even more on video. Both live and tape had advantages. Live I could really feel the thud of all of the strikes. These shots didn't have the snap of a Low-Ki kick, they thumped, the sound when they landed wasn't sharp it had a real bass to it. On tape you can really see the close up of the mat work, I could tell that Thatcher was mauling Riddle's foot, but on video you can really see him try to separate the toes and turn the ankle. Thatcher has been hit and miss lately, but having this kind of harrowing violence in his grappling is where he is at his best. There is no test of skills, this is a mean guy trying to use grappling to maim the guy across from him. The no holds barred stipulation came in to play mostly with a lack of rope breaks, there was a bunch of innovative cool looking spots around no rope breaks, including both guys locking in kneebars and rolling off the apron to the floor, and Thatcher using the ropes to choke Riddle out and break a triangle. Finish was also an awesome use of the ropes, as Thatcher hung Riddle by the arm into a hangmans crossarmbreaker. Great stuff, right up there with my favorite Thatcher matches ever, and the best Riddle match of his young career.

ER: My god what a match. Phil has been on me for 3+ months to watch this, it has been the subject of at least two arguments, maybe three, and I get it. This match was ridiculously awesome, Phil was a lucky enough son of a gun to see it live, and he was just trying to share some wonderful wrestling with a friend. I was the bad friend. When I heard "No Holds Barred" I was thinking it was going to devolve into cheapshots and chair shots or something, and I'm so happy that wasn't the case. The stip took away rope breaks and you don't realize how important rope breaks are to these type of matches until the don't exist. So you're left to cringe at the twisting and screaming for extended periods of time, until one of them gets desperate caged animal eyes and starts lashing out at the other to save a limb. This is just a hyperviolent war with no weapons necessary to enhance the violence. This is a match that would translate across all eras of pro wrestling. As we learned through the 80s projects, violence and brawling are what most consistently transcend any particular style. And this whole thing is just awesome. Riddle jumps Thatcher during his entrance and the whole thing is go go go but with no big moves or rope running or anything like that. I was honestly hooked right from Thatcher's early match heel hook. It was one of the nastiest things I've ever seen. I fully bought into Riddle's screams, and Thatcher kept ratcheting that ankle further and further out of position and you could hear the crowd swelling each time. And from there they just tear into joints the entire time. The whole match looked like a constant struggle. Arms bent at awful angles, suplexes fought over, necks cranked, ankles twisted; everything in this looks career shortening. You hear about all those PWFG guys had wrecked joints into their 30s and you wonder if the same is going to happen to some of these Catch Point guys. But I will not think about that now because these men are fighting for my enjoyment!!! Phil covered how great all the rope based spots were, so I'll mention how much I loved how much sweat played a factor in things. "Slipperiness" as a match goes on is a favorite Joe Rogan talking point and I love how that proved true here. The longer things went the tougher it was to keep on a hold. You see Thatcher lock in what could have been a match ending ankle lock but Riddle slipped out. Riddle locks on a Bro lock in the middle and Thatcher is able to slide right through into a vicious calf crusher. The violence never stopped in this, and the whole thing really felt like a high water mark for this style. Love.

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Cody Rhodes

ER: I was really curious about this one, as I've somehow become one of the bigger Sabre supporters (despite my opinion on him remaining relatively consistent), and I was also a pretty early fan of Cody. Cody would go through peaks and valleys in WWE, but every year or two he would go on a TV run that would reconfirm his quality. He had a nice 09/10 syndicated run and as recently as 2014 I thought he and his brother were the best tag team (and it wasn't just Dustin doing the heavy lifting, Cody was more than holding his own in those tags). So I was excited to see his first non-WWE affiliated match of his career. And I really liked this match, although admittedly it was mostly Sabre that I liked, and the ending was far too sudden. But I thought this match was a nice feather for Sabre, who has gone from internet favorite to "overrated". I thought he was pretty vicious here working over Cody's wrist. He kept on that wrist and plenty of stuff he did made me cringe. I injured my wrist 15 years ago working at FedEx and I'll go months without feeling any pain, then out of nowhere be hit with a stabbing pain on my top right wrist. Seeing Sabre bending and wrapping and twisting Cody's wrist made the pain palpable to me. Sabre locked on some really cool stuff, especially loved his short arm scissor. He locked it on real tight and clasped Cody's hand to wrench it in even more, and it even lead to some nice pinfall counters by Cody. Also loved the moments of him stomping the wrist, stomping the elbow, really everything Sabre did looked really good. Now any problems with the match mostly lied on Cody. He had a bunch of weird dated Edge offense that landed completely flat with me and the live crowd, several of those lame power plant moves that look like the giver is bumping just as hard as the taker. He even rolled the dice! His springboard kicks both looked weak, and it's not like I was expecting him to come in and wrestle all "indy", but his style also seemed somehow more dated than it ever looked in WWE, so that's weird. And the finish, as I mentioned, just came too suddenly and didn't really work for me. Maybe the match structure is to blame, and maybe that's on Sabre, but Sabre took 80% of this match, and it ended with Cody basically dropping him with a slam, and then locking on a (nice looking) knee crank to get the tap. The sub looked great, and the ring positioning was good, but we had just seen Sabre work Cody's wrist for 15 minutes while none of Sabre's limbs got worked over, so it came off really hollow for Cody's wrist to suddenly be strong enough to tap a guy who hadn't been weakened. The finish just didn't feel earned, which is a shame as I really dug the match overall. It stinks when the weakest part of the match is the last visual.


Overall a fun show (from what I watched), and Thatcher/Riddle is one of the easiest locks for our 2016 Ongoing MOTY List as there ever was. Every wrestling fan owes it to themselves and the wrestlers to go out of their way to watch that match. It is near wrestling perfection.  Find it, watch it, love it.

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EVOLVE 74 Live Blog

I figured the return of Segunda Caida legend Dick Togo is enough for me to give FloSlam a shot and live blog EVOLVE 74. Hoping for the best!!

Jaka v. Drew Gulak

Really good opener, way more competitive then I was expecting. Gulak is on his way out and he really tried to make Jaka. Really violent shots by both guys, Jaka is at his best as an indy Haku, and parts of this felt like a nifty Haku v. Benoit Thunder match. I also thought Jaka looked pretty solid on the mat, never looked out of place rolling, and when they stood up he was really laying in the head butts and chops. Really liked this finish too, Gulak is really good at snatching his Dragon sleeper out of nowhere, and while Jaka escaped it once, he wasn't going to escape it twice.

Larry Dallas who was a mediocre manager for this fed a while back, returns as a truth telling interviewer and they do a back and forth with Tracy Williams and Gulak. Excited about this as a match, but they aren't going to talk anyone into the building.

DUSTIN v. Chris Dickinson

Weird match, they keep booking Dickenson, who is a great loathsome heel, as a plucky babyface. Here he beats the shit out of DUSTIN, nasty chops, kicks, suplexes, with DUSTIN throwing in a bit of his weak looking shit, I have no idea why you would throw such pillows if Dickenson is throwing heat. This was basically poor man's Low-Ki v. poor man's Elax the Exploited child, with Elax working heel and going over.

Darby Allin v. Brian Cage

This was pretty much perfectly worked, Cage has a tendency in Lucha Underground to work 50/50 with littler dudes, but here he was just brutalizing Allin. Allin jumps him in the aisle with two cool dives and then he just gets smashed. Huge powerboms, suplexes and a awesome finish where Cage hurls Allin from the ring to the stage, totally holy fuck bump. I was excited about this match on paper, and it totally delivered.

Cody Rhodes v. Ethan Page

Jesus this Ethan Page push is killing me. Again he gets all of the shortcuts, ref bumps, interference, a long visual pin over the high dollar ex-WWE import. Every show feels like Page is a Make-a-Wish kid working a match at a fundraiser for him. There was an amusing spot where Page gets a portly Page fan to hold Rhodes for a chop and then gives him the finger instead of a high five, enraging the husky gentleman. Most of the rest was lots of terrible looking Page elbows and Rhodes kind of mailing it in. Not good. Poor Dick Togo has his work cut out for him.

Jeff Cobb v. Matt Riddle

Really fun match, I don't think either of their singles matches against each other have been the classics they have in them, but I really enjoyed this. They feel like a big deal whenever they get into the ring it feels like two big stars are locking up.  The match made a lot of sense Riddle was hitting Cobb with strikes and Cobb getting close and throwing him. I really loved Cobb having too thick of a neck to put on the Twister, and the catch into the tour of the islands was awesome. With Cobb going over, I figure this will get run back, and I am excited to watch it.

Fred Yehi/Tracey Williams v. Ricochet/Peter Kaasa

This was your big workrate tag, and it didn't do a ton for me. The Ricochet and Yehi have some really awesome fast exchanges, almost Red v. Ki speed, but outside of that this wasn't good. Kassa looks totally lost much of the time, he has some cool spots but he is basically indy Tom Magee, Williams is on a run of not doing much for me, he looked lost a couple of times, and some of his stuff looked weak. Would love to see Yehi v. Ricochet in a singles though, I wonder if Mr. Hughes ran that in his fed at one point.

Dick Togo v. Chris Hero

My stream died in the middle of this for a bit, so I am going to have to rewatch it, on first glance, I liked parts of this, but thought Hero was spamming piledrivers a bit, and it felt a little like they working an indy dream match, rather then a match with a real story. Might feel different on a rewatch without the stream death, but initially it was a bit disappointing. I did love Togo faking out Hero's mind games early and some of the big right hands by Hero.

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