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.