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

ER: At the Nashville airport waiting to fly back to SFO, and none of these guys showed up on WWE TV this week! So I'm gonna take this chance and find each of their earliest match from this year that I have not seen, and write them up. This feels like a good way to play some 2019 catch-up while waiting for new material, while waiting for a flight, while just wanting to be home this second.


Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Bartel WWE NXT 1/3/19 (Aired 1/23)

ER: I wasn't expecting this one to be so hotly contested, but Aichner and Bartel worked most of this as if they were exact same level as Lorcan and Burch, and I didn't realize that was ever the case. Maybe Lorcan and Burch's stocks have just risen that much in only 6 months. But this was cool, filled with hard suplexes and big back elbows and uppercuts. Burch had a couple nasty cut off moments - the dropdown out of air single leg being one - and threw a big headbutt, but I was surprised (pleasantly) at how much Bartel and Aichner ran this. That mostly stopped when Lorcan started his big comeback, flying in with an elbow and hitting a wild flip dive out the other side. This was under 5 minutes but filled to the brim, everyone shining, crazy highspots like Aichner's triple jump moonsault, or hard strikes to the neck, fun watch.

Drew Gulak vs. Mark Andrews WWE World Collide 1/26/19 (Aired 2/2)

ER: I liked this, but a lot of it felt like Andrews along for the ride, and even though it really wasn't long I found myself just wanting Gulak to put this little floppy haired guy away. It had good basics, side headlock takeovers that whipped over, some fine headscissor reversals, neat wrist control segments from Gulak, rolling foreheads off each other, stuff I like. And I have dug Andrews before, think he always has the talent to show up, but I also don't like a lot of the times he's shown up. I don't think he looked bad here, but he looked like Gulak was schooling him and it felt long. I liked Gulak's stump puller arm bar, but we got probably a couple too many sunset flip roll up sequences (though I think the one where Gulak jumps backward to catch one with opposite momentum is almost always a great looking spot and was here). Rolling through pins into chokes is something Gulak does well, and all moments of it here were nice. An enjoyable match that really wasn't too far off from being list. One more tiny something would have boosted it well.

Gentleman Jack Gallagher vs. Tyler Bate NXT UK 1/27/19 (Aired 2/27)

ER: This had the beginnings of a seriously great match, but I thought the finish was sudden (by design), distractingly long, and more than a little silly. Since the entire match is essentially matwork leading to pinfall, with not much in between, the matwork portion was great and then things basically ended. I'm unsure if I would have been better with the match just ending as a 10 minute draw, rather than the finish we got. It's a little tough to evaluate a match with some of the best mat tricks WWE has seen, that then ends with a dozen one counts and a schoolboy. So let's just look at the matwork and soak in it pleasantly. Bate was aggressive on the mat, going after Gallagher's arm but not ever really doing too much damage, and always eventually getting shown up and punished by Gallagher. Gallagher had some smooth reversals into a headscissors, and Bate had a slick moment where he kneeled down on Gallagher's ankles to get him to loosen his legs enough for Bate to pop his head out.  Jack's Indian deathlocks and work on the knee were great, sinking in holds and doing things like digging his knee into Bate's thigh. I really liked how Bate sold the knee too, being wobbly on his feet and using his bum wheel to still do kneelifts into Gallagher's face (while making it clear that he has made the choice that it's better to use his in-pain knee as a blunt instrument than trust putting weight on it to weaponize his good knee). It looked like the match was getting off the mat and into a crazy stretch, and then the silly little finish happened. And that's fine. Wrestling isn't all about Match of the Year status and can also be about the unexpectedly good and bad. This whole thing is well worth seeing just for the opening 5-6 minutes alone, some of the most fun scrambling and transitions I've seen in wrestling this year, regardless of promotion.