2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Gallagher vs. Carrillo

33. Jack Gallagher vs. Humberto Carrillo WWE 205 Live 5/28

ER: This was the last Jack Gallagher match I needed to see from 2019, I've already watched and written about the other 23. This one came in the middle of the year - just before we started our Big 3 project - meaning is was eventually the 24th that I got to. And what a match to go out on. This was probably the most stretched out a Gallagher match as we've seen from his improbably long WWE run, a full Gallagher circus without a net. But it also turned into one of my absolute favorite style clashes of 2019, two guys using their very different styles in some inventive complementary ways, and some expert callbacks and killer uses of learned behavior. This match was two guys given 17 unconstrained minutes to do whatever their thing is, and they crushed it.

The first 5 minutes are spent on absolute horseshit, and it was great. Gallagher worked like Harold Lloyd doing a wrestling film, all quirky escapes and distractions and misdirections into other escapes, the kind of gags you'd see in silent pictures. I loved his headstand escape out of a grounded headlock, and they worked a bit that felt so wonderfully out of place in modern WWE. It reminded me of the 1989 European Rougeaus/Rockers tags, with both teams just posing and doing kip ups and handsprings for reaction. That kind of stooging is nonexistent in WWE, and here Gallagher works several long bits, peaking with him doing headstand work on the top turnbuckle, leading up to Carrillo appealing to the crowd with his own headstand. And so Gallagher shakes the ropes comedically and scrambles for a fast 2 count schoolboy. That feels like something that's inevitably going to show up in some 1959 French Catch match.

The first third of the match there aren't any strikes, and I began to get excited at the prospect of them working a long match with no strikes, and not advertised as a match with no striking. But I really loved the direction they went instead, as Carrillo dropkicks Gallagher after a fast sequence and Gallagher goes down, holding his mouth. And from that moment it's like Gallagher decided gloves were off and started ramping things up all the way to the finish. The first dropkick he throws lands much harder than Carrillo's and later he hits a finisher worthy flying dropkick into the corner, but there's also a fun recurring story of Gallagher always wrongly anticipating The Kick. They craft a real cool callback moment (one of several), where Carrillo hits a tope en reversa and the next time Carrillo springs off the rope Gallagher anticipates the same tope, and winds up eating a sweeping kick to the face. Later Gallagher ducked a high kick and wound up eating a standing version of that same sweeping kick. Gallagher really pushes pace as this keeps going, and he breaks out a legit contender for Dive of the Year when he sprints as fast as he can and hits Carrillo flush with the most of his body as possible. Carrillo eats boot on a twisting moonsault and that pays off when he tries the same on Gallagher, who spots it, but doesn't spot the small package right after. The match was filled with moments like that, learned behavior that never felt like any kind of dance, because they kept things to their own beat. I even thought the character stuff between Gallagher and Carrillo after the match was really well done. This was two guys well tuned and confident in their characters, and it was to our benefit that they got to do this.

PAS: I think we will look back at the time when 205 Live had these super long weird matches as a weird blip. Hell I am not sure WWE had more then 10 matches in the 2000s as long as this random 205 Live match between two guys who are hardly on TV. Gallagher is one of the few guys with enough stuff to fill such a long match, and I loved how he went from lighthearted to more serious as he failed to really keep Carrillo under wraps. Eric mentioned all of the French Catch we have been watching, and this really did have a French Catch feeling with all of this counter heavy athleticism early, leading to a finish with more nasty violence (although the forearm exchanges in 50s Catch matches are way better, that was the only real flaw of this match). Loved Gallagher putting on a tight facelock and showing everyone in the crowd his forearm before he drove it across Carrillo's face. I would say the wrong guy went over, as Gallagher was so much better than Carrillo, but these matches all kind of feel like they happen in a weird vacuum so it doesn't really matter.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST