Wading in the Water, Gulak's Trying Not to Crack

Drew Gulak vs. Lince Dorado WWE Main Event 4/22/21 - GREAT

ER: The week before this Gulak had maybe my least favorite match of his this year, and definitely the only match of his this year where it seemed like he wasn't as sure how to fill time. And then this, a week later, is one of his absolute strongest showings of the year. Maybe you can give credit to his long history with Dorado, but whatever the reason, I love what they did here. Gulak was excellent at being into position for every Lince strike or piece of offense, and in between all that he went after Dorado's joints. I love how Gulak doesn't treat any small piece of offense as merely a transition. Sometimes his nastiest stuff comes off a move that many other wrestlers treat as a means to get to something more flashy. Here Gulak hits a drop toehold early in the match that looked like Inoki unprofessionally hacking at a fake Russian judoka's knee. They work some cool knucklelocks, Gulak has some nice bridge work, Dorado gets Gulak down by pushing his knee into Gulak's arm, all cool stuff. Gulak always seems to bring different offense to each match, things you won't see him do for the rest of the year. He hits a great spinning side slam (looked like he was corkscrewing Lince into the mat) and a nice sitout powerbomb, and I like how he slowed things down with a nice joint-stretching Gory special. 

It's difficult for a masked guy to sell a Gory special well, since all their limbs are tied up and most of their face is obscured, so Gulak knows he has to pick up the slack to keep it engaging. The shot of Gulak hunched down in a squat - aiming to tear Dorado's quads and wreck his shoulders - was completely badass, and Dorado's arm drag to break the Gory special was excellent. My favorite Gulak moment (in a match filled with them) saw him duck a Dorado superkick and seamlessly get him into an electric chair faceslam that moves immediately into the Gulock, and no part of it looked like Dorado was intentionally missing the superkick *just* to get into position for the electric chair. It was a very complicated spot that they made look as natural as a bodyslam. I really dislike the trend of guys being able to survive the Gulock, as the prior week saw Garza spend 90 seconds working to the ropes, and here Dorado lasts 25 seconds before forcing Gulak to break with a roll up. They went to the Dorado win way too easily for how the match had been going, essentially letting Dorado survive Gulak's finisher and tons of punishing and then go right to the superkick/shooting star for the win, but I'm not going to let that ruin an otherwise great match. 

Drew Gulak vs. Akira Tozawa WWE Main Event 4/29/21 - GREAT 

ER: Great work from both in a match that got a few more minutes than either usually get. Gulak is great at  slowing down sequences you might recognize, make his opponent work for something that can be more perfunctory. Here he controls Tozawa with a nice top wristlock, holds on to headlocks, breaks Tozawa's reversals with a snug headscissors, drops to a knee to neutralize a Tozawa headlock, uses his leverage to block a Tozawa armdrag, it's all a cool way to do some flashy aggressive grappling with a bunch of twists on familiar exchanges. Gulak gets kicked to the floor and Tozawa hits a fantastic tope, just a flawless headbutt torpedo that nails Gulak in the chest. But it's an interesting note about the match story, as Gulak shows he is prepared for Tozawa and has counters for a lot of Tozawa's offense. Tozawa may be able to surprise him with a perfect headbutt, but anything short of perfection Gulak will be there with something mean. 

He elbows his way out of a fireman's carry and blasts him with a clothesline, chokes him over the bottom rope with his boot and then wedges Tozawa's face between steel rope cable and boot, just standing on Tozawa's head over that rope. Gulak drapes him over his back and holds onto only Tozawa's jaw, like a Gory special if you want to rip a guy's head off, then makes things even more painful by twisting Tozawa like Volk Han would. Gulak locks in that dope Volk Han special inverted STF, and the immediacy that Tozawa went rolling for the ropes made an already devastating sub look even more dangerous. Tozawa's flying seems to be his only in, as he's landed a few nice punches but every time he tosses a limb at Gulak that limb seems to get eventually caught, so he nails a cannonball off the top (to a standing Gulak, love how it looked) and appears to be rolling, until Gulak shifts perfectly to catch Tozawa's senton in a match finishing Gulock. Excellent stuff throughout, a dominant Gulak performance that ends with him looking still dominant, and a very fun Tozawa performance. A lesser wrestler would have looked like they got steamrolled by Gulak, but Tozawa knew how to get his while also getting beat. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DREW GULAK