August 2015

One of my fears about this tourney was the dreaded PWG bloat, this is a fed in the past that has had 14 minutes matches drag to 25, so I was happy this was a compact 9 minutes. Both guys had some cool ideas, that they only hit sometimes, I liked Cage doing curls with Aerostar's body, and that finish hanging Steiner screwdriver was uncalled for. Cage is good in Lucha Underground 4-Ways, and this felt like it could have used two more guys to do some stuff in between their big spots. If they had included Big Ryck and Drago this might have been something great.

Took a while to get going, as they did a lot of dance contest horseshit which didn’t do much for me. Had a fun finishing run, including a great dive by Angelico, but the problem with tourneys like this is, is that you get inured to all of the high spots, there has been a reverse rana in every match so far, so when Rich Swann does one, it is hard to care, same with 450s and 630s, just the same kind of spots over and over again. I liked this fine, but I could see having a problem watching all three nights of this tournament.

This was pretty much a popcorn match, with both guys breaking out all of their spots until there was a finish. For that type of match it was pretty good, although nothing I will remember later (unlike the British match earlier which was a similar style but with more pizzaz) . I liked how Fenix brought a little extra to all of his kicks and chops, there was one point where he toed Sydal in the eye, which was brutal looking. Sydal is good at playing the outclass veteran who used to be able to jump as high as these kids, but now is a step slow, kind of like a Grizzlies era Vince Carter. Still the match ending on a reverse rana,, into a SSP after every nearly every other mat…

This was the most PWGish match on the show. Mt. Rushmore 2.0 has some fun triple teams, and I loved ZSJ using a Breaks special as a hot tag move, but this match just went forever. It felt like it had two or three crescendos, and then the match would slow down with the Bucks doing shtick. It this had seven minutes or so cut, it might have been pretty good, but I just lost interest as it just kept going. I did think this set up Sabre Jr. v. Strong pretty well, and made Rushmore look badass going into the next two days.

This was a bummer, I like both guys a lot and you figure they would have lots of experience working each other, but lots of this felt off, and even the big spots weren’t as big or interesting as stuff that was hit earlier in the tourney. Pentagon Jr. has a lot of charisma but this wasn’t good.

Trent ? is the former Trent Barretta and an ex Chuck Taylor partner, and he has the same junior college improv troupe approach to wrestling. After his early shenanigans he tries to have a serious indy wrestling match, and he isn’t particularly good at that either. We get the 43rd reverse rana of the tourney, and some german suplexes and shit. Lee is a guy I have liked in other matches (He had an awesome sprint with Bailey in PWG earlier this year) but he couldn’t do much here

This first round placed guys together who had worked each before or worked similar styles. It hurt a little on the dream match aspect of a tourney like this, but it did allow new guys to avoid awkwardness and show their stuff. This was a total blast, both guys are hitting very high difficulty flips and arm drags, I know my man Robert Bihari must have been losing his shit live, Andrews especially was just contorting his body in mid air with a variety of crazy takedowns, reminded of a taller Mascarita 2000, including one of the prettiest springboard ranas I have ever seen. Osprey was also really fast, and got crazy height on everything he did, his twirling kick looked like …

Well if you are going to do a goofy indy comedy match, I much prefer this kind of thing to stupid shit like slow motion or hypnotizing. Jack Evans is talking shit to the audience and goes to grab a beer, he drinks it and breaks out Drunken Kung Fu, which he was totally awesome at, so much fun to watch him and Angelico do Jackie Chan spots. The rest of the match was fine, but they probably should have made that the apex of the match.

This was really great, and the kind of change of pace night one really needed. Less grappling then EVOLVE Thatcher matches, as this was more of a FUTENish slugfest. Hero was absolutely blitzing Thatcher with kicks and elbows, which Thatcher would do a great stunned sell of. Thatcher meanwhile would fire back with uppercuts and grabbing ankle picks, including one in the ropes which looked like it might shred Hero’s achilles. Lots of great violence here, including a Hero short snap piledriver which Thatcher sold like it paralyzed his arm, and a headbutt counter by Thatcher which looked like it dislocated Hero’s jaw. I didn’t love the finish, which had Hero hit a sick tombst…

I enjoyed this, it was worked as sort of a bankrupt man’s Ikeda v. Ishikawa. Gulak would control with takedowns and grappling, while End would spring out and land a big punch or kick. I liked End’s spin kick a lot, which is a great looking strike which Gulak sold great. There was a silly spot with End selling a knee by falling down hokeyly and getting clotheslined, and I thought the finish was a good idea that wasn’t executed properly. Still this was mostly pretty good, and I like how this show is mixing up the styles of matches, much better then night one which was very samey.

Hyped up version of a Nitro Lucha tag. None of these guys are prime Juventud Guerrera, but this was a blast. Fenix especially looked good, hitting a really insane dive really fast. I thought Aerostar was a bit botchy, but out side of him everything was hit cleanly and Pentagon continues to look like a total badass.

This was fine indy juniors wrestling. Scrull had a lot of shtick which I began to tire of, I liked the finger breaking spots, but it didn’t really lead anywhere. Still this was short enough and didn’t have a ton of things I hated. Would get the full Worldwide point

Bailey has gotten to be a master at this kind of workrate indy match. Galloway is just a monster compared to most indy wrestlers and this was almost Rey v. Big Show. Really liked how nasty all of Galloway’s simple stuff looked, he had really nasty stomps including some right on Bailey’s insteps. Galloway set up some very realistic near falls, and made Bailey look overmatched but credible. Felt this went a little long, and would have been better if they cut a near fall or two.

Super Dragon returns after a four year absence, which was preceded by a three year absence, so it has been seven years or so since he has been a regular active wrestler and he comes in killing people like he hasn’t missed a beat. He takes an Alabama Slam on a ladder, does a flip dive and takes a bunch of chair shots to the head. Busick and he just rip into each other all match. Busick feels like a guy who grew up watching Super Dragon and was super amped to have a chance to have one of these crazy brawls. Bucks are fine in this kind of nutjob brawl (my favorite Bucks match ever is their Guerrila warfare match against Dragon and Steen), they aren’t afraid to take big bumps…

Pretty entertaining stuff, with Ricochet looking perfectly comfortable working Sabre’s WOS tribute act stuff. Ricochet even breaks out the Cerebro special which will endear me to you. Sabre has a bunch of fun ways to snatch someone out of midair. This seemed like it was raring up to go long, but I actually liked the point it ended at. Good stuff.