This is really fun early as they do a lot of shit off the ropes, some nice execution and Rip is really strong keeping pace with Barr. The crowd is super into this and they do a lot of comedicesque spots out of holds, with Barr controlling the arm. Oliver takes over with a short elbow. Cool spot with Barr powering out of a camel clutch and dropping Rip into the turnbuckles. Crowd is really hot and he starts to rattle off some offense but whifs on a dropkick. Cool spot with Barr rolling through on a reverse crossbody that Oliver had ducked on and hitting some big offense, only to hit the post on a corner charge, leading to the Rip shoulder breaker. Really fun tv match that I would like to see make the set.

The undercard matches on Portland TV were generally solid during this era, with guys like Chris Colt, Barr, Brian Adidas and the Samoans. But this was definitely a step above the norm. Barr came out with a lot of energy as he worked some nifty arm-control spots. Oliver's cutoff elbow looked nasty. Rip will be an interesting guy for people to see, because he was such a solid hand who won't really pop up anywhere else as far as I know. Anyway, the crowd really liked the match, popping big when Barr broke the camel clutch as Dylan described. It seemed fitting that Barr got a little overzealous and threw his shoulder into the post, which left him a sitting duck for the veteran Oliver's finisher. This was short and probably won't do great against the more epic main events. But I'm all for including it as a strong example of another type of match Portland did well.