EVOLVE 59’s stream was brutal, but what I saw was very cool. Barely could see any of Hero-Yehi unfortunately, but what was there seemed awesome. The wristlock wars of Riddle-Sabre were cool.

 

Early on Ricochet and Ospreay clowning around did nothing for me, but in the home stretch it became a really entertaining spotfest. Trading reverse ranas, Phoenix splashes, Death Valley Driver on the apron. It was over the top, but I will be the first to give it to them in saying it was all well executed and really fun.

At Mercury Rising now. HERO vs. SABRE was amazing live. It was hard for Gulak vs. Fred to follow but they tried. Crowd was still sort of dead at the beginning of Riddle vs. Hot Sauce. However, both guys were awesome and won the crowd over quickly and we were going nuts by the end.

Watched a handful of Riddle matches for the first time yesterday. As much as I enjoy most of the Evolve crew, I don't see most of those guys going to WWE and drawing money. Riddle is different. He has so much personality. He has an awesome character with that whole East coast jock/lax bro thing going. On top of being a legit badass, he just has that it.

Evolve might be my favorite promotion in the world, but the presentation of 58 was total amateur hour. Not just the technical difficulties; the card was poorly designed with two confusing finishes to kick it off. I'm still looking forward to catching up on the rest of the WWN weekend, but it was a bummer to turn to that after watching NXT.

Yeah Evolve 58 was my first attempt to watch a live Evolve show and, well. . . not so smooth.

 

It's a shame because I really just want to order Mercury Rising and enjoy it ASAP but the way they have tried to handle these problems has been so haphazard and on-the-fly and really has shown how horrible their refund policy is. I'm so fed up by honestly not even knowing what "make good" I'm entitled to because they just have no organization or clear line on some of this stuff. Not to mention the whole five dollar increase if you order a show the day of, which I would be more accepting of if they just made it clear somewhere on the website.

 

Ah well, I'll still be buying their shows and supporting them but I hope they get a little more organized for rainy day situations like they ran into this weekend.

Evolve might be my favorite promotion in the world, but the presentation of 58 was total amateur hour. Not just the technical difficulties; the card was poorly designed with two confusing finishes to kick it off. I'm still looking forward to catching up on the rest of the WWN weekend, but it was a bummer to turn to that after watching NXT.

The finish of the first match was not confusing by design, it was just that somehow they had problems with the ring bell (there was no opening bell either) and the wrestlers did not realize that and thought that the referee did not end the match. Judging by all the people looking under the ring between matches 1 and 2 I would guess that they just "misplaced" the ring bell, as stupid as that sounds.

I know it wasn't confusing by design but it was confusing in execution and then they followed it with the title match, which had a purposefully strange, unsatisfying finish. It was a bad one-two punch, especially when paired with the tech difficulties. Also, I didn't like the way they threw the title match on impromptu. The whole Thatcher-Riddle feud, which I was pumped for, has been disjointed.

Watched a handful of Riddle matches for the first time yesterday. As much as I enjoy most of the Evolve crew, I don't see most of those guys going to WWE and drawing money. Riddle is different. He has so much personality. He has an awesome character with that whole East coast jock/lax bro thing going. On top of being a legit badass, he just has that it.

I was there live and Riddle's live charisma is off the charts. Plus the dude lives the gimmick. He was cheering his team on and booing their opponents from his gimmick table.

Having only seen the bits and pieces from evolve 59, most of 58, all of super show, nxt, and Mania for my personal preference Riddle vs Williams was the match of the weekend those two have such great in-ring chemistry and the back story that they are like competitive brothers in catch point that are down to fight each other anywhere at a moments notice is fucking brilliant if Riddle does get signed to WWE soon I really hope Williams goes as well because they have a chance to really be like a modern Bret vs Shawn eternal rivals.

Haven't seen any Evolve before this weekend, but I'm a confirmed fan now. 58 and 59 were great shows, and the supershow was pretty fun too, if a bit too long. I was super impressed with Matt Riddle - for a dude with like 10-15 matches ever he's amazing, not just with the athletic stuff but also his selling was really good too. The only disappointment was Timothy Thatcher. His work was technically really good but for whatever reason it didn't connect with the live crowd in the way that Hero, Ricochet, TJP, ZSJ, and Ospreay did. Anyway, tons of great matches and I'll definitely order the next show.

I'll talk more about it soon enough, but the WWNLive Mercury Rising show is the best pro wrestling card I've ever attended

Did you go to Evolve 59, Dylan? Feel like I've seen the least chatter about that one, and it's not On Demand yet.

Evolve has a few guys I could see making a career in the WWE, but Riddle I could see drawing serious money on top of the WWE.

Did you go to Evolve 59, Dylan? Feel like I've seen the least chatter about that one, and it's not On Demand yet.

 

What I've seen from 59 was good but the stream was such trash it's hard to say for sure. Can't wait for this VOD

Cross-posted from Shoe's MOTYC thread:

 

I did like Hero-Sabre, but I didn't get into it as much as others seem to have. It didn't feel competitive enough to me to truly be a MOTYC. At least I thought that until I realized that Hero was actually very giving, but he didn't really treat Sabre like someone at his level, just because he spent so much time jaw jacking with fans while working the match. I think in a way that was the whole point -- that Hero was overconfident and Sabre was an underdog -- but I usually like more parity in a MOTYC. I don't know. Evolve is brand new to me, so I might see it differently after watching more stuff. As of now, I'd go about ***3/4.

 

Going through the whole card now and will post other thoughts as I go.

Yehi-Gulak was ... wow. Short match that left me wanting a lot more, but this was pretty flawless. Yehi's grappling is amazing, but his selling is even better. He may be my new favorite wrestler. I want to go ****, but that's the appreciation for the new stuff talking. I'd go ***1/2 on the match.

Yeah I thought Yehi/Gulak was pretty damn great with a kind of abrupt finish. Check out Yehi selling his foot even after the following match, that dude has dedication.

Yehi-Gulak was ... wow. Short match that left me wanting a lot more, but this was pretty flawless. Yehi's grappling is amazing, but his selling is even better. He may be my new favorite wrestler. I want to go ****, but that's the appreciation for the new stuff talking. I'd go ***1/2 on the match.

Yehi is amazing and he has good chemistry with Gulak. They had a terrific match with one another on the last set of Evolve shows as well.

Post match of the Riddle match with Williams . Look how bush league Riddle looks compared to Yehi in selling.

Matt Riddle vs Tracy Williams blew my mind. I LOVED how it was structured with Tracy being pretty dominant but Riddle doing little teases to show he was still very much in the fight. I kept thinking they were going to jump to the finish after Riddle was getting beat up the whole time and then they'd keep going, which I appreciated. This got better the longer it went, which is a tribute to the great wrestling, but moreso Matt Riddle's intangible charisma. Great, great match. ****

I gave it 3 3/4* because Riddle didn't sell his neck post match and you had Yehi still selling his ankle big. I had it at 4 until the post match

I do think Williams is really growing in the Catch Point position, he is becoming one of my favorite indy guys.

Did you go to Evolve 59, Dylan? Feel like I've seen the least chatter about that one, and it's not On Demand yet.

Sadly no. I was at 58 and the Supershow. Also did the two ROH shows, the Funk BBQ (which had an ACW show going on throughout it), TexasMania, WrestleMania and Raw.

I thought Evolve 59 was the best show I saw for the weekend out of the 5 shows I saw live.

That's interesting. I seem to be higher on Mercury Rising than most. I think a lot of that hinges on the fact that I loved the FIP title match, which seems to have been polarizing.