I did a road report for that show

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2016/11/evolve-73-road-report.html

Tommy End and Matt Riddle are the two guys I see having some box office in them. You notice it so much more seeing them in person, how they just have that it, have that thing.

I didn't get that with Tommy End at all, though I agree with Phil that it feels like he should be cool to watch. That opener was a real dog of a match. But I certainly can't complain about a show with the one-two punch of Sabre-Gulak and Hero-Riddle. Two totally different matches that both hit the spot.

I thought the End match was fun, not great but fun. He has that it thing. He has a unique look. He looks like if one of the Dutch kickboxers from RINGS spent time in a Russian prison. He does cool shoot stuff in this modern era where UFC is all the rage. He has a shit load of personality. He's not vanilla, which 99% of the guys on the indies are. They are either small vanilla shooty guy or small vanilla flippy guy. Nothing about End is small and nothing about him is vanilla. He stands out in the crowd.

I just bought tickets for Evolve 75! Anybody else going?

Anyone else going to Evolve on Saturday in Queens? Pretty damn excited to see Dick Togo live again. A few other matches look promising too.

 

 

EVOLVE Tag Team Championship Match

Catch Point of Tracy Williams & Fred Yehi defend vs. Ricochet & Peter Kaasa

Special Challenge Match

Cody vs. Ethan Page w/ The Gatekeepers

Special Attraction Match

Chris Hero vs. Dick Togo

The Rivalry Comes To EVOLVE

Matt Riddle vs. Jeff Cobb

Special Attraction Match

Drew Gulak vs. Jaka

David vs. Goliath

Darby Allin vs. Brian Cage

Bonus Match

DUSTIN vs. Chris Dickinson

Gulak-Jaka: one of the best EVOLVE matches I've seen all year. Really stiff strikes, and Gulak really stepped his game up from recent outings where he's felt a bit lacking. This really had everything you could ask for in terms of some flying in and out of the ring, a good pace, violent exchanges, and smart struggles for submissions. This woke up what had been a dead crowd coming in from the cold.

Gulak-Jaka: one of the best EVOLVE matches I've seen all year. Really stiff strikes, and Gulak really stepped his game up from recent outings where he's felt a bit lacking. This really had everything you could ask for in terms of some flying in and out of the ring, a good pace, violent exchanges, and smart struggles for submissions. This woke up what had been a dead crowd coming in from the cold.

 

Big time breakout performance from Jaka in EVOLVE. They really have something if they can build on this immediately. I have been pretty down on the booking for the second half of the year but hopefully they see that they did a great job of making him here.

Dickinson-Dustin: Not a fan of either guy, but they worked some good schtick that kept the crowd into it. Taylor has real weak chops that the audience was mocking. Ended kind of abruptly, but props to Dickinson for improving from Generic Dude to Sure Brah.

I am live blogging this as well over at SC

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2016/12/evolve-74-live-blog.html

Darby-Cage: Another fantastic outing from Crash, who may be the most over act on the show halfway through. His two big bumps were great and Gabe got to fulfill his boyhood dream of doing a Paul Heyman-style "He's not quite dead" wave-off.

Cody-Page: Ethan Page continues *his* boyhood dream of looking like the Rock, i.e. The poor man's Dusty Rhodes. Match was solid but Cody in the Bullet Club doing meme wrestling is predictably stupid. I wanted him to bring some class to the indies and instead he's shook by the Brooklyn crowd and doing goofball comedy. Also: I hate fun and everyone but me is dumb. Seriously though: entertaining match even if it's the type of stuff that Parv would say kills the business (and he's not wrong). It was immature fuckery, but immature fuckery live looks a lot different than it does on film.

Riddle-Cobb: And then the best act in wrestling came out. What doesn't get talked enough about in Riddle's work is that he is an amazing seller and a very generous worker to his opponents, the opposite of what ex-MMA guys tend to be. Surprise pin and an unexpectedly short match, but solid work from both, albeit kind of a letdown if you were expecting an epic. It's as if Sapolsky saw Goldberg-Lesnar and said, "Me too, Paul." Thankfully all I missed while peeing was a Stokely promo.

Tracy/Yehi vs. Ricochet/Kaasa: I love Kaasa, but crowd was getting on him for looking like Scott Steiner, Marty Jannetty, and Barry Horowitz. I'd say in this case he was more like DGUSA's version of a Kikuchi who's bigger than his Kobashi. Some great Ricochet-Yehi exchanges here. This is EVOLVE's aim towards a 90s All Japan/2000s Dragon Gate hybrid, and it does feel fresh and intriguing. Crowd really shat upon Kaasa's look, but he did well here. One thing overall that this match made me wonder about is the ubiquitous influence of WWE on matches like this. Crowd was trying to pop one another even in the best moments of the match, to the point of doing Tye Dillinger chants more than once, and popped loudest for the displays of multiple simultaneous moonsaults. Some of the Ricochet stuff with Williams was choreographed to a fault, but ultimately saved by Kaasa's big suplexes thrown in for good measure. Yehi has the best front facelock in the business, and Williams' big flurry at the end redeemed a meandering performance. Crowd audibly booed the submission: like it or not, Ricochet was much more over than the local heroes.

My review is here.

https://prowrestlingsuperblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/evolve-74-review/

Togo-Hero: Not the best match of the year, but possibly my "favorite" match of the year. Both fought hard, and while the end result lacked singular "moments" beyond purely good wrestling, they both worked relentlessly and won over the crowd. The company had better matches this year, but Hero really put over Togo in his post-match promo, explaining the whole Vietnam/Bolivia gig and actually vomiting at the end of a match that clearly took it out of him. Two fantastic workers who on the strength of such a night could make my 2026 PWO All-Time 100 ballot.

Togo vs. Hero was everything I wanted from Togo v. Hero, which is saying quite a lot. Total war between two of the best ever. They basically worked it as equals, despite the size difference. But that was fine, because Togo's offense still looks so fucking crisp.