This rocked my world. 6 minutes of fantastic, gritty back & forth wrestling with a terrific sense of urgency + really great selling and amazing looking strikes. One of my favorite ones of the year. ****1/2

This was great: two technical masters giving an unusual type of match in WWE, and the NXT crowd totally buyed it. In less than eight minutes we see quality matwork, tension, limbwork, good selling and a last couple of minutes of pure european brawling. Loved every second of it. It's funny how they tried to work a classic grapple match, 'cause they respect each other and know the other one is a worthy mat-rival, but due to their personalities things got crazy sooner than expected. That final headbutt looked brutal, as always. Very good match, yessir! ***3/4

 

Holy hell what an awesome bit of grappling. Pretty crazy that something so stylistically odd awesome ended up on a WWE produced show. Gulak has been training as he looks way more muscular then the last time I saw him (I clearly need to go on a Gulak run). The first six minutes of this are all matwork and it is some all time great stuff, cool mix of traditional pro style, World of Sport stuff and point jujitsu. There is this truly epic leg lock battle with Gallagher adjusting a step over toe hold in multiple cool ways, and Gulak looking to roll and attack from the bottom. The attacks here were way more Volk Han then Johnny Saint, and while I actually really like Zach Sabre Jr., the technique here was on a whole different level. I loved how both guys would use front chokes and can openers to counter the leg locks They get up off the mat and have a great rope running section with both guys attacking from odd angles, and then a great striking section which was super stiff, and ended in a Gallagher KO headbutt which looked like a Fujiwara KO. I loved every second of this, the skill level of this match is unlikely to be matched by anyone, anywhere in the world.

 

Gulak and Gallagher are playing this super seriously. All the action minus the final two minutes  is mat-based. Gulak grinds down Gallagher with a mean headlock. Not many people nowadays put much effort into making a headlock look painful. Gallagher manipulates Gulak's limbs in a nasty fashion, but eventually this match turns to a straight up brawl after one too many stalemates on the match, and oh boy, is it glorious.

★★★★

Yep, really really good stuff here. These two could have a good match in 30 seconds or 30 minutes.  Great mat based work that evolves into more of a fight. Loved the flash ko finish.  All around quality stuff. ****

Blown spot aside, this was a really fun match with a cool finish. I like both guys but haven't seen them much in WWE so seeing them actually wrestling was a nice surprise.