BRM Reviews Evolve 44

[Big Red Machine]

Evolve 44 (5/31/2015)- Ronkonkoma, NY

IF PAGE WINS, GARGANO MUST SHAKE HIS HAND; IF GARGANO WINS, PAGE MUST LEAVE EVOLVE: Johnny Gargango vs. Ethan Page- 6.5/10
Lenny Leonard is joined on commentary by Ron Niemi of all people? What is this? FIP in 2005? Well… umm… Gabe is booking, Lenny Leonard on commentary, Sal Hamoui is involved in the promoting, SoCal Val is around. Um… it just might be.
The match was pretty good, but started to feel like it was dragging. The finishing sequence felt like they were just overdoing it with the superkicks and reversals of stuff simply because the match was already dragging, but the actual finish itself did a great job of building off of their split at Mercury Rising 2015. Great post-match heel antics by Page as well.

RICH SWANN vs. TREVOR LEE- 5.5/10
Swann’s music was really faint for some reason, which resulted in Swann looking like a complete and total clown walking/dancing/swaggering around to no music. The match itself was just… stuff.

REY HORUS vs. TRACY WILLIAMS (w/Drew Gulak)- 3/10, but great for what it was, which was a match meant to remind us that matches can end at any time.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The Premiere Athlete Brand attack Rey Horus as a warning to TJ Perkins. Instead of heeding this warning, TJ came out to make the save, so we got…

TJ PERKINS & REY HORUS vs. THE PREMIERE ATHLETE BRAND (w/SoCal Val)- 6.75/10

BIFF BUSICK vs. MIKE BAILEY- 7.25/10
Great match. The way Bailey took those half-nelson suplexes looked scary as hell.

DAVEY RICHARDS vs. DREW GULAK (w/Tracy Williams)- 8/10
Great submission wrestling and a great finish.

DREW, GALLOWAY, RODERICK STRONG, & SOCAL VAL SEGMENT- good.
Val came out to try to recruit Roderick to the Premiere Athlete Brand, guaranteeing him a world title victory tonight if he did. Drew told Val that he didn’t want her screwing up this match, so he told her that if she didn’t screw this match up he’d give one of her guys a title shot at any time. Val was happy with this. Roddy shooed Val away, then cut a short promo on Drew.

EVOLVE TITLE MATCH: Drew Galloway(c) vs Roderick Strong- 8.25/10
An awesome match, but aside from the finish, it didn’t feel like the epic blow-off it was supposed to be.

DREW GALLOWAY PROMO- was hard to understand between Drew’s accent and the bad audio, but it seemed too nice and almost kayfabe-breaking for my tastes.

SHOW-CLOSING ANGLE- The Premiere Athlete Brand jumped Drew. SoCal Val then announced that at the next Evolve show, drew would defend the Evolve Title against Trent Barreta. This perplexed Lenny Leonard because Trent wrestles for New Japan and ROH and doesn’t work for WWN anymore. Val tried to encourage Roddy to join in the beatdown of Drew, but Roddy saved Drew instead. Val declares that Roddy will pay for this. Roddy says he saved Drew for himself.

A great show from Evolve, but mostly on the strength of the last two matches, as the first half dragged a bit.