BRM Reviews Evolve 2

[Big Red Machine]

Evolve 2: Hero vs. Hidaka (3/13/2010)- Rahway, NJ


QUICK INTERVIEWS- good
We started off with rapid-fire interviews. It was just the wrestlers in question sitting down in front of a camera and saying their piece. First was Bobby Fish, then Aeroform, then Chuck Taylor. Fish and Aeroform both expressed their desires to win tonight after having come up short on the first show, while Taylor reminded us all that he was angry about only having been booked in a qualifying match on the first show, and said that he was going to make EVOLVE management look silly for doubting whether or not he belonged. All three promos were good, and I am very much digging this very different side of Chuck Taylor.

WHAT IS EVOLVE? VIDEO- That wasn’t the official title of this thing, but when you’re trying to do something as different from what pro wrestling has become as early EVOLVE was, something like this is necessary both to explain the things that need explanation and to simply reinforce the difference. This video explained to us that things are strictly broken up into a singles division and a tag division, that we’re keeping track of people’s records, and that people who aren’t on the official roster will sometimes have “qualifying” matches to trey to earn their way onto the roster, but that these qualifying matches don’t count towards your official record.
They also explained that we have a “documentary crew” running around backstage to film the wrestlers, then pitched us to…

THE DOCUMENTARY CREW CHECKS IN ON OUR MAIN EVENTERS- fine
Chris Hero is talking with Claudio Castagnoli. Hero is indignant that Brad Allen tried to call him out on the previous show because what the hell has this Brad Allen guy ever done in the business? Claudio tells him to forget about it and just focus on his own match. Hidaka is just pacing around a gym.

BRAD ALLEN(1-0) vs. CHRIS DICKINSON(0-1)- 5.75/10
This was a very good match for the less than seven minutes it lasted. It was all business aside from one moment, which made that moment stand out more when they got over Dickinson’s temper by having him get in the referee’s face about a count. The announcers took this time to let us know that Munenori Sawa had been suspended for merely slapping TJP before a match, which both served to drop that information on us as well as to make the threat of Dickinson getting in deep doo-doo very real. The announcers also pushed that Allen was using Chris Hero’s rejection of his challenge as a positive motivator rather than getting upset by it, and Allen took a big step towards proving he is worthy of a match with Chris Hero when he picked up the victory in this match to become the first person in EVOLVE with two wins. He cut a promo about this after the match.

PARTY PEOPLE BACKSTAGE- This was WAY too much of listening to Sean Davis’ obnoxious voice. The gist here was that they haven’t seen Silas since the last show, so I assume that means he decided to not to go out with them after all. They- Davis and Johnny Gargano- said he was lame, while Larry Dallas nodded in the background while cuddling with an attractive woman. This went on for longer than it needed to, and most of it was Sean Davis talking, so… yeah. I didn’t like it.
Jimmy Jacobs then showed up and yelled at Gargano. Apparently Gargano posted… something about Jimmy on the internet. They didn’t tell us anything other than that Gargano said something. Jimmy was upset about this, and yelled at Gargano for presuming that the fact that they partied together after a show made them friends. Jimmy was in full heel “show me some respect, rookie” mode, while Gargano was, in fact, being a disrespectful punk, but only after Jimmy disrespected him first. Jimmy challenged Gargano to a match tonight.
Both parts of the segment were effective kin getting across the idea that they were intended to get across, but not one person here came across as likable in any way, and the whole “you said something about me on the internet” thing without any further explanation came off as painfully Russo-booked WCW “we’ll assume that everyone knows what we’re talking about so we don’t have to explain it.” While I think that assumption is much more reasonable for the early days of EVOLVE than it was for WCW, I still think it’s a poor approach to take, and especially when explaining to us what Gargano posed could have been easily inserted to the dialogue in a rather natural manner. It’s possible that keeping it a mystery was done intentionally so as to avoid making either guy look too much like the babyface or the heel, but doing it this way

BRODIE LEE(0-0) vs. GRAN AKUMA(0-0)- 1/10
Apparently between this show and the last show, Gran Akuma disbanded his Akuma’s army stable from the tag division, so Brodie Lee, who was part of Akuma’s army, is angry and wants a match against him. The match was very short (under four minutes) felt shockingly low-impact for the guys involved, and had almost nothing resembling a story. Akuma worked over Brodie’s legs a bunch with kicks, then dropped him on his head for a nearfall… then got the win with a shoulder submission. It was rather weird.

UP IN SMOKE(0-0) vs. AEROFORM(0-1)- 4/10
Another short match. I bumped it up 0.5 just for Up In Smoke’s finisher, which looked fantastic tonight.

TONY KOZINA TALKS TO KYLE O’REILLY BACKSTAGE ABOUT… SOMETHING- Kyle is worried a contract of some sort or something. Kozina tells him that it’s all part of the business, but no matter what else Kyle has going on, he has to stay focused on his match tonight because wrestling is more mental than it is physical. I get what Gabe is going for with the realism here, but the way he is going about it, where the many of the details in the conversation don’t actually matter because it’s really about the message that the segment is getting across (in this case that Kyle most stay focused on his match) is so at odds with the way we’ve all learned to watch pro wrestling that it’s very hard for me process the fact that I don’t need to- and likely even am not supposed to – understand the details of the actual subject of the conversation.

CALEB KONLEY(0-0) vs. KEN DOANE(0-1)- 4/10
Doane angrily insisted to ring announcer Lenny Leonard that he should be 1-0, not 0-1, apparently still unhappy about his victory over Jimmy Jacobs on the first show being overturned when the referee noticed Jimmy’s foot on the ropes after having counted Jimmy’s shoulders down for the three-count.
Doane won another short match. He cut a promo after the match saying that “justice has been served” and that he has now proved everything he needed to prove here in EVOLVE. Lenny Leonard said he was unsure of what Doane meant by this. This was Doane’s last match in EVOLVE, so I doubt we’ll ever find out… but at least it works as a backdoor explanation for him never showing up again.

HALLOWICKED(0-0) vs. KYLE O’REILLY(1-0) (w/Tony Kozina)- 5/10
Another short but good match, with mutual respect afterwards. Apparently Kyle and Kozina’s discussion earlier was about Davey Richards having to leave EVOLVE because he “couldn’t come to terms on a contract” with them.

PARTY PEOPLE BACKSTAGE- Jimmy Jacobs is brooding and still making comments at Gargano. Phil Davis wants Jimmy to chill out. I want Phil Davis to go away, so we don’t always get what we want, do we, Phil?

CHUCK TAYLOR(0-0) vs. RICOCHET(1-0)- 6.75/10
Easily the match of the night so far, although that is partly due to it being the longest so far by a good margin. Young Ricochet’s athletic ability is clear here, but his decision-making skills are not yet up to par, as evidence by that completely awful haircut.

BOBBY FISH(0-1) vs. CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI(0-0) (w/Chris Hero)- 7/10
Fish was a great underdog babyface, and Claudio was his usual impressive self.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Before Claudio can cut the post-match victor promo, Chuck Taylor comes out to challenge him to a match at Evolve 3, which will take place on May 1st back here in Rahway. Claudio agrees, adding in a bit of friendly smack talk. Chuck offers Claudio a handshake but then pulls back when Claudio goes to accept it and walks off.

BRAD ALLEN BACKSTAGE- good
He says he’s been watching his Chris Hero tapes so he went to Ikuto Hidaka and offered to give him some tips and be his second tonight to counter Claudio and Hidaka accepted. His plan in all of this is that Hero will recognize the advice he gives Hidaka to be critical to Hidaka’s victory and thus Hero will feel that Allen is an opponent worth his consideration.

CHRIS DICKINSON’S IN-RING PROMO IS INTERRUPTED BY THE PARTY PEOPLE- meh
The Party People (that’s what I’m calling them until we get an official name) in this case consisted only of Larry Dallas, his female companion, and Sean Davis. Davis did all of the heckling, standing by the entrance way and calling Dickinson a curtain-jerker and saying no one cared about him. Even skinny, full head of hair 2010 Chris Dickinson is still Chris Dickinson so I was desperately hoping that this would end with Dickinson storming over to Davis and kicking his ass, but alas Tony Kozina came out to calm Dickinson down and escort him away.
Unfortunately, Sean Davis did not go away. He and his pals stayed out for the entrances for the women’s match, with Davis making the standard sexist “they don’t belong in a wrestling ring” type of comments. In what has to be one of my favorite lines in all of a EVOLVE history, a fan loudly but simply responded to Davis heckling Mercedes Martinez by saying “you know…she could kill you, you fat piece of sh*t.” That seemed to shut Davis up.

WSU WORLD TITLE MATCH: Mercedes Martinez(c)(1-0) (w/Sammy Geodollno) vs. Sumie Sakai(0-0)- 5/10
This only went five minutes, but was EXCELLENT for the time it got. Sumie worked over Martinez’s arm and Martinez sold it wonderfully. Why can’t we get Judo expert Sumie Sakai in modern ROH? Mercedes’ comeback consisted of one HUGE kick to the face, then a Fisherman Buster where she understandably struggled to get Sumie up due to her hurt arm and took a while to make the cover and couldn’t really even hook the leg well (again due to her injured arm) but the impact was vicious enough to keep Sumie down for all of the necessary time.

JOHNNY GARGANO(1-0) vs. JIMMY JACOBS(1-0)- 6/10
Another match that was very good for the under seven minutes it got. Jacobs targeted the head and won. Gargano got too cocky in the beginning, leading to Jacobs taking over, and Jacobs mocked Gargano for his former cockiness after the match.

BOBBY FISH TALKS TO SOMEONE ON THE PHONE- meh
He knows he lost, but he’s confident that the fans are behind him now. When the he notices that documentary crew are standing behind them he asks them to leave. They don’t, so he gets up to continue his conversation in another room.

FOUR-WAY ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH: Osirian Portal vs. The Colony (Green Ant & Fire Ant) vs. Mike Quackenbush & Jigsaw vs. CHIKARA Sekigun (Hallowicked & Frightmare)- 8.25/10
This was eighteen minutes of excellent Lucha rules tag team action, and is by far the best thing we’ve seen on either of the first two shows so far aside from the main event of the first show. What it was not, however, was an official tag team division match because aside from Hallowicked and Frightmare, none of these teams are official tag team division teams. However, as Lenny Leonard told us, the winning team will almost certainly be added to the tag team division. Based on their performance here, I’d be happy to see all of these teams added.

CHRIS HERO(0-0) (w/Claudio Castagnoli) vs. IKUTO HIDAKA(0-0) (w/Brad Allen)- 8.75/10
A fantastic wrestling match that told multiple stories very well. Hero tried to win by knockout while neutralizing Hidaka’s offense by working over his arms. Hidaka, for his part, worked over Hero’s knee and ankle in an attempt to either win by submission or slow Hero down to in the hopes of allowing one of his own big strikes to connect or to at least make it harder for Hero to get momentum behind his strikes. In addition to that they also had some very nice little bits about a move or reversal that worked the first time being stopped the second time.
In hindsight, this match most stands out to me as something of a proto-form of the standard Chris Hero match from his 2013-2016 indy run, where he mostly relies on strikes and sentons, and there is a lot of down-time between moves during which he will taunt his opponent in some manner. This one had some of that and had a similar pacing, but it incorporated a lot more mat-work so it didn’t feel as repetitive, which is a big positive, especially in a match this long. The match went almost half an hour, so Gabe is pretty clearly trying to establish a framework here where no matter how short the undercard matches are, you know the main event of an EVOLVE show is going to be given time to deliver, and this one certainly did.

PARTY PEOPLE BACKSTAGE- good
Gargano is visibly salty about losing to Jimmy, so Jimmy decides to rub some of that metaphorical salt into the metaphorical wound. Sean Davis shows up and announces that it’s time to go party, and they leave, with Gargano and Jacobs each making taunting gestures to camera when the other’s back is turned.


Another good show from EVOLVE, and even better than the first one in terms of in-ring action. I do wish the undercard matches were longer, but I think Gabe’s goal with them is to establish tone and to get over certain wrestlers as winners more than anything else, with the few “personal issues” situations all revolving around the backstage stuff with the Party People or Brad Allen wanting to face Chris Hero. While I think they are too permanent a thing to be tenable in the long run, the public tracking of the win-loss records do add a certain something to the matches that makes the results seem a little bit more meaningful.

[NWK2000]

Babyface Bobby Fish is alien to me dude. He's got such a nasally voice I don't know how anyone could've ever seen him as a babyface.

[Big Red Machine]

Babyface Bobby Fish is alien to me dude. He's got such a nasally voice I don't know how anyone could've ever seen him as a babyface.

The voice he uses now seems to be a bit exaggerated. That or he had some sort of throat surgery or whatever that changed his voice.