BRM Reviews the 4/2/2019 205 Live

[Big Red Machine]

In a rare mistake, General Manager Drake Maverick claims that tonight’s Oney Lorcan vs. Kalisto match is a “first time ever” match, but they actually wrestled each other on the milestone 900th episode of Smackdown.

ONEY LORCAN vs. KALISTO (w/Lucha House Party)- 7/10
Lorcan started off by charging at Kalisto while Kalisto was putting his dumb piñata in the corner. This should be a heel move, but it really just feels like Kalisto took his eye off the ball because he distracted himself with something dumb, so he deserves exactly what he got.
Speaking of dumb, we cut away from this match because someone got word that Buddy Murphy was walking around backstage and was angry. Yes, really. Fortunately Murphy founded some nameless jobbers to bump into or else this would have been completely pointless and stupid instead of just 99% pointless and stupid.
Other than those two points, this match was great. Lorcan got the win, establishing the Half-Nelson Suplex as his finisher.


DRAKE MAVERICK & CEDRIC ALEXANDER BACKSTAGE- fine
Uh-oh. First that stupid backstage cutaway in the middle of a match and now we’ve got Maverick fiddling around on his phone until someone comes to talk to him. Is Vince rewriting parts of the show while Hunter isn’t looking?
Cedric wants to know why he didn’t get the match with Oney Lorcan that he wanted. Maverick tell him that he has lost his last two matches and both have been very hard-hitting, so he thinks Cedric needs some time to recuperate. Cedric was not happy with this reasoning, but went along with it, though he definitely let some sarcasm seep into his voice, which is rare for our most virtuous babyface. Cedric came off a little bit entitled in this segment, which also wasn’t good. Some of it was the opening dialogue, but some of it was not reminding the audience why Cedric wants this match (Oney majorly overreacted to Cedric accidentally knocking his jacket off the commentary table and attacked him). The reminder is always good, but in this case it also would have forced some anger into Cedric’s voice, which would have made him come off less entitled and more righteously angry.

TONY NESE INTERVIEW- fine
He started to cut a good promo to build up to his Cruiserweight Title shot at WrestleMania but got attacked from behind by Murphy. The camera followed their brawl for a while… and then just gave up and stopped following them and we cut away to the announcers talking about how “somebody has to get some control around here.” In a complete and total coincidence, Murphy and Nese’s brawl apparently went right through Gorilla Position and they brawled their way out onto the stage. They were now being followed by referees and road agents. They tried to separate the brawling wrestlers but failed. Eventually Nese ran Murphy into the LED board and agreed to leave.

AKIRA TOZAWA (w/Bryan Kendrick) vs. MIKE KANELLIS (w/Maria Kanellis)- 7.5/10
A great match reversing the finish from last time, as now Maria’s attempted interference not only fails, but even contributes to Mike’s loss (her pulling Mike forward to help add pressure to Tozawa’s shoulders means that when she lets go, he falls backwards with a greater force than he would have with only Tozawa pulling him, helping Tozawa roll him over to complete the sunset flip. Nigel credited Kendrick with pointing Maria’s cheating out to the referee, allowing him to fulfill the role Maverick brought him in to fulfill as well.

GO-HOME VIDEO PACKAGE- fine

A pretty good show from 205 Live. The weakest aspect of this was the go-home show aspect of it, but the story already felt like it was where it needed to be after last week’s show so their water-treading didn’t hurt the build in any way, either.