BRM Reviews the 6/4/2019 205 Live (great)

[Big Red Machine]

AKIRA TOZAWA vs. NOAM DAR- no rating, never takes place
Dar got jumped during his entrance by a bearded Drew Gulak, dressed to wrestle. Gulak took out Dar’s injured knee with a running dropkick into the steps. Drake Maverick came out and yelled at him, with Gulak being stoic throughout. Tozawa demanded to be allowed to fight Gulak and Maverick relented, telling Drew “alright. You’ve got what you want” in a derisive, “you’ll be sorry” tone. We then followed Drake as he went over to Kayla Braxton and instructed her to announce Tozawa vs. Gulak, then stayed on Kayla as she made her announcement.
I thought this was a very good segment. It got over Gulak’s new, more brooding, possibly even unstable personality very well, but what I really loved about it was how wonderfully different it was from Raw or SD. On one of those shows, everyone involved here would have a microphone, and Gulak would have cut some sort of promo trying to explain his new personality to us. Instead they let Gulak’s actions stand on their own, and the lack of not just that unnecessary explanation to crowd but also the lack of microphones made this feel so much more organic. Everyone having a microphone makes it feel like this is all being done for the benefit of the TV audience and for the benefit of the crowd, instead of athletes acting on their own and the crowd happens to be there because they fans of the sport, not an “audience.” We sitting at home clearly heard everything that we needed to hear from the participants merely thought the audio receptors on cameras that were filming this, and the live crowd understood everything via the body language of those involved. Kayla was the only one with a microphone, and they had her make the announcement of the switch even though we at home all knew what happening from what we had heard the participants say, because ring introductions are an important official capacity and need to happen, as opposed to in WWE where a bell will ring and only afterwards then are we told what is happening, with it being left to the live crowd to figure it out by themselves.
(I’m not saying it’s not simple to decipher, but it’s the sort of thing that would never happen in a real sport. If a center hikes the ball while one of the receivers his hanging out in the other team’s end zone and a flag is immediately thrown and the play waved dead, everyone knows what the violation is and who did it, but they’re still going to announce that the number of the offending player and the tell you that the offensive team has been assessed a five-yard penalty for being offside, because some things just have to be done in an official manner.)

AKIRA TOZAWA vs. DREW GULAK- 7.25/10
Tozawa hit some beautiful, pin-point perfect dives here. The purpose of this match was to show off the new Drew Gulak. His offense his more suplex-based now, with some brawling components that generally weren’t previously present. His new finisher is an Argentine neckbreaker.

MIKE KANELLIS PROMO- great
He wants to prove that he’s the best so he demands that Drake Maverick send him the best competition he can. Maria was there but didn’t speak, which might be a first for them in WWE.

SARAH SCHREIBER INTERVIEWS TONY NESE- good
She asks him for his thoughts on the guy he has been pushing for to get a title shot, Akira Tozawa, losing to Drew Gulak tonight. He says he’s fine facing either guy and will leave the decision up to Drake Maverick. He also subtly criticized Maverick for focusing on the 24/7 Title (Kanellis also did this during his promo, but in a much less subtle way).

LUCHA HOUSE PARTY PROMO- whacky. The Singh Brothers are apparently trying to get yat another match against Lucha House Party.

In an odd moment, Nigel criticized Drake Maverick for his earlier decision to “make a match-up on a moment’s notice.” I assume this must be a shot at the booking of Raw and SD, right?

ONEY LORCAN vs. ARIYA DAIVARI- 8/10
They had an awesome, kind of mean, gritty match that matched the tone of their promos well. It did find it a little weird that they didn’t do too much to try to bush each other open like their promos had suggested. They matched the tone of the promos well, but not really the content.
The match told a good story with Lorcan working over Daivari’s arm. The finish saw Daivari hit his top rope splash but landed on his elbow while doing so, and the delay this caused in going for the pin allowed Lorca not recover enough to turn the pin into a roll-up for the win. One other thing I really liked about this match was that they (and particularly Daivari) seemed to make a point out of inserting some moves that you just don’t see anymore, like the draping neckbreaker off the turnbuckle or a cross-armed Iconoclasm or even just a good, old-fashioned struggle over a Greco-Roman knuckle lock.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Daivari tried to attack Lorcan from behind but Lorcan saw it coming and low-bridged him, and the announcers push it as him having “outsmarted” Daivari yet again (the first time being in the five-way main event a few weeks ago, and the second one was apparently the idea that he went after Daivari’s elbow knowing that Daivari does a top-rope splash and would thus hurt himself doing it. That last seemed like a stretch to me).

Another GREAT episode of 205 Live. This episode was an oddly destabilizing one, shaking up the usual storylines in an interesting manner. Basically, they’ve been pushing the idea that Tozawa should probably be the #1 contender but it’s not quite official yet. By the end of this week’s show, however, they have Tozawa, Gulak, Lorcan, and Kanellis all coming off like guys headed down the #1 contednership route, but all of them are sitting firmly a 7 or 7.5 of out a necessary 10 to be named #1 contender. The accusations of Drake Maverick focusing too much on the 24/7 Title seem to play into this in that they’re hinting that he should have found a way to whittle the field down by now but hasn’t. I don’t think that’s quite fair to Mr. Maverick, but the aspect of this story that has me most interested is seeing how Hunter will politically play taking something Vince thinks is a positive (Drake Maverick hunting the 24/7 Title on Raw and SD) and spin it as a negative, especially when has no control over Vince’s crazy whims, so things on the Raw and SD side could go spinning crazily out of control at any moment, and seeing how Hunter might adapt to that.