Kota Ibushi vs. TJ Perkins, WWE Cruiserweight Classic Finale (9/14/2016)

This was a semi-final match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

Like the other man in the Final Four who it seemed Ibushi was destined to face in the finals, Kota Ibushi also wound up not signing a WWE contract, instead opting to continue his deeply important research. As such, this match follows in the former match’s footsteps, the tournament finally falling victim to the politics of things like this, delivering a match with a result that just feels a little phony. No matter how you cut it, it’s just hard to get into TJ Perkins beating Kota Ibushi, and I say that as someone who was genuinely a pretty big Perkins fan at the time.

In the theme of the night though, it doesn’t matter because this kicked ass anyways.

The match is your classic Kota Ibushi God Damner.

One step below from an Encounter, the sort of a match that doesn’t happen in a semi-final, and the sort of match that TJ Perkins’ style of wrestling simply doesn’t lend itself to, making it something of an impossibility.

What happens is paint by numbers Kota Ibushi big match stuff, and that is more than okay. The offense is dazzling and the construction is immaculate. Even the great flaw to this match is something that Ibushi kind of just forces into function. The WWE’s misreading of TJ Perkins’ EVOLVE hot streak in 2015-2016 is a tragedy, he’s woefully miscast as some working class hero when he has one of the most hateable faces in the world, but Kota Ibushi forces this misshapen piece to fit. Not carefully shaving down a square peg so it fits into a round hole, but brute forcing something into being that should not be.

In his time in Florida, Kota Ibushi learns how to do some of the most Florida Man shit in the world, rigging up a TJ Perkins babyface ovation with little more than some tape and strips of insulated cardboard. It’s not gonna last forever, but he’s not gonna be here for long. The idea of TJ Perkins as some conquering underdog hero only has to hold for the night.

And it does.

God bless.

Perkins kicks out of the Golden Star Bomb, avoids the Phoenix Splash, and he levels up the TJP Clutch to turn it into a real nasty STF for the win. The unbeatable God killer gets taken down in a surprise, going through the checklist of everything that ought to happen when blowing off a tournament run like this. It’s not the best version of this that there is, but a testament to the Cruiserweight Classic’s booking as a whole and to the performance of Ibushi in it especially that it works as well as it does, given every reason it shouldn’t.

A silly and transparent result, one that certainly hasn’t aged well, but you can’t fault the match. On the reactions alone that certain payoffs in the match received, it’s a beautiful example of tournament wrestling and a display of how much a guy like Kota Ibushi brought to this. Had they made the decision to run a better division/division launch or given this to someone with better prospects than Perkins, we’d talk about this potentially as an all-timer instead of what it is, which is “simply” a really really great match.

***1/4

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Gran Metalik, WWE Cruiserweight Classic Finale (9/14/2016)

This was a semi-final match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

One could easily imagine this not working.

Zack against all-world fliers has been somewhat reliable over the last few years, but between stylistic differences, it being a first time ever meeting (no practice), and, I imagine, a language barrier, it’s not quite so guaranteed of a success as Zack against more English speaking fliers.

While this is far from the cleanest match in the world, I think it mostly works.

Less so in a way where the structure of the Cruiserweight Classic made some things in this tournament hit about their weight class, so to speak, but more in that classic deeply flawed force-of-talent alone kind of a way.

Veggies first.

There’s some clear miscommunication at points here, Metalik not feeding Zack a limb (or in the case of the European Clutch, not giving up the legs at all so Zack just lied back with his feet on the shoulders instead) or them seeming a little uncooperative at times, but in ways that make a match like this more interesting. In a funny little thing too, now that Zack Sabre Jr. had decided not to sign with the WWE after all, he’s now let off the leash a little as a result, and has a much more typical Zack Sabre Jr. match. Less babyface skill and grit like in his previous two CWC matches, more of him sometimes playing at being an antagonist and/or bully, but having trouble ever committing to any one idea and instead gesturing towards a few different ones.

The match works though because, despite everything, two of the best wrestlers in the world come together and have a match that winds up being just great enough for the stage. Your classic case of it being harder for these two to fail than to succeed, and not being bad enough or dumb enough to really undertake the latter. Zack punishes Metalik for flying, but he’s then fast enough to catch Zack leaping in or getting a little too aggressive and overzealous when it matters the most. Simple formula, working out pretty well in spite of any reason it might not.

Metalik wins with a real god damner of a Metalik Driver.

Of the two semi-final matches in which signed talent went over guys who (smartly) decided not to put pen to paper, this one at least comes off as a far more believable result, even if the match isn’t quite as great.

***

 

 

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Noam Dar, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (9/7/2016)

This was a quarterfinal match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

In terms of what happens in this match, the conceit and idea of the thing, I don’t think it will surprise you all that much.

Your classic Zack vs. Other Technician double limbwork match. Zack goes to the arm, Dar goes to the knee. Sometimes Zack doesn’t offer up the latter all that often in matches like these, but independent and more critical-facing genres of wrestling are full of matches like this. They’re easy to get right and make viewers feel smarter, sometimes in ways that don’t feel entirely like nerd bait, and overall, they’re crowd pleasers. I like seeing them, especially when done right, and this is a match that does it right, for the most part. The selling isn’t perfect, and it occasionally threatens to drift in the way Zack matches like this often can, feeling less like a focused effort and more like a mad dash where some things just happen to work out right. However, this match never one hundred percent gets there, and so it works better than most.

The trick here as to why this works better than most is twofold.

First, this is a WWE thing and it’s more tightly regimented than most other Zack matches like this at the time. It’s only fifteen minutes or so, and as a result, they’re forced to cut out a lot of the fat you might see if this was on a PROGRESS or Rev Pro or IPW UK show where it would hit 20:00+. A hard cap being put on wrestlers and their matches is never one hundred percent good, but in this case, it does a world of good for a match like this, allowing it to make its points and get in and out. It’s not a sprint exactly, but there’s a punchiness to it that matches like these involving both men don’t always have elsewhere. I used to say a lot that some people would benefit or had benefited from this environment for the reasons this match illustrates, forcing the process to be a little more streamlined and a whole lot tighter, to the benefit of the wrestlers and the match. That isn’t quite so true anymore for a whole number of other reasons, but a match like this illustrates that idea so so so incredibly well.

Something else that really helps them though, beyond that they’re forced into a tighter timeframe and beyond that a match like this is always closer to succeeding than failing is that, right at the end, they totally shift the match in a way that is so interesting.

Throughout the first 95% of this match, it’s a chess match. Not always patient and gentlemanly like that might imply, as like any great Zack Sabre Jr. match, there’s a great deal of spite and pettiness. However, there’s always movement from both men in a certain direction. Dar’s attack on the legs, Zack’s attacks on the arms. Both strategies pay off, and Dar especially really gets going at the end. Zack again shows a real gift for a certain kind of selling, despite rarely showing that off, to the point that in what seems like an absolute lock, the possibility of an upset begins to set in. Not just for the crowd in the building, but like, for me, six years later. It’s one of the best feelings wrestling can produce. There’s this really great run where Dar single mindedly focuses on getting his kneebar(s) while Zack’s plan totally collapses, unable to do any more damage to the arm and paying for his usual lack of focus.

Suddenly, things get even worse, when they roll off the apron in a legbar.

In a spot usually done as a wonderful mean-spirited attack on the leg by the man applying it, they take it in a wholly different direction by having Zack sell his elbow after landing, making it even worse on himself.

It’s in this moment and the way they use it going forward that really really elevates this.

For one, Zack’s selling of the arm is even better than his selling of the knee. It’s more rooted in classic nerd bait, things like Alex Shelley switching an elbow pad in 2005, him using his legs for holds only when his arms don’t work and struggling with things like that, but there’s a look in his eyes beyond the strictly mechanical too. He seems panicked in a way that, specifically, Zack Sabre Jr. never ever looks panicked. Mechanically, it’s more than appealing, this statement of all Zack can do but often never does, but there’s more than mechanics as something like this shows off.

As a story, it’s so god damned great .

The kid has it, up until the moment an easier and newer opportunity prevents itself, and he blows it. He goes away from the leg to something he’s not as comfortable with, and a window is opened that wasn’t before. Zack Sabre Jr. gets by not on technical brilliance, but by a combination of this opening and guts, using both of his legs for a sort of Rings of Saturn variation to force a tap. It’s not only this nasty nasty hold that shows a real sense of desperation, but one going back to what worked for him in clear contrast to the reasons that Dar ultimately failed.

Stunningly, the best Zack Sabre Jr. was as a babyface in his career came here in these WWE matches, in which I won’t even use phrases like “came closest to” when describing it. The Gulak match and this are just, purely and simply, tremendous babyface performances. The skill is there, but there’s a heart and a gutsiness to Zack in these matches that’s always so absent from his attempts at this sort of a thing from elsewhere.

Certainly, I doubt it would have been like this long-term had he stayed, but that’s the magic of the Cruiserweight Classic. Had it been something that just appeared out of thin air, off the WWE Network and with none of those visual attachments, just running for these three or four months, it would have been the Promotion of the Year, because very little else in the world was as close to perfect as this stuff was. Perhaps more than anything else, a match like this proves that. Not because it was the best of the year, but because it was so much better in this environment than it likely would have been anywhere else.

A genuine shocker. The shocking thing isn’t that it was great, but that it was this great. Really, truly, and without a hint of irony, one of the best matches of the entire tournament.

***1/4

Kota Ibushi vs. Brian Kendrick, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (8/31/2016)

This was a quarterfinal match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

Another god damner out of Ibushi in this tournament run.

It’s somewhat similar to the Cedric Alexander match from several weeks prior, with Kota Ibushi as an unfeeling dead-eyed psycho up against someone with more human emotions and motives, someone using the tournament not just to garner a trophy or more acclaim, but to try and get a job. Kendrick differs from Alexander in that he’s an older guy who squandered chances earlier in life whereas Cedric was that younger man trying to achieve, they hit different spots in the brain (almost everyone understands the Cedric thing, the Kendrick story works 1000% better once you’re like 25+ and understand things a little more), but they work in the same way.

The matches, thankfully, are just different enough to stand out from each other.

Whereas the Ibushi/Alexander match was a 100% boiler plate certified Encounter, this is something a little more cerebral and fascinating in that other way. Cedric Alexander’s efforts against Ibushi were all physical. Getting in the best shape of his life and turning in a career performance to see if he could outdo this absolute freak at his game, and coming so close. Brian Kendrick’s efforts are not predicated on trying to find out the answer to a question. The fascinating thing about this match compared to that one and many others like it is that there is no question.

Brian Kendrick begins this match with the question already answered.

He cannot physically compare or compete with Ibushi, and so it is all tricks and veteran tactics and a sort of desperate ambition that is so rarely mixed with someone’s eyes being as wide open as Kendrick’s are here. It’s a rare thing in a Kota Ibushi match and it stands out every time, even moreso than the matches in which a more human wrestler (like Alexander) tries to go up against this unfeeling murder weapon, including the best Ibushi match of the decade so far. While Kendrick isn’t as endearing here as Dick Togo was then (or in general, but that comes later), the match works for all the same reasons. We so rarely see someone approach the challenge this way, less with the idea of One Big Move being the solution or a naked display of guts and pride, and more so a desperate reach for something.

Kendrick’s desperate gambits range from a 2006 Nigel McGuinness style attempt to trap Ibushi’s leg in the railing for a count out to using an uncovered steel rod connecting the turnbuckle to the post (specifically not the turnbuckle itself) for a neck snap. He tries outmaneuvering Ibushi in ways only old men would think to do, all rope tricks and the like. It’s not all nonsense and cheating, he tries specific set ups he used to beat other opponents in the tournament so far, and even digs into the One Big Move idea with the biggest move a 30 something wrestling nerd can think of, with the Burning Hammer as his last gasp.

None of it works, and it’s tremendous.

The plan falters and Ibushi comes back, winning once again with his Golden Star Powerbomb.

I am not going to complain about a Burning Hammer use or kickout.

Others have done this. In some cases, it’s fine to complain about it, like if fucking Mike Elgin does it in Japan. Here though, I think it’s beautiful. It’s the expression of Kendrick having no idea what to do, given that it’s something he’s never done before and would never do again. A guy reaching in his brain and pulling this thing out that’s been an ultimate kill move forever. The use bothers me less than the kickout, because I’m not a huge Kobashi fan and won’t clutch my pearls about that, but even here, the kickout works.

Mainly, it works because it’s a shortcut for Kendrick, and it fails. Purely as an accident, it turns the match into this morality tale in the way that almost no other Kota Ibushi matches are.

Now of course, that’s not the intent. The real thing is that nobody was beating Kota Ibushi who wasn’t on the WWE payroll. Had Kota Ibushi agreed to put his name on that list, likely nobody was beating him in this tournament at all. However, in actuality, it winds up being something so much more interesting.

I don’t know if you can really call it cosmic, dig up some concept of wrestling gods the way you can in real sports, and say that Kendrick couldn’t be rewarded for approaching this the way that he did, as if his failure here is the same as notorious grifters in basketball seeming to be stopped from winning a title as if by some invisible force that won’t allow behavior like that to prosper. I certainly don’t suspect that this and matches like it are some kind of large scale conscious effort. I won’t say that because Dick Togo approached the challenge honestly and that, two years later, Hiroshi Tanahashi will face a similar challenge and approached it with a pure heart, that they succeeded, whereas Brian Kendrick tried to outthink and outmaneuver and cheat his way through with skullduggery and nonsense. It seems like a lot to extract from that that Kota Ibushi has that sort of Black Lodge quality to him.

Even if on accident though, that’s what it looks like and more importantly, that’s what it feels like.

Brian Kendrick fails less because of any physical limitations, and more because of the greatest mental one. It’s a lack of self belief that allows him to falter in the most important moments. It feels like a match lost before the bell even rings, but different from so many of those matches because the party in question (Kendrick) seems to know it too.

Flawed in many ways after the fact, but one of the more purely fascinating matches of the entire year.

Admittedly, this doesn’t hit quite like it used to, and that’s not because the wrestling has aged poorly.

It’s a story of an old veteran’s desperation against the unbeatable, this force of nature that is as indifferent to his suffering as he is to anything else, the avatar of the clock moving forward no matter how smart you are or how many hidden tricks you have up your sleeve. Part of the reason it doesn’t feel quite like THAT is because it got Kendrick a job and this second chance, which is great and resulted in a lot of really good wrestling, but gives this a different feeling. A larger part of that is that as Kendrick moved away from weird but harmless conspiracy theories like aliens and pyramids and more into genocide denial, it became a lot harder to get into a performance like this on a real emotional level. Part of why this had the effect it did at the time is because it was one of the only matches of the tournament to have that other element to it, and all these years later, it no longer possesses that.

Heartbreakingly, it has to settle for being “only” the second best match of the tournament, behind a Kota Ibushi match in which those other elements still remain.

***1/2

 

 

Akira Tozawa vs. Gran Metalik, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (8/31/2016)

This was a Quarterfinal in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

It’s another one of those times when there is no good explanation for why something works. It is a match about doing a bunch of huge, gigantic, wildly impressive and impactful offense in a row. There is no thing I can point to and feel proud for recognizing and try and communicate to you. “Ah, [thing x] is an ode to something from 4,000 years in the past and/or earlier in the match”. None of that.

Tozawa and Metalik (aka Mascara Dorada) are two of the world’s most exciting wrestlers, to the point that you or someone else could call them #1 and #2 and I wouldn’t see fit to argue your stance, and this match allows them to do all of their most wildly exciting offense. This is the round in which the WWE thing and the “tournament booking” thing kind of go by the wayside and everyone just goes nuts for these last handful of episodes. Double dives, all the biggest nearfalls, the hardest shots they have in them, all of that.

Really, the only things about this that make it feel like a WWE match are the logos everywhere and Mauro trying to fit in every possible reference to the hip hop hits of 2016 (such as asking Bryan what the major keys are) and otherwise, it simply feels like one would imagine an Akira Tozawa vs. Mascara Dorada match might feel had it happened in the home territory of either man (or in a Liga Elite match, God, imagine).

Frantic and wild and so beautiful.

A certified God Damner.

***1/4

Johnny Gargano vs. TJ Perkins, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (8/24/2016)

This was a 2nd Round match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

Another match that is, more or less, just another EVOLVE match inside of a WWE ring. Another match in this tournament that is really pretty god damned great and better than one might imagine on paper. Smooth and crisp, full of cool counters and great examples of slow escalation in a match that moves this fast, counters and failed attempts paid off later in the match resulting in a real sense of accomplishment. Also a great example, yet again, of tournament booking, with things that worked in the first round being leveled up and having to be worked towards as the competition becomes harder.

Things of that nature.

More importantly and far more impressively, it’s a phenomenal show of foresight from the WWE of all places, telling a story related to prior events before said prior events had really even ever happened. In a match taped before Takeover Brooklyn II happened, this match revolves around a lingering injury to John Boy that happened in that match. While not a major focus — a positive, given the way he wrestles and also because the live crowd obviously didn’t see the match setting this up and so you can play off a minor injury as something sudden — it’s always there and the match winds up being a struggle for Perkins to finally get to that leg. When he does, it’s not long before the match is over as a result of the double leglock.

Again, we’re not talking about the most complex stuff in the world here, but it’s a lovely bit of a sensible surprise from a company that so often fails to be either sensible or surprising.

Not the best match in the tournament so far or really even close, but when one accounts for the planning that went into it, one of the tournament’s more impressive offerings.

***

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Drew Gulak, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (8/24/2016)

This was a 2nd Round match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

It’s not the bonafide Grapplefuck Classic that their EVOLVE match earlier in the year was, but to their credit, it is something totally totally different.

Zack Sabre Jr. and Drew Gulak have a WWE TV match.

Now, we’re not talking like full on transition spot during the break, “DREW GULAK TAKES FLIGHT AS THE CRUISERWEIGHT CLASSIC ROLLS ON!” commentary cue, meaningless chinlock to fill space style outright formula, but in terms of pace and length, cutting out a lot of the more complex stuff, focusing on action more than anything, it is a full on WWE television style match. A simple story about Gulak being more aggressive to try and prove that Zack isn’t the only guy in the tournament who’s a great technician, forcing Zack off of the mat, only to get beat in the end because he’s too aggressive in a match up that’s this even.

It’s simple and direct and honest in a way that really stands out, and so while it’s maybe not their best match together, it is maybe their most impressive as a result of all the limitations put onto it.

Mechanically, it’s as perfect as always.

Gulak is playing a more manic kind of aggressor than usual, but all of that stuff still works. Zack Sabre Jr. is playing more openly protagonist than usual, showing more guts and striking than elusive slippery scientific skill, but he’s genuinely very good at that in this specific environment when he’s not allowed to get all that goofy with it or stretch a match too long and allow his innate unlikeability (British) to seep through the pores. He’s just a guy fighting through Gulak’s aggression and bullying, and at least in this environment, that act works better than it has in a really really long time.

At the end, Gulak fucks himself by overreaching and Zack is able to roll through the diving Gu-lock, before grabbing the European Clutch for the win. A wonderful ending to a match like this, as Gulak proved everything he wanted to prove, but had this chip on his shoulder that Zack didn’t. An angry fighter is a sloppy fighter, and for the first time in one of their matches, Gulak wasn’t the cleanest possible version of himself. A wonderful and classical sort of a story and approach that helps differentiate this match from so many of their others.

Not the best they can do nor the best this tournament has to offer, but a sneaky little hit that I think maybe deserves another look.

***1/4

Kota Ibushi vs. Cedric Alexander, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (8/10/2016)

This was a second round match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

A great match that does enormous justice to the reputation it’s garnered.

There’s a lot someone (me, you if you also write or talk about wrestling as any sort of hobby) to read into it. A perfect match up of styles, mixed in with the unspoken story about Cedric Alexander leaving ROH, dropping all this weight, and being in this tournament to try and earn a job through sheer force of will. There’s a lot to that that helps this match, if one understands that unlike a lot of other people who this tournament was largely a measure to try and recruit, Cedric is competing for more than just the tournament. Everything feels more urgent, panicked, and desperate, because it is. Cedric might have shed twenty pounds to get into the tournament, but the real weight is the one he puts on everything he does in this match, and it helps the match feel special.

What Cedric brings to this not only helps to create real doubt late in the match where there wasn’t much at the start, but it also makes it all the more crushing when Ibushi is able to snuff the rally and take his head off at the end. It’s a heartbreaker for Cedric — albeit one lessened by the crowd yelling at the curtain until Triple H came out and basically had to give Our Hero a deal (that’s called direct action) — but the real effect is making deeper tournament favorite Kota Ibushi go from being one of the favorites to seeming unbeatable.

You can pick at a few different threads of this or mechanical aspects of it and say that’s what makes it great.

Really though, it’s just one of those matches.

You know the kind.

Every single thing in this that can go right does, and every positive aspect seems to come together perfectly to create the absolute best-case scenario for this specific match.

It’s laid out perfectly. Masterfully, even. The escalation is pristine, everything gets not only increasingly larger in scope, but more impactful and frenetic. For example, Ibushi misses the Golden Triangle Moonsault once, and near the end when he has a chance to hit it again, he does it off the top rope instead of the middle ring cable, making an already spectacular move feel even bigger. It’s also the sort of match I would show to someone if I ever, for some reason, had to explain what I mean when I talk about moves or strikes having an extra snap or crunch to them. It’s not just the sound, it’s how airtight it all is, and both how sudden and with the force that everything here is delivered with. Every major strike, piece of offense, and/or dive is delivered with an emphasis that elevates the match beyond what it might look like in an on-paper move by move recap. The crowd is also pitch perfect, creating the sort of atmosphere that elevates a match, reacting to every nearfall like it really could be it, and eventually, it’s hard not to join them in those reactions. Even nearly six years later at the time I watched this again, it’s hard not to bite on a few of these nearfalls late in the match.

As boring as it is to write and, I fear, to read, it all just really really works.

This is the perfect modern cruiserweight match.

A simple story that virtually everyone in the building and at home in the moment understands, different styles and characters being hurled at each other, and going completely insane for fifteen minutes or so. Of all the matches in 2016 that have made me think that this is what this division easily could have been on a permanent basis, this is the winner, because this is what it looks like in virtually every other promotion when presenting wrestling like this. Help them and get out of the way. More than any other match this year or in the tournament, it showed not only a way forward, but just how clear that path is, was, and probably always will be.

Writing about this match or matches like it, I feel, rarely does them justice. There is so much words do not convey, a kind of special sort of a match that you sort of just have to throw your eyes at to really understand. Because as much as one can describe and talk about why it’s great and how great it is, I don’t think anything I can say is more effective than simply watching the fireworks, seeing the bright flashes, hearing the loud bangs, and feeling all of it.

Everything that one imagines could go right does. Everything that one doesn’t even think about beforehand goes right as well.

It is, to use an old term I’ve gone into before, a god damned Encounter.

***1/2

Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (8/3/2016)

This was a first round match in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

Given all that follows, from one of the worst matches of all time to all the 2018 Feelings Epics, great and otherwise, it’s easy to forget about a match like this.

It’s a shame, because outside of the one major hit later on, this is probably the best of the bunch.

There’s a little bit of the classic complisult (part compliment, part insult. He invented it, I coined the term. See what I just did there? That’s an explanibrag.) to that, given what their matches turned into. Neither was especially suited for real long matches, and the addition of the influence of a real all-time dullard only exacerbated the situation. What they’re far more suited to is a match like this. Short at eleven or twelve minutes tops, snappy as hell, and with a simple line through the entire thing to help them out.

Simply put, this is a match between tag partners.

That lends itself to knowing each other pretty well, to create a few great counters, but it also means that there’s just a little hesitance. Ciampa’s a psycho and gets early advantages by being more willing to flip that switch into higher impact violence than the cleaner and more scientific John Boy, but he’s hesitant to finish the job. He pauses at a few key moments where he wouldn’t otherwise, unable to drop the bare knee. Gargano isn’t any less hesitant than Ciampa, but he also isn’t wrestling a match that requires a lot of violence. He’s flying and going for his hold, and grabbing cradles, and that difference proves to help him out in the end.

One is limited in this match, and the other isn’t.

It’s no surprise that the latter of the two wins out.

Shortly after his hesitation, Ciampa winds up missing the armbar he adopted/stole from Mark Haskins, as Gargano rolls through it an then right into a crucifix pin for the win. A great piece of logic to help explain why the match went like it did, and somehow, the sort of thing that actually matters more than six months later as well. This whole tournament feels like something out of another world, a much better one, but this match especially if only because there’s also a level of promotional competence and forward-thinking vision that you don’t often get here.

A lovely little thing, not only a great match, but something close to a best case scenario for this division in realistic terms, blending a great but not overpowering story with a whole lot of cool stuff. One of the rare matches in this division that feels like what the WCW cruiserweight division actually would have become by now, because it’s a whole lot like what it used to be at its best.

***1/4

Drew Gulak vs. Tracy Williams, EVOLVE 61 (5/7/2016)

This was a Cruiserweight Classic qualifying match.

You may go into this match with certain expectations. Teacher and student, a long history together both under real and assumed names, and both working a similar style. Catch Point began with these two, and it only makes sense that in their first real singles meeting like this, it would be a classical show of grappling. The ultimate display of Catch Point ideology. You might think that. Or, again, I should stop imagining my own thoughts to be universal, and I should say instead that that’s what I expected.

I was wrong.

(maybe you were also wrong.)

Considering their longer and more ground-based match later in the year, I am very happy to have been wrong, because this kicked ass.

While Gulak and Tracy begin on the ground and occasionally find their ways back there as two wrestlers with submission finishes are wont to do, that’s not really what this is. After a few moments early on, Hot Sauce explodes to stop a Gulak breather with a rare suicide dive, and the match is never really the same again. Maybe it was Tracy figuring he’d catch Drew by surprise. Maybe it was a reaction to Gulak having more experience on the ground, on top of the usual student/teacher thing, where Gulak taught or helped teach Tracy so much of what he knew at the time, so he thought he wouldn’t even try to win like that. Maybe you can put it down to the magnitude of the moment, trying things he almost never does with a wild hair up his ass. You can even put it down as just this showy statement from apprentice to master, It can be chalked up to any number of things, you can combine a few of them if you’d like. It makes sense and fascinates me from just about every perspective.

That’s the cool thing about wrestling like this.

Instead of the expected grit and grind style of match, this is something more heated, more frantic, and more desperate.

The match ends on the ground and is conducted on the ground in spurts, with each man trying at points to go for a limb like usual, but either being shrugged off and countered, or beaten off in horrific fashion. To their immense credit, while none of these segments matter, they’re never wasteful. In smaller moments like Tracy having a slight limp after Drew went to the knee or Gulak favoring the arm for a minute or two after a string of Williams attacks to the left shoulder, there’s enough attention and respect paid to what came before it that they’re able to get away with a looser kind of a structure.

When even the smaller moments matter like that, it has a way of making the big moonshots that they’re throwing out there in the other half of the match feel all the more significant.

That’s not nothing either, because these two are WAILING on each other. Apprentice takes it to master/sorcerer with the sort of passion and abandon he’s never quite displayed before, taking an absolute motherfucker of a swing at the thing. Both Tracy and Drew have one Rolling Lariat a piece that lands with a crack and ferocity you don’t see or hear out of these two quite so often. They chop, they throw some respectable elbows, but rarely do they throw out shots like they do here. Larger bombs are inflated to feel like a bigger deal by these real nasty shots thrown out in between those moments, much in the same way that larger moments are given greater importance by the way Drew and Tracy take the time to care about smaller moments. All the pieces matter.

In the end, Williams plays with magicks just slightly still out of his control. After a string of near disasters as Gulak turns up the heat with tricker roll ups and pieces of offense, Tracy gets stuck in the middle of everything around him, having also totally exhausted his smaller arsenal by now. Gulak flies in with this turn in the air into the Gu-lock that’s both gorgeous and violent, yanking Tracy down with him, and yanking that moon and stars hat off his head. Tracy’s caught, and Gulak taps.

Truly a remarkable match. Once again one of these that makes all of the sense in the world, but one that hits in ways I never would have expected it too, and with a tension and bombast and raw efficiency on top of it all. Not a grapplefuck masterpiece, but that’s to their benefit, because those sorts of expectations allowed this to hit with the sort of wild force that it did.

Secretly, one of the best matches of the year to date.

***1/2