BRM Reviews the 7/16/2019 205 Live (great)

[Big Red Machine]

DREW GULAK PROMO- great

AKIRA TOZAWA (Brian Kendrick) vs. SAMIR SINGH (w/Sunil Singh)- 4/10
The Singh Brothers cut a meh inset promo. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they were better utilized and more entertaining as Jinder Mahal’s henchmen than they are on 205 Live. Tozawa won a short match when Kendrick preventing Sunil from interfering distracted Samir, allowing Tozawa to roll him up for the pin.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- not good
Sunil yanked Kendrick down off the apron after the match and Kendrick hit his face on the apron. The Singh Brothers then double-teamed Tozawa and Sunil went to hit him with the Bolly award statuette but Kendrick prevented that and Tozawa took out Samir. The execution here was not very good. They just seemed a step slower than would have been natural.

HUMBERTO CARRILLO VIDEO PACKAGE, PART 2- The presentation was good, but there was nothing here we didn’t already know or kayfabe assume. He always wanted to be in WWE (doesn’t everyone kayfabe do that?), he grew up idolizing Rey and Eddie (like all Luchadores in WWE must) and he wants to win the Cruiserweight Title (doesn’t everyone on 205 Live?). So what?

MIKE KANELLIS vs. A JOBBER- no rating, fine squash
Mike squashed the jobber, then beat him up a bit afterwards and tossed him out of the ring. Then he grabbed a mic and called Drake Maverick out for the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- FANTASTIC!
Drake came out and told Mike to get it all off of his chest. Mike explains to us that he resigned with WWE for two reasons: to prove himself to his wife by winning the Cruiserweight Title, and to kick Drake Maverick’s ass. Maverick responds by telling Mike to take some accountability for himself because he’s not any more inherently deserving of opportunities than guys like Kendrick, Tozawa, Nese, Gulak, Daivari, etc. The difference is that unlike Mike, those guys win their matches.
They exchange some rather personal barbs, and Maverick emphatically tells Mike he’s not going to fight him because he’s not a competitor… to which Mike points out that Maverick has spent the past two months neglecting his duties in order to chase around a championship… and that this has frequently resulted in Maverick- and, by extension, the brand he represents- looking foolish, like when he was running around in his underwear trying to chase R-Truth.
Mike keeps running Maverick down and taking personal shots but Maverick keeps his cool… until Mike starts to insult Drake’s wife, at which point Maverick snaps and assaults him. I know the pieces for this were in place in a way already, but I don’t think either the 24/7 Title stuff or the Maria publicly emasculates Mike stuff were ever part of Hunter’s original plans, so I still feel confident in calling this whole thing Hunter somehow managing to turn Vince’s chicken sh*t into a chicken salad.

They took a moment to put over the punishment that both Oney Lorcan and Ariya Daivari took during their no DQs match last week.

JACK GALLAGHER vs. CHAD GABLE- 7.75/10
An awesome match that did a very good job of playing off of the first, and once they got past that part they seemed to make point of hitting big moves that you rarely (if ever) see these guys do. If Gallagher has sold his ankle better I would have given it an 8.

POST-MATCH STUFF- didn’t like it
Going into this match they pushed it as the rematch of “the match that got the entire WWE Universe talking.” That match did get people talking, yes, but they were talking about how surprised they were to see Gable on 205 Live, or to see Gable’s new haircut and gear, not about the quality of the match (not that the match wasn’t good, but it wasn’t anything great, either). For this match, they had the announcers give it a standing ovation afterwards. As you can tell, I thought this match was awesome… but nowhere near standing ovation-level awesome. And not even if I were grade on some sort of curve relative to other 205 Live matches, either, as I doubt this one cracks my top fifteen 205 Live matches of the year so far… and we’ve only half way through July.


This was another great episode of 205 Live, and I really do encourage everyone to watch the Maverick/Kanellis segment for themselves. It’s well worth your time.

[Big Red Machine]

Oops! In my excitement, I totally missed the segment where Maverick cut a promo telling Kanellls that he could have a Cruiserweight Title shot if he won his match in two weeks. And his opponent will be... Drake Maverick himself.