Previously on the 205 Live Recap:
Last week we walked through the Drake Maverick Picks your Poison challenge for this evening’s episode with the number one contender Cedric Alexander vs. Tony Nese. First up though, we’ll have Buddy Murphy (the carrot top champion) vs. Gran Metalik (standing in for Noam Dar who, surprise surprise is not medically cleared to compete. The poor Glaswegian has a worse injury record than Jack Wilshere.)
Also last week we had one of the least scintillating “most exciting hours on television,” that I can remember from this year at least. Yes, they do still call the show that, even when it’s not overly exciting, only goes for 48 minutes and is not even on television.
BUDDY MURPHY v GRAN METALIK
Nigel McGuinness kicks this one off with an anecdote about Ricky Steamboat accompanying Mcguinness to the ring once. I’m thinking he is referring to ROH Joe vs. Punk 2 which is probably worth a look if you enjoy wrestling at all.
I can almost hear Jim Ross from his outdoor couch in Oklahoma yelling at his iPad about announcers trying to get themselves over ahead of the talent. Might actually be a nice break for him to critique an announcer for being selfish rather than the constant mantra of “slow down; sell more.”
Note: I don’t really get impressed by individual moves or spots in matches on TV. But I tune in mostly to keep up with “me stories.” But in this match I think I saw a couple of things that I don’t remember seeing on TV before:
Metalik walks the guardrail and hits a diving rana to the floor. Then Murphy catches a top rope blockbuster attempt, mid-rotation, and counters with a running vertical suplex, Ala Jay Lethal. These would have been the most impressive spots of the match had the Budweiser not hit the highlight of stomping on Metalik’s toe mid strike combination.
It’s stuff like that which made me give him the nod for my Wrestling Should be Fun awards “WWE Male Superstar of the Year” nomination.
The blood nut gets the win after kicking out of a Metalik driver, forever renamed here now as “The Metallica,” and hitting Murphy’s law. No Spanish flies, but this was indicative of all Murph’s stuff this year. A bloody beauty mate.
PROMO POURI
The Brian Kendrick is trying to convince Maverick and the audience that he is “a changed man” from the one who was “doing anything I could to hold on to my dream.” The metaphor “holding on” creates imagery of desperation for the audience and invites us to empathise with the newly turned babyface and forgive him for his past mistakes.
Kendrick says that he “thanks Gulak and Gallagher for beating that into me and making me realise that I don’t need to manipulate people. I need to lift this division up.” The audience continues to feel sympathy because of the violent imagery in the metaphor, “beating that into me.”
He finishes with syntactic parallelism by repeating “I’m a changed man,” to foreshadow that the audience shouldn’t suspect anything fishy at all in the street fight next week.
Tozawa also impressed here and the silver tongued strong stylist definitely doesn’t need subtitles; unlike Noam Dar who, I remind WWE, would completely get over if he was subtitled in the Queen’s English.
Gallagher and Gulak (now officially known as team alliteration) spout about Kendrick’s dream passing him by. Alliterator 1 promises that Kendrick “Will tap out.” The use of the Modal Auxillary verb “will” suggests a certain Gulak victory.
I remember Bret Hart once saying that he never promised to win in promos unless he actually knew he was going over because he didn’t want to be seen as a liar to the fans. This probably doesn’t apply to heels in 2018 though.
Finally we get more of the new bromance between Drake Magnum and Hideo Itami. The last real men on 205 Live.
CEDRIC ALEXANDER v TONY NESE
Remember on Smackdown “Here Comes the Pain” when you could give your CAW “cruiserweight moves? We get plenty of that type of “Hold left and tap circle” type of action to open up this one. Chain wrestling and a fast pace from the get go and as Joey Styles would say “I get the feeling they’re just warming up.”
There is interesting commentary from the 3 man booth, which notes how Murphy is the only man to have kicked out of the Lumbar check. This adds to the major deal over the previously mentioned “Ranga ‘Restler kicks out of the Metallica at 2.”
I predict that finisher kick outs are a major story arc in the title match Sunday if the commentators are blatantly setting it up. Now I hear what you’re saying; “Dom it’s 2018, every PPV match has a finisher kick out.” Well I remind you that you’re talking to the guy who is trying to get language analysis in meaningless promos over in his recaps. So back off pal.
Tony Nese hits Cedric like Alexander owes him money throughout this one. It’s beautifully brutal with big time contact. Oh and there’s a Frosby (F’N) Flop (to the) floor; fantastic.
Nese impresses me by actually going for the pin every time Alexander hits the mat. It’s nice to see that type of desperation in a cruiserweight match and he’s actually trying to win the contest.
Anyway, he doesn’t win and C.A. Wrestle Factory does with the Lumbar check and…
0 Spanish Flies.
SHOW ANALYSIS
Tonight we got two pretty stellar matches to build for an important title defence at the P.P.V. The show ends with Murphy storming the ring but Alexander (Kidd in Cruiserweight Land) gets the better of him so the Aussie can take a smoko break and keep his heat.
What a great go home show from the lads!
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