205 Live Thoughts- Is The Gentleman Extraordinary Enough To Topple The King?
-Welcome to 205 Live, the only cruiserweight show where the ropes stay the same colour all night! Coming off the Royal Rumble, Neville cemented his status as King of the Cruiserweights by beating Rich Swann for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. Tonight's main event features Jack Gallagher stepping up to team with Cedric Alexander to take on Neville and Noam Dar. Can Gallagher be the Jamie Lannister to Neville's Jon Arryn? Can the Extraordinary Gentleman become the King Slayer?
-We kick off the action with Tony Nese vs. Lince Dorado. Nese coming off that odd interview with Aries, but pre-match they cover his assault of TJP last week instead. Aries insults Nese for not answering his questions. Graves compares the chip on Nese's shoulder to Aries' attitude, and A-Double takes offense to being compared to Nese.
-Lince Dorado deserve better than being a jobber, but a botched springboard headscissors doesn't help his cause. It seems to ring Nese's bell for a moment. Handspring stunner has more success. Mauro name drops Okada when referring to an impressive dropkick, and tonight Ranallo is bordering on Matt Striker levels of "look how much I know about Japanese wrestling". Tozawa's debut later in the show is going to be insufferable. Nese delivers the running knee, now dubbed the Running Nese (fair enough) for the win.
-Backstage interview with Rich Swann. He's wearing a medical boot and has crutches. He says he hurt his ankle kicking Neville's dome. Looked to me that he fucked it up on the dive, but Swann's story makes him sound way cooler. Neville interrupts, and Swann vows, bad ankle or not, that he will never keep him down. So Neville simply pushes him over. Bad man!
-Gran Metallik, coming soon. It's actually worked out pretty well that all these great CWC competitors had prior bookings to honour before starting full time with WWE, builds antici... pation for the arrival of new stars.
-Brian Kendrick comes onto commentary for Akira Tozawa's debut. Is he just swapping from Tajiri to Tozawa? Seems a tad racist. Also, I learned via Twitter this week that Tajiri is healing ahead of schedule and should be back in a couple of weeks. Great news.
-I saw Tozawa live at NXT Sydney against Andrade "Cien" Almas. He doesn't appear to speak English, but is very charismatic, and his German suplex is a thing of beauty. His opponent is Aaron Solow, who is actually Bayley's boyfriend. Tozawa must have a thing for Bayley, as he quickly turns Solow's chest beet red with chops and kicks. Kendrick admits that Tozawa is very good, but is quick to add that he's no Brian Kendrick. Tozawa ends it seemingly out of nowhere with a wicked snap German suplex, and Kendrick is stunned into silence. Aries tries to interview Tozawa after his victory, and Tozawa rattles off some Japanese. "Couldn't have said it better myself," proclaims Aries.
-Backstage segment with Noam Dar, with Alicia Fox, and Neville. Audio cut out frequently hear, so either they were having issues in production or they were swearing at each other for 75% of that segment. Neville tells Dar to leave his baggage (Alicia) at home.
-Main event time! Gallagher and Neville trade wrestling holds before the King tags out to Noam Dar. Mauro puts over the UK wrestling background of all three of those men. Gallagher plays the face in peril as Neville and Dar take turns beating him up, but still manages to get some of his shit in, including applying a hammerlock with his legs so he can use his hands to twirl his moustache. Brilliant. Dar starts to piss Neville off by continually bling tagging himself in. Gallagher creates an opening with a sick headbutt, falling lifelessly onto Dar for a convincing nearfall. Neville makes the save, allowing both sides to try and tag out. Unfortunately, Neville draws his hand away. There goes Dar's chances of being Hand of the King, as Corey Graves mentioned earlier- he drops a lot of GoT references in commentary, another reason why he's my favourite commentator right now. Dar's left alone, and fresh rival Cedric leaps in with a springboard clothesline, quickly followed by a handspring kick and the Lumbar Check to close the show.
-Interestingly, the commentators talk about this win perhaps putting Cedric in a position to challenge for the Cruiserweight title. I like Cedric, but I was hoping we'd get Neville vs. Gallagher- hence my opening about him being the Kingslayer. But if Cedric is the challenger to kill a bit of time before gearing up Neville vs. Gallagher for Mania, that'd be great. Cedric/Neville and Gallagher/Neville are both good feuds for the Cruiserweight division, and 205 Live has quickly become one of the better things on WWE Network.
Until next time, take care,
Mick
