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EVOLVE 8 - STYLE BATTLE DVD REVIEW: EIGHT WRESTLERS REPRESENTING DIFFERENT STYLES BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY IN A ONE NIGHT TOURNAMENT

YOU CAN ORDER THIS SATURDAY'S EVOLVE 10 iPPV FEATURING THE FINAL EVER ECW ARENA EVENT BY CLICKING ABOVE EVOLVE was in a bit of a quandary for EVOLVE 8: Jon Moxley had left for WWE after EVOLVE 7, their other two top stars in Chuck Taylor and Johnny Gargano weren't on the show, yet they still had to put together an event that people would pay to watch. To that end, EVOLVE delivered the Style Battle tournament, which took eight wrestlers that each represent a unique style in professional wrestling, and entered them into a one night tournament to determine whose style would reign supreme.

Being that they were without certain main eventers for the evening, the tournament included a blend of established wrestlers like Sami Callihan, Brodie Lee, and Bobby Fish, as well as newcomers like Jon Davis and AR Fox, who had wrestled on a few EVOLVE and DGUSA events, but weren't yet established mainstays. Between the tournament itself and the eight man Fray match that would go on right before the finals, EVOLVE 8 felt like a new chapter and gave us a good idea of who were going to be major players throughout the rest of the year.

EVOLVE 8 - Style Battle: 5/20/2011 in Union City, New Jersey

The show kicked off with AR Fox taking on Rich Swann in a rematch of EVOLVE 7, and the budding rivalry actually played into the storyline in this match where AR Fox was booked for the tournament before Swann to represent the high flying style, but Swann ended up getting voted in by the fans at EVOLVE's website anyway to represent Rich Swann style, I guess because his style is all his own. This wasn't as insane, Jackie Chan-esque as the first match but still followed a very fast pace and Fox hit a top rope Codebreaker to beat Swann for the second time and advance to the semifinals. Swann came over and stuck his hand out to Fox after the match, but pulled it away as Fox went to shake it.

The next first round match was a grueling physical battle between Jon Davis, representing the power wrestling style, and Tony Nese, who represented the standing combat style. Standing combat turned out to be a pretty appropriate way to describe it since they spent much of the match on their feet just battering one another. Even though you might look at these two and assume they're just a couple of muscle guys, they're both more athletic than you might think just based off of appearances, and they got the chance to show off some of their more athletic side here, including a beautiful bridging German suplex by Nese. Davis got the duke in this war of attrition with a combo consisting of a spinebuster, a powerbomb into the turnbuckles, and Three Minutes Around The World and will now go on to the semifinals to face AR Fox.

First round match #3 saw Brodie Lee of the super heavyweight style taking on Sami Callihan, representing hard hitting. This tournament is the first place I'm hearing a lot of the style names the wrestlers are representing, but if I had to hazard a guess as to the meaning of hard hitting, it includes not just the ability to dish out punishment but take it as well, because both guys took a hell of a beating in this one, but especially Callihan as he was not only the recipient of a pair of Truckstop slams from Brodie, but also took a pair of back suplexes onto the ring apron, both of which resulted in a sick and audible thud. The story here was that Sami and Brodie were dishing out massive amount of punishment to each other, but still managed to survive everything the other guy threw at them. In a brutal finish, Sami got Brodie in the stretch muffler and stomped Brodie in the face until he finally tapped out. This to me was easily the best match of the first round, and a standout performance from both guys, with Sami cutting a great postmatch promo talking about how he just made the biggest, baddest guy in the tournament tap out and he's just getting warmed up.

The final first round match pitted Bobby Fish of the Puroresu junior heavyweight style against the hybrid style's Austin Aries. This was very different than the other first round matches in that it focused more on technical and submission wrestling where both guys picked a body part (in both cases, the knee) and spent the match attacking it. This was good, but got a little disjointed in the middle where first Fish appeared to overshoot a moonsault attempt and that looked like it threw them off their game for a little bit, but they got back into it as they went to the finish. Fish again survived an insane amount of punishment by taking two running dropkicks into the corner, two brainbusters, and the Last Chancery and still managing to hold on and eventually catch Aries in a heel hook. Aries fought valiantly to try and get to the ropes, but eventually was left with no other option but to tap. Lenny Leonard got in the ring after the match to ask Fish about the finish, and Fish said that he's worked so hard on that move because Bryan Danielson caught him with it at EVOLVE 4 and, when he went home to go back to the drawing board after that loss, began working in earnest on perfecting the hold and it served him well here with what he considered probably the biggest win of his career and how he thinks it'll help carry him through the rest of the tournament.

Before we get to the semifinal round, Lenny Leonard introduces Larry Dallas and Reby Sky (who helpfully corrects Lenny that her name is pronounced Rebby and not Reeby, though Lenny ignores her and keeps saying Reeby), and informs them that due to their interference at EVOLVE 7, EVOLVE officials have decreed that anyone inside the guardrail at an EVOLVE event has to be a licensed manager or trainer. Therefore, if they ever involve themselves in an EVOLVE match again, they'll be ejected from the event and never allowed back. Larry seems unperturbed by this, and takes the opportunity to extoll the virtues of his newest signing, who we will see later tonight in the Fray match and just happened to draw the last number. Lenny says that's great but for now, they have matches to get to, and Lenny Leonard of all people takes up the flaming sword of EVOLVE virtue and orders Larry and Reeby to the back by the time he finishes counting to ten.

After that short segment, it's back to the Style Battle tournament as we kick off the semifinals with AR Fox taking on Jon Davis. This is obviously a huge physical mismatch, and matches like this tend to go one of two ways: either the big guy destroys the little guy, and the little guy gets a short comebackbefore being decimated in dramatic fashion, or the big guy destroys the little guy for nearly the entire match before the little guy hits a couple of fluke moves to get the win out of nowhere. This match saw option #2 play out as Davis basically annihilated Fox for the entire match, including hitting a Pounce that saw Fox come closer than I've ever seen to someone going clear through the cornerpost, Fox got a short comeback before Davis again retook control, but Fox got a fluke bulldog into the cornerpost and hit the same top rope Codebreaker he used to beat Swann to score another victory and move to the finals. Fox again found himself face to face with the guy he just beat in the postmatch promo, but this time Davis did the honorable thing by shaking Fox's hand and wishing him luck in the finals.

Now we're on to the second semifinal match between Sami Callihan and Bobby Fish, a match which only lasted a few minutes and saw the two of them do their usual stiff strike exchange before Sami hit his diving forearm and went for a cover, but Fish kicked out so Callihan hit it again and then sat on Fish's back and rammed forearms down onto the back of Fish's head until the referee stopped the match. Callihan now goes to the finals against AR Fox, and Fish blearily gets to his feet and wishes Callihan good luck in the finals, then challenges him to do this again and shakes his hand before leaving the ring as Callihan says he's got one more to go and will see AR Fox in the finals.

Before we go to the finals, we go to a non-tournament match pitting a pair of new-and-improved versions of teams against each other as Ricky Reyes and Alex Colon, the New Pitbulls, face off against Joel and Will Maximo of the New SAT. Both teams came off as, shall we say, a step behind their original incarnations, particularly the SAT who are a lot more girthy than they were when we saw them back in 2002-03. It was fine for a non-tournament match to give everyone a break before they had to come back out, but this was just standard paint-by-the-numbers stuff until the SAT hit the Spanish Fly on Colon for the win.

Now we have more non-tournament action with an eight man Fray match, held under pseudo-Royal Rumble rules where two men start and another participant comes in every 90 seconds, and the winner will get a shot to appear on Dragon Gate USA events during their June tour. Scott Reed & Cheech Hernandez start us off, and the other participants include Brian XL, Blain Rage, Kory Chavis, Pinkie Sanchez, Derek Ryze, and Larry Dallas' new protege Ahtu. This match told probably the best story of any Fray match I've ever seen where it started out like your typical Fray match with everyone flying around everywhere until Chavis came in and started destroying people to establish himself as the big badass in the match. Ahtu came out last and blew right through Chavis and it came down to him against Sanchez, and if you remember what I said earlier about the Davis-Fox match and how those matches tend to go, this match went the way that match didn't. Ahtu completely destroyed Sanchez for several minutes while fans chanted "you can't wrestle" at him, but Sanchez ended up hitting a second rope DDT out of nowhere to get the win. Lenny Leonard interviewed him after the match and Sanchez simply said he'll see us all in Dragon Gate USA, and history has shown that he was very instrumental in the formation of the DUFs with Arik Cannon and Sami Callihan.

Speaking of Callihan, he's up next as he faces AR Fox in the finals of the Style Battle tournament. This was a short match where both guys were understandably tired from the first two matches earlier in the evening, but went all out for the ten minutes or so the finals lasted. Fox hit the top rope Codebreaker he won his first two matches with, but Callihan kicked out and hit a pair of diving forearms, a top rope backdrop suplex, and another standard backdrop suplex, but Fox still kicked out and went on to hit a springboard top rope Spanish Fly to get the win and become the first ever winner of the EVOLVE Style Battle.

* * *

I enjoyed this show, and it could just be that I've always been a fan of one night tournaments, but I also think it was a very smartly booked show. They took a situation where Jon Moxley had left the company and Gargano and Taylor weren't on the show, effectively wiping out a good chunk of their main event talent for the night, and turned it around to a)make it a fun show to watch anyway and b)get over a bunch of newer stars like AR Fox, Jon Davis, and Pinkie Sanchez, all of whom ran with the momentum and ended up in the main event of Dragon Gate USA's final show of the year.

Even beyond getting the new guys over, you also had some really good matches between the established stars, with Aries-Fish, Sami-Brodie, and the Fray match in particular standing out. While I wouldn't say this show "didn't count" necessarily in the EVOLVE universe, it was fun to watch them take a break from ongoing storylines for this and I'd like to see them do it again. Also, the DVD includes an alternate angle video where you see all the most memorable in-ring occurences from a different perspective than the main show.

Recommended show, and for information on ordering, as well as this weekend's EVOLVE 10 event or anything else EVOLVE related, head over to the DGUSA website here.

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