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If you didn't watch EVOLVE 11 this past Friday night, you missed a hell of a show. There were three matches that were absolutely off the charts, and the undercard was all solid to good as well, and my feeling coming away from it was that I would have happily recommended the replay even at the price of a typical WWE or TNA PPV, and it is absolutely worth the cost on WWNLive.com, which by the way, you can order the replay on by clicking on the poster above.
I really have to give Sal and Gabe credit, they really have the iPPV game down pat to the point where you can plug your laptop into an HDMI port, full screen it, and never know you were watching an internet stream. The video and audio come through crystal clear, they have videos playing in the fifteen minutes or so before the show starts as a kind of countdown show, more videos playing during intermission so you're not just staring at a logo for twenty minutes, commentary is clear as a bell, the buildings are well lit, and it's just an all around top notch, professional production. Literally the only complaint I have is that it's sometimes hard to hear what's said on the house mic and they ought to find some way to loop that into the iPPV feed, but other than that it's as close to perfect as you can hope for.
Unfortunately, EVOLVE did run into some other problems presenting this show that were outside of their control, namely that Bobby Fish, Cheech, AR Fox, and Scott Reed weren't able to get across the border into Canada. This caused some of the lineup to be shuffled around, but none of the top matches were affected other than the planned Johnny Gargano-AR Fox bout, and they were able to shuffle the lineup and come through with a strong show even in spite of the border problems.
With Gargano's opponent off the show, Gargano was instead inserted into the planned Chuck Taylor-Samuray Del Sol match to make it a three way, and a few interesting things came out of this. Obviously, Chuck Taylor and Johnny Gargano faced off in their first official match since the breakup of Ronin, but they told a great story where Taylor beat Gargano to not only position himself as the wins leader in EVOLVE and a future challenger for the Open The Freedom Gate Title, but it was a 100% clean win. It has an asterisk, because Taylor won the match by working over Gargano's injured back and Gargano never actually tapped out, but officially it's a clean win that Taylor can brag about and use to make himself out as the favorite whenever these two face off for the title.
Beyond the interaction between Gargano and Taylor, you also have Samuray Del Sol getting in there and going toe to toe with the two top guys in the company, and it seems pretty obvious that EVOLVE/DGUSA sees something in the guy by having him in this match after having him beat Masato Yoshino during the last DGUSA tour. He's going to be an interesting guy to watch, because it's not often someone comes in and, out of nowhere, barrels his way right to the level Del Sol is at. I'm not sure what EVOLVE had planned if AR Fox had made it into Canada, but I can't imagine it coming off any better than what we got with the three way because it fit so much storytelling into one match that, by the way, was an excellent match to boot, especially once it got down to just Taylor and Gargano.
In addition to beating his former partner, Chuck Taylor also introduced his new stable, the Gentlemen's Club, which includes Drew Gulak and "Manscout" Jake Manning. This is going to be a very interesting group to watch just because it's such a bizarre and motley collection of guys who don't really seem to have much of anything in common. I haven't seen much of Gulak or Manning in the ring, but I've really liked what I've seen. Manning is a hell of an entertaining character with the way he treats his Scoutmaster Guide like the Hong Kong Book Of Kung Fu, and I enjoy watching Gulak's technical wrestling. They lost their first match, which seemed a little strange, but I guess we'll see where it goes.
Also making an impression were Alex Reynolds and John Silver of the NYWC, and I really enjoy watching the NYWC guys whenever they appear on DGUSA and EVOLVE shows. Tony Nese made a huge impression by having some awesome matches in DGUSA/EVOLVE before moving on to TNA last year, Alex Reynolds reminds me very much of a young Tyler Black in both appearance and what he does in the ring, and John Silver may be my favorite of the bunch because he's this small guy who has intensity and fights like he's 6'5" and 260 pounds. Hopefully later in the year they'll get to work some more prominent matches because I see a ton of potential in them.
Low Ki and El Generico had an awesome match and beat the CRAP out of each other. I've seen them work together in the past, most notably in Jersey All Pro Wrestling about six or seven years ago and they did the same basic match where Low Ki is clearly the better fighter, but Generico refuses to back down or be intimidated and comes back at Ki with everything he's got. It was interesting to see Low Ki cut a somewhat heelish promo after the match where he told Generico he's not as good as he thinks he is before walking off, because Low Ki has come off like this honorable warrior who respects everyone else he's interacted with so far, so it was a little out of character for him to do a 180 on Generico, and I wonder if this is part of an overall change in direction of Low Ki as a character in DGUSA/EVOLVE, or if it's just residual heat between the two that they'll play off for future matches.
This brings us to the main event, the Dave Finlay-Sami Callihan rematch from their very hard hitting first bout when Finlay beat Callihan at EVOLVE 9. They had another war here and actually beat each other up worse than Low Ki and Generico did in the previous match. I really thought Callihan was going to get the win here and I kept waiting for him to get that big move in that would turn the tide, but this was almost all Finlay as Callihan was unable to sustain any offense and was eventually forced to tap out to a cross armbreaker.
Sometimes I wonder what the plan is for Callihan, because he's easily one of the two or three best workers in EVOLVE, he's crazy over, he's super talented and everyone knows it, but it seems like every time he has a chance to win a big match and legitimize himself as a main eventer, he ends up losing. Granted, I'm not somebody who thinks a wrestler has to win every single match to get over, and Tommy Dreamer is a great example of what I mean, but after a while it establishes a pattern where Calihan loses to Finlay, he loses to AR Fox, he loses to Sabu, he loses to Finlay again, and it sends a message that this guy can't win big matches and he's just a loudmouth. I know that's now how EVOLVE sees him because they wouldn't put him in the matches and angles that they do if that's how they felt, but when I see him come into a rematch with Finlay and get his ass handed to him worse than the first match, it makes me wonder.
But taking my personal overthinking out of the equation, this was an excellent match and, when you combine it with Low Ki-Generico and the Gargano-Taylor-Del Sol three way, you absolutely can't go wrong and I highly recommend you buy the replay which, by the way, you can do by clicking the poster at the top of this column.
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