Yessir, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the World Wrestling Network to come back in to your home with Evolve 82 (live from Queens, New York) and Evolve 83 (live from Brooklyn, New York), and as always, I'm here to give you the low down on what's going down.
Video Roundup
Evolve Mini-Doc: Zack Sabre Jr. Can't Make A Mistake
Evolve Mini-Doc: Crowning A WWN Champion
The Master Plan For The Dream Team...
Evolve 82 (Saturday, April 22, at 6PM Eastern)
Matt Riddle (c) vs. Timothy Thatcher (WWN Championship)
Timothy Thatcher is the only man in Evolve Matt Riddle cannot beat.
Three times they've squared off and three times he's come up empty. Granted, the first two were mired in controversy— their first match at Evolve 56 ended abruptly on an alleged knee strike to the groin (although I assure you that if you watch the footage back, you’ll see that it was high but legal), and the rematch just weeks later at Evolve 58 was declared a no contest after Riddle all but broke Thatcher’s arm and the referee threw the match out rather than declare the stoppage win.
But on the third, there can be no doubt. At Evolve 66, in a brutal no holds barred war, Tim tapped Matt out with a cross armbreaker hanging from the apron. Untoward, perhaps, but in the context of that match type, clean and indisputable. The question was settled and Thatcher spent most of the rest of his 596-day reign fending off Catch Point maestro Drew Gulak. The Bro was in his rear-view mirror.
Not anymore, not now that the tables have been turned and it’s the former UFC fighter that holds the gold. And since losing the title, Thatcher has wrestled Riddle twice outside of Evolve (once for RevPro and once in the finals of wXw’s yearly shoot-style tournament, Ambition), and twice he has lost.
In this fourth time in Evolve, the odds seem truly even.
Drew Galloway vs. Zack Sabre, Jr.
This is, unbelievably, a first time matchup.
Zack was but a rookie when Drew headed to WWE the first time, and in the three years Galloway has been on the indies this run, amazingly, not one promoter bit on running this match until now. Two world warriors, working up and down the independent scene in both the UK and the US, and somehow their paths have never crossed.
Now they do battle, and at a crossroads in each man’s career. Galloway, the hypocrite, headed to NXT, the very place he claimed was rotting Evolve from the inside, a rot he claimed that only he could undo. Arguably the most successful he’s ever been to force WWE’s hand and wedge his way back in, but a hollow success, a success that rings false in the face of the crusade nonsense he’s peddled for the last year.
Sabre, finally cottoned on to that killer instinct that was in him all along, is lean, mean, and definitively the most successful he’s ever been, having turned down a WWE deal and holding three titles at once, the Evolve World Championship, PWG World Championship, and RevPro British Heavyweight Championship, as well as starting in for New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Both men are at an apex, in the ring and out of it, they’re as good as they’ve ever been. Stylistically, they compliment each other very well, as Galloway’s matches against Riddle and Thatcher and Sabre’s against Hero show. The match is gonna tear the house down, but the question is what will be built in its place after?
Darby Allin vs. “All Ego” Ethan Page (Last Man Standing Match)
I thought this story was over, I truly did.
When Darby came off that ladder at Evolve 81 and finally got the three count, well, how can you top that? Surely, that was this chapter of the book done and dusted, our hero went to incredible lengths but finally bested his tormentor, onto other things.
I was wrong. Allin interrupted Page while he was trying to absolutely destroy Jimmy Havoc and sabotage Evolve’s relationship with Progress and fended him off with a pipe, and just like that a match was dropped into a fresh can of gasoline.
This match is scary, folks, scary enough that Gabe Sapolsky publicly worried about whether or not to put it on at all after hearing some of the stuff Darby and Ethan intend to do to each other. For these two, with the hatred they feel for each other, the lines they’re willing to cross to make it so the other can’t rise to his feet before a count of ten, well...
Bodies, as the old WWE PSA said, will be broken. Neither man will leave the same as he entered into it.
And the rest
Doom Patrol finally get their shot at the tag titles held by their own Catch Point stablemates, Fred Yehi and “Hot Sauce” Tracy Williams. It’s a match months in the making, and both teams come in on hot streaks, although Chris Dickinson and Jaka may find their momentum blunted after their loss to the South Pacific Power Trip in one of the best matches of WrestleMania weekend. This one is a real tossup, but you can be sure of two things— the tag titles aren’t leaving Catch Point, and it’s gonna be quite enjoyable to watch.
Kyle O’Reilly makes his long-awaited return to Evolve as he goes one-on-one with Keith Lee. It’s the classic test of the unstoppable force and the immovable object, but usually the immovable object isn’t a titan that can flip with the best of them and the unstoppable force isn’t one of the best technical wrestlers in the world, finally unchained after years of exile. It’s a testament to the quality of this card that this match, that could headline a show anywhere in the world, ended up arguably fifth on the list.
Austin Theory is tested once again as he goes up against ACH. ACH exited the last weekend of shows down 1-2, and he’ll need this win if he hopes to get back into title contention anytime soon. But for Theory, who hasn’t picked up a win since he beat Darby Allin at Evolve 78, a win over a veteran like ACH could mean a complete reversal of his fortunes and a ticket to the main event.
Evolve 83 (Sunday, April 23, at 8PM Eastern)
Drew Galloway vs. Matt Riddle (“I Quit” Match)
This is it. Drew Galloway’s indie career, his feud with Matt Riddle, his crusade to save Evolve from itself, it all ends here, in this match.
The score is even, one decisive win each. Riddle caved Galloway’s head in with elbows for a stoppage victory at Evolve 79, and Drew returned the favor at the next show by putting our Bro through a table with a piledriver and snapping his head to the mat with Future Shock.
And now, the rubber match, the decider, and with two finishes as decisive as those in the record books, it’s hard to see how this is anything other than brutal war staged as a wrestling match, a struggle to near-death. These were not the submission finishes of men determined to make the other say “uncle”, they brutalized each other, shortening both their careers.
Win or lose, Galloway leaves after this, but make no mistake, this is a battle for the heart and soul of Evolve. Johnny Gargano passed the torch to Matt Riddle when he left, a move Drew immediately tried to turn to his advantage by recruiting the Bro. He got his head kicked off, and I don’t think it’s going too far to suggest that’s the moment when his war changed.
He blames Riddle for the neck injury that took him out of Evolve for months, and it’s no longer about saving Evolve now that he’s bringing in that fat WWE paycheck, it’s all about taking his pound of flesh from Matt Riddle’s body.
And if he does, he might have been right all along that NXT was killing Evolve from the inside.
Lio Rush vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. (c) (Evolve World Championship)
Lio Rush is, frankly, incredible.
He moves with a near superhuman level of speed and dexterity, able to duck and dodge blows that would strike anyone else in pro wrestling. What’s more, he’s 22 years old and has only been wrestling for a little more than two of those, he is the very definition of a prodigy.
After a year mired in Ring of Honor after winning the Top Prospect Tournament, he’s returned to Evolve and he’s wasting no time in gunning for the top. It’s his time, he knows what he wants, and he’s going to reach out and take it.
But he’s facing Zack Sabre, Jr., the man who sent Chris Hero packing with one final defeat. The man who ended Timothy Thatcher’s 596 day reign as Evolve Champion. A man who has an untouchable record against high flyers, having beat the likes of ACH, Tony Nese, and Will Ospreay in the last year, falling only to Ricochet, an Evolve legend in his own right.
If Lio wants to wrest the biggest prize in Evolve away from its owner, he’s gonna have to bring more than his natural talent and inherent wrestling acumen, more than his gift for showmanship and entrances. He’s gonna have to dig down and find that killer instinct and find it quickly, and he’s going to have to execute flawlessly.
Fred Yehi vs. Kyle O’Reilly
Six years, five months, and two days.
That’s how long Kyle O’Reilly has been away from Evolve. His last appearance? All the way back in Evolve 6, a loss to future tag partner Bobby Fish. But as it so often goes, he started picking up more Ring of Honor dates, and you don’t just get to play both sides, not for long, and he picked ROH.
75 Evolve shows went by without him, and in that time, Evolve gradually chiseled away the stone until finally, thanks in part to the efforts of men like Drew Gulak, Biff Busick, Timothy Thatcher, and Zack Sabre, Jr., it became the kind of wrestling promotion that Gabe Sapolsky and Bryan Danielson had dreamed up together in 2009.
Hard-hitting, with a focus on intense mat grappling, a zag away from the high octane spotfests that Ring of Honor had lead the charge to revolutionize indie wrestling with in the early 2000s, Evolve attracted a collection of the best grapplers wrestling has to offer. But for so long, Kyle O’Reilly was the proverbial one that got away, bar none the best technical wrestler outside Evolve on the North American indies.
No longer. And this, his second match back, is a most fitting showcase for that. Fred Yehi is at a point in his career not unlike KOR was when he left Evolve. An up-and-comer breaking out nationally in a big way, dazzling audiences with his unique approach to technical wrestling, it’s not one-to-one but it’s close enough to make Kyle look at Fred and wonder “what if I had stayed?”
Ordinarily in a match like this you’d assume it’s the young guy looking to knock off the veteran, but O’Reilly is hungry to prove that he belongs in a company that he says he never should have left.
And the rest
If Darby Allin makes it through the Last Man Standing, he’ll bump right up against the Limitless might of Keith Lee. Best of luck, Darby. You’re gonna need it.
ACH squares off against Jaka in classic-style high flyer vs. grappler action. Jaka was part of the Catch Point team that beat the high flyers in the clash of styles trios match at Evolve 81, but can he knock off a man who himself beat one of the best technical wrestlers in the world today at the same show?
“All Ego” Ethan Page gets another chance to take his frustration out on Austin Theory. All Ego has been a one-man welcoming committee for new talent for over a year now, but Theory will be only the second to face him twice. It took Darby Allin four matches and a lot of bumps to pull one out on Page, can Austin get it done in half the time?
Plus more from “Hot Sauce” Tracy Williams, Chris Dickinson, and others. Priscilla Kelly will surely be skulking around looking for a “friend”, and Stokely Hathaway will be on hand to represent his man Timothy Thatcher while the former Evolve World Champion is in the UK challenging for the Progress Championship in trios action.
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