The best thing that I got out of Raw this week was being made aware that 205 Live had started a tournament with a ton of stacked matches. This week's episode in particular has two matches I'm highly interested in. Particularly the main event which features Roderick Strong making his 205 Live debut against Hideo Itami. NOSTALGIA.
-Video package highlighting Daniel Bryan bringing out Drake Maverick (Rockstar Spud) as the new GM to announce this tournament is shown to start the show.
1) Kalisto vs. Lince Dorado
The lucha house party explodes here with this one on one contest and the stakes are high. I feel like this tournament could pull 205 Live out of the slump it's been in because of that fact, to be honest. The commentators said it really well when saying that every match feels like a title match. This is literally all these cruserweights' only chance to get to WrestleMania. There's 16 men and only two of them will get to hit the grandest stage. That's a recipe for some awesome matches. None the less, this was a fun opener that bordered on being just that and being more. It was structured like a main event style match, but compacted into 10-12 minutes, if that makes sense. Dorado hit all his signatures only for Kalisto to roll to the outside to avoid being pinned. Dorado finally gets Kalisto back inside and gets stunned with a salida del sol, but manages to kick out which really gets the crowd into things for the final minute or two stretch. In the end, a sick reverserana and one more salida del sol puts Dorado away.
Match rating - ***1/4
-Akira Tozawa faces Mark Andrews next week
-Drake Maverick is backstage and lights a fire under the ass of Tony Nese & Drew Gulak, calling them out for being a joke and wasting their potential. They face each other next week. That could be lit.
2) Roderick Strong vs. Hideo Itami
YES. This is good stuff. Strong & Itami slugged it out in a match totally different than it's a predecessor, thus showing that 205 Live can & does have variety. Roddy still has that special vibe to me that he's had since 2015 so I enjoyed this probably a lot more than others, but I'm still reviewing/rating it from an unbiased perspective. But yeah, this was exactly what you'd expect from a TV style main event from these two. They didn't tone down their style so to speak however they didn't go all the way out either. More like just enough to leave you wanting to see them lock up again. Last few moments had me gasping and they brought the crowd into it as well. Strong gets the shocking victory with the end of heartache. ROD DOG TO MANIA BABY. One step closer.
Match rating - ***3/4
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