WWE Cruiserweight Classic Review
August 17, 2016
By: Nick Bryant of Wrestleview.com
After last week’s insane episode, which was by far the best of the series thus far in my opinion, I was not looking forward to this episode at all. Much of that had to do with HoHo Lun being the weakest guy left in the tournament and the fact that Nese had arguably the worst match of the first round (not his fault though). Thankfully the show was a pleasant surprise and there wasn’t anything terrible at all tonight with two really good matches.
Tozawa and Gallagher was a terrific mat wrestling match with Gallagher and Tozawa telling a very simple yet effective story with Gallagher constantly going after Tozawa’s legs. Gallagher’s submissions and crazy holds are just insane, much like Zack Sabre Jr., and Tozawa’s offense is just so damn snug looking. I loved this match. Tozawa-Metalik will be an awesome styles clash in the next round and considering how Lucha influenced Dragon Gate is I fully expect it to be one of the best matches of the entire tournament.
HoHo Lun and Noam Dar was as good as you could possibly expect considering Lun is just not very good. Dar was solid and tried to work on Lun’s leg the whole match. Lun was very inconsistent with his selling as sometimes he would sell the leg, and then other times jump and hop around like there was nothing wrong with his leg. I guess Cena has been teaching him about selling.
Kendrick and Nese was absolutely terrific. Kendrick is so much better than he was even three years ago, when he was in TNA, it’s crazy how good he is. He used to be a flyer but now he rarely ever does high spots at all. Nese was terrific as well and the finish was done absolutely perfectly. That was the best match of the night and the second best match of this round, behind Alexander-Ibushi last week.
Next week’s show should be really good as I expect Dorado-Swann to be a high flying masterpiece, Perkins-Gargano to be on par with Gargano-Ciampa and Gulak-Sabre to be a piece of technical wrestling art.
Scheduled for Next Week:
– Lince Dorado vs. Rich Swann
– Johnny Gargano vs. TJ Perkins
– Drew Gulak vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
CWC QUARTERFINALS
– Akira Tozawa vs. Gran Metalik
– Noam Dar vs. Sabre/Gulak Winner
– Kota Ibushi vs. Brian Kendrick
– Perkins/Gargano Winner vs. Dorado/Swann Winner