1 Up & 4 Downs From WWE 205 Live (January 17, 2017)
Ups...
1. An Upstanding Main Event
Describing 205 Live as a one-man show is only half-wrong. Without Neville, the show has stuttered in the last few weeks - but Jack Gallagher is far and away the second best thing within it.
His “I Forfeit” match benefitted from a lengthy build-up and a big-feel presentation, preluded by an absorbing video package documenting their feud - and both Gallagher and Daivari deserve credit for crafting a match as unique as it was entertaining, getting a reaction from fans who’d been inundated with hours and hours of wrestling.
Gallagher was in typically excellent form, hilariously finding a surplus of umbrellas underneath the ring with which to batter his scoundrel of an opponent. He even managed to underscore his gentlemanly credentials when he politely requested that Corey Graves remove himself from harm’s way - before throwing Daivari across the announce desk and into the space he just barely managed to vacate. Daivari, oft-criticised on these pages, was no passenger; his selling and viciousness showed that there is some potential lurking underneath the basic game he has demonstrated thus far - even if he kept imploring Gallagher to quit, rather than forfeit. When he strangled out his match-ending forfeit, it was easy to believe that he was in real, career-threatening danger.
While the match was unique, and driven by character in a show with a dearth of them, it wasn’t - by any of its wide-reaching definitions - a cruiserweight match. That’s the reason we are given to tune in. As per its marketing ploy, 205 Live is meant to be the most exciting hour on television - an hour in which a diverse cast of smaller, dynamic athletes are meant to offer something their bigger contemporaries cannot.
Instead - on this evidence - it’s just main roster action, diluted. The Young Bucks, sadly, were right.