June 29th, 2018
Highlights from last week are shown, including Callihan’s heavies going to attack Strickland before his title match last week. Barrington Hughes is interviewed, he says he’s not in the best shape from last week. It took two people to take him down, but now it’s a problem, because he isn’t done rumbling.
Rich Bocchini and Tony Schiavone welcome us to the show. They talk about tonight’s main event, ACH vs. Rich Swann in a first time encounter. Also tonight is Sammy Guevara vs. Fred Yehi, along with a prospect match. That leads us to highlights from last week, showing Kotto Brazil’s first singles win. Brazil is interviewed, and says he’s feeling pretty good from his win last week. It’s only going up from here… Until Callihan’s heavies attack Kotto! Callihan appears, as the heavies are shown carrying Kotto away in the background. Callihan calls out MVP, and says if he ever wants to find Kotto again, he’ll need to come find him.
Prospect Bout: Ariel Dominguez vs. Jaye Skye
The idea of this was to promote the upcoming Middleweight division. The bell rings, they go to lock up, but the lights turn red and SU YUNG is out with Zeda Zhang! They absolutely destroy Dominguez and Skye with punches, before they walk off all happy. There’s no women’s division in MLW (at least not yet), so it’ll be interesting to see where these two fit in.
A video package for Salina De La Renta’s newly funded $60,000 bounty on Shane Strickland is shown. Low-Ki commentates in the background, and is looking to burn Swerve’s House down.
Battle Riot is promoted yet again, Tom Lawlor, Brody King, Low-Ki, Jimmy havoc, Samu, and Leon Scott are all announced. ACH and Rich Swann against the Hart Foundation, John Hennigan vs. Low-Ki, and the World Middleweight Championship match between MJF and Joey Ryan are all announced.
MVP opens a door and is on the hunt for Callihan. He finds Kotto tied up in a boiler room, and Callihan has a message for MVP, he says if MVP is man enough to meet him in the boiler room let’s do it. There’s our set up for next week…
Before our next match, Salina hypes up Sammy, saying he’s been in Japan and Mexico, training with the best. Also, Fred Yehi is on his way out, but shakes hands with Tom Lawlor and Simon Gotch before he leaves.
Sammy Guevara w/Salina De La Renta vs. Fred Yehi
Fred Yehi keeps getting put in good positions on Fusion, which is great to see. The story here was Sammy was overconfident and it costed him in the end, leading to Salina De La Renta walking out on him after the match. Anyways, it was a bit sloppy at times, but nothing was bad, and this was a good match. Yehi continues to look good, and should be a great contender for the Middlweight division. Sammy looked good, and we’ll see if he can rekindle his relationship with Salina.
Winner: Fred Yehi
Match Rating: **3/4
Tom Lawlor and Simon Gotch find Low-Ki in the back, and Lawlor mentions the bounty to Ki. Ki asks Lawlor how being #1 contender is working out for him. Ki then mentions Pentagon being the #1 contender, but Gotch quickly says that Pentagon didn’t have the heart like Lawlor does. Low-Ki is getting a match with Strickland, and that leads Gotch and Lawlor to walk off angrily.
AGAIN we get a recap for the MVP/Callihan feud, which seems to be the focus of our entire show this week. Callihan cuts a promo, telling MVP to watch out. What he did to Kotto was just a warning of what he’ll do to MVP. If MVP is man enough to meet him in the boiler room, let’s do it.
Jimmy Havoc is sitting poolside, after we got a glimpse of Lawlor and Gotch in the pool. Havoc is watching and following Lawlor. Next time he sees Lawlor, he’ll show him exactly why he’s here. This feud took a hiatus for awhile… But we’re back at it.
Team TBD is about to get interviewed, but all we see is Jason Cade storming out of the locker room. I still wonder why they’re breaking up a team when there’s barely any to begin with.
Guess what… Another Battle Riot hype video! Tom Lawlor joins commentary for the main event.
Rich Swann vs. ACH
This was a very solid main event, with ACH again looking great on Fusion. These two are teaming together moving forward, but it was nice to have this first time ever match before all of that. ACH got a little cradle pin to pick up the victory, which didn’t make one man shine more than the other. This wasn’t your typical high flying moves and tons of flips, but it was still very solid. MLW can either have great matches with wrestlers out of their comfort zones, or they end up flat (Strickland vs. Pentagon). Overall though, this was a good main event that allowed Swann to look good, and ACH impressed as usual.
Winner: ACH
Match Rating: ***1/4
Next week we will hear from MLW World Heavyweight Champion, Shane Strickland. Also it’s confirmed, Sami Callihan vs. MVP in a BOILER ROOM BRAWL!
Final Thoughts:
We had two matches this week, both were solid to very good. Otherwise, this show had the debut of Yung and Zeda, and then A TON of build to Sami/MVP, which really just featured the same promo three times, along with more hype for Battle Riot. This definitely wasn’t one of the best show, but it wasn’t bad, either. Lots of storylines keep on moving, we get some good in-ring action, and now we had a couple of debuts, which will change things up moving forward.
Final Rating: 6.6/10