August 17, 2016 – Winter Park, Florida
Akira Tozawa def. Jack Gallagher {Second Round Match}
This had a few quality comedy moments, but beyond that it rarely veered into that truly competitive territory like the matches on the previous episode. It was always going to be tough for a match to follow those, but that was the tone that the tournament had set for this round. Tozawa also decided to just stop selling his leg arbitrarily after we spent a major chunk of the match sitting through a ton of mat work on it. Tozawa won with a German suplex at 11:38, after an attempt to grab the leg from Gallagher failed. It would have been very, very cool had Gallagher been successful at blocking the move there, only for Tozawa to find another way to win. Oh well, such is life. ***
Noam Dar def. Ho Ho Lun {Second Round Match}
This had the same problem that the last match had, where Lun just stopped selling his leg injury at points when it wasn’t convenient. And what’s up with two matches in a row featuring extensive leg work? At least this gave us the Dar Wars chant in WWE for the first time. That counts for a decent amount. Dar locked in the Champagne Super Kneebar at 7:02 for the win. **¾
Brian Kendrick def. Tony Nese {Second Round Match}
Daniel Bryan doesn’t so much do commentary for this match as he does cut passionate promos in favor of Kendrick the entire time. It added a lot to this match, hammering home the story of this being Kendrick’s last shot to get a leg up at this late stage of his career. He fought tooth and nail against the much stronger and faster Nese by any and all desperate means at his disposal. He worked the Bully Choke at any chance he could, and won the match at 13:42 by avoiding a 450 Splash and locking it on immediately after. ****