Based on the volume of title changes in July, you’d think August would be lighter. But SummerSlam tends to have folks peekish for new champions.
August 1, 2021 – Kobe, Hyogo
YAMATO def. Shun Skywalker {Open the Dream Gate Championship Match}
From the 18th Dragon Gate Pro Wrestling Festival. Skywalker is in Masquerade and YAMATO is in High-End. Like a lot of promotions, Dragon Gate stretched their premier event out to two nights this year, and this was the semi main event of night two. Skywalker had defended the title against Kzy the night before.
This show was headlined by Masato Yoshino’s retirement match.
Masaaki Mochizuki is on commentary, which brings up the fact that it’s crazy he and Don Fujii are still wrestling into their fifties while Yoshino bowed out on this night. I loved this match. Skywalker had to wrestle from behind the night before, panicking that he’d lose his title to Kzy. Here, he wrestled with the confidence of a dominant champion. He hit YAMATO with bombs on the ramp and the apron early, giving him control for most of the match. He kicked out of a Galleria at one and then hit YAMATO with his own finisher. But as his confidence grew, so did his ego. His first mistake was gloating too long after popping up for strong style posturing. YAMATO took advantage of that. Then, he tried trading lariats with YAMATO, and his strength deficit bit him in the ass. That was all it took for the crafty veteran to take control. One Galleria and Ragnarök later and YAMATO was champion at 18:07. ****¼
August 1, 2021 – Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
Wll Kroos def. Dara Diablo {TCW Championship Match}
From TCW Act Your Rage. TCW had vacated all of their titles during the pandemic, and this was their first show back. Diablo had to fight in a contender’s match earlier in the evening to get in the ring with Kroos, who didn’t have to do that. While their pub venue had its charms, I much prefer this more traditional looking indie venue. The first five minutes of the match were filled with goofy brawling on the floor, while the rest was a solid heavyweight sprint. Kroos picked up the win with a backpack cannonball senton and the Island Driver at 10:19. **¾
August 7, 2021 – Osaka, Osaka
Akira Jo def. Hiroaki Taniguchi {VKF King Of Wrestle Naniwa Championship Match}
From VKF 14th Anniversary Wrestle Naniwa. Though they’ve been in business for over a decade, VKF only recently started streaming their shows to YouTube. The most recent title change happened on one such show, so I guess I’ll start there. I first became aware of this scumbag indie over a decade ago because Dragon Gate wrestlers would sometimes appear there, though that was before they established their title. Just last year a bunch of DG guys came over for a COVID relief show. There are a few VKF DVDs available on Smart Mark Video, but they’re from shows that occurred just before the championship was established. How’s that for a kick in the nuts? The thing I like best about this company is that they use WWE trademarked logos and names all over their promotional materials for no reason other than that they can get away with it. This show ripped off the WrestleMania 35 logo. The previous show had the old WCW War Games logo on it despite not having a War Games match, and their upcoming show has the Halloween Havoc logo. Actually, almost all of their shows are just old WCW PPV names, with the odd Summer Slam or Armageddon thrown in. As for this match, I got very little out of it. The crowd, which is still not allowed to do more than clap, seemed to be favoring Taniguchi quite heavily and didn’t react to Jo getting the win. He hit a spinebuster to do that at 14:31. There wasn’t much to this, mostly punching and kicking, though my lack of warmth toward it was probably also due to the static hard cam angle and the reserved crowd. You have to wonder if these restrictions on crowd cheering are making a difference, as Japan’s increase in COVID cases doesn’t seem much better than that of any other country. **¼
August 13, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan
Kengo def. HUB {Tenryu Project International Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Tenryu Project Survive the Revolution, Vol. 8. I really want a HUB mask for my collection. Look how cool these are! All sold out. Also, look at this dope Ikuto Hidaka mask. Damn, I love masks. This took longer to grab my attention than their match from June. I did like that it was less of a runaway match for HUB, which makes sense since Kengo won the thing, but it could have lost 5-10 minutes and been a lot more interesting. Kengo hit a diving double stomp and a pair of brainbusters for the win at 23:01. **¾
August 13, 2021 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Christian Cage def. Kenny Omega {Impact World Championship Match}
From AEW Rampage 1. Omega has the Impact, TNA, AEW, and AAA championship belts with him. I predict that he will also lose the AAA title the night after this and I will leave this statement here whether that happens or not. A note about the four-person commentary team for AEW Rampage: Chris Jericho and Mark Henry wrestled each other six times in short matches on WWE TV, Jericho and Taz had four short WWE TV matches as well as two short matches on ECW shows, and Henry and Taz never wrestled. And of course, none of them ever had a match against Excalibur. I had a feeling this match wasn’t going to pick up, and watching it live it probably felt like it’d be a breezy win for Omega. But after the commercial break (the version I watched was uninterrupted) they started ramping up the action in a much more main event style kind of way. I appreciate that. Don Callis and the Young Bucks tried to interfere, but that backfired when Christian used the chair they gave to Omega to amplify his Killswitch for the win at 15:28. ***½
August 14, 2021 – Hartselle, Alabama
Adam Priest def. Derek Neal {New South Championship Match} 
From the New South 6th Anniversary Show. I’m reviewing this before going back and reviewing the rest of the lineage so I’ll say it here, holy crap that title belt is too big. It’s too big! I saw a photo of Tyler Matrix wearing it and I thought it was photoshopped. It looks like a joke! Okay, the match. In a second, because look at this! It’s not the Tyler Matrix photo but it illustrates my point just as well. This show is in Alabama, so at a cursory glance there is one person in a crowd of a couple hundred wearing a mask. If you’re one of those masked people, and given Alabama’s abysmal vaccine rate, how do you sit in that crowd and tune out COVID fears enough to enjoy the show? I’m so glad I live in the northeast. Okay, the match for real. I’m going to be a bit generous in my rating because despite one really stupid moment, the things I didn’t like about this match had nothing to do with Priest or Neal’s performances. What bothered me most was the way that Steven Michaels & Tony Evans interfered. Not that they interfered, but that they did it in such a sauntering, lazy-looking way. The crowd LOVED seeing Michaels turn on Priest and Evans, so points for that, but damn if I didn’t almost tune out the moment entirely because they barely seemed interested in being out there. The moment between Neal and Priest that I didn’t like was Neal pulling a knife on Priest. How is that going to pay off? I imagine in the past (because the commentators suggested this wasn’t the first time this had happened) it was used like Abdullah the Butcher’s fork or today’s garbage wrestlers’ pizza cutter. But that’s dumb and it’s a dumb weapon that doesn’t work in a wrestling match. Priest quickly tossed it aside and whipped Neal with a strap. The rest of the match had a nice, territory-era blood feud vibe to it, which I dug. Priest hit Neal with a steel-plate loaded forearm at 14:20 for the win. ***
August 15, 2021 – Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Takashi Sugiura def. Masato Tanaka {ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championship vs. GHC National Championship Match}
From NOAH Kawasaki Go. Tanaka has opened the Prohibited Portal and Sugiura marched right through! Jokes aside, it is cool to see the AWA title belt headlining a NOAH show. I’m not advocating for guys like Edge, Christian, Chris Jericho, or anyone else circling 50 to get long matches in main events, but I loved watching these two old farts knock each other around for 40 minutes. All the pentagenarians stinking up the place in North America wish they looked like Sugiura. This match was interesting because both guys have a similar no-selling no matter what they’re hit with vibe, but someone had to go down. In this case, Tanaka was just a bit more susceptible throughout the entire match. Sugiura was hip to a lot of his plans before he could execute on them, and even when Tanaka got the advantage he was usually too wiped to capitalize on it. Sugiura put him away with an avalanche Olympic Yosen Slam at 38:37. ****¼
August 18, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan
Maya Yukihi & Yumi Ohka def. Mayumi Ozaki & Saori Anou {Oz Academy Openweight Championship Tag Team Elimination Match}
From Oz Academy Plum No Hanasaku OZ No Kuni: Mayumi Ozaki Debut 35th Anniversary. American eyes have not been graced with Yukihi’s title win over Kaori Yoneyama, which happened exactly one month before this. For a reason that doesn’t seem to have been reported anywhere in English, Yukihi vacated the title immediately after winning it and this match stems from that. As mentioned, this is Ozaki’s anniversary and this match consists of wrestlers in Ozaki-gun, who won an eight-man tag match earlier in the night. I don’t know if that earlier match determined who would be in this match. I loved what I saw of Yukihi in Ice Ribbon so I’m pretty mad the Yoneyama match never found its way to my TV. On the other hand, a recap shows she won with a roll up after blowing powder in Yoneyama’s face, so maybe it was a typical Oz Academy schmoz situation. This started as a tag match pitting Yukihi & Ohka vs. Ozaki & Anou. Anou got wrecked for that portion, eventually falling to a big boot from Okha. Ozaki fought against the other two in a handicap match next. Presumably, had Ozaki lost then Ohka and Yukihi would have fought each other. But Ozaki’s male cronies interfered on her behalf and helped her eliminate Okha when they all hit Shining Wizards. Ohka stayed loyal to Yukihi and Anou switched sides, both attacking Ozaki when the interference didn’t stop in the final stretch. Yukihi used a chair to shield herself from Ozaki’s red mist. That’s so goddamn dope. The rest of the match was not dope, though. After the initial tag portion, things slowed down so much to accommodate all of Ozaki’s typical gaga. The final two minutes where Yukihi and Ozaki beat the piss out of each other almost tricked me into thinking this was okay, but the truth is it was thirty minutes of Ozaki’s silliness. Yukihi got the win with a tiger driver at 32:59. **½
August 21, 2021 – Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Konosuke Takeshita def. Jun Akiyama {KO-D Openweight Championship Match}
From DDT Peter Pan. This show is in Kawasaki Stadium, which usually hosts soccer and is at one-thirtieth capacity here. Well, that’s not technically true because even for soccer they’re only allowing a couple thousand fans at a time, so DDT could almost say this is a capacity crowd. It’s kind of funny to see fans masked in an outdoor venue, but then Japan is a COVID nightmare so whatever, do what you gotta do. I love that Kenta Kobashi presents the title belt for big matches in DDT, it makes them feel epic. Akiyama had two singles wins by submission over Takeshita in the past, but Takeshita was coming off of a King of DDT tournament win and a stint in AEW where he teamed with Kenny Omega on Dark. This match was alright, but only half clicked for me. I like that Akiyama dominated for much of the match, and I like that Takeshita won by submission. But truly Takeshita’s final comeback didn’t feel like enough to put the champion away. After getting his ass kicked the whole time, he hit a few knee strikes, cross-armed suplex, and put on a weird crossface chicken wing for the win at 24:43. I did not love it. ***¼
August 21, 2021 – Paradise, Nevada
Becky Lynch def. Bianca Belair {Smackdown Women’s Championship Match}
From WWE SummerSlam. Internet anti-vaxxer Banks is absent for MYSTERIOUS REASONS, so Carmella came out to take her place. What the hell is Carmella’s entrance music? Totally doesn’t fit. Belair is pissed and cuts a promo on Banks while looking passed Carmella. And then, Becky Lynch strolls out after 17 months away. She beats up Carmella and takes her place. But she barely attacked Carmella at all so why wouldn’t Carmella just get back in the ring? And why doesn’t everyone just do this in order to skip the line and get title shots? This is trash booking. To be clear, it’s good that Banks is back, but there’s no way to square this as a good idea. Because then she squashes Belair and wins the title in 26 seconds with the Manhandle Slam. But Goldberg wrestled for more than five minutes on this show. WWE is bad, straight up. If you had told me in 2019 that I’d be this soured on basically everything WWE is doing just two years later, I can’t say I’d be surprised given their track record but I’d be skeptical. N/A
Charlotte Flair def. Nikki ASH and Rhea Ripley {Raw Women’s Championship Triple Threat Match}
A couple matches later, this happened. I’m not at all invested in ASH as a character, and I like Flair, but who does this result help? What have we learned about anyone involved that’s more interesting than where they were before Money in the Bank? What I find most annoying about the result is that the match was actually good! There were a lot of interesting stories being told, including Ripley’s complete inability to hit the Riptide on ASH, and ASH being a much bigger factor than Ripley or Flair expected. But for Flair to win cleanly and somewhat easily (at 13:05) with the Figure 8 when Ripley was clearly on the floor, alert, aware, and rather nearby, is lame. ***½
August 22, 2021 – St. Louis, Missouri
Mike Outlaw def. Jake Something {Crown of Glory Championship Dog Collar Match}
From GPW Down with the King. Outlaw had previously defeated Something by disqualification, so now this. There was an awesome moment in this match in which Something’s nose got busted open after getting it with a chair and Outlaw thought that opened an opportunity for him to get fancy on the top rope. But all it really did was make Something furious, so he yanked Outlaw down with the chain and hit a Michinoku Driver. I love when emotion dictates what happens. A lot of this match had that wonderful old school brawl vibe that you see in classic hardcore feud enders, like Greg Valentine vs. Roddy Piper and Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard. They generally didn’t get fancy, opting instead to beat each other up with chairs and the chain and their arms and fists. Stallion Rogers, formerly known as Curt Stallion, interfered and turned heel on Outlaw in a bit that I felt was executed rather poorly. I’m sure it was there to set up Rogers as Outlaw’s first title feud, but it landed on the porch of this match like a bag of flaming dog poo. Had Rogers come out after the match for the angle, this would have gotten higher marks. Still, it was a lot of fun and even though it was long it never felt that way. Outlaw blocked a powerbomb with a chain shot and picked up the win with a diving elbowdrop at 24:24. ***¾
August 22, 2021 – Orlando, Florida
Ilja Dragunov def. WALTER {NXT UK Championship Match}
From NXT Takeover 36. God damn did this deliver. They worked a less horrifying style than they did last October, spending the first five minutes trading gnarly holds on the mat before any bombs were thrown. Then, they threw bombs. But not as many as they did when they were fighting in front of no crowd. I appreciate that. Here, they had fans cheering on everything they did, so there wasn’t a need to lay it in as stiff. That’s not to say they strayed from that completely, as Dragunov still left the ring covered in blisters. But they were able to incorporate Dragunov’s triggered rage storyline and believably have him break down and tap out WALTER. There are few pairs of guys who have
delivered as consistently at the high level these two have against each other
. Dragunov locked WALTER in a sleeper hold and viciously wore him down until WALTER tapped at 22:04. Dragunov standing with his foot over WALTER in celebration was a perfect way to end the big man’s reign. Apropos of everything, WALTER was in the best physical shape I’ve ever seen him in here. *****
Samoa Joe def. Karrion Kross {NXT Championship Match}
Scarlett is missing, which I guess serves her right since she killed NXT. This is Joe’s first match in a year and a half, and his first NXT match in four and a half years. As much of a bummer it is to see Kross move through Takeover main events as if he’s got a gurney strapped to his back, it was that much fun to watch Joe bring maximum effort to send the fans home happy. This had zero chance of measuring up to what came before it, but it had Joe leaping five feet in the air to kick Kross on the top rope. Thank god for this old man. He hit the Muscle Buster for the win and the title at 12:26. ***
August 29, 2021 – Indianapolis, Indiana
Aaron Williams def. Tyler Matrix {IWA Mid-South World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From IWA Mid-South Put Up or Shut Up. Given how basic most of this was, it should have been half its length at most. The centerpiece of the story was whether or not Williams’s shirt and tie would come off. That was like half of the match. Once he was bare chested they barely picked up the pace. The last couple of minutes were kicked into high gear out of nowhere, and Williams won very suddenly with a roundhouse kick and a Buzzsaw Kick at 21:24. **½
August 29, 2021 – St. Louis, Missouri
Trevor Murdoch def. Nick Aldis {NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship Match}
From NWA 73rd Anniversary Show. I have to start out by talking about the commentary. I’ve heard offensive commentary, and I’ve heard bumbling commentary, and I’ve heard commentary from people who don’t understand wrestling. What we got here was worse. Velvet Sky and Tim Storm kept talking over Joe Galli, creating a cacophony of sound that stabbed at my eardrums. Sky wanted to be both a color and a play-by-play commentator. They should have just let her be out there by herself or done a two-person booth with Storm and Galli. Both options would have been bad but I’d opt for the one without Sky trying to dominate worse than Mauro Ranallo.
As for the match, it was what I expected from these two in this company. They brawled on the floor forever before the match started, which gave us Sky and Storm saying no less than ten times each that the match hadn’t officially started. This is a PPV, people aren’t tuning in halfway through a match. You don’t need to remind us more than once that the match can’t end before it begins. The first half of the match proper was just a bunch of callbacks to moves that superior wrestlers did better in the ‘80s. Halfway through they did a table spot and then started breaking out their own move sets. That transition was the only thing about this match that caught my attention in a positive way. Near the end, Aldis started selling exhaustion despite controlling almost the entire match up until that point. And it’s not like they’d been out there very long. So that didn’t make sense. Murdoch hit him with a piledriver and a diving bulldog for the win at 16:25. I personally think Murdoch being the guy to end Aldis’s 1,000+ day reign is a limp balloon, but the crowd went nuts for it so maybe the storyline leading up was compelling. This match definitely was not compelling. **1/2
WALTER vs. Dragunov is the easy winner here, and my match of the year so far. YAMATO, Skywalker, Tanaka, and Sugiura all put on incredible matches too. Thank you, August.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
