Guten abend, mga ka-205 Live! Live From the 205 is back to serve you after a two-week hiatus because it was tough to write about the show while it was hosting matches for both Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classics—for a show that's heavily dependent on its in-ring action more than the strength of the stories being told, there wasn't much to say about matches that didn't really belong to it, you know? But now that it's back to normal programming, let's get back to it!
Tony Nese and Ariya Daivari will forever be 205 OGs
After what was a solid match between cruiserweight youngsters Jake Atlas and August Grey (in which Grey surprisingly won, killing Atlas's mini-push) Tony Nese and Ariya Daivari attacked the two, re-starting their little tiff against the youngbloods.
As someone who's been keeping tabs on the show on-and-off, I gotta say: this shit is tired. So tired that it needs to sleep for a whole weekend. Nese and Daivari have been the angry old 205 boomers since the show was subsumed under the NXT umbrella, and it's clear that someone doesn't have any new ideas for them, or doesn't want to push any new ideas on them. Knowing what I know about wrestlers in the WWE, I'm sure that the two want to do something different already, but they just can't. I also don't believe there aren't any new ideas being floated for these two.
I mean, what else are we going to do here? Guys like Curt Stallion and August Grey himself have already beaten Nese and Daivari before, proving that the 205 OG schtick means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't make them better wrestlers than the kids, and it doesn't get them title shots with Santos Escobar.
Look, I already know that nobody in the organization really cares about 205 Live. It's a product much like AEW Dark, designed to give the cruiserweights reps in the ring while providing original content for those who want to see more of the promotion. But as it's a performing asset on the WWE Network, I've still got an obligation to call out whoever's got the final say for the show to do better by your talents. Give these guys a better story.
The rise of the Ever-Wood
Likewise, the hodgepodge pairing of the Bollywood Boyz and Ever-Rise—who have both turned face after they did the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic—tells me they've run out of ideas for what to do with the two tag teams on 205 Live. Although I'll say this is a little more inspired (I could think of a few things they could do with this setup in the NXT tag team division) it's clear that they're just forcing both teams to work so they could have something to do.
They won't be able to anytime soon, but I'd love to see this new super-team of midcarders try to win the NXT Tag Team Championships and Freebird the titles among two teams. Of course, they're cruiserweights and it's not gonna happen, but a guy can dream.
205 Live 2/5/21 Final Grade: B
*****
Romeo Moran (@roiswar) is the Editor-in-Chief of Smark Henry and one of the three hosts of the Wrestling-Wrestling Podcast. He gets by in this hard knock life through working in advertising. Smark Henry was his and Stan Sy's original vision of a watering hole for local wrestling fans. He roots for the undersized guys who hit hard, and he likes taking your wrestling questions over on his Curiouscat account.
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