How's your gloomy weekend hanging, friends? On this week's half-hour of easiest-to-digest wrestling, Brian Kendrick continues his nth slow-burn heel turn and 205 Live does its own little free agency moves. The good thing is we see some different faces from the usual, hinting toward a new little batch of cruiserweights to build.
Everybody welcome Curt Stallion
Ariya Daivari's Daivari Dinero Division actually leads to a new face debuting as Curt Stallion, the guy who beat him by DQ after Tony Nese (ugh) interfered, gets some time to shine against the very man who spoiled his performance.
Curt Stallion is solid in the ring. It seems like he's being hamstrung a little by the WWE's insistence of adding its own patented formula to a person's individual style—which is more obvious in the cruiserweight division—but it helps that he's going up against Nese, who's also affected by this stylistic watering down. He's certainly better to watch than Ashante "Thee" Adonis, who did NXT duty this week, and I look forward to seeing more of him and what he could do in the division.
One thing I'd like to point out—Daivari mentions on commentary that he's a 205 Live Original, and honestly, that term means nothing to me anymore. It meant something when the brand got subsumed under the NXT umbrella and the NXT cruiserweights shored up the division, but now that that's done, it's all pointless. So what if he's a 205 Live Original? That status doesn't give any benefits; it doesn't even get them in the Cruiserweight Championship picture or even a spot on NXT on Wednesday nights, so continuing to lord over that seniority makes them sound more pathetic than anything. (Unless, of course, that's the goal.)
The boyz are Bollywood again, and Brian Kendrick continues to lose
The Singh bros are back to being the Bollywood Boyz, and I noticed they were careful enough to not mention (yet?) their individual names, so I couldn't tell whether they were still Samir and Sunil Singh, the Bollywood Boyz, or back to being Harv and Gurv Sihra. I will say, however, that the two have been surprisingly durable, starting as the Bollywood Boyz on the very first episode of 205 Live and going back to the gimmick four years later.
Now that 205 Live mainstays Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch are your NXT Tag Team Champions, I want to see those titles defended on this show too, because there's not much of a point in having a tag team in a singles division. (Ask EverRise, they'd know.)
In other news, Brian Kendrick continues to lose to another young gun, and I've realized my other problem with this storyline: if it's not being done to boost the career of a younger guy, I won't be into it. Like I've said before, we've seen Kendrick turn so many times that it hardly means anything anymore. The guy is good, but it's been years since he's been compelling.
205 Live 10/23/20 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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