TAKEOVER 25

Matt Riddle vs. Roderick Strong

This was a BANGER, and how it could've not been that? Riddle & Strong compliment each other pretty perfectly with their in-ring styles meshing up wonderfully. Brutal, hard hitting, back breakin', explosive action from bell to bell w/ no dull moments whatsoever. Helluva way to open the show, and actually ended up being my favorite match of the night. ***3/4

Danny Burch & Oney Lorcan vs. Street Profits vs. The Forgotten Sons vs. The Undisputed Era

Such good shit, pal. Everybody went crazy & took hellacious beatings - especially O'Reilly who just got DESTROYED throughout. Thought the Ryker segment was really awesome too, with them milking it to the max, which made the eventual teaming up of Burch & Lorcan, Street Profits and The Undisputed Era feel very fulfilling. ***1/2

The Velveteen Dream vs. Tyler Breeze

There were quite a few dead moments in the match where seemingly nothing interesting happened, but overall I thought that The Dream & Breeze had a fun chemistry, and all the sequences flowed nicely with a neat feel of competition & swagger to 'em. Good match. ***

Io Shirai vs. Shayna Baszler

Their Stardom 2017 match is what made me a believer in both of them, so I was very much looking forward to this, and while it didn't quite reach the great heights of that Stardom bout, it was still a very good one. Shayna is awesome w/ her work over the arm, Io sells well & is great w/ her comebacks. Felt like the crowd & the match got hotter & hotter as it went on too - it helped the choke in the end feel sooo dramatic, in a very good way. ***1/2

Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano

A BIT better than the 2/3 match, but still awful. The positives are that I liked some of the knee & arm targeting by both guys; the kneework by Cole actually made the set-up for the Panama Sunrise logical & good for once during the finishing stretch, as Gargano sold it dramatically there. Also dug Cole's facecrusher to the knee from the Burning Hammer position. Now what I DIDN'T like was the fact that they had to have around 400 nearfalls once again, the shitty superkicks, the generic indy strike sequencez, especially that one with Cole spamming shitty bicycle kicks, no selling of shitty strikes, finisher stealing because muh STORYTELLINGZ~!~! etc. Wasn't a big fan of the thing. Save_Us.Riddle *1/4