MLW Fusion Results, Highlights, and Grades: Highs and Lows for MJF & Aria
Credit: MLW.com
MLW Fusion picks up with more from War Games from Fort Lauderdale with PCO and Brody King in the main event. Taya Valkyrie makes her MLW debut teaming with Joey Ryan to take on World Middleweight Champion MJF and Aria Blake, and The Hart Foundation battle The Stud Stable in six-man tag team action.
The namesake of the War Games show has come and gone, but there is still much to look forward to from the taping on September 6. Last week’s show featured the War Games match which saw Sami Callihan’s team fall to Shane Strickland’s team (minus Shane Strickland) thanks to a little miscommunication between Callihan and Jimmy Havoc and a lot of Barrington Hughes wrapped in barbed wire. The fallout from War Games is yet to be seen, but if the announcement of a Spin The Wheel Make The Deal match on October 4 is any indication, Callihan and Havoc will be wasting little time in getting at each other’s throats!
What Lies Ahead for Lucha Bros?
Fusion kicks off with Konnan and the MLW World Tag Team Champion Lucha Bros already in the ring. Konnan rallies the fans in Fort Lauderdale with a good old-fashioned hometown cheap pop before laying into Salina de La Renta. He makes mention of the shady contracts Pentagon and Fenix had with Promociones Dorado leading to the pair splitting from de La Renta’s camp to join Konnan.
As Konnan reminds Salina that he’ll always be one step ahead of her, the former manager of the champions enters with Ricky Martinez by her side. Once in the ring, Salina clarifies that she granted Lucha Bros an early release from their contracts and that they did not, in fact, tear up their contracts despite everybody visibly seeing them tear up the contracts on MLW Fusion a few weeks back.
Salina offers brand new contracts to Pentagon and Fenix while making a couple of references to “Hunter” and conversations she’s had with him that would give Pentagon and Fenix more notoriety along with some slight rebranding.
After some hesitation from Penta and Fenix, Salina tries to sweeten the deal by telling them that, if they do sign the contracts, they won’t have to find themselves on the receiving end of beatings from LA Park and Low Ki later on that evening.
In response, Lucha Bros tear up their second pair of Promociones Dorado contracts and run Salina and Martinez out of the ring with some parting words from Konnan.
Grade: Meh. Kind of a throwaway segment since the lines had already been drawn, and Salina remains unimpressive on the mic.
I suppose I get the idea of wanting to drive the point home between these two groups in the ring, especially for fans in attendance who may be more casual and not know why the matches between Penta and LA Park and Fenix and Low Ki are meant to be so heated.
Unfortunately, it fell flat for me as Salina’s delivery is a bit wooden. It seemed like she didn’t know where to focus visually either, looking back and forth between the hard camera and a camera on the floor when it would have felt more natural to look at the people she was addressing in the ring. She’s young and just passed two years in the sport, though, so I’m not writing her off fully yet – she just has a lot of room to grow as a mouthpiece, especially when dealing with such dynamic personalities like Pentagon and Fenix.