MLW Fusion Results, Highlights, and Grades: Battle of the Aces

The rollout of matches from New York’s Fury Road is hitting the airwaves this week with a huge main event between Tom Lawlor and Shane Strickland. Each man has a claim as the Ace of MLW, but only one man can come out on top. Who is going to be MLW’s franchise player as we head into November’s Fightland in Chicago?

We kick off with our commentators, Tony Schiavone and Matt Striker. Apparently, Striker is the second-in-command for New York shows which is a bit disappointing. His commentary style is pretty grating for me and I much prefer the team of Tony and Rich to Tony and Matt. We also get Stephen DeAngelis as our ring announcer, which is generally fine, but I think MLW could feel a little more cohesive if they were able to stick with the same broadcast and announce teams from show to show.

Sammy Guevara vs El Hijo de LA Park

The action kicks off right away with the returning Sammy Guevara taking on the newest charge of his former promoter Salina de La Renta. I’m a huge fan of Sammy and had the opportunity to see some ridiculous matches of his at Wrestle Circus – I’m stoked to see him getting more exposure on some larger stages.

These two go to the air almost immediately, first with Hijo de LA Park hitting a tope suicida on Guevara which bends his back over the guard rail in a sickening way. Sammy is able to make his way back into the ring, briefly, before hitting a somersault dive onto Hijo de LA Park nearly sending both men toppling over the railing and into the crowd.

Back in the ring, the two men trade control back and forth with each man hitting some high-impact moves including a running Canadian Destroyer by Hijo de LA Park followed up with a moonsault from the second turnbuckle to a recovering Guevara on the outside. Guevara is never able to gain any meaningful momentum again before getting caught in a spike piledriver for the victory.

Grade: Great. Not very long, but a much better showing for Hijo de LA Park and fun while it lasted.

Guevara is on tap to face Rush at Fightland in Chicago and I’ve got my fingers crossed that he’ll be included on the MLW shows still to come this year and into the next. The sky is really the limit for him; he makes a convincing babyface as well as a heel and his in-ring abilities are off the charts.

Hijo de LA Park seemed to gel a lot more with Guevara here than he did with Jimmy Yuta last week. I would have loved to have seen this one go a bit longer, but keeping it short helped it maintain more of a hectic feel from bell to bell. As much as I would have loved to have seen Guevara pick up a win on his MLW return, Hijo de LA Park definitely needed the win more after his loss in his debut last week.

To her credit, de La Renta was also a bit more animated and interactive as a manager during this match which is something I’ve been critical of her about before. She had some nice touches like pulling the bottom rope away during a pin when Guevara was close enough to grab them and mouthing off to both Sammy and the referee from time to time.