MLW Fusion Results, Highlights, and Grades: The Fall of the House of Swerve

MLW World Heavyweight Title: Low Ki vs Shane Strickland

Since July, everything Shane Strickland has done has led to this match. After suffering a surprising loss to Low Ki on Fusion Episode 21, Strickland has been fighting to find his place and to regain his position atop the MLW roster. Despite being taken out of the picture before his War Games match against Sami Callihan’s team and tapping out to Tom Lawlor in New York, Strickland has one last shot at glory.

Low Ki has been one of the most dominant wrestlers on the MLW roster for the past several months along with Sami Callihan who just suffered his first major setback at the hands of future World Heavyweight Title challenger Tom Lawlor. With Salina de la Renta by his side and Promociones Dorado watching his back, Ki seems unstoppable in his quest to stomp out every fighter in Major League Wrestling.

Strickland Ki showed themselves to be fairly evenly matched in the early goings of the contest. Both men worked conservatively in an attempt to take control without leaving any openings, but Strickland would mistakenly feed his leg to Low Ki leading to an STF in the center of the ring to ground the challenger as Salina and Ricky Martinez watched on.

After breaking out of the hold, Strickland used his obvious size advantage to nearly decapitated Ki with a lariat in the ring before taking things to the arena floor. Martinez got in the face of Strickland which distracted the challenger briefly but not long enough to turn the tide in Low Ki’s favor. Back inside, Strickland would demonstrate his own mat wrestling prowess to control Ki’s body around the ring.

Ki would fight back and attempt to take Strickland down with a leap from the second rope, but Swerve avoided the contact leading to the referee being wiped out. A Strickland flurry would follow with a series of kicks rocking the champion before the Swerve Stomp connected with Ki’s chest in the ring. Of course, with the referee still down Strickland would receive no count from the official.

A second referee would rush the ring a little too late, at which point Martinez jumped on the apron to offer a distraction. With one referee down and another’s back turned, Ki grabbed a handful of Strickland’s hair and whipped it back and forth ripping chunks of Shane’s hair out of his head. With Strickland feeling the shock, and pain, of having his hair pulled from his scalp, Ki rolled him up for a quick three count.

Grade: Good. Not great, and a bit of a weak ending, but a fine match overall.

I get the idea of a referee distraction leading to Low Ki doing something disgusting to lead to a victory. In his match against Daga, Ki exploded the ear of his challenger before hitting him with the double stomp for the victory. Here, the hair tear fell a bit flat for me. Maybe if he had delivered the stomp as well it would have felt a bit more wrapped-up, but the pinfall sort of came out of nowhere.

Swerve Snaps

Post-match, Strickland bailed from the ring and shoved the ring announcer to the arena floor before grabbing his mic. Continuing his descent from the top of the pack in MLW, Strickland blamed MLW CEO Court Bauer for allowing someone like Low Ki to behave the way he does while walking around with the MLW World Heavyweight Title.

Strickland chided the fans in attendance and at home for acting as enablers to Bauer and Low Ki. Without them promoting and supporting the actions of the World Heavyweight Champion, we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. Strickland closed out by making his intentions clear as day – he announced that he is terminating his contract with MLW just as his microphone was cut off.

Grade: Good. If this is the final sendoff for Strickland, it works.

The rumor mill has been running rampant that Shane Strickland is NXT-bound. If that does happen, he needed a way to be written out of MLW and this is certainly one way to do it. With Low Ki as champion and a feud with Tom Lawlor beginning to bubble and boil over, Strickland was somewhat lost in the shuffle at the top of the card.

By spinning his “Franchise of MLW” character into the rancorous ex-champion who can’t find a spot for himself anymore, Strickland earns an easy out from the promotion with the door open for a return down the road if those stars were to align. I’m not a fan of the “worked shoot” style of promos or storylines where a wrestler calls out the promoter or complains about backstage politics, but this was about as inoffensive an attempt at that as I can remember seeing in recent memory.

If this is the last we see of Strickland in MLW, then he served the purpose of helping to establish Low Ki as a commanding champion with another successful title defense leading into December’s pair of events.