MLW Fusion Results, Highlights, and Grades: Filthy’s Revenge

Credit: MLW Instagram

The second week of matches taped in Miami begin airing this week as we’re back to the regularly scheduled taped versions of MLW Fusion. Last week’s first-ever Fusion LIVE was a solid test for the promotion which I think they passed. This week, Tom Lawlor has his own test in front of him in the form of Simon Gotch in a No Ropes, No Holds Barred main event.

Before the action could get started in the ring, Salina de la Renta got things started on the mic. Entering the ring with Ricky Martinez, the leader of Promociones Dorado let her feelings on the city of Miami be known very clearly – that Miami is a Hellscape surrounded by demons.

As she declared 2019 to be the year of Promociones Dorado, the future challenger for the MLW World Heavyweight Title, Konnan, made his way to the ring.

Konnan kept his comments short and to the point inferring that the reason demons are surrounding Miami is because of the bruja standing in the center of the ring right now.

Konnan made his promise for next week’s World Heavyweight TItle Match – he claimed that he’s already in the head of Low Ki and performing “a long-distance lobotomy” on the champion. Konnan made a clear and lasting promise that he would become the World Heavyweight Champion in the “greatest city in the world” next week before leaving a flustered Salina in the ring.

Grade: Solid. A nice, quick opener to push next week’s main event.

Konnan can be unbelievably smooth on the mic at times and most of what he says feels entirely natural. A lot of his jokes and remarks can be somewhat dad-jokey, but they don’t feel like they were written by someone else and are, if nothing else, endearing.

This might be the first time Salina has been visibly frustrated by Konnan to the point of throwing her cane to the mat after he dropped the mic. She does well here playing off of Konnan, who essentially ran the segment, and helps drive the point home that these two endlessly annoy one another. Next week will be telling for this feud’s future.

The Hart Foundation vs Tommy Dreamer & Barrington Hughes

Before the match, we got another sneak peek of H2tv, The Hart Foundation’s new YouTube series posted under the MLW account. Hart may have heard my pleas from this past summer to bring his cats to MLW as he and Brian Pillman Jr ran down Tommy Dreamer while snuggling some furry little buddies. Pillman describes each member of The Hart Foundation as a leader and Hart follows up declaring that they are a pack of wolves… or hyenas… or lions.

Hart told Dreamer that he would be another corpse left laying and become a statistic – just another person who failed at trying to stop The Hart Foundation. With a Singapore Cane match still in the future for Pillman and Dreamer on MLW Fusion, it remains to be seen if Hart’s prophecy will come true.

Dreamer and Hughes took the advantage early on here with Hughes’ size keeping Pillman and Davey Boy Smith Jr from building any offense. As Dreamer became the legal man, though, Pillman was able to connect with a sharp dropkick to swing things toward The Hart Foundation as they worked over the smaller of their two opponents.

Davey Boy, coming off of a nice run with Lance Archer in NJPW’s World Tag League, was able to shine here showing off his strength against The Innovator of Violence. Dreamer was able to catch DBS off guard, though, and drop him with a cutter before both men tagged their partners.

Hughes once again took over on the much smaller Pillman and even showed some strength in dropping DBS with a standing urinage. With Dreamer tagged back in as the legal man and a referee distraction due to Davey Boy grabbing the leg of Barrington Hughes in the corner, Pillman drove his cane into the nether regions of Dreamer before rolling him into a small package for the victory.

Grade: Good. An alright match with some good storytelling.

I’m not the biggest fan of Barrington Hughes, especially in the age of more capable big men like the recently debuted Ace Romero, but he served his purpose here. The story of Dreamer and Pillman essentially needed a warm body to use to build to their coming match and Hughes accomplished that.

Harkening back to their previous encounter in which Dreamer used a low blow to pick up a victory on Pillman, Pillman used the same tactic here to return the favor.

Pillman looked good here and may be well-suited to remain in tag team matches as he still seems a bit rough around the edges as a singles competitor. With Teddy Hart now holding the MLW World Middleweight Title, a Pillman/DBS team could be a great way to fill in the gaps in the MLW tag team division and give Pillman a chance to learn from a more seasoned wrestler.