These two worked super hard here and produced a fairly interesting match all things considered. Whether or not it was the right match to work in this instance is another matter though.
They basically did a gatekeeper story in this one. Lio Rush was the young boy making his PWG debut. Ricochet was the seven-year PWG veteran who was going to make him earn every inch. As such, they worked a really methodical match that relied on sporadic bouts of heavy strikes and sudden exchanges. Those sequences always got Rush over, but you could feel them losing energy in the moments between those moments of excitement. It made a match that should have been an easy W into a mixed bag.
A good thing to compare it to would be the far more effective match between Ricochet and Generico in 2010. After Ricochet tore it up in that year’s BOLA for his debut, he was brought right back to work the standard bearer for high flyers in PWG. Ricochet was so fresh and over that the fans decided right then and there that they actually liked Ricochet MORE than Generico. It led to a genuinely exciting bout that solidified Ricochet’s status as a star in PWG.
They kind of went for that here, but they really forced the underdog story for Lio which came across all wrong. This should have been an exciting bout where Rush threw spot after spot at Ricochet who was clearly being tested by the new kid on the block. Instead, this match was almost designed to humble Lio and make him seem inferior to the long-time PWG star. It’s no wonder that Ricochet left the Generico match a god and Lio left this one as a midcarder. (***)
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