205 Live – October 17, 2017: The Zo Show, Fresh Prince Edition
205 Live
Date: October 17, 2017
Location: KeyArena, Seattle, Washington
Commentators: Vic Joseph, Nigel McGuinness
It’s probably the last show of Kalisto’s title reign, which means it’s time to shift things back to Enzo Amore for the sake of getting people to watch the show. Amore also suddenly has a small army backing him up, despite spending weeks ripping on them for being worthless. 205 Live is a funny place at times. Let’s get to it.
The long opening recap looks at Kalisto taking the title from Amore and Amore sending his goons to take Kalisto out.
Opening sequence.
Here’s Enzo to open things up. Enzo asks if you can smell it, because it smells like team spirit. He brings up the help he had last night (Noam Dar, Tony Nese, Ariya Daivari and Drew Gulak) and says Kalisto is only going to be jumping from channel to channel in a hospital. Kalisto is going to be in there for a long time too so he can log onto the wi-fi and watch the Zo Show on the WWE Network.
Enzo has built this place up and he’s an original who was only handed a microphone. This is all about charisma and you can’t teach that. You can love this or hate this but you can’t get above this. Enzo doesn’t like Kalisto playing it so safe (Huh?) so here’s Kalisto for a springboard missile dropkick, sending Enzo bailing.
Long recap of Cedric Alexander vs. Jack Gallagher/Brian Kendrick. Rich Swann has joined Cedric’s side to even things out.
Jack Gallagher vs. Rich Swann
Kendrick and Cedric are the seconds. Swann flips over the suited Gallagher to start and a quick hurricanrana takes him down again. Gallagher heads outside and the referee is so busy keeping an eye on Cedric that he misses Kendrick taking Swann down to the floor. Back in and Jack slowly hammers him down until Swann flips out of a suplex. That just earns him another dropkick to the face for two with Gallagher grinding his forearm into the face. We hit the neck crank for a bit before Gallagher starts in on the leg.
Swann fights back up but has to punch his way out of an electric chair. Instead it’s a tiger driver for two on Jack but the fight heads to the floor where the seconds get involved. Gallagher is all kinds of aggressive in beating Cedric on the announcers’ table. Cedric fights back with Swann loading up a Phoenix splash but Jack and Brian bail. The match was thrown out somewhere in there, say around 7:30.
Rating: C. This was just a preview for Sunday’s tag match and that’s fine. I’m glad that they didn’t have either of them lose as there’s no point to making one of them look weak going into Sunday’s match. It might not be a big match on the card but it’s cool to see the cruiserweights get to have a non-title feud getting some pay per view time. Good little match here too.
Here’s Drew Gulak with the NO CHANTS sign for a chat. He sees himself as his father and the Drewtopia as a safe space from dives and unnecessary chanting. We see a clip of Gulak attacking Akira Tozawa last week and calling it tough love. If Tozawa wasn’t spending so much time chanting, he might have seen slide #9 of the POWERPOINT PRESENTATION! Proposal #9: No Defying Authority.
Despite what you might have heard from the Beastie Boys or the Fresh Prince, rules are not made to be broken. The fans chant that this is boring (kind of the idea in this story so it’s not so bad) but Gulak promises to be on the Kickoff Show with a special refresher course on his plan for a better 205 Live.
Quick look at the cruiserweight stuff on Sunday’s show.
Mustafa Ali/Kalisto vs. Enzo Amore/Ariya Daivari
Daivari rants in his language but Enzo says they speak the shared language of money. Enzo hides from Kalisto to start and brings in Daivari instead. The trash talk doesn’t get Daivari very far and it’s a double dropkick to put him down. A slingshot hilo keeps Daivari in trouble but an Enzo distraction lets him knock Kalisto outside. The bad landing messes up Kalisto’s back and Enzo throws it into the corner. A Downward Spiral and the baseball right hand combine for two.
Daivari comes in for his turn at some stomps and sends Kalisto outside. Some right hands drop Enzo but Daivari is right back up with a clothesline. Kalisto reverses a suplex into a DDT though and there’s the hot tag to Ali. Everything breaks down and Ali kicks Enzo in the head to set up the rolling neckbreaker for another near fall. Ali sends Daivari outside for a big flip dive, leaving Kalisto to end Amore with the Salida Del Sol at 9:22.
Rating: C-. Alas, this is likely the end of Kalisto’s title reign as they did the standard of having the future champ lose. To be fair though it’s not like it matters all that much in Enzo’s case as he loses to almost everyone. Ali is still one of the more consistent performers in the division and could be a big deal, though I’m not sure he has the personality.
Kalisto dives onto Enzo and Daivari again, sending Enzo bailing up the ramp to end the show.
Overall Rating: C. It’s amazing how much more I like this show with Enzo as the big bad that the good guys are trying to keep from taking the belt hostage again. That’s a much better story than “let Enzo do whatever for an hour” and if Kalisto can get some more backup, there’s a good Survivor Series match in there. It would probably need a stipulation, but at least there’s a story here, which is more than we’ve had in a long time.
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