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The Run-Down/Lucky
Like I said last week, I’m having so much fun exploring the heel side of Eugene. Again, all of this felt natural and all of it just flowed out. For the rest of it, this tourney has given me a chance to work against two wrestlers that I’ve wanted to write singles matches with and have segments with for some time, so I’m pretty sure that DEF*MAX is totes amazeballs.
These Backstage Areas Are Safe For No Man
Mushi getting a beast push right now is only good, but this segment… It started off well and was nice a descriptive, but by the end of it it felt like… a list of stuff happening. “The mushi did this before doing then. Then mushi did this.” isn’t effective, and it certainly isn’t emotive and when the seg is so, so short… that kinda makes it fall flat for me.
Momma Said Knock Him Out
I’m not sold here. I always thought Lance wasn’t the kind to get physical, and certainly not one to stand there and be all sheepish about the abuse he’s taking. His Bio on the site definitely doesn’t paint him in that light.
Also, something else that has bugged me about Sam’s dialogue for some time is the swearing. I mean, there were 10 occurrences of Shit and Fuck combined in this seg. 2 Whores and a wanking reference in a pear tree.
I’m no prude, but it’s hard to take Sam seriously when his dialogue is littered with swearing to the extent that it is in this seg. Honestly, I’d like to see that toned down in the future.
DEF*MAX Tournament (Block B): David Noble vs. Samuel T. Turner
A good opneing match and a win that definitely makes sense. Sam gets riled up by Lance, he comes out and beats up his opponent, who despite being the SoHer champion, got beaten up by Mushi just moments earlier. Nothing much else to say about this. I just hope Noble gets some kind of revenge against Mushi a bit later on.
For Every Action
I want to make a joke about how a Dan Ryan segment is so rare it’s worthy of a masterball being thrown at it, but Dan’s been a lot more active in segs over the last couple of arcs. Still, it’s good to see Dan be Dan and cut a scathing promo.
Still, there’s gonna be retaliation to that. So I hope you’ve got your burn heal at the ready.
Agree To Disagree
I’m definitely enjoying this jaded Jake Donovan. It’s given him another dimension that he’s been lacking for some time. Obviously we’ve still not seen much of Kenny Freeman, so I’m still reserving judgement on him, but this is a nice introductory story for him which definitely has me watching.
Watch Yo’ Mouth
Any time Evan and James work together it’s gold. Seriously. Doesn’t matter who’s in it. Could be Dusty, Ty, Jane, Nicky, Boxer, it’s brilliant.
DEF*MAX Tournament (Block A): Eugene Dewey vs. Henry Keyes
This is a match I’ve wanted to write for some time and I enjoyed every minute of it.
New Followers
Straight off the bat it’s nice to see Malachi somewhere other than at the top of the card. That instantly makes him feel like more of a member of the DEFIANCE roster than just some curtain jerker.
Malachi is definitely getting fleshed out now, which is great, and I can totally imagine a segment like this on TV. Wheel in a couple of randoms to ‘induct’, attack one because why not and you’ve got segments 101. Good stuff.
Kings And Queens
See, this is why Mushi is so much more interesting than Troy Matthews. Eddie Dante has confidence, and Mushi has something that he can be confident about. Troy’s background is just… not something to be confident about. I know that’s been by design and down to his size, but he’s just so much more believable as a threat.
Good segment, and I can’t repeat enough how much I’m enjoying LT on her own.
Hook ‘Em Up
HA! Frank’s lack of punctuation on twitter is awesome.
I’m loving the length of segs in DEF right now. They’re all getting to the point and they’re not all 10 pages or more. It’s making the shows a lot more readable and a lot more enjoyable. As far as this one goes, it’s always good to see Ty, and combining him with Frank and Billy has to be good.
Lexi’s introduction has confused me greatly. At first I thought Noble was gonna steal her and she’d be some kinda lynchpin in Frank losing the SoHer title, but that never happened, now I’m wondering if she was brought in to get this storyline up and running, but I don’t think that was the case. Hopefully this has come out of that organically, and if that’s the case then I might not totally hate the Lexi angle.
Troy Matthews vs. Jake Donovan
- The match that I thought would end with one of the two guys that seem to never win picking up a win didn’t even happen
- Neither Jake nor Troy’s replacement picked up the win because it ended in a draw…
- I thought it was only tournament matches that had a 15 minute time limit.
A decent debut for Harmony, but I can’t shake the feeling of annoyance over points 1 and 3 above.
Second Chance
Personally, I don’t want to see Jake join with the Malachites. I also don’t want him to reject them and feud with Malachi, because that would be exactly like Daniel Bryan vs. Bray Wyatt, or John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt. Jake needs a new edge to his character, but it shouldn’t come from Malachi, and he shouldn’t remain in the status quo by refusing to join Malachi.
The thing going on with Kenny Freeman would be where I want to see Jake go. The disillusioned veteran indirectly influencing the rookie to feel disillusioned before he even starts. I like that. If Jake joined with Malachi then that story with Kenny is effectively out the window.
A Short Interlude
Holy shit Mushi is all over this show.
Ok, Mushi siding with Jane would be mental. Could you imagine Nicky and Mushi on the same side? They’d run amok.
DEF*MAX Tournament (Block A): Lindsay Troy vs. Mushigihara
Damn this match was a lot quicker than I thought it would be, especially after Boxer and Mushi went to a draw. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but I was definitely expecting something a little longer.
A Promise
I can see Noble in a Stone Cold-esque anti authority role. One man against the establishments kind of thing. The only problem is I’m pretty sure Kelly is designed to be an equal opportunity offender in the sense that she’s not on any side other than Eric Dane’s. She doesn’t favor anyone, so how can you rebel against that unless the issue was made personal?
Good Segment though. Noble has definitely transformed into someone I enjoy reading compared to how I felt about the character when he started.
Franks Counterpoints
Frank’s got some good points here, and I’m liking the fact that a lot of people have taken the PiP idea and twisted it around so that it’s not overplayed. Everyone seems to be getting their words in before their matches in one way or another and that’s a good thing.
DEF*MAX Tournament (Block B): Frank Holiday vs. Curtis Penn
One day I hope Curtis Penn’s list of nicknames is the longest part of the show.
Damn good match, and I absolutely love the cast that Penn is wearing. I hope he doesn’t lose that for… well, the rest of his career? Is that too much to ask?
The results tonight have kept this tournament wide open still in both brackets. But with four guys in Bracket B all on 2 points that one just couldn’t be closer. I want to give mad props to the planning of the tournament, because despite 2 weeks going by and us only having one person to have won 2 matches it doesn’t feel like the last 2 shows have been wasted. All results are believable and all results feels like they’ve meant something.