After this week’s episode of NXT, the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is thoroughly underway (the women’s one starts on 205 Live next week). There were two first-round matches on the Purple Brand last night, one much better than the other. Let’s unpack.
Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic 1st Round Match
Legado Del Fantasma (Raul Mendoza and Joaquin Wilde) vs. Bollywood Boyz (Sunil Singh and Samir Singh)
There really wasn’t much to write home about here. Bollywood Boyz controlled most of the match, right up until they didn’t. It really felt like there was very little tension, the near-falls for Bollywood weren’t all that believable, and Fantasma going over felt like kind of a foregone conclusion. You’re always going to get these kinds of perfunctory matches in a tournament like this, so let’s just hurry along to the good stuff.
Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic 1st Round Match
Killian Dain and Drake Maverick vs. Curt Stallion and August Grey
Now, this was more like it. Despite Stallion getting a pretty substantial push lately, his future seems intimately tied to the singles title picture, so it makes sense that he and August Grey would lose here. But the team of Dain and Maverick is endless fun. They’re not just physical opposites but completely different personalities, and all of that was on full display in this match.
Drake is smaller than most cruiserweights, and Dain is bigger than most people, so that made for a nice rhythm to the tagging in and out, and give the different pairings a distinct vibe. But the real joke is how Dain consistently used Maverick as a weapon, casually using him as a projectile. It’s childish, obviously, but I was genuinely laughing, in large part because they were selling it verbally, too, with banter back and forth rather than the usual played-out “they don’t get along” routine. It was great stuff, and that they incorporated it into the finish – Dain powerbombed Maverick onto Stallion – was a lovely payoff. More of these two, please.
These were the WWE 205 Live Results for January 15, 2021.
