MLW Fightland Review - October 7, 2021

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Tajiri def. Myron Reed, Aramis and Arez to win the MLW World Middleweight Championship

I saw Aramis and Arez for the first time on Fusion: ALPHA just recently and was blown away by the match they had. It's funny I was familiar with them coming into this contest but not Reed, who was the reigning MLW World Middleweight Champion before he lost the title here. I'm new to the product, but you'd think they'd introduce viewers to who Reed on Fusion: ALPHA before this special aired. Nonetheless, this was a fun four-way and Tajiri winning was a nice moment considering this emanated from the old ECW Arena in Philadelphia. The crowd was happy with the result.

MLW National Openweight Champion Alexander Hammerstone def. Jacob Fatu in a Title vs. Title Match to Win the MLW World Heavyweight Championship

MLW was heavily hyping this up as the biggest match in MLW history. They were wise to hold off on this until their biggest show to date (in terms of how many people were able to watch it on TV) with a full crowd in attendance, but it fell slightly flat for me. It was definitely a very good match, but apparently Hammerstone was legitimately injured early on and that's why the rest of the match felt off, particularly the finish that the crowd didn't seem to know how to reach to. Despite that, they gave it a great effort and both guys felt like stars. I'd hope anyone who watched this show and weren't aware of who they were left impressed by them. Fatu's historic reign ends at over two years, or 27 months to be exact.

Overall Show

I wasn't sure what to expect coming into this show because I was under the impression that it'd be the full event featuring the Opera Cup matches and everything else, but obviously not. Instead, they devoted a decent amount of time to the Embedded segment. It was well done, but it felt like a waste of time and I honestly have no desire to hear fellow members of the wrestling media discuss WWE potentially being sold and topics that have no relation to MLW on an MLW show. Other than that, this was a thumbs-up event. The main event had a big-fight feel, the crowd was hot, and the two title changes were newsworthy. I hope MLW gets to do more stuff like this on Vice now that they have some sort of working agreement. More exposure for the product, the better.

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