MLW Fusion Review - April 14, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

5150 Attacked The Von Erichs

5150 are fresh off their loss of the MLW World Tag Team Championship to Calvin Tankman and EJ Nduka, so I'm surprised they focused more on The Von Erichs in this promo than they did regaining the titles. Why not just keep the belts on 5150 in that case so the two teams can feud over those? This was a fine segment used to introduce Hernandez as the newest member of the group. As an original member of LAX in IMPACT, he makes perfect sense to join. Hopefully we can get him and Homicide teaming up again.

Matt Cross def. TJP

Both of these guys are obviously talented, so there was no doubt it'd be a quality contest. It was well wrestled and I enjoyed the action. Cross seems to lose far more than he wins and is typically used as a stepping stone for others, though this wasn't a match I expected him to win with TJP recently beating Buddy Murphy. He even mentioned that in his pre-match promo, so for Cross to defeat him clean was weird.

Holidead def. Shazza McKenzie

​MLW seemed serious about building up their women's division when I started watching the product last year, but it feels like we've barely seen any women's matches since the departure of Willow Nightingale (who's gone on to bigger and better things). This was decent, but I'm not a Holidead fan and I don't think the shenanigans from her faction on the outside of the ring helped at all. McKenzie is skilled, though, so I'd like to see her get more opportunities.

MLW National Openweight Champion Alex Kane def. Puma King, ACH, Juicy Finau and MLW Middleweight Champion Myron Reed in a Five-Way Match

This was built up over the entire episode with Kane complaining about having to defend his title in a multi-man match and Reed wanting to become a double champion, which is why it was so weird when this ended in under five minutes. What we got was solid, but it never had a chance to get going. I'm curious who the masked individual was who helped Kane retain, though. On a side note, Finau just signed with MLW and while he did just fine here, it was hard to get a grasp on what he do due to how short this was.

Overall Show

I had a chance to attend MLW's Intimidation Games taping at Gilley's in Dallas over WWE's WrestleMania 38 weekend and had a fun time as it was my MLW event. I had to take about an hour or two in, so I only watched the first two segments on this show live. Everything was taped out of order, so everything else should be airing in the coming weeks. As for this episode, it was underwhelming on the whole, at least from an in-ring standpoint. I loved the hype for Alexander Hammerstone vs. Mads Krugger for the MLW World Heavyweight Championship next week with those promos from Hammerstone, but nothing else that happened in the ring was overly exciting or eventful aside from Hernandez's debut. Cross vs. TJP was enjoyable, but the main event was way too brief and the women's match was mediocre at best.

SEE MORE: MLW Reviews