MLW Fusion Review - January 26, 2023

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Sam Adonis def. Johnny Patch

Cesar Duran announced Adonis as the newest addition to the MLW roster. For those unaware, Adonis is the real-life brother of WWE commentator Corey Graves. I've seen him work on a few independent shows and he's also been featured in the NWA in recent years as well as in AAA. He feels like a good fit for MLW and I thought this was a solid debut for him. This was a straightforward squash and exactly what it needed to be.

YAMATO def. Shun Skywalker to Win the Open the Dream Gate Championship

This was filmed at a Dragon Gate event. I thought it was recent until a quick search told me that Skywalker is still the Open the Dream Gate Champion. I eventually discovered this was from a few years ago. Uhm, okay. This was a quality contest that had a ton of time devoted to it. I know Skywalker has made multiple appearances on Fusion in recent months, but I'm not a big fan of putting random matches on the show without providing much background beforehand.

MLW World Women's Featherweight Champion Taya Valkyrie def. Trish Adora

All due respect to Skywalker vs. YAMATO, but I would have rather seen that get a little less time (or at least a more condensed version of it) so that this could have lasted longer. What we got from them was fine but I'm sure these two are capable of better knowing how talented they both are. As a result, this was underwhelming, though I do like that that Valkyrie is a heel now that she's aligned with Duran.

Overall Show

I'm looking forward to the upcoming premiere of MLW's new Underground show, but Fusion feels like it's been in a holding pattern for weeks. This episode was an example of that as this was a random collection of matches and the inclusion of the Dragon Gate match, even though it was well wrestled, hurt the overall flow. This was the definition of a filler episode featuring nothing you need to go out of your way to see (other than Richard Holliday's pre-taped promo as it was great to hear from him).

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