WWE 205 Live Review - July 25, 2017

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Ariya Daivari def. WWE Cruiserweight Champion Neville by Count-out (Non-title)

Heel vs. heel matches don't normally work in wrestling, and while the crowd was unsurprisingly quiet for this, it did make sense from a storyline standpoint after Daivari laid out Neville on Raw this week. Akira Tozawa was limited with what he had to say on commentary, which was for the best, and I liked the count-out finish that keeps Daivari in the title conversation and doesn't ruin Neville's undefeated singles streak.

Gentleman Jack Gallagher Interrupted The Brian Kendrick

Most of what Kendrick and Gallagher have done throughout their rivalry up to this point has been either hit or miss, and this was absolutely a miss. Kendrick is a talented talker, but the material he was given to work with here (calling Gallagher a literal clown, etc) was godawful and fell flat with the crowd. Not even Gallagher interrupting Kendrick was enough to salvage this segment.

TJP and Tony Nese def. Cedric Alexander and Rich Swann

A major criticism of 205 Live since its inception late last year is that they don't wrestle the same style they did in the Cruiserweight Classic. Granted, they didn't do anything extremely insane in this match, but it felt the chains were taken off them and they were allowed to go all out in producing a super fun match. All four stars shined at various points and the in-ring action was very enjoyable. The heels picking up the victory not only furthered the feud between TJP and Swann but also seemed to start something up between Alexander and Nese.

Overall Show

I would have called this an above-average edition of 205 Live had it not been for that terrible promo from Kendrick. I just can't overlook that, but obviously, you can skip over it if you haven't already seen this show. The opening and closing segments, rather, were well-wrestled and the main event in particular was a nice treat. I hope we see more matches like that in the future on 205 Live that aren't always so focused on storytelling and are different than every other match we see on Raw and SmackDown Live.