We’ve two new faces this week as Brendan White and Violet Nyte join the Grind.
Quick Results
Spartan Medal: Aleah James pinned Angel Hayze in 9:11 (***¼)
Spartan Medal: Tyler Owens pinned Violet Nyte in 8:27 (***)
Spartan Medal: Jay Joshua pinned Brendan White in 13:13 (***)
Once again we’re back in Digbeth at the Kamikaze Pro dojo with commentary from Conor Bailey, Lucy Simons and Jetta… and we’re straight to action.
Aleah James vs. Angel Hayze
A win for Angel Hayze books her a spot in the eventual title match – and given we don’t know how far away that’d be, something tells me she may be going back to square one here.
Commentary played up Hayze’s win over Aleah back in 2019 at EVE, and Hayze enjoyed the best of a bright start, but Aleah was able to respond with a monkey flip out of the corner before she took down the Scotswoman with some headscissors.
Hayze responded with a handful of hair to throw James into the mat, while almost a diving Superman punch nearly won it as Hayze was beginning to look comfortable in pursuit of her third medal. Irish whips bounce James into the corner, but Hayze goes for that once too often and almost paid the price.
A front facelock grounds Aleah for a spell, but a jawbreaker eventually gets her free as Aleah finally mounted a sustained comeback, leading to a leaping crossbody for a two-count. Hayze’s Slingblade stops all that briefly as she regained the upper hand… James’ sunset flip out of the corner’s sat down on, but Angel grabs the ropes, which the ref quickly spots… and the stalled count gives Aleah a chance to reverse the flip and snatch the win in the process. This was a really good outing, with Angel Hayze perhaps losing and regaining the advantage once too often as I was starting to wonder where the banana skin was coming… and with that result, Angel’s back to square one, despite her despairing dive for the medals. I quite liked that exasperation at the end… ***¼
We recap Millie McKenzie’s win over Melissa Fierce last week – that’s Millie’s second in a row, and she’s in the same club that Angel Hayze just left.
Tyler Owens vs. Violet Nyte
This was Violet’s debut on this series – Owens is undefeated in Spinebuster, which makes you think he’s getting that second medal here.
A hair pull from Nyte creates an opening after Owens had started out brightly, but there’s a quick turnaround leading to a senton atomico from Owens. A Finlay roll lands, but a springboard moonsault out of the corner does not, and there’s another opening for Violet, who drags him into the corner to wrap his legs around the post.
Back inside, Nyte keeps working over the knee with a bridging deathlock, but Owens manages to break her balance and push the hold apart… but Nyte keeps going to the leg and knee, using a toe and heel hold before a clothesline put Owens down.
Nyte retains focus on the knee with a Figure Four, but Owens manages to roll the hold to reverse it. Eventually the ropes save Owens, who’s really worried about his knee. Of course, the ref doesn’t stop it so the match – and the beating – continues, until Owens was able to push Nyte into the corner.
An inside cradle on the rebound’s more out of hope than anything else, but the knee holds up enough to hit a powerslam. Nyte kicks at the knee before a swinging Fisherman suplex almost got the upset, before she grounded Owens with an Octopus stretch. They’re really trying to have you believe she can beat the undefeated Owens here, but Tyler’s flying Flatliner swings it back in his favour.
Owens has to grit his teeth through another Octopus stretch, but despite the bad wheel he’s able to power out of the hold and hit a One Night Stand for the win. I wasn’t a fan of Nyte taking the bulk of the match only to lose out of nowhere like that – but I really liked what I saw out of her here. They’re telling the story that Owens’ knee could cost him the chance to wrestle again, but I’d perhaps not have done this match with that opponent. ***
We’ve got two more faces to the series here… the tandem of Ted Sabin and Jack Landers. Sabin lost last time in Spinebuster, but he’s back with a tag partner who seemingly doesn’t want to be here. They’ll be working here under the moniker E-M-Zero.
Next week: another new face! Shane Hook joins the fray as he teams with Leon Cage to take on Sabin and Landers… Hollie Barlow faces Claudia Bradstone… and The Duchess faces Harley Hudson.
Tyler Owens is outside celebrating with his two medals, and recounts his past wins in multi-person matches around here. He doesn’t care what stipulation his multi-person match is, he just wants that third medal.
Brendan White vs. Jay Joshua
This is a first time singles match – although they’ve had a few tags down the years. It’s Brendan’s debut in this format, and I think that stare gave my monitor screen burn.
We’ve got the thick end of a quarter of an hour left on the VOD, so it’s time to settle down. Especially when the opening exchanges didn’t draw any clear advantages. Brendan works the arm and head in the early going, but a push-off leads to a collision as the pair tried in vain to take the other down with shoulder tackles.
In the end it’s Joshua who pulled ahead, following up with a back senton as some chops took things into the corner. Boots out of the corner looked to give Brendan an opening as he proceeded to throw Joshua shoulder-first into the corner ahead of a bodyslam for a quick one-count.
Joshua goes back to the chops, but Brendan carves through him instead before a Bret Hart-esque whip into the corner left Joshua laying. Bodyslams from Brendan keep Joshua on the deck, but Joshua returns the favour before telegraphing a back senton. Regardless, Joshua’s able to hit back with a Scooby Doo suplex and a full nelson into a German suplex for a near-fall, before a diving boot from Brendan just earned him a spear out of nowhere.
Heading onto the apron, the pair trade blows as Joshua ended up taking a back body drop onto the edge of the ring. That’s followed up with an elevated suplex to bring Joshua back in the hard way, ahead of a moonsault out of the corner… but it’s not enough as the pair resume clubbering each other. A German suplex from Brendan just earns him a swift response in the form of a diving headbutt from a steaming Joshua, who then looked for a Gotch-style piledriver.
Instead, Brendan rolls him up, before some back-and-forth ended with Joshua’s take on the Gotch-style piledriver for the win. With a crowd, this’d have only been elevated – but they made up for the lack of an audience by knocking seven shades of you-know-what out of each other. ***
After last week’s niggle about the uncapped roster, I ran some numbers. We’ve had 31 wrestlers so far on this show in nine weeks, with that number rising by three taking next week’s announced matches into account. Granted, that number is inflated with a Rumble match, but unless this series is going to completely open-ended, we’re probably looking at The Grind being akin to the first Bound For Glory series, particularly with regard to the lower-card names who you’d not expect to be in the mix.
As for this week’s show, it was easily the best episode of this run so far – although my concerns about the format of the show still remain… at least until we start getting wrestlers completing their collections!