Featured image by @handsomedagger
This review was commissioned by Hippoboy281 over on my Ko-fi account.
A little better than I remembered it. Probably because I’ve been sifting through some stuff I truly don’t care for in this particular sitting, but this actually has just enough energy to it to be decent. Rina’s got that big personality as I’ve already discussed, but Masha’s just a spitfire here with how she throws herself at the opposition. I do still find Masha’s striking a little hit or miss, but in terms of just raw energy, she delivers well enough to keep the pace up for most of this. Violence is Forever also do deliver on a certain baseline brutality here. Their strikes land better than I remembered them, and they’re decent enough in control when they isolate Rina.
That being said, this match can’t help but highlight some of the issues I have with VIF’s run in GCW, and some of their recent work in general. While the heat segment is mostly fine, it feels perfunctory to the match as a whole, with the crowd not really buying into it, and the eventual hot tag feeling flat to come. Then, things just breakdown in a harmless if rather uninspired finishing stretch. Rina here too feels a little too goofy for what the occasion might call for and that final finishing stretch is way too long and back and forth to milk any real tension from any of it. Nothing here ever really feels like it’s escalating or building to much, especially when the opening moments of the match are the crowd brawl to begin with. Just a real mixed bag of decently done moves in mostly the right order.
Rating: ***
