RevPro 2/18/2024 High Stakes 2024: Ospreay vs Oku

RevPro 2/18/2024 High Stakes 2024: Ospreay vs Oku

I decided to check it out since Meltzer was calling Ospreay vs Oku one of the greatest matches ever. The whole show is 5 hours long with every match being 10-20+ minutes, so I will only be seeing some of the matches here. I'd also like to save my typing fingers here, so I'm just going to do after-match thoughts.

AEW International Title Seven Way Scramble Match - Orange Cassidy (c) vs. Sha Samuels vs. Shigehiro Irie vs. Flash Morgan Webster vs. Spike Trivet vs. Richard Holliday vs. Cameron Khai

 

OC beat Holliday with an orange punch at 8:03, which obviously wasn't enough time OC showed up unexpectedly and made this a title match. It was a fast paced multi-man match. OC did his comedy of course and despite there being 6 people to stop him while his hands were in his pockets, they were all unable to. Despite there being 7 people here, it was mostly just 1v1 the whole time. Flash had a nice sliding armdrag here that I included above and probably was the big highlight on this one.  

Young Blood (Oskar Leube & Yuto Nakashima) vs. Kieron Lacey & Mark Trew

 

It went 9:25 with Young Blood getting the win with a 2nd rope knee + F-5 combo. It was rushed with a super fast pace here. Yuto seemed to have a hard time keeping up but Oskar did well showing good fire. The finish was really nasty here. They had the illegal man in there on a pin attempt and the crowd chanted you f*cked up when the ref wouldn't count it because of it.

Shingo Takagi vs Trent Seven

Shingo won with a lariat 21:58. If they had just stuck with the strikes and lariats, it would have been good. But they ended up going too long and ended up doing a bunch of kick-outs on head drops that brought down the match. Nobody should ever be kicking out of a 2nd rope emerald flowsion. Shingo also had a rare botch here as he slipped on the death valley driver on the apron spot. The crowd also wasn't as into it as the other matches.

Anthony Ogogo vs Ricky Knight Jr.

Ogogo got the win with a punch at 13:30. It was indy garbage that started out with 450's ended with a punch, and not just one punch, of course. It felt way longer than 13 minutes. We also got the customary indy canadian destroyer kickout here.

Zack Sabre Jr. vs Connor Mills

 

I liked the submissions and the general wrestling here. They were definitely working on various parts for a while. However, they ended up giving that up. They did give it up for good exchanges though. I still thought it was a good technical match and a good wrestling match, but it would have been better if the submissions went somewhere.

 RevPro Undisputed British Heavyweight Title Match - Michael Oku (c) vs. Will Ospreay

Oku got the win here with a calf-crusher style hold at 47:12. While Dave called this one of the best matches ever in wrestling, I didn't think it was that good. They started off fast and slowed down as the match went on. They did a lot of kicking out of dangerous looking stuff here with Oku kicking out of a tiger driver '91, Oku taking a full speed spinning forearm to the back of the head and Will getting spiked on his head with a tombstone reversal. The submission finish had little to do with the rest of the match here as Will only sold his supposedly injured knee for a few minutes. As you expect, the selling was not good here. I give them credit for it not being boring or slow, but that's about it.

Overall thoughts: I skipped 3 matches and still felt it was a very long show. The main wasn't even the best match on the show, yet alone a best match of all-time and I'm not really surprised by this. I liked Zack/Mills best here. Shingo/Trent could have been good but they started kicking out of stuff and brought it down. I didn't like Ogogo/Knight Jr. much. The Young Blood tag was rushed and the 7 way had the usual OC shenanigans. I wouldn't recommend this one. It's really only for people who like the more indy style of wrestling and it's straight up punishment for people who don't.