[2018-09-23-PWR Live: Homefront] Ralph Imabayashi vs Quatro

[SmartMark15]

Thought this was a legitimately great title match. Opens up with some decent exchanges. Then we get into an Imabayashi heat segment trying to take out Quatro's leg. I don't know what it is about Ralph but he moves kind of slowly in the ring and that sort of kills the energy of his heat segments. Luckily he doesn't give in to the temptation to just do rest hold after rest hold and instead does some pretty decent looking offense on Quatro's leg even though it doesn't quite catch the momentum of the crowd.

Quatro does a decent selling job of the leg for a lot of the match but it more or less disappears once we hit the finishing stretch. There are some legitimately great false finishes down the stretch. When Quatro hits the sitout Last Ride, it was so visually stunning that the crowd were convinced that was it. It made for a great false finish and added a lot of tension for all the nearfalls that came after.

Quatro looked like a world killer taking out Ralph's goons especially when he no sold the tray shot. The crowd just got hotter and hotter seeing him away away all of Ralph's usual tricks and they went absolutely mental for the Dusty false finish. I'm glad they didn't prolong the match too much after the Dusty false finish as I think the heat had certainly peaked. The finish was anti-climactic but it did make sense with the story they were telling as Ralph tied up the legs to get the leverage advantage.

Thought this was a little tough to get into at first as we have the typically jokey Filipino crowd mixed with some slightly lethargic ring work to open but that finishing stretch is worth seeing for just how perfectly it came off to make Quatro seem like a main event babyface.

It was really nice to see both this match and the JDL-Tengu match come out on YT after the show. There was a lot of good action they released online worth seeing.

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