Man, this was good stuff. I wasn't really intending on going through a bunch of Alex Shelley for this but I kind of want to now. He's actually a bit of a blind spot for me, or at least that '04/-'05 run is and this was way more enjoyable than his later decade Motor City Machine Guns stuff. Really dug the early matwork and I thought Shelley's selling of the arm was great, not just during the section where Punk was working it over but basically all the way to the end. Loved him taking the elbow pad off his good arm and putting it on the bad one for some extra support. Lots of moments as well where he'd hit an offensive move and then shake out the arm, slap some feeling into his hand, wouldn't be able to do something properly because of it. At one point he even buckled over in pain after performing a double stomp like the reverberation of it jarred that arm again. This was part of his redemption arc in ROH as well, where he was coming off the sorta-babyface turn after Gen Next gave him the boot and he was trying to prove that he wasn't a prick anymore. There were a few cool moments built around that, my favourite being where he had Punk on the floor and went to throw him into the barricade, then changed his mind and rolled him back in with a "goddammit" instead. It wasn't hammy either, didn't feel contrived and he never bothered trying to be melodramatic about it, which all in all went a long way to making me believe he was not in fact a prick (Gabe's spiel about the Code of Honor was hilarious he is terrible my god). All of Punk's offence looked solid and he had a few really cool moments himself, like rolling through with Shelley as the latter tried to escape an arm-wringer. When Shelley takes over he mostly works the midsection of Punk, and Punk sells it fine in the moment but not quite as well over the long term as Shelley does with the arm. Eventually it becomes a story of who can damage those specific body parts enough to get the win, which then narrows down to Shelley trying for the Border City Stretch and Punk trying for the Anaconda Vice. I had pretty much no expectations for this and it totally delivered. I think this was also the first time Punk had switched from the baggy shorts to wearing trunks. He had the black wrist tape rather than his usual white and he just looked way cooler than he ever had before. On the other hand it led to Gabe on commentary talking about dieting and how Punk's never eaten a carb in his life or something and I muted it for a minute there. I will talk often about the commentary as I dive deeper into this, it seems. I may keep note of the worst lines.
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