Revisiting 00s US Indies #15

Low-Ki v Paul London v AJ Styles (ROH One Year Anniversary Show, 2/8/03)

You know, for a wild spotfest triple threat, this was probably one of the best of its ilk that I've seen. It was like the best possible version of a Beyond Wrestling match where they just went out and did as much awesome looking shit as they could. You're not listening to 2 Chainz for deep story raps and you're not watching this for the psychology or narrative structure or whatever. My low bar hopes for threeway matches are basically that there isn't a ton of one wrestler needing to lie around selling something for an inordinate amount of time while the other two pair off, and that when they inevitably try some elaborate shit it doesn't take half an hour to set up and leave me tuning out. I thought they mostly nailed that balance between selling and getting shit in here, and while some of the stuff was elaborate, it wasn't ridiculous and that elaborate stuff wound up being cool as fuck anyway, so I'll accept the tradeoff. There was even a bit of role-establishment as well, with Ki and Styles being the indie superstars and the guys folk had pinned their hopes on for solidifying ROH's seat at the big boy table, while London has never had any of that hype and thus essentially becomes an underdog babyface. Ki and Styles were never dismissive of him as such, but there were a couple points where they doubled up on him just to get him out the road so the all-star match-up could take place. Some of the stuff they all did was nuts and things I've never seen before or since, which is quite incredible considering this happened in 2003 and the level of INNOVATION~ wrestling his strived for since then. Also helped that everything looked like it hurt like a bastard. London hit one missile dropkick to the back of Styles that I thought gave him whiplash. I rewound it and slowed it down and the back of his head about touched his shoulder blade. Even struggles over a top rope move were good because Styles would just whack London in the kidneys with nasty forearms, Ki would do what he always does and hit everyone really hard, they never messed about up there for ages, etc. The final bit with all three of them on the top rope was about the least contrived version of that particular threeway trope I could ask for and the finish itself was great. Shockingly enjoyable match. I know why they didn't but they should've stuck the belt on London that night because the crowd were SO ready for it.