Tuesday 19 October 2021

Revisiting 00s US Indies #30

It's been almost a year but I'm jumping back into the 00s indies. We'll see how far I get this time before wandering off for another 11 months.


Bryan Danielson v Jack Evans (ROH Survival of the Fittest, 6/24/04)

Well this ruled like fuck. ROH is hardly the promotion that comes to mind when talking about great squash matches - for obvious reasons - but this is largely an extended squash, and an awesome one at that. I imagine this is the Bryan Danielson people are buzzed about seeing again in AEW. I mean, I mostly checked out of watching WWE a decade ago so there's a lot of WWE Bryan that I haven't seen, but I absolutely do not recall him being allowed to do this to someone at any point in that run. As a babyface he was always the underdog, often a goofy one at that, and even when he got to tap into his mean streak it felt like a fleeting foray into a past life. As a heel he leaned a little further into it, but I don't really remember anything like this. He tortured wee Jack Evans here and never before have I seen someone twisted and contorted into so many ridiculous shapes. Even for an extremely flexible young man this was some real nonsense. At one point Danielson had both of Jack's elbows about touching each other behind his back while his heel was connected to his neck. He put him in the nastiest version of an Argentine backbreaker you've ever seen and then he pretzel'd him with a stump puller from hell. Evans got a few licks in and once or twice mounted some offence, but it was always brief and only drove Danielson to make his life an even greater misery. Evans' bump off the European uppercut was amazing and the Boston Crab at the end is a disgrace. Total blast of a match. 

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