I had never before seen an Arik Cannon match. I've been meaning to check out the Hero feud - and specifically their I Quit match from 2005 - since I started going through this stuff a year ago, but as is my wont I got side-tracked and never did. I was familiar with the name Arik Cannon, and have been for a number of years, long and winding as my journey as a wrestling fan has been. I was aware of his existence as a professional wrestler. Could not have told you a single thing ABOUT him, but I knew OF him. Strangely he didn't really look like I would've expected, which I guess is sort of weird because I'm not sure why I would've expected something in particular anyway. He was 22 years old here and I would not have guessed that from looking at him. He had the baggy pants and leather vest but is sort of pudgily put together so that choice of ring gear isn't the most flattering, looks like he could be Glenn Morshower's delinquent son who ran away from home in Friday Night Lights because his old man is a cop, must only be about 5 foot 4 considering Danielson is noticeably taller than him, has the face of someone who maybe had a rough paper round growing up...just a very different look than the vague portrait I'd painted in my head. Still, we're not here to judge books by their covers and overall I thought he was perfectly good in this. He works as overt heel and had lots of fun moments, both on offence and while working from below. He tells the crowd to shut up, is never above taking cheapshots and shortcuts, stooges with a little subtlety to it, just generally turns in a nice heel performance. And on top of that he brought some neat grappling, sold his arm pretty well, had some nice stuff to work over Danielson's neck, threw mean forearms, it was all fine work. Danielson was playing big fish in a small pond here though, and it was wonderful. The grappling was first class and he stretched Cannon to the limits of his flexibility, almost condescendingly gave him clean breaks without being a proper dick about it, then when Cannon annoyed him he wellied the wee fella in the face with elbows. Danielson's neck selling wasn't big and dramatic, but he made it look like he was at least bothered by it and Cannon's offence came off all the better because of it. Is it contrarian to say Danielson was better before he got the ROH title? Because he was on another level around 2004-2005. He was hardly a chump during the title reign and maybe some of those longer title defences are colouring my judgment, but everything just felt tighter and chip on his shoulder Danielson really was something else. This was very decent.
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