I reckon I could watch this match up all day. Or at least parts of the day, most days. Maybe even ONE day I'll watch that match where they wrestle for like four hours with Gabe Sapolsky on commentary and if that's not the highest compliment I can pay both of them I don't know what is. I haven't watched those 2007 matches since probably 2007, but this feels like a good shout for being their best match together. I loved the early parts with Aries chucking Danielson across the ring by his beard, Danielson coming back and chucking Aries by the ears, then Aries grabbing Danielson's beard again to keep hold of a headlock as Danielson tries whipping him into the ropes. Everything was really snug and fought over, largely a stalemate but nothing felt like they were going through the motions. There was a fight over a Japanese stranglehold that especially ruled, Danielson as vicious as you'd expect while Aries had to try and roll over or out of it, finally managing it and reversing it and even applying his own version into the bargain. Danielson's kicks the whole match were tremendous and he gave us the first glimpse of them during this opening stretch. His aggressiveness during this period of his career is something else and I'm pretty sure 2005 is my favourite year of his, the way he worked with a GIGANTIC chip on his shoulder going after the belt. I prefer that to how he worked after he did win it, when his urgency and drive to prove something gave way a little to some of the arrogance one can only demonstrate by working a 57-minute main event with Delirious. He didn't have the belt here, had never held it before, and maybe there was a voice in his head that told him nobody thought he COULD hold it. So he stretched Aries like a sadist, grabbing him by the face, cranking his neck at disgusting angles, locking him in some double-arm stretch plum where he was trying to twist Aries' head 180 degrees. Danielson from this period would also throw in some goofy shit to juxtapose the savagery and I loved him doing that here with Earthquake's Richter Scale finisher, stomping around to start the TREMORS~ while Aries lay unconscious. Aries finally takes over by just flinging Danielson over the ropes out of a headlock, following up with the bullet tope. Similar to how he went after Gibson the night before he targets Danielson's arm from here and it was great stuff again, super varied offence but crisp and violent. Really liked his headstand hammerlock thing that he tried transitioning into Cattle Mutilation, which he couldn't quite lock in, partly because Danielson was too stubborn to let him, partly because it SHOULD be difficult to apply someone else's finishing hold, especially if it's a hold only really used by that one person anyway. Of course I loved how Aries would routinely halt Danielson's momentum on comebacks by yanking on the beard again. As someone who has grown a very large beard at several points of their life I can tell you it's annoying as fuck when someone decides to pull on it. Whether it was that or the Cattle Mutilation I'm not sure but when Danielson decided he'd had enough he tried to kill Aries. The armwork sort of gets forgotten, but YOU forget THAT when Danielson absolutely hammers Aries with those kicks. These are the best he's ever thrown. His enziguri was used to get him out of trouble a handful of times and there was one shot on the floor where he had Aries up against the barricade, measured him, and fucking obliterated him with a spin kick right out the Ikeda playbook. I was a little shocked at how decisive Aries' win was in the end, though Danielson locking in the REAL Cattle Mutilation had everyone fully biting on a title change before that. Danielson sullying the Code of Honour and leaving without giving Aries his handshake is probably a bit of foreshadowing for where Danielson would go after finally winning the belt a few months later. How could we expect anything different from a man willing to display such wanton dishonour? It takes an appalling sort to willingly work 60 minutes with Colt Cabana knowing it'll be available for purchase on DVD.
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