Revisiting 00s US Indies #48

Austin Aries v Bryan Danielson (ROH Nowhere to Run, 5/14/05)

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.

Revisiting 00s US Indies #47

Necro Butcher v Thumbtack Jack (Cabin Fever Deathmatch) (IWA East Coast, 11/29/08)

I'm not really sure what makes this a cabin fever deathmatch, to be honest. I don't know what it means. The ring is surrounded by platforms made of light tubes that are wired together, presumably intimating that the participants are confined to the ring, the fear of leaving and being cut to pieces enough to instill in them a form of MADNESS experienced only by deathmatch practitioners. I've never seen Thumbtack Jack before. Necro comes out bloody and battered wearing a torn up $4 ROH shirt, so presumably this is not his first match of the night or maybe on the way there he got into a fight with some raccoons or scaffold workers or whatever. This was pretty much pro wrestling for the sickos; the sort of thing you don't tell non-wrestling fans or even most actual wrestling fans you've watched lest they make all manner of assumptions about you. Telling people you grew up watching WWF and your hero as a kid was Stone Cold Steve Austin is just about acceptable. I would never in a million years broadcast that between once and thrice a year I will willingly watch two psychopaths attempt to mutilate each other with soda-lime glass in front of 23 people in a community centre in West Virginia. The match started with Necro going right at our man Thumbtack, kicking him into a panel of light tubes hanging in the corner before punching him dead in the face. The punch looked and sounded vile and I'm not sure Jack expected it, even though he absolutely should have. Jack has tape around his waist - possibly from a match earlier in the night - and Necro scraping his fingernails down the bandaged area is a hunner diseases waiting to happen. One solitary person in our audience does the Ric Flair woo when Thumbtack Jack fires back with knife edge chops. After they trade revolting headbutts like top tier morons Jack gets slammed on a pile of light tubes and walloped over the head with some more and almost immediately he's bleeding profusely from his head and shoulder. These are two men who cannot be caged by any feverous cabin and before long they've brawled into the crowd and up towards the back wall, where Jack makes his comeback by running up said wall and hitting a moonsault, which honestly was fucking awesome. He throws a trashcan at Necro's bare shins and jabs his bare foot with the back of a chair, both of them by this point leaving bloody smears and trails wherever they go. Jack smashes a bundle of about 20 light tubes over Necro's head and drapes a light tube blanket over, then misses his moonsault by about eight feet but still ends up stabbing himself in the hand with a piece of glass while Necro writhes around bleeding from the eye. The close-up camera shot of Thumbtack Jack pulling a piece of broken glass out of his finger is the part where those of us with any sense decide enough is enough and go find ourselves a different hobby. The big car crash spot came off great, with Necro punching Jack off the apron and Jack falling several feet through a platform of light tubes. And a not-insignificant part of me kind of loves the finish. Necro asks the referee for assistance in bringing another light tube contraption into the ring so naturally you're expecting some more madness to unfold, but instead Jack reverses a scoop slam into a small package for the surprise win. Surprise not just in that Thumbtack Jack won (unless someone tells me Thumbtack Jack is actually an IWA East Coast legend and was a seven-point favourite from the beginning), but in that they went to the finish before following through on whatever nonsense they'd teased with the light tubes. Maybe that's the deathmatch version of a southern tag ending before the hot tag. Obviously this had gnarly shit in it and this is an crowd who arrived expecting gnarly shit, but really they were dead at the start and by the time they got to the last few minutes the heat was right there, so credit where it's due for working the place (or you can give no credit whatsoever and declare this an affront to the noble art of professional wrestling, as is your choice). I don't feel like a better man for having watched this, but I do feel like I've learned to better appreciate the simple things in life that don't involve excessive violence and depravity. Possibly. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #46

Austin Aries v James Gibson (ROH Final Showdown, 5/13/05)

"Another really good Austin Aries match." I guess I should stop being surprised at this point, but since I started going through all of this stuff again a few years back, there really hasn't been one Aries match I've revisited - or visited for the first time, like this one - that I've come out of without a higher opinion of him as a wrestler. I feel like he was at his absolute peak around this time and there's pretty much nobody I'd be opposed to seeing him in there against. The opening section had a real nice snap to it and all of the hold-trading was airtight, none of the counters into and out of holds looking overly cooperative or choreographed. It's sort of crazy to me that with all the bells and whistles and production values of today, I can't think of many current wrestlers doing these sequences who manage to pull them off like this crop of indie guys in the mid-2000s who were being recorded by like three people with video cameras. I could quite easily be convinced this period was as good as it's ever been for workrate promotions doing workrate. Even if the STUFF they're doing today is bigger and flashier, it rarely feels as organic to me as what they were doing on a 2005 ROH show. Anyhow, the early parts were good and I liked them foreshadowing Aries targeting Gibson's arm by stomping on the elbow out of a key lock. He takes over fully with one of his rocket topes and Aries really does have one of the best topes of the last 25 years, certainly outside of Mexico. They then follow through on that arm stomp as Aries drapes Gibson's arm over the barricade and crushes it with a running dropkick, which sets off a pretty great control segment. He's mean and focused working the arm, hitting some cool hammerlocked scoop and sidewalk slam variations, really snapping Gibson to the mat with arm wringers. I don't need offence in wrestling to look super crisp, but it's worth mentioning it when you've got a guy like Aries making everything look killer, like he's actually trying to hurt a guy and win the match. Gibson for his part is really strong working from below and selling the arm. He made it show that nothing was coming easily, clearly hindered in trying to fight back and hit certain moves. He hangs the arm limp by his side and has to throw punches and forearms with his right, then resorts to headbutts from his knees in moments of desperation. At other points he'd fight from his back and on one occasion Aries just about piledrove himself on his own head off a monkey flip. They played up the arm for the big spot out on the floor as well, with Gibson failing to get Aries up for the Tiger Driver and that leading to a wild flip senton into the crowd. This was also second from the top on a show where Danielson and Homicide would blow off their best of 5 series in a cage, so they worked the finishing run with a bit of restraint rather than going for epic. The two big kickouts felt huge even still; Aries' 450 splash and Gibson's Tiger Driver that he was finally able to hit after locking in a guillotine choke (that he had to release fairly quickly because it was applied with the left arm). I thought the last couple transitions were maybe a little rushed, but I did like the finish with Aries almost being out on his feet and fluking his way into a home run bomb. A very good wrestling match. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #45

Necro Butcher & Toby Klein v The H8 Club (CZW, 6/11/05)

What a grimy unhinged madness of a thing. This took place about five hours after Necro v Joe on the IWA-MS card. THAT Necro v Joe. Basically Necro got the living shit beat out of him, went backstage, got taped up, maybe rolled the dice on being able to wake up from a CTR nap, put on some Air Maxes and a shirt and rolled back out for a tag match in the same building for a different company. Necro and Klein are a pair of homeless drifters, Gage and Pain are Semtex dealers living out of an abandoned church, there was only one way this was going to go. Klein is bleeding profusely after about 20 seconds, before Necro has even clothed himself and walked out from the locker room. I would not voluntarily be taking a chair shot from Nick Gage under any circumstances but Klein takes several here and they all look horrific. I've never seen anyone get thrown into a metal shutter the way Gage gets thrown into one here. Justice Pain getting flung off a balcony and going feet-first through a table is one of the more ludicrous things I've seen in a long time and then Necro, for the second time in several hours, takes a putrid flat back bump off the apron to concrete from a double suplex. Necro and Gage doing the meth head strike exchange where they sit and trade punches is the dumbest thing but also entirely believable given what we know about them and every one of these punches were revolting. Necro instigates a hailstorm of folding chairs on top of Nick Gage and hits a somersault senton into the aftermath, Gage himself underneath it all. Yet in the end, Necro can only be beaten about the head so many times before even his imperviousness to brain damage wilts. What goes around comes around, the poets tell us. What was this match if not poetry? 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #44

Nigel McGuinness v Austin Aries (ROH Rising Above, 12/29/07)

The Austin Aries hits keep on coming! I watched this over a decade ago and thought it was better than all but one of the Nigel/Danielson matches and this watch didn't change my mind. I'm not really a Nigel McGuinness fan but I thought he was great in this, even if some of it might've been circumstances beyond his control. Was his selling of being concussed and running on fumes at points terrific? Sure. Was he absolutely and legitimately concussed and running on fumes at points? You better believe it. Was some of the match an uncomfortable watch as a result? Well this is a post-Benoit world and we know what we know about concussions so it's hard not to feel at least a little icky about enjoying a match in which someone's clearly had their brain rattled. Nigel was already injured even before the concussion, coming in with a torn biceps from when he won the belt. He'd missed a few shows before this because of it so of course the ROH crowd were on his case. When Danielson was champ he wrestled hurt for like two months! What happened to putting your body on the line for the STRAP??? I'm not sure if they'd planned on eventually turning Nigel before this or he just went with the crowd reaction and played into it, but either way he was giving it back to a few fans at the intros. The opening few minutes are tentative, with Aries almost testing the waters by going for that taped up arm, not too aggressively but enough where you know he's willing to exploit it. And why wouldn't he, I guess? Then Nigel takes a powder to go at it again with a fan and Aries wastes him with a tope to the back. Nigel's head crashes into the guardrail and you can tell immediately that his lights are out, and a nasty cut opens up above his eye. For the next few minutes he's left staggering around, partly selling (probably?) but also not even close to being all the way there. It's maybe a wee bit hard to watch through current day eyes. Aries might've already been up on that CTE research way back in 2007 because he looked a bit tentative for a few minutes afterwards. The concern was probably legit and he wanted to kill some time to let Nigel recover, but regardless it worked for the pacing of the match and created a story of Nigel trying to keep his concussed head above water for the remainder, having to break his own momentum a few times and get himself right. The crowd do not give Nigel an ounce of sympathy during this and pretty soon Aries is like yeah sure maybe this guy is an asshole and starts throwing elbows to the head. The focus after that was Aries working over the cut and scrambled head of Nigel - which again, wee bit unsettling - while going after the arm when the opportunity arises. People continue to just eat this up and Nigel gets more and more belligerent (can you blame him?). When Aries tried the pop up dropkick out of a headscissors Nigel blocked it with his forearms, turning away while giving Aries the fingers - middle AND index like a proper Englishman. When Aries tried it again later Nigel blocked it the exact same way, this time giving him the middle finger with a bit more venom behind it. Aries just punted him in the face after that. Nigel had started using his new arm submission around this time so we get some duelling arm work in the back half and the crowd are invested in all of it. I'd forgotten about 99% of what actually happened in this as well so when Aries went for another tope later I wasn't sure if Nigel was enough of a lunatic to let himself be torpedoed into the guardrail again. The finishing stretch is BIG and there are some BUMPS and the transitions between everything are mostly on point. Aries takes a screwball flip bump off a lariat to the floor while he's seated across the top rope, then takes an even SCREWBALLER bump off the jawbreaker lariat at the end. I kind of hated that move after a while because, while the actual lariat part always looked good, the set up either ranged from daft to ridiculously contrived, mostly because he just wasn't quick enough to do the rebound part smoothly. Well Aries is the best I've ever seen at setting himself up for it and not making it obvious he's standing around hoping Nigel doesn't get tangled up in the ropes. Then he eats the lariat and basically spikes himself on his own head like a fucking stone cold psychopath. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #43

ROH Manhattan Mayhem (5/7/05)

One thing I did not expect to want to do when I started going back through this stuff a few years ago (lockdown was a wild time), was sit down and watch a full Ring of Honour show. Full, in its entirety, from start to finish (in several sittings over the course of about five years). ROH holds fond memories for me and that '04-'07 peak will always have a special wee place in my heart, but my days of wanting to watch ANY 3-hour wrestling show in its entirety are really only reserved for 90s RINGS or WAR. But I watched the thing and it was not a terrible time whatsoever.  

Lacey's Angels v Dixie & Azrieal 

This was supposed to be a 3-way tag match where the losing team would be forced to disband. Quite a severe stipulation for a curtain-jerker, but this is ROH's debut in New York - even Jay-Z is in the building, apparently - so I guess we're pulling out all the stops. Before it starts the Carnage Crew run out and annihilate Dunn and Marcos and tell the crowd they can kiss their ass, then they spit on the Ring of Honor turnbuckle padding, then leave. So it becomes a regular tag match instead, though the stipulation remains. I'll be honest, it's been so long since I've watched anything involving any of these guys that I had no clue who was who for a while, and possibly still don't. Lacey's Angels are Izzy and Deranged and they come out to the ring wearing tuxedos (without Lacey, who has a business meeting with P. Diddy, which I'm sure she regrets deeply now), while Dixie and Azrieal are part of Special K, which is the stable/group/unit that Jay Lethal was once a part of (under the name Hydro). So there you go. Do with that information what you will. I figured this would be your standard sort of 2005 ROH opener fare, and it probably was in all honesty, but it totally did the trick in the same way any good opener from any promotion or any era should -- it got the crowd fired up and ended with an awkwardly brutal headscissors takeover-reverse rana thing that probably could've killed someone. Deranged was pretty amusing in this as a skinny maniac. He took some impressive bumps, did a bit of stooging, got into a shoving match with an even skinnier referee, hit his offence nicely, a real fun ten minutes' worth of work. Dixie - or maybe it was Azrieal; I know it was one of them - definitely comes from the Dynamite Kid line of stocky juniors who work very intense, as he slashes a thumb across his throat and shouts "IT'S OVER" before grabbing a rear waistlock on Deranged and rolling backwards into a camel clutch. That was done to set up a top rope double stomp that, unfortunately for our man Dixie, went horribly awry, as one of those other people involved in the match intervened and instead it was Dixie - or possibly Azrieal - who got double stomped on the back of the head. For a spot-a-thon opener this ticked pretty much all of the boxes. They did cool shit that looked like it might even hurt, they fit in an actual heat segment, the crowd were red hot and that finish was a proper finish. 

Colt Cabana v Nigel McGuinness 

I don't really have much use for either of these guys but for a WHIMSICAL lower midcard match this was fine, if maybe a little too cute at points. Cabana is very jovial and he's here to have a nice sporting contest. Nigel is less jovial but seems to be on board with the sporting contest. The Euro style matwork was all neat enough and they ran through it at a decent pace. Like, you can tell that both of them have been doing this for a while so even the more elaborate and tricky sequences come off smoothly. There's a bit of comedy in there, some light-hearted parity stuff, all-around acknowledgment of the other's prowess, but then Nigel visibly starts to get a little more frustrated. There are about six exchanges in a row where Nigel tries to tie Cabana down and Cabana escapes every time by literally crawling away, once while Nigel rode his back like Cabana was a Shetland pony. The next time Cabana tries to shoot in for a leg Nigel just boots him in the mouth, and in that moment we all live vicariously through Nigel McGuinness because who hasn't wanted to boot Colt Cabana in the mouth at least once? Things never get properly surly and the matwork stays pretty light right until the end, but I thought the finish was cool as an idea, even if they had to just up and redo it because they made an arse of it the first time. 

James Gibson v Black Tiger IV

This was fine. Black Tiger is Rocky Romero and I can't really say I've ever been arsed about anything involving Rocky Romero, but Gibson was on a hot streak in '05 and they both meshed pretty well. A lot of Tiger's offence in the first half of the match consisted of him grabbing a cravate and ramming Gibson's head into things, sometimes the turnbuckles, sometimes the ring post. That was pretty neat. I actually really dug the last few minutes, and the best part is that a move I thought was sort of stupid initially wound up being the thread that ran through the best bits. Tiger going to an ankle lock straight out of a tiger driver or something (I genuinely don't remember the move now) felt kind of silly initially, and I wouldn't even say I'm someone who's particularly tied to the idea that submission moves need a ton of limb-focused build up. Fujiwara never spent every match working the arm but when he grabbed that armbar you knew the people bought it. This just felt more along the lines of being flashy for the sake of being flashy. HOWEVER who really gives a shit anyway and Tiger kept going back to it and Gibson sold it really well and it had a by god payoff in the end so who are we to complain? Who has given us that right? A perfectly okay wrestling match, this was. 

Jimmy Jacobs & BJ Whitmer v Roderick Strong & Jack Evans 

I enjoyed this about as much as I possibly could've hoped for. There were some iffy moments, some bits of questionable selling, a few parts where something didn't come off great, but for the most part it was a pretty awesome blend of workrate and traditional tag. It followed a fairly linear shine-heat-finishing run template and each segment was strong on its own, and that finishing run never stuck around too long and ended with a man nearly impaling himself head first on the canvas so we certainly can't complain about an anti-climax. This was whimsical mini-Brody Jimmy Jacobs rather than stab you in the head with a railroad spike and drink your blood Jimmy Jacobs, but whimsical Jacobs is still fun and he'll bump wildly if called upon. His personality is infectious and nicely offsets the lack thereof brought by his partner. Whitmer isn't even someone I actively dislike, he's just one of the least interesting wrestlers ever. He was mostly here to hit cool offence and make it look good though, and in fairness it all had some impact behind it and I guess that's enough. Him and Strong also chopped each other hard so there's another thing that happened. The transition to Jacobs in peril was truly ludicrous, as Strong flips Evans off his shoulders into a moonsault double stomp while Jimmy is lying prone in the corner across the middle ropes. For a second you wonder how his spine wasn't mangled and I guess Gabe did as well because he shouted "DANGEROUSSSS!" and I can't even tell you the face I made. The doomsday contra code at the end was very ridiculous and Jack Evans is a screwball. What a fun wee match. 

Samoa Joe v Jay Lethal

I liked the story of this. They didn't necessarily thread it through a ton of the match, it was more backstory narrative that the commentators explained until I muted it when Gabe got to talking about something or other, but knowing what that backstory actually was accentuated some of the moments. Joe had taken Lethal under his wing a while back and taught him how to BE A MAN. Lethal is now ROH Pure Champion and wants to prove that he has not only BECOME A MAN but become his OWN man. So a play on teacher versus student when you boil it down. A few of the broader story points were fairly self-explanatory. Lethal has been Pure Champion for a couple months and is familiar with the rules and strictures of a Pure title match. Joe has never been in a Pure title match and takes a while to collar how best to operate within one. He gives up two rope breaks early because going to the ropes to break a hold is what he'd do in a regular match. Then he loses his third break by throwing two punches. The first warning is met with annoyance, probably at himself as much as the rule that you can't punch someone in a wrestling match. I liked the spot because it wasn't telegraphed for dramatic effect, he just threw one of his regular combos because he's been doing them for years. It was muscle memory as much as anything. Then he throws the second one and right away he knows he's fucked up, which was cool because it gave you the sense that he was absolutely taking Lethal seriously. As the match goes on it feels like Joe is the most likely to actually win, but Lethal understands the challenge a little better, and if nothing else can maybe manipulate Joe into shooting himself in the foot. Lethal beat Spanky on a previous show by using a rope-assisted submission (which Spanky couldn't break because he'd used up all his rope breaks). This time he locks in a choke while both guys are on the apron, using his legs to wrap the ropes and keep Joe pinned. So Joe bites the bullet and just hurls the both of them through a ringside table. The final transition was a little weak, with Joe kicking out of the dragon suplex and just reversing another attempt into his own string of offence, but the stretch run itself was pretty tight and they never went crazy so you take the good with the questionable. Maybe the best Jay Lethal match of them all. Do with that what you will. 

CM Punk v Jimmy Rave (Dog Collar Match) 

This was kind of long and drawn out as a match-angle segment, but the Punk/Rave feud has been fairly enjoyable on re-watch and I at least appreciated them keeping the match itself relatively short. Part of me was worried they'd go 30 so I was pleasantly surprised when they went like 14. Punk is obviously a huge Piper fan so you knew he'd have some gnarly stuff up his sleeve. Sure enough the point where Rave had the chain across Punk's mouth as he shoved his face into it with his boot was disgusting, but then he took it a step further and turned it into a chain-assisted curb stomp! It looked very brutal. They also didn't do anything overly flashy or INNOVATIVE and leaned into wrapping a chain around their fists and throwing punches, which of course I liked a lot. Punk taps a gusher and his blood-loss selling was pretty great, staggering across the ring to get at Nana only to be cut off when Rave yanks the chain up into his privates. This is building to a cage match in Chicago a week later so there's plenty of interference, I think in the end from every single person in the Embassy, so eventually the numbers catch up to Punk and Rave yet again stands victorious. I've watched this feud in smatterings over the past five years so it's not like much of it is fresh in the memory, but they've built Rave well over 2005 and overall it's been a really fun pairing. 

Austin Aries v Alex Shelley

Honestly, I keep waiting for the point where I'm over Austin Aries. I don't even really know why, maybe because he's a real-life shithead or whatever, but I always expect to go back and revisit something and think he maybe wasn't as good as I used to for a while there. He was my favourite guy in ROH when I was following in real time from around '05-08, then when I fell out of that loop he was someone I'd still check out from time to time if something caught my eye. When we did the PWO GWE project in 2016 he made my list (at #99) and then when I started going through this stuff again in 2020, everything with him in it held up great. Maybe at this point I should just embrace the fact he was kind of fucking awesome? I thought this was an excellent match and I thought Aries' performance was absolutely top banana. He was an offensive dynamo here. He's quite often an offensive dynamo, but what really impresses me isn't just that he a has LOT of offence. I mean he does have a lot of it and all of it looks great, with real snap and intensity and impact, but if you've bothered reading more than five entries of this stupid blog over the last 15 years then you'll probably gather that I don't really need a ton of varied offence in my pro wrestling to enjoy it. What I like most about Aries is how he uses all of that offence - his offensive REPERTOIRE, if you will - and builds compelling control segments and cut-offs and sure, at the end of the day some of it just looks badass as fuck. His work on Shelley's neck was tremendous - varied, targeted, focused, paced well, the lot. It was an awesome control segment and kind of brought to mind Eddie working over Rey in their Smackdown! match a month after this, albeit played to an audience that was looking for different things. The original transition was great, with Shelley being rocked and stood dazed by the ropes, Aries catching him with an amazing Randy Savage style clothesline, snapping Shelley's neck back over the ropes as Aries himself landed outside the ring. This was lightning quick, even faster than Savage and he LEAPT into this thing, almost making it a flying cutter/clothesline combo. He followed up with a brutal looking apron neckbreaker across the middle rope and to borrow another page from the Eddie Guerrero playbook, a hilo across the neck, rolling up and sprinting to the opposite ropes, hitting a flying kneedrop to the neck on the way back. The coolest part of the workover is that it actually felt organic, even when he was doing some complex stuff. It didn't look choreographed or mapped out to the letter. I guess you could call it innovative or whatever, but it was reactive rather than wanky and he did it in response to whatever the situation gave him. Those neckbreaker variations obviously looked great. The twisting one off the middle turnbuckle also made sense in the moment because it was a reaction to Shelley trying to superplex him. The snap neckbreaker onto his own knee is always a cool spot. He didn't just do it to be flashy though; it was used to cut Shelley off when he tried to run the ropes and build up momentum. His signature stuff was geared towards the neck as well, like the pendulum elbow while Shelley was on all fours, then later he grabbed him in a crossface and tried to twist his head around by fish hooking him (which would've fucking ruled no matter what). And then he has the brainbuster to set up the 450, so it all built back from his killshot. I liked this a ton. 

Samoa Joe & Jay Lethal v Low Ki & Homicide 

I watched both of the wild Joe/Lethal v Rottweilers matches from '05 about 12 years ago and thought they were just about the best tags to ever happen in an ROH ring. Unless the rematch from later in the year doesn't hold up then my opinion has not been SWAYED by the passage of time. This was a fantastic balls out sprint and the crowd were nuclear from the jump because it was impromptu. Homicide and Ki were a pair of maniac bastards here and tried to murder Jay Lethal several times. Lethal and Joe had already gone through their Pure Title WAR - skirmish at minimum - earlier in the show only to be jumped post-match by Ki and Homicide. So this is payback, but the promise of revenge can only carry you so far, as my great grandmother would always say, and pretty soon fatigue kicks in. When it does the Rottweilers isolate Lethal and get to the killing. Ki's tree of woe double stomp to Lethal's chest might be the craziest version of that move ever, and that includes the times he did it to Necro Butcher's face and willy. Joe coming in off the hot tag was molten but I love how even his adrenaline could only last so long. He ends up hanging between the ropes and Ki hits a double stomp to the back from the top rope with such force that he bounces himself all the way across to the opposite corner. It was like Joe was a trampoline. How they never honest to god killed Jay Lethal with that double stomp/Cop Killa combo is a mystery. A fucking absurdity of a thing, I'll tell you. These four should've had a dozen 10-minute matches that year. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #42

Low Ki v Xavier (Ladder Match) (ICW Last Stand at the Elk's, 6/30/01)

I thought this was shockingly good. If I've written about five ladder matches here in the last 10 years then I've mentioned five times that I'm pretty much over ladder matches as a concept, but I watched this because to hell with it and I certainly didn't regret it. I was a wee bit worried initially when Xavier set up a ladder across the ring apron and guardrail, because at that point naturally I'm thinking they're going the route more conducive to nonsense and less conducive to making it look like they're trying to actually win a match, but it didn't really veer too far into that and they grounded it with enough brutality to make it work. This happening a quarter-century ago is also sort of crazy because a lot of it wouldn't look out of place today. Those Hardys/Dudleys/Edge & Christian matches happened within the year prior to this, but what Ki and Xavier were doing here felt closer to something you'd see in 2025 rather than 2000. Innovative and all that. The big spots were wild, pretty much all of them landed on the money, and they only used two ladders the whole time and not one of them broke in half so all of those bumps must've SUCKED. Ki also kicked the living shit out of Xavier whenever he could. There's one part where Xavier is hanging upside down with his leg stuck between two ladder rungs and Ki is just teeing off on him with hellish roundhouse kicks. Xavier climbs the ladder and Ki almost yanks his trunks off trying to pull him down, but Xavier just keep trying to climb bare-arsed and Ki chops him as hard as humanly possible on the exposed buttocks. Pretty cool that they injected Shawn Michaels influences into things, I guess. Xavier's seated springboard moonsault to the floor was nuts and then the Ki Crusher off the ladder at the end was bonkers. I mean truly fucking bonkers. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #41

CM Punk & Ace Steel v BJ Whitmer & Dan Maff (Chicago Street Fight) (ROH Death Before Dishonour II - Night 2, 7/24/04)

Choosing to watch the blow off to a blood feud - any blood feud - after having watched three Buzz Sawyer v Hacksaw Duggan matches the previous week might've been a poor decision on my part. I live around the corner from an exceptional Italian restaurant and I would never eat there on a Friday and then go to Pizza Hut on the Tuesday (or one could argue any day). To be fair this was always going to be more about the big spots and crazy looking shit. It's 2004 and that was the done thing then and is largely still the done thing now. When they brought the barbed wire board out though, it felt like the point of it was to maim rather than pop the crowd, so they captured the sense of hatred well enough. Even the goofier moments like the duelling chair shots were at least carried out with plenty of violence. The chair shot bit also led to everyone in the crowd hucking chairs into the ring while the referee covered up in the corner, then all four guys proceeded to wrestle on a canvas fulla folding chairs for the next few minutes. Punk and Whitmer doing a fighting spirit exploder sequence on the chairs was dumb as hell but still sort of amusing, I guess? All four guys tasted the blade and Whitmer leaned fully into his Dusty Rhodes side by blading his head and arm. Unfortunately his Dusty Rhodes side lies almost entirely in the shadow of his other side which isn't nearly as interesting. He and Maff are the heels and they stall early, flipping off fans and cussing people out rather than getting in the ring and giving this Chicago crowd the mutilation they want. Whitmer just always feels like a guy playing pro wrestler and not even an interesting one, zero conviction behind anything, hollow personality, no presence. He tries like a bastard and of course he'll bump wildly, but it's all in service of putting on the wrestling match that was mapped out beforehand. Nothing is immersive beyond the crazy shit he might do but three seconds later I'm back to not caring anyway. I could not have bought anything less than I bought Whitmer giving someone the finger and telling them to fuck off. Dan Maff isn't someone I've ever really cared about either but he was pretty fun as a stocky Bob Orton Jr. Some of his bumping was right out the Dick Murdoch playbook and once or twice it maybe never matched the tone of what they were aiming for, but I'd be completely full of shit if I sat here and said I wouldn't have loved it if the actual Dick Murdoch had done the exact same thing. The commentary was very bad. Holy moly Sapolsky is the most terrible and his partner on the night wasn't much better. If I can't buy anything Whitmer is doing in the ring then I'm buying even less of what Gabe is selling on commentary. Not for a second does it feel like HE buys what he's selling and everything just sounds like a shill. He's a car salesman who really does like that Skoda Octavia, but he's not convincing anyone that it's everything you'd get from an Audi Q8. You can tell me that this is one of the most savage things you've ever seen, but when you're using the sort of lingo you'd see on a wrestling message board to do it I can't possibly shake the sense that you're trying desperately to convince me. Then you get over the top nonsense like when Punk and Steel set up some mad shit they're about to unleash on Whitmer and Gabe says "oh god, they're gonna try and take his life!" And the actual spot was insane, as they prop Whitmer in the corner with a table jammed into his throat before Punk skites a ladder across it into Whitmer's face, but I couldn't appreciate it because I was too busy laughing. And then Steel tombstones Whitmer off the middle rope through a table and Gabe shouts "DANGEROUSSSSS" and whoever told him it was a good idea to ever do that should be shot point blank in the face. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #40

Super Dragon v Rising Son (Revolution Pro, 1/5/01)

I thought this had some great moments and a few broader elements that were really good, without the match quite reaching great as a whole. When I opened the video and saw 30 minutes I got worried, but they thankfully never went the half hour and capped it at around 23-24 minutes. By and large I thought they filled the time well and there was never really a point where it felt like they were reaching for stuff to do. I'd never even heard of Rising Son before. He's a skinny flier type, very Blitzkrieg-ish, wearing a mask like Sunfire from the X-Men. According to cagematch he'd been wrestling less than a couple years at this point and sadly died in 2010, at the age of 33. I liked his performance in this. Most of his flying looked slick and the few things that didn't come off great were covered for pretty well, including one flip kick in the corner that whiffed badly and Super Dragon played it off as a Liger applauding Sasuke moment. The reverse rana was a bit ugly, but ugly in a nasty way as Dragon landed all awkwardly on the side of his head. This is actually one of the earliest Super Dragon matches I've seen. He was a little more jovial than I'm used to seeing him, less of a crowbarring unprofessional psychopath. The audience was comprised of some kids, one little girl in particular who was just mesmerised by Rising Son springboarding into the ring, so he worked more like a territory mainstay babyface. He still unleashed some brutality, though. A few of his chops about ripped the t-shirt off Rising Son's chest and there was one spot where he thumped the kid's head off a wall. He also took a couple insane bumps. The first was a legit Mick Foley flat back bump off the apron that looked very disgusting. The venue they're wrestling in is narrow and the ring is flanked on two sides by wall, close enough that you could reach out and touch it from inside the ring. Rising Son is in the corner and Dragon charges for a shoulder to the midsection, Son moves and Dragon just hurls himself through the ropes and smashes into the wall. It was bonkers. In the back half I thought the pacing was generally good and I liked how they played up Rising Son's strategy. Son was persistent in going for the cross armbreaker, cycling back to it even after running through some of his riskier dives, Dragon was really good in selling how much it bothered him, but in the end the less experienced guy deviated from it at the wrong time and Super Dragon put him on his head. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #39

Necro Butcher v Mitch Page (IWA: MS, 5/26/01)

I wonder about the turns these men took in their lives; the roads that led them to a match like this. Or really to the sort of wrestling Necro Butcher did on the regular. Throw in his fellow deathmatch specialists (I realise you may want to use that term loosely) while we're at it and I assume Mitch Page can be counted among that number. Obviously there had been deathmatches long before these guys started wrestling, but Necro made his debut in 1998, a couple years before the real indie boom. You look at his contemporaries, guys like Low Ki, Danielson, Punk, Hero, even someone like BJ Whitmer who debuted two years after Necro. These were guys who paid a goodly amount of money for 90s All Japan tapes. You know, I assume. They traded tapes and watched the New Japan juniors and maybe Battlarts and probably some joshi and heyday World of Sport. You know, probably. You can tell who gravitated towards that stuff because they outright emulated a lot of it (Whitmer was basically a walking All Japan youtube package). You can also tell who gravitated towards FMW and the King of the Deathmatch and blood and piss and mutilation. Necro Butcher might be kind of garbage as a human being but as a pro wrestling entity he's endlessly fascinating. My good man elliott from PWO called him the modern indie version of Buzz Sawyer and that feels very accurate. Like with Sawyer, I legit don't remember seeing a single Necro Butcher match that I didn't find him compelling in. And to be honest I don't know if this match was any good or not, but I was sort of mesmerised by Necro's performance in it. There are about 40 people in attendance, in this tarped-off venue that looks like the setting of a deep web snuff film, and Necro hits a somersault senton off the top rope into Mitch Page and several non-foldable chairs. It's met with the meekest of applause. Necro holds a wad of light tubes to Page's forehead, then uses his own head to smash those tubes over Page's. One nearby fan hands him a broom. "Do something with this, dancing monkey." Page mostly stumbles around being hit or stabbed in the head with various weapons - many of which brought by the fans - shambling from spot to spot, every now and then lending a hand in setting up whatever nonsense they're going to put themselves through next. Necro takes a scoop slam on a blanket of chairs and light tubes, then another, shirtless, on a pile of broken glass. One kid holding a cheese grater nodded approvingly. By the end Necro's back is a bloody canvas and in one of the goofier but also crazier Necro Butcher spots he douses his leg in gasoline, sets it on fire and hits a top rope legdrop. "Ten minutes gone by," intones our ring announcer. "Ten minutes." Page valiantly fights back and responds to being hit with a flaming legdrop by setting his own head on fire and giving Necro a diving headbutt. You might hate this wrestling match. If you gravitate towards 90s All Japan then I would suggest it's a probability more than a possibility. But then you have your tape collection and All Japan Classics and there is no space on King's Road for the likes of the Necro Butcher anyhow. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #38

Homicide v Necro Butcher (ROH Ring of Homicide, 5/13/06)

How good was the ROH v CZW feud? You've got this workrate super-indie known for guys like AJ Styles and CM Punk and Samoa Joe - the real upper echelon favourites of folk talking about wrestling on the internet - putting on matches that yer man Meltzer is raving about and throwing all sorts of star ratings at, and yet at this point, even in the midst of an acclaimed year-long title reign by THE internet wrestling community sacred cow, the best stuff happening on every show was whatever involved a bunch of scumbags from a garbage fed running into town and wreaking havoc. I checked out on ROH in early 2008, but for a two-year stretch before that it became a promotion that consistently ran awesome brawls, and part of me wishes they just leaned all the fucking way into that and rebranded as a 2000s indie Mid-South. To hell with your Davey Richards and Tyler Blacks of the world, give Necro Butcher the keys to the kingdom. What was so great about ROH v CZW was how chaotic it was. It felt like all manner of shit could kick off at any moment, and this was one of those moments. Memphis was the king (man I am hilarious) of the match-angle segment, where both aspects would mesh together to make a seamless whole. This was that, but stiffer and with lots of cussing and an increased likelihood of someone actually being killed. Homicide v Necro wasn't even the scheduled match -- it was supposed to be Joe v Necro, but that got abandoned early when Hero and Castagnoli interjected. Then Adam Pearce and BJ Whitmer evened the score and for a minute there we got a redux of the 100th Show riot. Many chairs were battered over heads, people were thrown bodily into things in uncomfortable ways, Adam Pearce crushed Claudio with an absolute bastard of a piledriver, Necro took a powerbomb across two chairs that would make you vomit, it was ROH v CZW at its scuzzy best. Then the CZW guys are going to kill Whitmer and the lights go out, the siren blares and everyone goes crazy. Homicide had stayed on the peripheries of this turf war before now, still a heel feuding with Colt Cabana and trying to poison him with bleach, but on this night he stepped up, if not necessarily for ROH then at least for himself, or maybe just out of belligerence. The actual Homicide v Necro part ruled. You probably know what you're getting and they largely deliver. This is also the match that's been GIF'd and used on twitter in meme format to communicate when someone spouting a terrible opinion needs to shut up, as Homicide incites a near-murder by getting about a hundred fans to throw chairs into the ring as Necro curls up underneath them. They then wrestle part of the match on top of this sea of chairs and obviously Necro Butcher is going to be taking lunatic bumps on a million folded chairs, because why would you expect anything else. "Welcome to Ring of Homicide, bitch!" A corker of a feud. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #37

Bryan Danielson v Arik Cannon (IWA-MS Stylin' in the Summertime, 7/31/04)

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. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #36

Low-Ki v Mark Briscoe (ROH Death Before Dishonour II - Night 2, 7/24/04)

This was everything it needed to be. It's not quite an extended squash, but it is Low-Ki smashing someone to bits and comes with all that entails. Mark is fired up and starts quick and Ki just cannot be bothered with that foolishness. The crowd start a duelling "let's go Briscoe/let's go Low-Ki" chant and are hungry for some non-Sports Entertainment independent wrestling action, so Ki assumes the down/referee's position because we're going 1972 here, motherfuckers! But then Briscoe obliges and actually out-wrestles him! And Ki is extremely peeved! He takes a powder, Mark gets agitated, Smokes climbs up for a cheapshot, Gabe is mortified. Ki then leapfrogs Mark and comes down clutching his leg and we one and all fear the worst. Perhaps it's a torn ACL, perhaps a dislocated patella. It must be serious for Low-Ki of all people to be in this much visible pain. But then he throws Briscoe into the ref' and as they work to untangle themselves Ki hits Mark with a springboard leg lariat. He had us all fooled and Gabe calls him a deplorable asshole, and we can't help but nod in agreement after such a wanton display of dishonour. Ki just eats Briscoe up here and shreds him with chops, so Briscoe will fire back and Ki will punt him in the mouth. There was one roundhouse kick that about took Mark's jaw off and by the end the crowd were almost entirely behind Briscoe. That's just good pro wrestling, friends.

Revisiting 00s US Indies #35

Eddie Kingston v Chris Hero (Last Man Standing Match) (IWA-MS, 9/29/07)

I'm a bit of a low voter on this. I like Kingston well enough and I'm mostly fine with Hero, but I've watched this a couple times over the years now and it's never blown me away. Some of the fighting spirit parts are kind of ropey, though they at least manage to feel like moments that are driven by a desire to get back up and kick the shit out of an opponent. Fuelled by HATRED and whatnot, as opposed to...whatever else fuels one's fighting spirit. And those parts are few and far between anyway because this is largely an alley fight. "Gritty", "seedy", "nasty"; the good stuff. There's no commentary and nobody even bothers with introductions, they just appear from a room punching and slapping each other. How long were they brawling back there to begin with? Where in the arena did they bump into each other? It could've been three minutes, it could've been an hour. Every shot lands with a thud or a whack and not a minute goes by without Hero calling Kingston a piece of shit or Eddie threatening to "fuckin kill" Hero. The chokes are violent, the eye rakes look like proper thumb in the eye trying to squish brains eye rakes, the elbows and forearms rattle teeth and the headbutts are appropriately disgusting. All the weapon shots are reckless and the bit where Hero just chucks a chair in the ring and the edge of it belts Kingston in the neck was unreal. Hero stamps repeatedly on Kingston's hands and fingers, at one point doing so while it looked like Eddie's fingers were flexed at the joints. Usually you'll have guys do that on flat fingers, obviously so it doesn't legit break those fingers (or at least offers less chance of breaking them, as you're still stamping on a person's hand after all). This time Kingston's hand was just lying curled on the mat and Hero squashed it with the sole of his boot. To hell with him being able to tie his shoelaces for a month. All of the guardrail stuff was mean and I'll always appreciate the finish of a match like this being the biggest and nastiest spot of them all. There was no anti-climax here, boys. Not my favourite match, one I'd put a few rungs below your Necro Butcher prison riots, but a badass fight all the same. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #34

Samoa Joe v Homicide (ROH Death Before Dishonour II - Night One, 7/23/04)

This was a good Samoa Joe v Homicide match. I've watched a handful of them over the last couple weeks and I haven't really loved any of them, but this one was very good. Watching it in the context of their feud from this period helped as well. Homicide has been on a rampage and wants Joe's belt, and at the previous week's show Low Ki returned and joined the Rottweilers. They all stomped Joe to bits and Gabe suggested on commentary that they might actually murder him, which was very Gabe. This is now Homicide's last shot at the belt as long as Joe has it. I hoped he would be extra wild to match the occasion and I was not disappointed even a wee bit. Straight away he runs around ringside kicking over chairs and pulling apart bits of ring barricade, giving the finger to fans, delivering fuck yous all around. The rest of the Rottweilers are in attendance and Smokes jumps on the apron to distract Joe as Homicide attacks, a trick as old as any in the book and the mark of truly dishonourable individuals. Mark Nulty makes note of how he's "never seen Samoa Joe more focused," as Rocky Romero immediately gets up on the other apron and the laser-focused champ is reeled into being sucker punched for the second time in 15 seconds. At this point the ref' ejects all of Homicide's THUGGISH companions and I love how that really formed the story of the match; the story being that Homicide will lean all the way into being a bastard, even when doing so often ends up being actively detrimental, because he's Homicide and fuck everyone else and particularly fuck Samoa Joe. Trying to stand and trade blows with Joe is almost certainly not the strategy he wants to employ, but to hell with it. Maybe he's doing it because someone said he shouldn't, or that he wouldn't be able to, or he just can't help himself and he'll die on his sword no matter what. After Joe mauls him a few times he then starts going to the eyes, and obviously that ruled because the eye poke is one of the great, underutilised moves in modern wrestling (especially in a place where such dishonourable behaviour won't be tolerated). Homicide tries to brawl, Joe gets annoyed and fires back, Homicide pokes him in the eye, Joe goes down. Look, if it works it works. The big turning point comes when Homicide finally pushes one too many buttons, as he attempts Joe's own Ole kick and gets heaved across the floor with a nasty belly-to-belly. I liked how he sold it the rest of the way, how it stopped him from being able to hit a piledriver later, how he couldn't really go for the cover at points, how it felt like he never truly recovered from that moment on. In one sense I suppose it made it difficult to buy him actually winning, even when he was kicking out of Joe's biggest bombs down the stretch. Even when he hit three lariats on the spin it never felt like they would be enough, and shortly thereafter Joe was back in control again anyway. He fought hard until the end, refused to be pinned and never in a millions years was he going to submit, but when Joe grabbed that choke the lights were going out whether he liked it or not. Post-match the Rottweilers lay another gang beating on Joe and they all spit on the belt and Gabe shouts in his nasaly whine that "THEY'VE RAPED THE BELT OF ITS DIGNITY!" What a strange fellow. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #33

Samoa Joe v Homicide v Bryan Danielson v Austin Aries v Mark Briscoe v Colt Cabana (ROH Survival of the Fittest, 6/24/04)

This is another long one and I really only wanted to watch the Danielson/Aries part of it, but I had some time and went all in. NO FEAR. It didn't really feel like 40+ minutes so straight away we're onto a winner. First half is the elimination part and it was mostly decent stuff. The Colt Cabana/Mark Briscoe pairing to start us off was very Colt Cabana-ish and they did some parity stuff with quasi-WoS exchanges that I didn't have much use for. At one point Mark turned his back and started walking towards the ropes for no reason whatsoever and you're like "oh, they're setting up the next part of their routine. I see" and they did something or other and I really just wanted Homicide to stab someone with a fork instead, ideally Colt Cabana. Cabana has done very little for me during this little trip down memory lane, in case you were wondering. Danielson was spectacular in this entire thing and he was in a surly mood from the start. The few minutes where he took Briscoe's leg apart was particularly great. Aries was a weasel and in no hurry to get involved unless it was necessary, but the exchange with Joe was really good. Joe of course steamrolled folk and especially wanted to steamroll Homicide, who stabbed him in the face many times with a fork not too long ago, and then his surprise elimination came off great. Cabana acting like a full blown doofus after being the one to pin him ruled. We've all known a Colt Cabana and we all know how they'd react to taking a scalp like that. Strutting around like they're untouchable, zero humility, full of hubris, that inflated sense of self-assurance, just totally insufferable. That he was eliminated next was a great payoff, particularly while Mark Nulty on commentary solemnly speaks to "the highs and lows of an elimination match." Very poignant. Aries and Danielson get about 20 minutes to work one on one and shockingly enough it was excellent. I guess Danielson works a little more like the heel than Aires - the actual heel - but I thought it played out fine. Surly Danielson will stretch anybody and their granny so Aries is probably always going to be an underdog in that scenario, whether he's supposed to be likeable or not. Aries tries to match him on the mat and Danielson applies this brutal sort of full nelson hold where both of Aries' arms are key-locked. Aries' offence comes in bursts and all looks really explosive, though the one time he does manage to apply something on the mat it's awesome, as he grabs a crossface and about cranks Danielson's head around a full 180 degrees with a fish hook. He gets his first proper opening after Danielson misses a charge in the corner and tangles himself in the ropes, and while there's never really any specific and prolonged limbwork, there are at least moments where they'll both focus on something. There's Aries going after the leg a bit. At some point Aries gets split open under the chin so Danielson hammers him with uppercuts. Towards the end Aries keeps going for the brainbuster because, you know, it works so why wouldn't that be a viable strategy, while Danielson apparently wants to break Aries' spine. Not extended body part segments, but it doesn't feel haphazard and all fits together nicely. The finish is great. Danielson is just obliterating Aries with some of the meanest body slams you've ever seen, then he clonks him with a roaring elbow and applies a fucking bearhug! I've seen a goodly amount of Bryan Danielson matches where he's twisted someone in knots, but I don't recall him using a bearhug as a viable means of finishing a match. The crowd totally bought it as well, and the way he used it to eventually set up his disgusting Boston Crab variation was amazing. The Danielson/Aries segment is where the money's at, but the first half with all six guys involved was good and as a whole I thought it was booked super well, especially watching it in context and knowing the surrounding storylines.

Revisiting 00s US Indies #32

Necro Butcher v Toby Klein v Brain Damage (CZW Tournament of Death V, 7/29/06)

What a ridiculous nonsense of a thing. Mid-2000s CZW deathmatch isn't a stylistic rabbit hole I have much interest in jumping down, but I hoped this would be more of a deranged Necro Butcher alley fight than a light tubes and barbed wire gorefest. I care little about guys in their awful baggy wrestling pants getting thrown shirtless into glass panels and bathtubs fulla thumbtacks, but I can make myself care somewhat about a bunch of psycho hillbillies trying to take the jaw off each other in front of 60 methamphetamine distributors. This was held in what looked like a forest clearing so it had the feel of a drunken brawl that broke out during a Yellowstone Park tour. As soon as the match starts Klein literally rips out Brain Damage's eyebrow piercing with a pair of pliers. I'd never seen a Brain Damage match in my life (prolly) but he certainly lived up to his name. Necro comes out to 'Freebird' and the crowd immediately lose their shit and five seconds later he's absolutely fucking whomped Brain Damage in the face with an empty gallon-sized water cannister tied to a broom handle. Klein gets bottled by Brain Damage, then Klein tries to pay him in kind except the bottle doesn't smash and somehow that looked even worse. Klein takes a hiptoss off a truck through four tables, Necro sneaks in and goes for the cover, and when Klein kicks out a fan shouts "you should've hooked the leg" and Necro holds his head in his hands like "fuck man I SHOULD'VE hooked the leg!" Still, the craziest bit comes at the end when they're just cracking each other in the face. This is all the way up there as the single most absurd punch exchange ever. All three are completely drilling each other in very non-worked fashion, both Klein and Damage laying full force jabs and hooks right to Necro's jaw and temple, Necro swinging wildly at anything attached to a pair of shoulders, and this rather than any of the previous gruesome stuff is what elicits the big CZ-Dub chant. If you're going to end a match like this with a punch then you better make that punch count, and brothers, any one of these punches would've done the trick. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #31

Alex Shelley, Austin Aries, Roderick Strong & Jack Evans v The Briscoes, Jimmy Rave & John Walters (ROH Generation Next, 5/22/04)

I was a wee bit sceptical about this. I already knew going in it was a long one and I don't REALLY care about watching any of these guys for 40 minutes, but you know what? I'll be fucked if I didn't think it ruled. I never thought it dragged, never thought it was bloated, never thought they were just doing stuff to be doing stuff, never thought it got too contrived. Would it have been tighter if they'd shaved like ten minutes off? Probably, but all the same it never felt like they were running out of ideas and even at 41 minutes I thought they had just the right amount of stuff to fill the time. The first half was largely back and forth, plenty of momentum shifts with neither team really sustaining an advantage. That they managed to keep me fully engaged for that long (I'm sure this is very important to them) without a prolonged heat segment or obvious story hook was surprising, so fair play to them because most matches would've lost me long before that. I mean, this is 2004 ROH, right as the indie boom is about to peak, so at the very least you know these guys are going to make their shit look good, and usually that's not something I care all that much about but tip of the cap to the fellas because all of their shit looked good. I can't believe how well mid-00s Austin Aries has consistently held up going through this stuff and yet again everything he did came off great. Strong is pudgy and looks like a 19-year old trying to grow his first goatee because it is 2004 and goatees were all the rage then, but he still hits like a bastard and all of his exchanges with Jay Briscoe were uncooperative and potatoey. At one point Jay spat his chewing gum at Shelley and Gen Next got super indignant so later on Aries spat on the entire babyface corner. Just the general vicinity of it and everyone got caught in the blast. And he wonders why people want him to wear a mask, the silly prick. Things kick up a gear midway through and the back half has a little of everything. First the babyfaces isolate Evans with an absurd electric chair drop across both Briscoes' knees, and of course Evans gets stretched and wellied all over the place and of course it was a hoot. His backflip bump off a clothesline is always great because he makes it look like it was the force from the clothesline that flipped him all the way over and not just him doing a backflip. After that we get Jay in peril, which comes from an awesome transition where Strong folds him with a capture suplex just as Shelley dropkicks the knee. It was like a modern indie version of a Total Elimination where you know they all sat around geeking about how they could do something cool and that in and of itself is sort of cool and makes me wish I pursued that teenage dream of becoming a professional wrestler working in front of 23 people. The beatdown on Jay is good and he sells the leg well, and then they tease going into the finishing run but NO, it instead leads to a further heat segment on Jonathan Walters. Earlier in the show Gen Next attacked Walters and spiked him with a piledriver, so they work over the neck and naturally they do some neat stuff. Great moment where Walters nearly escapes to his own corner but Aries grabs his hair and slams him to the mat, and as Walters is on the way down Aries knees him in the neck, which looked pretty brutal. The actual finishing run is short by indie epic standards and I thought it ended just at the right time. Shelley double stomping Walters in the fuckin neck from the top rope was an absolute bastard of a thing and I'd have tapped out shortly thereafter as well, so keep yer chin up there Johnny Walters my good man. I watched this late last night, figuring I'd go to sleep after it if I wasn't put to sleep during it, but it actually gave me a proper buzz and I wound up watching some more stuff when it finished. I'm not about to call it the peak of modern indie workrate tags, but I'll tell you one thing and you best heed these words - I can't think of another straight up workrate tag that landed as sweetly as this. I thought it was properly excellent and massive surprise; in the good way and not like when you step in a puddle or a bees nest.

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. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #29

Samoa Joe v Jay Briscoe (Cage Match) (ROH At Our Best, 3/13/04)

This held up well. For a blowoff to a months-long feud it was pretty much an extended squash, and that's exactly what it should've been. Joe stomped out Mark at Final Battle but came up short in his pursuit of the Briscoes' tag titles, losing matches against them with partners like AJ Styles and Brian Danielson. This time Jay gets his chance at the World Title and can win by escaping the cage, while Joe...can't win by doing that? I think? They kind of play it up like Joe has to pin or submit him and escape isn't an option for him. Or maybe he CAN escape but he simply doesn't want to, because that would be too easy or something. It doesn't really matter one way or the other so, you know, whatever. Jay immediately tries to escape at the bell as that seems like the smart thing to do, but obviously Joe cuts him off. Anybody who thought Jay was just a dumb country boy is proved wrong as Jay keeps going for that door any chance he gets. Then he actually manages to land an offensive move, but rather than stick to his original plan he gets cocky and tries to leave a few lumps on Joe first. Of course Joe kills him dead and maybe we were wrong about being wrong about Jay being a dumb country boy. I guess you make mistakes at 20 years old. It's all a part of growing up. How are you ever going to be old and wise if you never live a little wild and crazy first? Joe finding a chain and sealing shut Jay's potential avenue of escape for good is an awesome "oh shit, this is about to get ugly" moment, and ugly it surely gets. Jay goes bonkers with the blade and hits a truly horrifying gusher. Some of the camera shots are sort of harrowing, especially late on whey they get a close-up of the blood clotting! There's one part where Jay is dead in the corner and Mark looks on outside the cage like damn y'all that's a whole lotta blood. Joe is covered in Jay's blood by the end, licking the blood off his hands and slapping him about the face to send the blood spattering everywhere. The Jay Driller was such a great spot here as well. He'd used it to beat Danielson in the Briscoes v Joe/Danielson match in January, so when he hits it in this you wonder for just a second if it might be enough. It's just that it takes all his strength to actually DO the move and he can't quite follow up with a cover. There was another great moment where he managed to kick Joe off the top, but in his own exhaustion he just toppled off along with him before he could climb out. Then again you wonder if he'd even be able to make that climb given the state of him. Joe bringing out the big gun and putting him away before anybody has the chance to find out was as emphatic a finish as you could get, while making Jay look tough as a bastard for hanging in there like he did.