Five matches that shaped your wrestling fandom

[air_raid]

The Match Where Context Was Everything 

I was very tempted to include a different match entirely for the first "indy" match (unless we count mid 90s ECW as indy) that reinforced that I was right to expand my horizons outside the old "Big 3" - that would have been AJ Styles vs Low Ki from ROH Night Of Appreciation, which I got in a tape trading order that also included New Japan and All Japan. However, there's a far better story behind this one ; this is a match that casual WWE fans have watched with me and opened their eyes to the quality that can also be seen in smaller companies, and memorably on one occasional, I asked a flatmate to watch with me when he'd previously only seen WWE (he came to Passport To Pain with us) and he enjoyed it so much he ended up putting his money down to come to shows around the country too, including International Showdown, Noah Limits and Universal Uproar, once I got some of the Wrestling Channel tapes sent up and he started watching Noah with me too. It held sway, clearly, and is still one of my favourites.

(4) Samoa Joe vs Austin Aries (Final Battle 2004)

The background here is crucial - Joe has been champion since March 2003, and has just come off the back of three famous defences against CM Punk, two of which went to an hour draw and the third under “no time limit” rules, Joe won in about 30 minutes in a match where Punk bled and was unable to push him in the endurance stakes. That being the last show before Final Battle. As a member of the ROH message board at the time I can tell you that nearly as many members that assumed Joe vs Punk IV was happening in 2005 and there was a good chance Punk would finally beat him, were posing that Joe was going to make 2 years with the title. Make no mistake, this wasn’t a Brock Lesnar or Roman Reigns reign of terror ; people loved and respected Joe as champion. He showed up to all the shows. He’d retained in bangers with Paul London and Bryan Danielson, had hard hitters with both Briscoe brothers, a violent series with Homicide, and turned back the challenge of every “flavour of the month” that had come into form and deserved a title shot, on top of the series with Punk which had put ROH “on the map” in a lot of eyes. Meanwhile Austin Aries was one fourth of upstart heel group Generation Next who’d ran roughshod in the short months since their creation under the leadership of Alex Shelley. Aries had earned plaudits for the closing stretch of the “Survival Of The Fittest” eliminator opposite Danielson and in beating the “Dragon” in a 2/3 falls match at Testing The Limit which went 75 minutes. He’d gone on to earn a title shot, IIRC by beating Punk, but as good a wrestler as he was proving to be, nobody gave him a chance of winning.

The match begins against the backdrop of change, even on the night - Aries suddenly supplants Shelley as leader and kicks him out of Gen Next by attacking him after a loss to Punk and Steve Corino while tagging with Roderick Strong - who immediately sides with Aries. Then, Aries makes his entrance to a new entrance tune, Marilyn Mansons cover of Personal Jesus which call me crazy, but gave him more presence than Interstellar Overdrive ever did. A note must be added that Gabe Sapolsky, in his “Jimmy Bower” character really adds to the match on commentary with several choice remarks that serve to make sure the viewer is reading the story the wrestlers are telling. In the early minutes he suggests “the bigger question” is if Joe can make that two year mark - as though perhaps the result is a foregone conclusion. It’s not an especially long match, but as it goes on there are one or two moments where Aries seems to have scouted Joe particularly well - he avoids the knee drop of one of Joes usual sequences and an attempt at his signature tope, when Joe dawdles during a series of Olé kicks, Aries avoids and absolutely smashes him with a running dropkick and later he reverses a kick out of an attempted pin into a modified crab in a similar manner to which Joe usually goes into an STF (drawing a bit of an “ooo!” from the crowd). The theme continues that Aries seems to have a counter for every counter when he goes for a rana and Joe catches him in what looks like an attempt at a powerbomb, and Aries snaps off the rana he was looking for initially. Another theme however is that Aries keeps going for the brainbuster but can’t get Joe up - which is going to build masterfully. Similarly he goes back to the knee every time he gets in trouble.

A first 450 from Aries for a pretty good nearfall is a clue that Joe might be in jeopardy, and the crowd reacts… almost as if they can hear Gabes little hints that maybe the champions grind has started to catch up with Joe. He comes back with the Island Driver, which has been a move he’s won defences with, and only gets 2 for a good pop. The champs face betrays both disbelief and weariness and after further back and forth, right when he’s looking totally knackered, he goes for the Muscle Buster, which triggers one of my favourite home straights of all time. Aries counters with the crucifix bomb, both get back to their feet but the challenger can’t take Joe down with forearms. He ducks a clothesline and kicks Joe in the knee which drops him to one knee, then boots him flush in the face which Joe sells like it’s nearly knocked him out. Aries picks him up and goes for the brainbuster again, and this time when he gets Joe overhead, the noise the National Guard Armoury makes, while on a smaller scale, reminds me a lot of the Georgia Dome when Goldberg put Hogan up for the Jackhammer. As Aries scales the ropes they’re cheering, yelling, banging on the barriers… the second 450 is almost academic, as he’s going up you already think “There goes the champ” and the three count draws an eruption from the Philly crowd and stunned silence from Jimmy Bower. Thus ends an utter masterpiece in telling the story - the match transforms in progress from what EVERYONE had down as another strong defence from the dominant champion on the way to Joe vs Punk IV and/or making two years with the belt, to a switch that the crowd entertains as possible and ultimately endorses. Aries winning clean is almost a catalyst for turning Gen Next babyface - which eventually happens anyway.

Fun fact, I actually found out about the switch the day after via a text that read “It occurs to me I’ve never seen Austin Aries wrestle so I don’t know if I can endorse him as champion” - I was gobsmacked, this must have been how the Hulkamaniacs felt in 88! Different times entirely with no easy downloads and most of us on 56kps dial up, I finally got to see that match when I bought 3 ROH DVDs at International Showdown - Generation Next where the group formed, Testing The Limit and Final Battle. My first ever wrestling DVDs which I had to watch on my PS2. As you can tell, the match left a mark on me. You can watch it in it’s entirety on YouTube, if you like.

…. I wonder what happened to Green Lantern Fan anyway…?

Edited April 28 by air_raid
Reach out and touch faith

[air_raid]

The Match That Won Me Back

After 30 years as a fan and with my current lifestyle no longer affording me time to actually watch much wrestling, I stopped caring. WWE, the most accessible wrestling available, becoming first a chore to watch then a tedious campaign to somehow wash away years of mistreating Reigns with years of mind-numbing dominance… well, that helped. I needed a hero to save my fandom.

(5) Roman Reigns vs Cody Rhodes

Saccharine though it may sound. The real story of course started the year before - having played in pain then gone on the D/L but returned to win the Rumble, Cody seem nailed on to go to Mania, win the belt and lift the grey fog from around the main event scene. It didn’t happen. What’s happened in 2024 to move back into that direction and eventually get to Cody on top - the hero we all need - has been written about so much and so recently here it’s not worth recounting, but the investment in the story and actually caring about who wins the match, is something I’d not felt for quite a few years, and more years still in WWE terms. So much of the final weekend of Cody’s journey, I’ve re-watched multiple times since, and that simply isn’t something that had happened for me since… I don’t know, it’s probably Becky rising to the top in 2018 that I probably cared as much about one wrestler winning matches. So given where my fandom is today, I’d be lying to myself if this wasn’t the 5th that has shaped it even if I could list 30 matches that better represented my various tastes and experiences over certainly the last 20 years.

TL:DR, I know.

Edited April 29 by air_raid
The sky is purple, things are right every day