Incredibly fun little brawl.
The worst thing about this match, and really the only problem I have with it at all, is how much better it could have been. It’s a Cornette era sub fifteen minute brawl in the middle of the show, with a heel he’s building up and an underneath babyface he doesn’t like all that much. So, while this certainly isn’t a match that I would call handcuffed or all that held back, it’s still a big no disqualification match with two of ROH’s more notorious brawlers ever, and it’s not that wild.
What it does have going for it is how efficient it is and how well it tells one basic story.
Jimmy gets the jump on Steen, revealing the AOTF jacket and gear for a cheap little nostalgia pop, and tries to find the “old” Jimmy Jacobs underneath that. It’s part of a long term story with Jacobs being Steve Corino’s sponsor and trying to atone for mistakes he made before, all of that, whatever, but now when he has no choice but to try and reach back, he ultimately fails because it is an attempt to recapture something. He is not actually bad again. He’s trying to use something bad inside of him without fully embracing it, and ultimately suffers for his hesitation, when he finally gets Kevin Steen with the spike, having not used it in some time, and pauses in shock, both at actually doing it and sinking back there again and as is later revealed, at how good it made him feel. But in the moment, he’s punished for trying to keep one foot on each side of the fence. No more half measures, you can’t be half a gangster, and all of that.
On the way there, they have a hyperefficient and pared down little fight. Chairs, and guardrail sections, and a table, all of that. It features the best aspect of a Kevin Steen brawl in the general chaotic vibe of the whole thing, and the best aspect of a Jimmy Jacobs brawl in his post-peak period here too, which is this sort of utilitarian nature to his brawls. Everything has a purpose in the structure of the match, beyond simply being cool, and there is very little fat on this thing. The thing that impressed me most about this match, and about a lot of Jimmy brawls, is how little time there is between set up and payoff. Nothing gets to stick around unused for minutes at a time like Chekov’s Table Spot, where you know as an intelligent wrestling fan who’s seen enough of this shit to sense patterns that this match is not ending until someone goes through this table on the floor. Jimmy repeatedly uses these things within a minute or two, and in ways that make the absolute most sense. He avoids a powerbomb through a table outside, dives in, and when Kev chases him, Jimmy can spear him through the ropes and down through it. Big Kev undoes railings out in the aisle to set something up, but Jimmy runs and DDTs him onto them slanted on the ground. Beyond getting the most out of these things and not having them hang over the match going forward, but because it’s this nice little story about Kevin being punished for playing too much.
In the end though, Jimmy can’t go all the way, and Kevin Steen is too tough and too devious for Jimmy to have any chance in this if he won’t go all the way. Jimmy’s hesitation to use the spike a second time allows Kevin to get it, stab Jimmy in the dick in a nice inadvertent callback to the last time Jimmy used the spike in a major match, even if it wasn’t in ROH. Following that, Big Kev absolutely murders my guy.
The way it goes wrong only makes it like a million times more brutal. Obviously, that’s the finish.
(for the uninitiated, the Package Piledriver was banned in ROH at this time in a GREAT bit to explain why this angle and Cornette’s entire ROH run eventually failed. It’s supposed to put it and Steen over as dangerous, but given the way ROH treated him and the way the core audience — which never got replaced by the fans Jim imagined he might draw in with his choices — reacts to Steen, it just wound up coming off like the company trying to hamstring him, proving Kevin right about everything)
Not everybody’s going to be as high on this as I am, it’s a match based around the psychological failures of one of my guys (we all have them), with a lot of cool and nasty spots thrown in. Narratively, I want to push it because yeah man, Jimmy Jacobs didn’t just die in 2008, but there’s a limit there, even for me. The sort of match that I can understand not fawning over and falling in love with, but that it’s hard to find any real flaw within. Easier to enjoy than most ROH matches for a year or so in either direction.
HANDWERK 