It isn’t going to make any lists probably, but sneakily, this winds up being one of my favorite Elgin matches ever.
In the same way that only Nixon could have gone to China, really only Jimmy Jacobs could have gotten a match like this out of a guy like Elgin. He’s small enough to make him look like a monster when bumping but also Elgin is short enough that they can convincingly do a match like this without it ever feeling hokey or forced. Jimmy is also experienced enough to work this in the perfect way. The idea of building Elgin up for his big title match on Ring of Honor’s first genuine pay per view in a few weeks and nothing Jimmy does ever takes away from that. It’s all trickery or being desperate enough to hurl his body around at Elgin. It works until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t anymore, he gets his ass horribly beaten.
Of course, it’s still Big Mike and you get some dumb stuff where he leaps around and tries to fly when that’s not the point. He always seems just a little too preoccupied on making sure everyone leaves this thinking about how great a wrestler he is, but it always has the opposite effect with me. Instead, I always leave thinking about how Michael Elgin thinks he’s a way better wrestler than he is because of this. Fortunately, Jimmy is great at reigning him in. It goes a little long, Elgin tries a little too much, but Jimmy never lets himself get drawn into epic territory, so it kind of just comes off like he’s hard to beat and less like the match meandered before the finish.
A genuinely (mostly) great match, due entirely to Jimmy’s effort.
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HANDWERK 