ACH vs. Jimmy Jacobs, AAW Showdown 2018 (2/17/2018)

This was for ACH’s AAW Heavyweight Title.

I do not anticipate a lot of casual eyeballs on these 2018 AAW reviews. It’s not to say this is like a DDT house show tag or weird little grapplefuck thing or old lucha in terms of readership self-selection, but generally speaking, you click on this if you’re probably already familiar with how I feel about these things in general. That is to say, I believe everyone reading this is aware of a few things.

Firstly, that in 2018, ACH has maybe the best year of his career.

Not so much in terms of the raw numbers output, he’s probably not beating 2013-2015 when he was in ROH and PWG at once when both were still regularly producing great matches on a show-to-show, and in ROH’s case, week-to-week level. However, in terms of what he gets to do in 2018, he’s so impressive. In 2018, AAW finally does what every other indie in the country decided three or four years prior that they were too afraid to do, and builds the entire company around ACH as the top champion. In doing so, he gets to have a ton of different kinds of matches, all based around him finally getting to prove something smart people had known for years, that a guy like ACH — crisp, exciting, mostly sensible, incredible likeable — not only can 100% be this guy now, but probably could have been for years.

Less importantly, although important to this specific match, is that I’ve always had a soft spot for Jimmy Jacobs, at least once the bell rings. (We don’t need to talk about anything else. I would prefer not to talk about anything else.) An undersized little blood goblin involved in still probably one of my favorite wrestling storylines ever, and who wrestles a certain sort of sparse bare bones style that I’ve always liked a lot. His return after the WWE writing job didn’t go especially well, but in the rare cases one of them goes like this, borderline great with enough positive qualities and no real negative ones, I am more inclined to give it a break than a lot of others.

So, I don’t expect a lot of people to like this as much as I did.

However — and respectfully — eat one, this is my platform, and I liked this a whole lot.

In terms of the mechanical aspects of the thing, construction, execution, whatever, it is as good as you’d expect. Everything ACH does looks and sounds tremendous, Jimmy is capable of keeping up, and he’s in his element in the middle of the thing with your standard few chair indie pop set up. Character wise, it’s the same story, predictably real good. Jimmy is again real good as a sneaky veteran, and ACH is one of the most likeable wrestlers in the entire world. It all runs smoothly.

The match really succeeds in the way an ACH/Jacobs match was always going to though, and that’s through pure narrative might and real great ideas. Jimmy goes back after the AAW Title only a few months after returning from a three year retirement, and it isn’t going super well. He talks shit but can never actually do anything to ACH. He gets outmaneuvered and run out of the ring on pure wrestling, briefly uses a bunch of chairs and veteran wiles, but ACH eventually turns that against him too, leading to something that isn’t exactly new or all that novel, but that they pull off so well that it’s what makes the match great, instead of simply really good.

Jimmy pulls off the fake injury act when nothing else is working, rolling outside holding his ankle right before it looks like ACH is about to enter the last stages of a successful defense, and it’s one of the best versions of the idea in recent memory.

As always with a bit like that, what it requires more than anything else is commitment, and everyone involved really really really commits. Not just in terms of the way Jimmy sells it or the way ACH reacts to it, although both are outstanding (ACH promising another match, Jimmy acting actually pissed off instead of just holding the leg), but the institutional support it gets. It’s one thing for the referee to come out, but clearing out the back to check on Jimmy after he’s down on the floor for maybe longer than usual to sit the bit up. So often, it’s isolated to just the two people involved and a referee, so you can spot it coming, given how real injuries are usually treated, and in actually giving it the hallmarks you’d get from an actual unfortunate accident, the whole thing works a hundred times better.

Most impressive is the way that the crowd goes from a few people at ACH not to fall for it when Jimmy first rolls outside to then full-throatedly chanting for Jimmy when ACH and others help him up on the outside.

The punishment for the act comes so soon that it’s both hilarious and a thousand times more rewarding. Jimmy gets him back in immediately and sets a chair up for something, trying to weaken ACH with the End Time first, only for ACH to immediately muscle him up and into the Buster Call (Brainbuster) through the chair to win.

It’s perfect.

Not only perfect pro wrestling, Pro Wrestling Ass Pro Wrestling if you’ll allow me to abuse one of my favorite turns of phrase, but just a lovely piece of storytelling. Impatient with still having relative ring rust after three years off, unable to successfully bully he somebody he used to be able to push around, Jimmy tries to skip forward and bypass the hard work that probably could work, only to immediately pay the price. You do not get moral lessons all that often in this corner of wrestling, or at least, you do not get endings like this that so completely feel like inarguable moral lessons, and it’s a fascinating and wonderful thing.

Looking at the pure mechanics, a borderline match, but wrestling is so much more than the mechanics, the nuts and bolts, and so I really loved this.

***+

Jon Moxley vs. Jimmy Jacobs, Wrestling Revolver Tales From The Ring (10/31/2021)

(photo credit to @photosbymanning on Twitter)

This was an Iowa Street Fight.

Wrestling in 2021 offered up a lot of things that were very special to many of us. Getting the greatest wrestler of all time out of the WWE. A childhood hero returning, people getting their due after a long time, much-needed changed of scenery, multiple returns to form in so many different ways. A lot of these felt like things large swaths of people wanted, but every so often, wrestling in 2021 offered some very specific presents to very specific people.

This match, very specifically, felt like something specifically for me, and I can’t think of a better one.

It’s another one of those matches in 2021, on top of that personal appeal.

Their 2010 feud is one of my favorite of the decade, speaking to me on a real human level in the way that many Jimmy Jacobs storylines (non-kidnapping ones, anyways) tend to, and the blowoff “I Quit” match they had in DGUSA was one of my favorite matches of the year and of the decade.

Obviously, this is not that.

Not just because they’re more grown up and banged up now, but because of all the matches where the wrestlers have changed for the last eleven years, this is the one with the largest change in between the wrestlers and in what the match up can be. I don’t think this is a better match than Danielson/Kingston II or the latest KO/Zayn match, but it is the match of the three like it with, I think, the largest hill to climb, and it’s one that I find so impressive. While Jacobs has gone into something approaching semi-retirement, it’s Moxley who’s become this gigantic star. In most of their 2010 matches, it was Moxley as the the upstart bully against this undersized weirdo, and that just is not a story that they can tell again.

Moxley is who he is and Jacobs is who he is, and like those other great rematches, this is a match that lives with and works around those new realities.

That is to say, Jimmy works as more of an antagonist now against the big hero, and it’s a lot of fun.

Jimmy Jacobs, beautifully, doesn’t play it as pure evil. It’s not 2008 AOTF cult leader Jimmy. It’s something mostly new, this little psycho who seems to know from the moment the match begins that he’s probably going to lose this fight, but that it’s still one worth having. Focused on procuring his pound of flesh first and foremost, making this on hard on his old opponent as possible, on every level. At times, it seems the goal is simply to drag Moxley back into the muck with him (this being Jon Moxley’s final match before going to rehab is something else), not into the WWE or AEW sort of prop hardcore wrestling or even the light tube deathmatch that Moxley recently had with Gage, but into something bloodier and more guttural.

The result is a more classic kind of independent wrestling brawl, something closer to Midwest in origin and feeling then the east coast. It’s more about punching and stabbing and bleeding than about big flashy spots. There’s an acquiescence to that at the very end with one (1) barbed wire board spot, but even that’s done in a more impactful way and built up to better throughout the match. That comes both on accident, with the wire catching and tearing the ring skirt some and on purpose, with the usual avoidance of it, and also Jimmy shaking his hands out after touching the wire to set it up, in a cool little trick. For the most part though, it maintains that rawer kind of a feeling. Deathmatches can feel like real struggles and competitions, but this is a match that feels like a fight, and I’m always going to appreciate that more.

Like the other matches in this vein in 2021, they’re also really great at adding in new bits while playing an old song. They strike several familiar old chords with Jimmy’s spike and Moxley using a fork as his own stabbing weapon, with Jimmy dual wielding at a point and the classic Frye/Takayama-with-stabbing-weapons hockey fight, both spots that never fail to be gross and awesome. However, what’s new is the spike in the mouth from Jimmy, and what’s both new and really cool is updating the spike-in-the-turnbuckle bit to now be used by Jimmy to swing up into Moxley’s face to break a sleeper, instead of being a big comeback spot.

It’s a perfect little shorthand for this match, what was once jaw-dropping and groundbreaking losing that novelty, but having it replaced by a kind of airtight function and utility. What no longer amazes still works, the match stripped down to all but the most basic and primal elements of the thing. Just the beating heart of the matter.

Through a combination of evasive tactics, a mastery of edged weapons, and just a little luck and willingness to die for a match like this, for a moment, Jimmy Jacobs has a shot. Not a big one, but a window being able to crack open just a little feels like the biggest victory in the world when it seemed painted shut only a moment earlier. Unfortunately, like the other matches of its ilk, there are realities to deal with here. Jimmy isn’t what he once was, and Moxley is so much more than he once was. While lacking the ability in 2010 to fight Jacobs off when he lost his mind entirely and went on a late-match rampage, Moxley now has the size and power to not only fight him off, but to do real damage in the process.

Moxley throws Jacobs not only off of the front guillotine, but flips him off with the release suplex and through the barbed wire board. He follows right up with the Paradigm Shift (with wire still stuck in some part of Jimmy Jacobs, taking the strands of barbed wire and half the board with him for the move in a beautiful visual), getting out as quickly as he can, and that’s that.

Jimmy takes the loss he was always going to, but along the way, gleefully extracts the pound of flesh in the way that few others are ever able to.

I don’t know if this is going to hit quite the same for anyone else. I kind of doubt it, but ultimately with a match this fun, this bloody, and this satisfying, I also don’t especially care either.

***1/4

Jimmy Jacobs vs. BJ Whitmer, ROH Supercard of Honor IX (3/27/2015)

This is Jimmy Jacobs’ farewell match before he goes to WWE to become a writer, and it’s the effective end of his in-ring career as anything of note.

Would I be reviewing this if it wasn’t his final match in ROH and thus the end of the company’s all time greatest character arc? No. Absolutely not. I don’t seek out BJ Whitmer matches to write about.

But it is.

So I am.

It’s a perfect end for Jimmy’s story in ROH, both during the match and especially after it.

For anyone not aware of the entire Jimmy Jacobs storyline, it’s one of my favorite stories in the history of wrestling, and one of the all-time great character arcs. It helps of course that as someone who saw a lot of my own life in certain storylines in the larger arc (girl stuff minus the kidnapping and stabbing, the drug abuse aspect of the Moxley storyline) and appreciated a short non-athlete from Grand Rapids, MI doing things, Jimmy Jacobs is one of my favorite wrestlers ever, but it’s just so well done in general. Even this second ROH run, where Jimmy is less of a booking priority, but still ties everything together so well with his own history.

This weird undersized goof came into ROH and got beat up a lot and had a lot of confidence issues after his first partner, Alex Shelley, turned on him. He spent the next five years clearly striving for some sense of belonging and had these real tangible confidence issues. He initially turned on Whitmer when Lacey showed him attention, and finally won her over through some combination of bloodlust, guts, and destroying her enemies. Still lacking that confidence though, Jimmy tried to become a revolutionary but clearly never believed any of it, eventually losing Lacey and going insane. He spiraled, dropped out, fought the worst possible fun house mirror version of himself with Moxley (in which Moxley briefly brought Lacey back to taunt him, before attacking her), and eventually came back to ROH. Good intentions turned bad when the company itself was bad, and SCUM happened. Jacobs later had a moment of doubt when Corino went too far in Steel Cage Warfare and tried to do things right before growing disillusioned with rude younger talent like Adam Cole and Mike Bennett. He formed The Decade with fellow veterans Roderick Strong and BJ Whitmer, before once again becoming alienated with a group as a result of the fanaticism that Strong and Whitmer seemed to go after the young guys with.

This is a perfect full circle ending to all of that, spending the last several months slowly giving up on all of that. He shook hands with Jay Briscoe after a great little television World Title challenge, saw the light with The Decade and shortly followed Roderick Strong’s departure with his own, and as a character, finally just decided to leave. BJ Whitmer now took issue with his partner abandoning him while he was getting too insane, a perfect reversal of their first split, with Lacey being replaced by Whitmer’s evil young boys, Adam Page and Colby Corino. It’s not the first time he’s suddenly grown a conscience, he sponsored Steve Corino in 2011 and then tried to curb his worst impulses two years later when they both had fallen from grace together. It is, however, progression. Instead of sticking around and repeating the same pattern for the millionth time, he’s finally just taking himself out of a situation that’s just bad for him. This arc has never been about titles or wrestling things, it’s about confidence and growth and the idea that personal happiness has to, at least to some extent, come from within. The perfect ending to that is finally displaying all of these things and simply leaving.

The match itself is fine. It’s good. I like it a lot, and admittedly, so much of that is driven by a sense of finality and the love for the story and this one character, but you can never separate the way some things are intertwined, so whatever, it is what it is.

On its own, the match is a really fun undercard brawl. Nobody is getting as crazy as they did in 2006 and 2007. There’s a few really great callbacks, particularly Whitmer trying the Superbomb again, and the classic Jimmy Jacobs back senton — second only to Dick Togo’s if we’re all being honest — through a table, performed twice until the table finally breaks. Nobody gets stabbed in the face with a railroad spike (or two), nobody gets stabbed in the hog with one either, and in general, it’s not the sort of manic and deranged effort that made those matches in 2006 through 2008 so special.

All the same, it’s still a fairly deranged performance by Jacobs given how little he probably could have done. It isn’t as though he’s going to WWE to wrestle, there’s no impetus to protect his body to make a ton of money with it later, but it’s still something he absolutely didn’t have to do. The table bumps, the chair shots, even just the way he hurls his body around when reacting to everything Whitmer does. You roll the dice with Jimmy Jacobs in this 2010s ROH run a lot of the times, but along with the Adam Cole matches and some of his wilder early 2013 efforts, this is one of the time when he really comes up big.

The finish is as gross as they deserve, an Exploder through two back-to-back steel chairs Necro style, finally putting Jimmy down to end the match. Not big and bombastic, but gross and nasty enough that it doesn’t feel like a letdown at all.

Bell to bell it’s probably a *** match, a classic three boy just on the border, but this is not one that’s just about bell to bell.

Way more importantly than any of that is what happens after the match.

BJ Whitmer fakes Our Hero out on a hug, and says he doesn’t shake hands with people who don’t belong here anymore, before dropping the classic “I love you, little brother” as a sign for Colby Corino to attack. It’s then that the dam breaks and we finally get the payoff all these years later.

Lacey returns from the crowd and she saves Jimmy for once. BJ Whitmer finally leaves in disgust, having accomplished nothing here once again, and Jimmy and Lacey leave ROH together. “The Victory of Love” returns for the night. Cell phone flashlights in the air.

It’s an overwhelmingly beautiful thing.

It’s especially welcome after the absolute mess that was made of it in the 2008 Age of the Fall storyline with Austin Aries in which Gabe realized too late that nobody normal would side with Aries, so they then tried to do a kidnapping angle but left it too ambiguous so nobody ever actually knew what happened, and it just made everyone in the feud into a heel. This is the resolution the entire long running story always needed, especially when Gabe later opened it back up during the Jacobs/Moxley feud in 2010. It’s a story that I never ever thought would get anything close to a satisfying resolution, no matter what said resolution actually was. Giving it one is one of the best things to happen in ROH in the last thirteen years and counting.

Given ROH’s seeming disdain for things like emotional payoffs and investment at points, it’s hardly a shocker that this is the most uplifting thing they’ll do all decade. It’s one of the best moments in ROH all decade, one of the highlights of the year, and a perfect ending both to the entire Jimmy Jacobs character and a storybook farewell for him, Lacey, and this entire storyline.

It’s prom night.

The villain gets what’s coming to him and the hero gets the girl.

 

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Michael Elgin, ROH Road to Best in the World Night One (6/6/2014)

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.

***

 

The Decade (Roderick Strong/Jimmy Jacobs/BJ Whitmer) vs. Mark Briscoe/Cedric Alexander/Adam Page, ROH 12th Anniversary (2/21/2014)

An incredibly fun undercard match, featuring a lot of talent and then also BJ Whitmer, once again finding himself stumbling backwards into a good match because his guardian angel is there.

Your central stories here are Page being intimidated by the veterans en route to his eventual arc of being bullied into joining The Decade as their young buy, and Cedric Alexander being HOT at Roderick Strong, after Roddy made a big deal out of Cedric’s finish, like he’s the only one allowed to do backbreakers. Great veteran heel stuff. That gets much of the focus here, and it’s all good. They’re smart enough to hide Whitmer for the most part, and while he’s not killing himself out there in the second or third match on the show, Jacobs is tremendous in the supporting heel role. And once again, Roderick Strong delivers. Six months or so before people pretend some imaginary switch flips, like he hasn’t been great all along, he’s already a much better and more engaging heel than he was the last few times it’s been tried.

It helps that the opposition is as great as it is here.

Mark Briscoe is one of the best hot tags ever, and he shows it here and helps take the match from very good to genuinely great. Cedric lives up to the opportunity the feud presents him, and genuinely looks like he’s going to become one of the best wrestlers in the world in a year or two, if not within the next few months. Exciting offense, all super crisp, and performed not only with a lot of energy but in such a likeable way too. Page isn’t on the level of those two, but given the story here, he doesn’t have to be. He does a few things, but mostly gets eaten up. With a lack of tag experience, the good guys get picked off, leaving Page alone there with people he’s not only much less experienced than, but who he’s also clearly intimidated by. Beej and Jimmy beat him with the All Seeing Eye, their new tag finish, which is the sort of Dominator/Sliding Cutter deal that the MCMG used for a while.

An incredibly fun match that not only delivered in the ways that exciting undercard matches are supposed to, but one that furthered two different stories. Efficient pro wrestling. If it was the opener of the show, I’d call it a perfect example of opening match wrestling.

***

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Reed Bentley, IWA-MS Big Ass Christmas Bash 2013 (12/6/2013)

This was a First Blood match.

Honestly, I turned this show on on IWTV for a pair of other matches, but while I’m here, you bet I’m gonna watch just about anything Jimmy Jacobs does. This isn’t the place to go into it, but yeah, one of my all time favorites ever. Grand Rapids, baby.

The match itself was fine. A good mid-feud style brawl. Jimmy’s so creative in little ways, so this match is entirely made up of near misses with all these different weapons that could conceivably break open someone’s forehead. Lots of great punches and mean body shots to then try and open someone up for the killing blow that never comes.

Of course, the reason I’m writing about this and not just going “hey, a good match” and moving on is an all time great bullshit finish. Reed’s pal Trik Davis runs out in a Habs shirt to distract the referee, and that old rogue Adam Gooch comes out AND POURS A BOTTLE OF KETCHUP ON JIMMY JACOBS’ FACE. THE REFEREE SEES IT AND CALLS FOR THE BELL?!

God damnit, it’s perfect.

If you’re going to do some bullshit, do some bullshit. 

Adam Cole vs. Jimmy Jacobs, ROH The Hunt for Gold (1/18/2013)

Sometimes, things just work out?

It’s not a pairing with a lot of history behind it, the match isn’t for anything, and it’s on a completely inconsequential show, but something about this clicks. Jimmy’s fired up in Michigan (and based on the SCUM shoot interviews Highspots, pilled up and/or coked up and/or drunk out of his fucking mind immediately following a break up), and Adam Cole is still at this great point where he’s established enough to be credible and has cool ideas and is a little bit of a bump freak, but then also still junior enough to let other smarter wrestlers take the wheel.

Very simple story told here, to the match’s benefit and to Adam Cole’s benefit in some sort of kayfabe sense, probably the most anyone’s ever elevated him on purpose so far in a single match outside of Kevin Steen in PWG.

After years of brawling and on and off again cheating, Jimmy Jacobs tries to surprise Adam Cole by playing it entirely straight and being way more athletic than he’s been in forever. It’s a really cool change, especially from a guy who too often got pigeonholed into the one thing he was really incredible at. The story goes about as it should from there. Cole’s surprised but adapts and as a bigger and more athletic guy, so once he figures the trick out, it’s not so hard for him to keep up. It’s still hard because Jimmy’s smarter than him, but Cole figures out more and more as it goes on. Beyond the story, Jimmy also elevates the match by taking a bunch of real manic bumps, even when he’s not trying to, like here when he tries to safely eject off the apron and still eats SO MUCH shit on the landing.

Despite that, Jimmy overreaches once more and Cole superkicks him mid-Spear in a spot that goes off much better than you’d think. The Florida Key follows that for the win.

Real surprise that, once again, I don’t expect anyone to ever believe me about given both my very clear bias towards one of my guys and also because yeah, on paper it doesn’t make sense.

***1/4

 

Team CHIKARA (Eddie Kingston/Hallowicked/UltraMantis Black/Frightmare/Tim Donst/Gran Akuma/3.0) vs. Team ROH (Kevin Steen/The Briscoes/The Young Bucks/Jimmy Jacobs/The Bravado Brothers), CHIKARA The Cibernetico Rises (11/18/2012)

This was the yearly Torneo Cibernetico match. For the uninitiated, there are two teams of eight wrestlers, with a specific batting order of who can tag in first, second, etc. Eliminations happen until only one man is left.

This isn’t quite as heated as the 2010 BDK vs. CHIKARA classic, but it’s much more heated and intense from the start than your usual Cibernetico. Most of that is the Steen and Kingston issue but the ROH team has some incredibly goons on it too. The Bravados and Young Bucks are perfect cowards in different ways, The Briscoes are goddamned animals at points here, and Jimmy Jacobs is somewhere in between those poles. The CHIKARA team is weaker, and the match suffers for building around Tim Donst, a total nothing, but the booking and work on the other side is largely good enough to make this stand out anyways.

The chaos first claims Frightmare, dealing with a lingering knee injury that Team ROH exploits for five to ten minutes in the second cycle, leading Big Kev submitting him with the Sharpshooter. The match then gets incredibly frantic in the next cycle, in all the best ways. My favorite thing about a Cibernetico, which you see in the best ones (2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, this) is that you can keep a fast pace up for a long time without blowing anything immediately. You have sixteen people to start with, no reason to not be able to do this and keep it fun and feeling consequential. This has more behind it, but it’s the same philosophy done to perfection. Everyone’s great here, but a few guys really stand out in this phase of the match, especially Eddie Kingston.

UltraMantis Black also goes on an absolute tear. There’s a phenomenal sequence with Jimmy Jacobs, but he also just about runs through the Bravado Brothers too. Mantis is cool as hell, but every once and a while, you get an UltraMantis Black performance where he wants to remind you that, yeah, he’s genuinely really great at this.

Mantis eliminates Harlem Bravado first with the Cosmic Doom and then Lancelot with a Wrist-Clutch Regal Plex of sorts. On a more micro scale, the booking here is incredible too. UMB immediately feels for real again and like an actual force, so when Jay Briscoe comes in and steamrolls him to put it back at six-on-six, it helps Jay Briscoe and also serves as this crushing elimination. The Briscoes also easily handle Akuma and take advantage of rules to get rid of him, before our hero Jagged/Scott Parker manages a roll up on Mark Briscoe (called repeatedly “Brother Mark” by the dullard Gavin Loudspeaker on commentary for some reason) to put it to five on five.

These matches can very rarely be wall to wall insanity either though, unless they’re spotfest masterpieces like 2009’s or are only thirty-something minutes like 2010’s. Once it’s down to five on five, the match calms down significantly, and it’s wonderful. Kevin Steen is a big asshole who keeps running from Eddie Kingston. The Young Bucks, Jay Briscoe, and Jimmy Jacobs all play to their strengths, with the three cowards making Jay now do much of the work in this period. And it goes fine! Jay totally handles everything, and gets another elimination off with the Jay Driller on Hallowicked. Sadly, Donst then sneaks in and grabs his weird From Dusk Til Donst (ugh) hold on Jay to eliminate him, before getting out of there. The match exists in a very weird space where it constantly serves to highlight Tim Donst, but also seems to accept that he isn’t anywhere near as good as the other people he’s in the ring with at this point in the match.

The final run is pretty exceptional too. What it might be lacking in some areas is made up for the overall feeling they’ve built up, the heroics of Team CHIKARA, and the SCUM-my nature of Team ROH. Eddie Kingston has to finally get in and go on a run himself to get it done, and the result is a Backfist to the Future on Jimmy Jacobs and Team CHIKARA having its first lead of the match. The Young Bucks suddenly turn it on to stop his run, and instead of fighting them, Tim Donst dives onto Eddie, turns on him, and begins pummeling him instead. It’s better than Donst wrestling, but something about it just still feels off. You’re not going to get me to want to see this match outside of the year 2007. You’re not. The 3.0 vs. Young Bucks stuff here is better than any of their tag title matches due to the short length and how much of the set up work has already been done. Both Bucks get eliminated by 3.0 members, leaving Steen in there at the end with Shane Matthews. BIG MAGIC forces Steen to use his real finisher on him to eliminate him, and Steen effectively wins, outside of this other CHIKARA story.

King is able to roll up Steen because he won’t stop talking shit, and Team ROH is gone.

But one man always has to win the Cibernetico, and if it’s multiples left on the same team…again, one man has to win.

Kingston kicks out before Donst uses his manager’s loaded European man purse on Kingston for the win.

The first 95% of this is really really great. It came off much better now than I had remembered it. Everyone involved does a terrific job, the pace is blistering, and every single person in this rises to the occasion. Save for the guy who won. The problem I still have with this is the ending, where a big payoff is sacrificed to build up to a match that’s a thousand times less interesting and which highlights the least interesting, entertaining, and all around worst guy in the match.

It’s the sort of bargain that CHIKARA has always made, serving characters and stories first and foremost. It wasn’t such a hard bargain to make with good characters and great wrestlers. Very easy to track the decline of CHIKARA to the moments when these moments began serving stories, characters, and wrestlers who weren’t capable of holding up their end.

Luckily, the 5% of this that wasn’t so good or interesting didn’t wash out everything that came before it. One of the all time great CHIKARA Cibernetico matches, likely the third or fourth best one.

As always, if you want to know everything you need to know about CHIKARA in a given year, watch the Cibernetico. Some big problems, the magic touch is slipping if not gone entirely, but there’s still such an enormous level of talent with most of the top guys that in big situations, it doesn’t matter quite so much.

***1/2

The Briscoes vs. Kevin Steen/Jimmy Jacobs, ROH Brew City Beatdown (7/14/2012)

Super fun house show main event brawl.

They initially go to a quick double count out before Cornette comes out and gives the fans an “impromptu” anything goes match, where in fact, very few things go. Tornado tag rules, some cool dives, a fast pace, and then a few chair spots before a big finish. That being said, these four are talented enough to make that work out. Not amazing, but another of these real easy little matches to watch. Mark Briscoe dives off the short balcony almost on top of the ring and puts Big Kev through a table. Jay then hits Jacobs with the Jay Driller onto the broken table for the win.

Obviously, there are crazier tag team matches in the past with the Briscoes against tag teams involving both Kevin Steen and Jimmy Jacobs, and a Cornette era ROH house show match, they don’t really get to even approach that. A good time though.

***

Kevin Steen/Jimmy Jacobs vs. El Generico/BJ Whitmer, ROH UNITY (4/28/2012)

Good little brawl.

Simultaneously, a definite letdown and a stark reminder of what Sinclair ROH is now. “Good little brawl” is a definite disappointment given that you have two of the best brawling/garbage match pairings of the century so far in the same match. One table spot, a handful of things with a chair, only one stabbing, and it stays very confined. An easy contrast is something like the Steen/Corino vs. Generico/Cabana match only two years prior in the same building. Insane sprawling bloodbath, maybe the best ROH match of the 2010s. This is just a nice match. Good wrestlers beat each other up and throw each other around and into stuff. They maintain a chaotic atmosphere and there’s at least three great wrestlers in there to always keep it moving (BJ Whitmer is bad and dull here, but not enough to drag it down too deeply), but it’s just disgustingly restrained on the whole. ROH deciding to cram its two hottest wrestlers, the two most popular wrestlers on the indies, and its most popular match up of the last three or four years into a handcuffed midcard brawl while letting a WGTT vs. Team Ambition (Davey/Kyle) match go 20+ in the semi-main is a fucking CHOICE, and one of the best ever explanations I can show anyone for why this era has such a negative reputation.

They turn it up at the end though and for like a fifth of this, we get a look at the match it could have been under a different regime. They get wild, it’s the sort of fun match you’d expect. Generico gets stabbed in the eye, Steen gets dropped on his brain on the apron, and Jimmy takes a gross Exploder bump off the top and through the tables, so the good guys (“good guys”) get to win.

Another great example from Steen, Generico, and Jimmy of making chicken salad out of chicken shit, but this isn’t a match up that should be a salad at all.

the most upsetting “three boy” rating i can possibly drop