Kevin Steen vs. Jimmy Jacobs, ROH 10th Anniversary Show (3/4/2012)

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.

***1/4

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Jon Moxley, DGUSA Bushido Code of the Warrior 2010 (10/29/2010)

This was an “I Quit” match.

I’ve been watching a lot of DGUSA on and off over the last few months. A lot of that is wanting to cover every possible base for a series of 2010s lists and pieces that I’m planning on releasing over the next few years. A lot of it is also revisiting stuff I loved and/or liked and/or hated at the time but never reviewed and put on record how I felt about it. I hadn’t planned on reviewing any of it, and I’ve been able to stick to that, for the most part. Of what I focused on and might have written about beyond just “this was bad, meaningless limbwork that meant nothing”, things either didn’t do it for me like they once did (Shingo vs. Davey), were disappointing but still good (Bryan vs. Shingo, Bryan vs. Moxley), or were a blast but in ways that left me nothing to write about (the big four way spotfests and tag bombfests). This put my ass on the floor, and while I’m still in awe of it and watching something else, I might as well write about it. I don’t think this is MOTD level stuff, but as people do more decade type work, I think this is something people should look at again.

This is the end of a long feud. As Jimmy Jacobs has come to EVOLVE and DGUSA in 2010, trying to make good and be a positive influence, following a series of wonderful promos talking about his drug and attitude problems over the last few years, Jon Moxley has very much not been like that. He is where Jimmy was. Jon Moxley has been a mirror. He’s repeatedly antagonized Jacobs about losing his edge, and at one point, Moxley brought Lacey back from retirement as a mind game in a match against Jacobs before then attacking her. Jimmy’s talked about how Moxley behaves like he used to, and Moxley’s taunted Jacobs about how he no longer has it in him to go as far as Moxley does. Their previous matches have all proven this correct. Moxley’s cheated and benefited from interference, and while Jimmy’s tried to turn back the clock, even bringing back the white and blood stained MAN UP gear last time, but cosmetic change isn’t real change. In response, Moxley has embarrassed and hurt him for approaching him with half measures like that. That last match ended with Moxley beating Jimmy down into the mat with chain whips and chair shots, leading to Jacobs collapsing backstage and vomiting, completing as absolute a loss as he possibly suffer.

As any good blow off does, the things said in a pre match summary video matter, and the themes of the last ten months matter. They start hot, as Jacobs dives off the small balcony overhead onto Moxley before whipping him with a belt, again hoping a cheap and unexpected trick might work. It doesn’t. He can’t hold onto the advantage for more than thirty seconds before he loses it. Moxley plays up to the themes more overtly by being the one to produce railroad spikes this time. Before long, Jimmy is bleeding, and he is bleeding BAD. The full and complete Crimson Mask. Jimmy has his bursts, but Moxley is a younger, crazier, and more physically gifted version of the man he was at his best, and it’s just so hard.

Moxley has never seemed to me like a particularly dangerous person so much as he has a crafty survivor type, but the mirror element to the match casts him in a more dangerous element than usual. When Jimmy was like this two or three or four years ago, it always felt a little sad. A lot of that, and a lot what’s always connected me to the Jimmy Jacobs character, is a personal thing. It’s a little bit of growing up with this character, it’s a little bit of just having the same roots (what’s up Grand Rapids?), and it’s a lot of these ways that I’ve been able to look at this character and its turning points and being able to see something there that reflected what I was going through at the time. Certainly not entirely, cut out the stabbings and the ex-girlfriend kidnapping angle that was never TOTALLY explained, but the root causes? The motivations? The promos about kicking a drug habit around the time I was trying to do the same? It’s not a one to one mirror, but it was a mirror. Pro wrestling rarely ever gives me so accurate a mirror. As a result of all of that, there’s been very few times where I didn’t at least get a sense of weight behind Jimmy Jacobs doing horrible things. Something had gone wrong with this kid somewhere, and it always felt like I was watching someone who had descended into this from a mugh higher starting point, like a cautionary tale. In comparison, Jon Moxley felt like he had always been like this. He didn’t feel like he changed to become like this, there wasn’t a descent into this, it’s just how he is. He himself is not dangerous, but I felt a sense of danger for my guy specifically when he was against somebody like this.

Of course, experience matters. While Moxley is making a show of using all these old tricks that Jimmy used to, Jimmy starts to use the tricks that people used against him. There’s specifically the transition where he pulls a spike out of the top turnbuckle pad and turns to jab Moxley with it, a direct echo back to the Windy City Deathmatch against Colt Cabana three and a half years prior. Moxley’s opened up, as happens when you get stabbed in the face, but he’s not really slowed at all. Jimmy’s again turned the clock back in some way, and once again, it does not matter. At all. Moxley continues to beat the shit out of him, it’s just that now he’s also bleeding. Moxley ties Jimmy’s arms behind his back with the belt introduced earlier, and unlike how that’s spot gone with chains before, it’s actually tight. Moxley begins to really go to work, including one tremendous moment that I’d put up there with the best work of his entire career.

Moxley focuses more on torture than victory though, and never once (maybe once only?) does he actually ask Jimmy if he quits. So, he doesn’t. You can’t win unless you try to win. Jimmy is able to sneak in a low blow, and for once his size helps him out. He can scoot his arms underneath his legs and back in front, and bite his way out of the belt. They manage to trade spikes to the head, and Jacobs repeatedly lands the chair shots in revenge. Moxley keeps getting up in a way Jimmy hadn’t been doing when the roles were reversed. Moxley won’t give up when Jimmy jabs the spike in his face, so Jimmy goes and does what Moxley either didn’t think of, didn’t think of YET, or (least likely) would not do. He digs the spike into Moxley’s groin, and unlike the famous 2008 “I Quit” match against BJ Whitmer, it’s not this manic stabbing motion. That felt like an act of hate, with desperation behind it. This feels like an act of panic, still with desperation behind it. Jimmy holds onto the spike and keeps pushing at it desperately, and Moxley gives up.

Beyond just hitting an emotional chord with me because of who and what this was based around, this does so many things that I absolutely love. It’s a bloodbath, it’s incredibly efficient at under fifteen minutes, there’s stabbing, and it’s a story both about an underdog and about a veteran turning back the clock. It’s also specifically just so smart about everything it does. Moxley always comes off tougher and stronger, even at the end. Jimmy found a way and pressed his openings in very specific ways, but they did everything correctly to make this feel like a situation where everything broke perfectly to result in this outcome. Everyone looks better coming out of this, and most importantly, it allowed for perfect fanwank continuity, as Jimmy embracing the evil at the end is enough to pretend it’s a direct bridge to the SCUM stuff when he resurfaces in ROH again within the next year.

One of the best blowoffs and best matches of this type of the decade, and I absolutely accept being on an island there.

****