The Decade (BJ Whitmer/Adam Page) vs. Jonathan Gresham/Corey Hollis, ROH Winter Warriors Tour: Atlanta (2/21/2015)

A real fun little thing.

This is helped a lot by booking, as two local favorites have their match interrupted by the heels, and an impromptu tag team match breaks out. It’s nothing new, the wheel is the same as it ever was, but it’s fairly unexpected in a spot like this and done against a team of unsigned locals.

It’s the exact sort of match made or broken upon the performance(s) of the underneath guys, and thankfully, Gresham and Hollis are so much more than ready to make this match.

It helps that the match is short and that it mostly leaves Page in the ring with them, but it’s these two that make it. It’s two fired up and electric performances in front of the most receptive possible crowd for these exact performances from these exact wrestlers. Hollis kills it at the start and Gresham kills it at the end. With all due respect to total superstars in the role like Mark Briscoe or Roderick Strong, it’s Jonathan Gresham here who delivers the single best hot tag run since Daniel Bryan stopped wrestling The Shield. It’s clearly modeled on that, and Gresham does a tremendous job. It’s all fairly basic, simple young babyface hot tag stuff, but it just WORKS. It’s energetic and crisp and loud as hell, in the exact setting where they can make the most of it.

The match ends with an especially great sequence with Gresham against Page. Gresham proves himself, he could have had Whitmer beat a few times if he was legal, and he’s clearly working with more outright skill and know-how than anyone else in the match. Unfortunately, his barrier is also what stops this match from immediately putting him on the track to stardom, and it’s his size. Try as he might, succeed as he will, it’s simply a longer distance for him to the same point as everyone else. The finish is a perfect way to express that too, as following a series of close counts and nearfalls, they wind up with Page able to stand up with Jonathan Gresham in perfect position for his finish. Gresham didn’t do anything wrong, Page is just as smart and with an advantage Gresham will never have. Page hits his Rite of Passage reverse tombstone and gets The Decade to the pay window.

One of the most purely enjoyable things ROH put on in this entire two-year resurgent period.

Somehow, Gresham and Hollis aren’t immediately picked up and we don’t get a hundred Page vs. Gresham matches after this, but only one seven minute television match in 2016.

The most unbelievable thing here, beyond the good booking or hot crowd helping a fun little match along, is that Jonathan Gresham was on ROH’s radar for this long and it took until 2018 for them to even sort of start to see what they always had. ROH is hot now and unbelievably a genuinely good to great promotion, but failing to follow up on something this fun and great shows the same heart still deep underneath all of that new sheen and gloss.

***

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.

***