Matt’s Classics – Let The Era of Honor Begin…

No Tattoos? No Skynyrd? Mark Briscoe with a full set of teeth? We must be looking at some early Ring of Honor this week!! In fact, my classic match of the week takes us back to where it all began, with the first official ROH match between Jay Briscoe and The Amazing Red.

Jay makes his way to the ring with his brother Mark (who at age 17 is too young to wrestle in Pennsylvania at the time). Red comes out next to a good ovation. The bell rings and the Era of Honor is underway!

In my opinion this match is great for several reasons:

1.       Both men are under 20 years old.

2.       It sets a great tone for a new company.

3.       It still holds weight as a great match to this day.

I’m not ashamed to admit I love the Briscoes. Whether in tag action or singles action…something inside of me just loves hearing the opening of Gimme Back My Bullets. Maybe it’s a southern thing. Seeing the beginning of both ROH and the Briscoes is cool for me. The fact that two young guys go out and just tear the house down really says something about the tone that ROH wanted to set for its company.

This match is just great. I know I’ve already said that but it bears repeating. This match has it all: great hold for hold wrestling, great high spots and a great story.  The crowd is into it the whole way and shows a lot of love and respect for both of these young kids. My only negative thing about this match is how short it is. It comes in at around 10 minutes, but looking back at the rest of the card, most of the matches were short. This match (and DVD as a whole) gets my full recommendation. It’s sold out over at rohwrestling.com, but I’m sure it’s on ebay or highspots or somewhere. For great, fast paced action that doesn’t take too much of your time…check this match out. You’ll see why so many of us fell in love with Ring of Honor to begin with.

That’s all for this week…be good everyone!

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