Coming to you quicker than a Raw GM e-mail, it’s Matt’s Classics! This week we take a look at a brutal I Quit match between Jimmy Jacobs and Alex Shelley from 2004 in Ring of Honor. Read on my friends and see what my thoughts are for this week’s edition of Matt’s Classics!
Before we get started on the actual match review/commentary, I just want to say that Alex Shelley is amazing. So is Jimmy Jacobs. Oh man this match is going to be fantastic!
This match is sometimes forgotten about due to the fact it’s on the same show as and comes right before Joe vs. Punk II. Jimmy Jacobs was viewed at as the huss kid, the guy with the goofy tights and the furry boots. In this match, however, Jacobs takes a ridiculous beating. It was the worst beating Jacobs would take until his feud with BJ Whitmer and the infamous cage match at Supercard of Honor II. I quit matches are supposed to be and are expected to be brutal. Jacobs and Shelley take the brutality to a new level though in this match, and given that it came before a technical wrestling masterpiece it served to fill the notoriously bloodthirsty crowd’s bloodlust.
The central weapon of this match was the chair, which is possibly the most basic of all weapons in professional wrestling. The moves that are executed both onto and using the chair in this match are so innovative that you forget they’re using a simple folding chair. Jimmy Jacobs also pulls out the famous spike early in the match (was it the famous spike in 2004?) but it quickly gets turned back on him as he gets spiked in the head.
Shelley dominates a majority of the match, but Jimmy Jacobs comes out looking like a star. The finish comes when Shelley hits a variation of a fisherman buster through a chair and then locks on the Border City Stretch. As I stated above, this match is often overlooked due to the fact of when it occurred. However, if you have the opportunity to pick up Joe vs. Punk II on the ROH video on demand website or come across it on ebay I recommend picking it up for this match as well as the main event. This match shows that, while ROH does pure, athletic wrestling excellently, they also know how to put on a heck of a fight.
That’s all for this week! Be sure to check the website daily for new articles and join me again in a couple weeks for another edition of Matt’s Classics! Be good everyone!
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