Austin Aries vs. Nigel McGuinness (ROH - 12/29/2007)

2nd.

I regret reading the reviews for this one. I watched this yesterday and I thought it was an incredible match that pretty much captured the essence of what I imaged 2000's ROH to be, that being young guys wrestling epic, innovative, and violent matches with each other. The only thing I wasn't sure about were some choices in the structure that didn't really make sense to me. Biggest one was Nigel going for a nothing shoulder hold right before the finish. I figured maybe that sort of thing would make a bit more sense if I familiarized myself with Nigel's work a little more before coming back to it so I could get more out of the match overall.

I thought the spot where Nigel hits the guardrail off an Aries tope and busts himself open was an awesome spot followed by some all-time great selling by Nigel, playing the role of a boxer who doesn't know where he is after a knockdown. Of course, now I know that he wasn't actually selling at all and was legit badly damaged. Knowing that, I'd agree with what some say that the story of Aries working over Nigel's head afterwards is a bit tasteless just a few months after Benoit did the thing and would be a lot harder to rewatch.

Getting past that, the arm-focused matwork looked pretty good to me. The holds looked hard fought, creative, and painful. There were also some other nice big spots sprinkled throughout that were a lot safer than the aforementioned tope, like Nigel hitting a Tower of London onto the outside. I enjoyed seeing all of Aries's counters to the jawbreaker lariat attempts and the bump he took when Nigel finally hit it stands as one of the most breathtaking lariat bumps ever, even after having seen it in gifs many times beforehand. Like I said beforehand, it did feel like I missed something watching Nigel go for that aforementioned shoulder hold right before his successful lariat attempt. Reading Simon's review, he seemed to argue that it was a common thing in the match for Nigel to alternate between arm work and head shots, reason being that he was just so fucked up from the beginning tope that he'd forget his strategy and where he was in the match. That would explain things pretty well, though it suddenly makes the match feel a lot more morbid.

Not sure how to rate given how finding out about Nigel's concussion completely changes my perception of the match's work, but I do agree to enjoy this more than any of the Nigel/Bryan matches.