The Full Impact Pro Championship isn’t an important title by any stretch of the imagination. Truthfully I’m just doing it because I happen to have access to some of the matches I needed to complete this lineage because I had a month of WWNLive after watching the SHINE Championship title changes. That said, there is one interesting thing about the FIP Championship; it’s the one physical artifact that made the jump from Gabe Sapolsky era Ring of Honor to his run through World Wrestling Network. It’s also probably the only title that’s been defended in Ring of Honor, Dragon Gate, Dragon Gate USA, and EVOLVE. I don’t know if that means anything to anyone, but I think it’s at least a little bit neat.
FIP is a Florida-based indie promotion that had the benefit of being run by the guy who was producing Ring of Honor’s DVDs, Sal Hamouie. He started the company as the same ECW wannabe that so many of the time were running. But he was able to pivot in 2004 thanks to his access to top ROH talent and spots for his FIP branding on some ROH shows. Seeing it was part of the early ROH universe, I reviewed a bunch of their shows back when they happened. Or rather, back when the DVDs of the shows were released, which was in some cases long after they happened. As such, some of these early reviews are in my (almost unbearable to me) old style.
September 25, 2004 – Tampa, Florida
Homicide def. CM Punk {FIP Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Emergence, Night 2, the finals of a two-night tournament to crown the first champion. Joshua Masters attacks Homicide on the outside before the match can start, but bad communication leads to Punk hitting a suicide dive on Masters. Homicide gets in the ring and hits a tope onto both of them. He elbowdrops a popcorn bucket onto Punk’s head. Punk tosses Homicide over the guardrail and brawls with him to the bleachers. The fight spills outside where Homicide hits a hiptoss onto the grass. The wind howls as they trade chops. Punk pulls Homicide back into the building but Homicide takes over. They fight into a restroom where Homicide pushes Punk’s face into a urinal. They brawl back to ringside where Masters is still recovering. Homicide whips Punk with a velvet rope. Back in the ring Punk hits the Shining Wizard as the match officially starts. Homicide hits a lariat for 2 when Masters pulls the referee out of the ring. Homicide dumps Punk onto Masters and then pulls Punk back into the ring. Punk falls onto Homicide and Masters tries to hold his leg again, but it only gets 2. Homicide blocks the Pepsi Twist and hits a lariat for the win and the title at 13:35. The actual match was only a few minutes, but the whole thing was a lot of fun and really different from usual brawls. ***½
January 14, 2006 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Bryan Danielson def. Homicide and Roderick Strong {FIP Heavyweight Championship Triple Threat Match}
From ROH Hell Freezes Over. Sucks for the FIP fans that their title changes hands in a different company a thousand miles away. Danielson and Strong brawl through the crowd as Colt Cabana attacks Homicide in the ring. He takes him to the floor and rams him shoulder-first into the barricade. Danielson and Strong brawl around the building and back to the ringside area. Danielson rams Strong into the barricade and rolls him back into the ring. Strong hits the gutbuster and a tiger driver. He puts on the Stronghold but Homicide breaks it up. Homicide and Danielson take Strong out of the ring and then Danielson puts an armbar on Homicide for the win and the title at 4:31. The play-by-play was old but my commentary here is new. I could be remembering this totally wrong but I think Homicide was injured so they booked this title change rather last minute. Danielson wrestled again in the main event against Chris Hero, so I’m going with that. This match was basically nothing. *
November 10, 2006 – Inverness, Florida
Roderick Strong def. Bryan Danielson {FIP Heavyweight Championship Match}
From All or Nothing. Strong put his career on the line to get this title shot. Danielson kicks the match off with a headlock. Strong comes back with a wristlock but Danielson gets to the ropes. Danielson grabs a wristlock but has to go to the ropes when Strong counters. Danielson bails repeatedly and sits on Milo Beasley’s lap with his rear exposed. Back in the ring Danielson puts Strong down with chops to the head. He dumps Strong on the floor where Dave Prazak and Beasley get a few shots in. Beasley even hits a senton off the apron. Danielson suplexes Strong back into the ring for 2. Strong dodges a diving elbowdrop and rams Danielson into three turnbuckles. He climbs the ropes but Prazak cuts him off. Danielson brings Strong down with a superplex. Strong puts on the Stronghold but lets go when he sees the referee is distracted. Beasley gets on the apron and Danielson uses the distraction to get a roll up. He puts the crossface chicken wing back on but Strong fights out and hits the gutbuster. He hits the Sick Kick and slugs Prazak to the floor. He knocks Beasley down and hits Danielson with another Sick Kick and a tiger driver before finishing him off with the Stronghold at 16:48. Ladies and gentlemen we have our first FIP title change in FIP ever! The match itself wasn’t on the same level nor was it in the same style as their amazing ROH matches, but all of the pieces fell together to make it feel special, especially down the stretch. ***¾
December 30, 2007 – New York, New York
Erick Stevens def. Roderick Strong {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From ROH Final Battle. The title had been defended in England, so they jumped at the chance to add the word “world” to it. They lock up and Stevens powers Strong to the corner. Strong pushes Stevens to the ropes and spits in his face. He wraps a towel around his head to drown out the “Rooooooooderick” chants. He goes to the eyes when a chop exchange proves more difficult than he expected. He hits the Sick Kick out of nowhere. He dumps Stevens to the floor and follows him out with a kick to the neck. Back in the ring he hits a snapmare. He hits a springboard Sick Kick, sending Stevens to the floor. He dives out after Stevens. He hits a side slam on the floor and rolls back into the ring. Stevens beats the count at 6. Stevens comes back with an avalanche. They fall to the floor when Stevens blocks the tiger driver. They fight up the ramp where Strong hits the tiger driver. He stumbles back to the ring but Stevens beats the count at 19 (oh my god, remember 20 counts in American indie promotions?). Strong goes back to the chops. Stevens gets fired up and asks for more. Strong hits a pumphandle driver for 2. Stevens blocks the tiger driver. He hits a German suplex. He drives Strong to the mat with a clubbing clothesline. He hits another German suplex. He hits two lariats and the Doctor Bomb for the win and the title at 20:51. The New York crowd is spoiled. These guys threw huge bombs at each other and the fans were maddeningly quiet. I thought this was fantastic and if I were in Manhattan I would have gone crazy for this match. ****
February 16, 2008 – Crystal River, Florida
Roderick Strong def. Erick Stevens {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Redefined. Strong is wearing a No Remorse Corp shirt but he still takes time to slap hands with the fans as he comes to the ring because he was a babyface here but a heel in ROH. Whereas the New York crowd that saw Stevens win the belt sat on their hands for the twenty-minute affair, these fans were hot for the entire half hour. This was very different from their other matches. They spent a lot of time trying to wear each other down before dropping the bombs. At first I thought the stuff with the belt would have been more effective had the referee missed or ignored the whole thing. However the more I think of it the more I love the way that Strong used the good will he’d built up in FIP to cheat the title back into his possession. The belt shot added a layer of drama that was missing from the first two-thirds of the match. The commentators also did a great job of explaining that most men don’t bother striking Strong because they don’t want to encourage the chops, but that Stevens wasn’t afraid. Put everything together and you’ve got the best match in FIP history. Strong shoved the referee into the path of a lariat as that’s the move that put him away in Manhattan and the desperation makes sense. They fight to the floor where Stevens misses a clothesline and hits the post. Strong hits him over the head with a chair. He gets back in the ring and tells the referee to count Stevens out, giving Strong the win and the title at 30:47. I can’t remember if count out title changes were a thing in general in FIP at the time or just for this match, but either way they made it work. ****½
July 19, 2008 – Crystal River, Florida
Erick Stevens def. Roderick Strong {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Dog Collar Match}
From Hot Summer Nights. I guess this is where I stopped watching FIP. At this point I’d launched TheCoolKidsTable.net (RIP) and left the FIP reviews to someone else. There was a lot of good violence in this, and some creative use of the chain and collars. I would have liked to see Stevens in trouble a bit more, as there wasn’t a lot of drama outside of Strong being difficult to put away. I understand that the point of this match was that Strong always ran from Stevens, so this was how the challenger could get his revenge. But it would have pulled me in more if Strong had cheated more and gotten close to winning a few times. Stevens hit a pair of Doctor Bombs for the win at 18:29. ***½
August 23, 2008 – Crystal River, Florida
Go Shiozaki def. Erick Stevens {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Heatstroke. I always find it interesting when guys on a hot streak in big Japanese companies slum it in small indies in the States like this. Shiozaki was a heel aligned with the Heartbreak Express. That has to be one of the most random pairings I’ve ever seen. This match, less the interference at the end, would have been perfectly at home in a NOAH ring. They beat the living crap out of each other and transitioned who was in control perfectly to keep me on the edge of my seat. Stevens looked amazing even in an effort to make Shiozaki look like a million bucks. I loved when Shiozaki chopped Stevens in a chair on the floor and the chair kept sliding back with each chop. What a great visual. The Davis brothers got involved, Sean even hitting a massive splash, leaving Stevens open for Shiozaki to hit a moonsault for the win at 26:32. The interference was fun and while I was a little annoyed that it directly led to the finish that part won’t tarnish my memories of this match. ****¼
May 2, 2009 – Crystal River, Florida
Tyler Black def. Go Shiozaki {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Unstoppable. Between the uninteresting interference, fake disqualification, Larry Zbyszko speech, and Tyler Black doing annoying Tyler Black things, this fell totally flat for me. Black hit a Phoenix Splash for the win at 20:57. I don’t know if I fall into the minority here but I find Black to be totally overrated. I didn’t like his indie run when I was watching it at the time and it looks even worse to me in hindsight. He’s better as a heel, and much more palatable now in his current Seth Rollins cult leader role, but damn was he irritating as a plucky babyface with exaggerated mannerisms. No thanks! He held the title for five months, but then got injured and lost the belt by forfeit to Davey Richards. ***
December 18, 2009 – Sapporo, Hokkaido
Masaaki Mochizuki def. Davey Richards {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Dragon Gate’s Gate of Generation. I pulled this review from one of my e-books. Richards isn’t officially in Kamikaze, but he’s wearing their colors, teaming with them, and traveling with them. This was so much better than their match from Ring of Honor almost three years earlier. The crowd wasn’t so into it, but I was. So much was done well, like Richards kicking Mochizuki’s arm every time he needed to shrug the veteran off of him, and Mochizuki baiting Richards into kicking exchanges because he’d worked Richards leg and knew his own leg was stronger. One of the best Dragon Gate matches of the year (Dragon Gate in 2009 was a bit rough) and it came completely out of nowhere. It was quite different from what you’ll see out of most Dragon Gate matches, and different even from most of Mochizuki’s matches, which are in a style all their own. ****
January 23, 2010 – Chicago, Illinois
Davey Richards def. Masaaki Mochizuki {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From DGUSA Fearless. Richards won the title back with a cross armbreaker at 19:06. It will be interesting to see if FIP will be allowed to book Richards to defend the belt, or if in hindsight it might have been a better idea to keep the title on Mochizuki for a few months (they should have kept the belt on Mochi, as Richards never wrestled in DGUSA again). As for the match, I was thinking it was a step below the match from Japan for the bulk of it. Then that final stretch kicked in and the exchanges on the mat just blew my mind. Davey Richards wraps up his DGUSA stint with a third great match. ****
April 17, 2010 – Crystal River, Florida
Jon Moxley def. Roderick Strong {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Southern Stampede. This was as run of the mill as you’re ever going to get out of these two. Just when the pace started to pick up, Stevens came out and distracted Strong. That led directly to Moxley catching Strong in a Crossface Chicken Wing for the win at 15:34. This reminded me a lot of Black vs. Shiozaki in that it should have been way better but never took off, never got the crown engaged, and had a crappy finish. I mean, this was pulled directly from WWE’s playbook and just came off as crazy lazy. ***
Moxley defended the title for the rest of the year. From January – April of 2011 when he was signed to WWE, Moxley was on a handful of DGUSA shows and should have been booked to drop the FIP title there (or at his final indie show, an EVOLVE card where he lost to Austin Aries), but that didn’t happen. Rather, when FIP finally ran a real show in April of 2011, Moxley was stripped of the title for no longer being available. Things weren’t going well for the company, so rather than crown a new champion they just let 2011 fizzle out and then went on hiatus for over a year.
When FIP returned in early 2013, Jon Davis beat Fox (the last Jeff Peterson Memorial Cup winner before the break) to win the vacant title. His six-month reign ended at the hands of Trent Baretta in August. Both of those shows streamed live but weren’t archived by FIP, and I can’t find them.
November 14, 2014 – Emeishan City, Sichuan
Rich Swann def. Trent Baretta {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From WWN Supershow in Emeishan. Barett was also a DGUSA Open the United Gate Champion (alongside Caleb Konley) here. These two did an amazing job getting the fans into the match. After watching the DGUSA and SHINE title changes from this tour, I was expecting this to be pretty much nothing. But rather than focus on big moves and flips, which these fans didn’t seem to care about, Swann and Baretta focused on character work. By the end of the match the crowd was very invested in Swann getting over on the arrogant, rude Baretta. The action wasn’t anything to write home about, but watching these guys engage with fans who clearly didn’t know a ton about these wrestlers was fascinating. Swann hit a Frog Splash for the win at 20:52. ***½
February 20, 2015 – Tampa, Florida
Roderick Strong def. Trent Baretta {FIP World Heavyweight Championship No Disqualification Match}
From Ascension. Swann was injured at the hands of Strong, and then Strong demanded that the referee give him the title by forfeit. But then Rob Naylor let Strong know that he’d have to beat Baretta to win the belt. This was a fun, fast-paced bop. Beretta had Strong discombobulated and stayed in control through most of the match with his speed and quick maneuvers. Strong came back with the backbreakers and the cheats, which were too much for Baretta. Strong put on a Cloverleaf for the win at 19:58. ***½
April 18, 2015 – Orlando, Florida
Rich Swann def. Roderick Strong {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Establish Dominance. I guess Swann’s injury wasn’t that bad if he could come back so soon. Or maybe it was, because this match was void of action, in the middle of the show, and quite short. Strong controlled for almost all of it by being a jerk, stomping, and not much else. He went to get a chair and Swann caught him with a roll up at 7:03. I wonder what that was about. **
July 3, 2015 – Tampa, Florida
Caleb Konley def. Rich Swann {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Declaration of Independence. Based on the time remaining in this show this match should last more than seven minutes. I’m very thankful that FIP realized that they weren’t going to be drawing crowds that could fill the echoey gymnasiums they were running and moved the show to a smaller venue. I’m pretty sure this was the first Konley match I’ve seen and it was pretty damn good. There were a couple of times I didn’t buy him kicking out of Swann’s finishers, but other than that it was a very hard-fought match that had the crowd foaming for Swann to retain. But he did not. With a bit of help from his ladies at ringside, Konley hit an avalanche Death Valley Bomb for the win at 21:19. ***¾
May 27, 2016 – Orlando, Florida
Fred Yehi def. Caleb Konley {FIP World Heavyweight Championship match}
From Accelerate. Yehi won the Florida Rumble to earn this title shot. I only vaguely remember what that is. What the fuck is this venue? There are dozens of busts on display! I guess it’s like a Dave & Busters meets comic book shop meets the basement from Stranger Things. At fifteen minutes, this was feeling a little long in the tooth by the end. It had a sound throughline with Yehi trying to keep Konley unable to stand on both feet, but the crowd didn’t care and it hurt the flow. Yehi put on a Koji Clutch for the win at 15:13. ***
December 10, 2017 – Melrose, Massachusetts
Austin Theory def. Fred Yehi {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From EVOLVE 97. This was alright. A lot of Yehi’s offense seems to be based on anime and video games, which works well in some instances and less well in others. I like the capture rapid kicks. Theory was in big move → rest → big move → rest mode here, which was fun when he did it quickly and less so when he didn’t. Priscilla Kelly distracted Yehi in a moment that seemed really forced, and from there Theory strung together a few of his big moves before winning with Ataxia at 16:06. ***
September 30, 2018 – Ybor City, Florida
Anthony Henry def. Austin Theory {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Accelerate. When Theory wasn’t stalling and Henry wasn’t stalling to make fun of Theory’s stalling, and when silly interference from Kelly and Amber Young wasn’t the focal point of the match, Theory and Henry put on an above average display. I’m a big fan of Henry and have always been surprised that he never got more attention in general. I’m just a touch more than lukewarm on Theory, and he hadn’t hit his stride yet at this point (and probably still hasn’t). Henry put on a half crab (and Young made sure Theory didn’t break it with the title belt) for the win at 14:36. ***¼
February 21, 2020 – Ybor City, Florida
Jon Davis def. Anthony Henry {FIP World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Everything Burns, the last FIP show to date. Davis was the Florida Heritage Champion going into this. They make a big deal about the winner of this match getting to defend the title on WrestleMania weekend, which is funny and sad in hindsight. I liked the power vs. precision dynamic here. Henry controlled so much of this that at times it felt like he was wrestling himself. But then it became clear that whenever Davis connected with a big shot, it was a lot more dangerous for Henry than when Henry dished punishment out to Davis. That would have worked better for me had Davis been the heel, but given the state of FIP in early 2020 I’ll take what I can get. Davis hit Three Seconds Around the World at 21:03 for the win. ***¼
The FIP title was never a particularly important one, but it was defended in killer, under-the-radar matches for some time. But from 2015 onward, the commentators started reminding people of the title’s history rather than the title’s present. They spent more time talking about all the guys who’d held the belt that went on to be on WWE TV or be big names in NOAH and Dragon Gate than they did extolling the virtues of the current champions. By all accounts, Yehi’s title reign was solid, but it certainly didn’t help FIP to draw on its own. Davis has yet to make a title defense because during the pandemic EVOLVE was sold to WWE, and WWN hasn’t really said what they’re going to do going forward outside of helping Eddie Kingston run an indie produce show.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
