Westside Xtreme Wrestling began running shows over twenty years ago and has produced a lot of the European wrestlers that you’re familiar with today. Their annual 16 Carat Gold tournament became a kind of annual indie wrestling destination the likes of Pro Wrestling Guerrilla’s Battle of Los Angeles, and PROGRESS’s Super Strong Style 16. They launched their singles title a year after they debuted, though footage of the first six title changes were hard to come by. So I’m skipping them and starting with when Chris Hero won the title brought it to the United States in 2003.
For the sake of having a complete record, Mad Cow beat Chris the Bambikiller to become the first champion. Then, Eric Schwarz beat the Bull, who was subbing in for an injured Cow, to win the title. Then, Schwarz got injured so Thomas Blade beat Big Sick Ben for the vacant title. Bambikiller beat Blade, but then he got hurt too. Martin Nolte won a battle royal to win the title, and that brings us to where we begin.
March 1, 2003 – Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Chris Hero def. Martin Nolte {wXw Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Back to Roots 2. Hero came in as the IWA Mid-South Champion as well. Because wXw has become a more professional looking outfit in recent history, I’d forgotten how offputting they appeared in the early days. The mat looks like a blue tarp was spread over a gymboree floor, and the commentators sound like they’re watching golf instead of wrestling. They’re also so much louder than the crowd despite talking in such soft tones. There was nothing in this match I’ll remember even later today, but the crowd was really excited for Hero to be there. It’s pretty wild how popular he’s always been with hardcore wrestling fans. The Bull distracted Nolte, leading to Hero putting on the Hangman’s Clutch for the win at 11:04. **½
November 8 2003 – Salem, Indiana
Danny Daniels def. Alex Shelley and Chris Hero and Danny Daniels {wXw World Heavyweight Championship vs. IWA Mid-South Heavyweight Championship Elimination Match}
From the second IWA Mid-South Ted Petty Invitational. Remember those indie tournaments I mentioned? The Ted Petty Invitational (previously the Sweet Science 16) was one in the early days of the aughts indie boom. It probably would have remained one but Ian Rotten is a joke. There was no pandemic in 2003, but the fans are few and far enough apart to be socially distanced despite this supposedly being a big show for the company. This is the tournament finals. Whoever pins each respective champion wins the title they hold. Apparently though the title reign doesn’t begin until after the entire match ends because they wanted a way to leave a loophole for two different guys to leave as champions. Daniels came in (and left) with the IWA title, and though Shelley ultimately lost the match, he beat Hero for the wXw title here. This is probably the only match with the IWAMS title on the line that I’ll ever review, so I’ll take this opportunity to state that there’s a picture of me with a terrible haircut posing with that title in my apartment in college because at one point my roommate was the champion. Yes, indie wrestling is weird enough that your college roommate could bring home a championship belt he won the night before.
They went to great pains to make sure that all three guys were involved in every minute of the three way portion of the match. There was no time when one guy was taking a breather. That’s commendable, though there wasn’t much reason or rhyme to the action. Stuff happened, most of it very tame by today’s standards. Shelley caught Hero with the Hero’s Welcome and the Shell Shock, which are very similar, to win the wXw title about sixteen minutes into the match. From there, the commentators don’t know whether or not Daniels would win the wXw title if he pinned Shelley, which feels appropriate given the amateur-as-all-hell setting of this show. The rest of the match is more of the same, with neither guy really selling anything despite getting dropped on their heads a bunch. BJ Whitmer and Jimmy Jacobs fight at ringside, which knocks Shelley off the top rope and allows Daniels to hit a Tiger Driver ‘91 to win the tournament and retain his own title at 22:28. It was never boring, but time has not been kind to matches like these. I know some people don’t want to hear this, but a lof of the AEW matches that get lauded are just like this, with tons of stuff happening but no way to remember anything but an insane spot or two because there’s no emotional connection to it. Daniels tries to leave with both belts but the referee makes sure that Shelley gets the wXw one back. Shelley then turns on Jacobs to reignite that feud. **¾
December 19, 2003 – Lafayette, Indiana
Jimmy Jacobs def. Alex Shelley {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Submission Match}
From the inaugural IWA Mid-South Winter Wars. This was match three in a best of seven series of title matches between the two. They’d get to match five and then stop because Jacobs went on to lose the title to someone else before they could finish the series. You get the sense that they knew the title wasn’t staying Stateside for long because they jammed three of the matches onto this one show. Shelley was 2-0 coming into this. This was quite good given the length. Jacobs didn’t have a solid gameplan, but Shelley did. Anytime Jacobs went for one of his signature moves, Shelley blocked it and zeroed in on Jacobs’ arm. Rather than hitting any of his own signature moves, Shelley only attacked Jacobs’ arm in anticipation of the Border City Stretch. In the end, Jacobs caught Shelley in a Camel Clutch and Shelley tapped out immediately at 13:01. He chose to lose the title now so that he might leave at the end of the night with it rather than risk having an injury going into their later matches. Meanwhile, Jacobs shows that he’ll aggravate an injury to get a win by using a submission that needed him to hurt his damaged arm. That overarching storytelling bodes well for the other matches on this show. ***¼
Alex Shelley def. Jimmy Jacobs {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Lumberjack Match}
We’ve got B-Boy, Hero, Whitmer, Nate Webb, Rotten, Delirious, Becky Bayless, Brad Bradley, Michael Shane, Ryan Boz, Arik Cannon, Matt Sydal, Daizee Haze, and JC Bailey around the ring. The heels help Shelley and the babyfaces cheer on Jacobs. That’s some good wrestling tropes they got there. There wasn’t anything to this outside of that. The match was just an excuse to get a lot of folks fighting. Cannon and Shane interfered, allowing Shelley to put on the Border City Stretch for the win at 11:31. **½
Jimmy Jacobs def. Alex Shelley {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Texas Death Match}
This is under real Texas Death Match rules, which is you win by scoring a pinfall or submission and then your opponent can’t get up by a 10 count. The guest commentators immediately point out that it’s a good strategy to never kick out of pins and to tap right away in submissions so you expend less energy, endure less pain, and get a chance to rest.The commentators also make Matt Striker sound like Brie Larson and it’s cringey as hell. Dave Prazak tried, but Daniels (dropping the f-word) and Jim Fannin (calling being gay a disease) emphatically display one of the many reasons IWAMS never made a dime in profit. As for the match, they did a good job putting together a violent if bloodless match using a ton of chairs. I’m disappointed that almost nothing from the previous matches played into this as I expected it to, but that’s what I get for putting my faith in something out of IWAMS. Jacobs hit Shelley with the Contra Code through an upstanding chair for the win at 21:16. ***¼
December 27, 2003 – Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Double C def. Jimmy Jacobs {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Huss-Mas. Double C became Claudio Castagnoli before becoming Antonio Cesaro. He was still doing the Swiss Money Holding evil banker thing here. I liked this a lot. Much like in the submission match in Indiana, Jacobs was always fighting from behind and getting run over here. And from this match it’s clear that C has always been more than compelling in the ring. He was only four years into his career at this point and he was already quite good. Some bumbling interference from Ares got the crowd fired up and fully behind Jacobs, but C countered the Contra Code to a straight jacket neckbreaker for the win at 22:31. ***½
June 19, 2004 – Vienna, Austria
Double C def. Ian Rotten {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Rings of Europe Summer Crush. Rotten had defeated C for the title a week earlier at Dead End 4 (a show that doesn’t seem to exist anymore). Rings of Europe looks to have been Austria’s attempt at a big indie, that this was its debut, that it ran sporadically from ‘04 to ‘08, and then that it was revived 10 years later. This was the end of a round robin tournament. Rotten won the title a week earlier on a show that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. Less Rotten is not a problem in my life. He might be the worst wrestler of all time. He has basically zero talent in the ring as everything he does looks totally fake and thus exposes the match as false. Worse, he strung together a 25+ year career on the strength of other people’s (CM Punk, Colt Cabana, Seth Rollins, Cesaro, etc.) and fooled the wrestling world into thinking that someone with more scruples might not have offered them the same platform to display their undeniable talents. This match is garbage, seeing Rotten putter around between the few bumps he’s willing to take at the hands of the vastly superior youngster. C puts the match out of its misery at 21:17 with a rear naked choke. ¾*
December 11, 2004 – Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Robbie Brookside def. Double C {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the 4th Anniversary Show: Another Holy War. I was about to marvel about how much younger Brookside looks with long hair until I realized that this was also sixteen years ago and he was still in his thirties. I had high hopes for this, but it was at least twice as long as it needed to be and thus got very repetitive. If you love snapmares into uppercuts or punts, you can watch this and be quite happy. If you’re into long matches in which the story evolves given the massive amount of time, you’re out of luck. This was one-note and ended because C screwed up a foreign object shot and got caught with a surprise roll up at 28:49. Not into having wrestling matches feel like chores. **¾
October 2, 2005 – Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Ares def. Robbie Brookside {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Sunday Bloody Sunday II. This was another Brookside chore. It started out well enough, withe champ on offense overwhelming Ares with his mat prowess. But then Ares countered a headlock to a shinbreaker and almost twenty minutes of this thing was insanely dull and meandering leg work. Ares caught Brookside with a half crab to finally put this thing to bed at 28:18. Just because you can go a half hour doesn’t mean you should. Woofatronic. **¼
March 18, 2006 – Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Mike Quackenbush def. Ares {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Back to the Roots 5. Ares has just defeated 2Face to retain his title in about two minutes. He (I think; I don’t speak German) laid down an open challenge and Quackenbush shocked the crowd by answering it. The fans were molten hot for this, elevating an above average match to one that felt more special than it probably was. There were a few wild counters that made my perk up, which is impressive in a fifteen-year-old match. Quackenbush took a beating for most of this, but a comeback at the end led to the Quackendriver II for the win at 12:42. ***¼
March 31, 2006 – Reading, Pennsylvania
Ares def. Mike Quackenbush {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From CHIKARA: Naked. This had a neat little story which was basically the mirror opposite of their match in Germany. Here on his home turf, Quackenbush controlled most of the match by frustrating Ares with quick pin attempts, blocks, and counters. Ares was visibly upset through most of the bout. But where Quackenbush’s momentum stopper in Germany won him the match, Ares used the same tactic here (only with a pair of power moves) and made Quackenbush pass out to a Sharpshooter at 11:00. It’s impossible not to compare this to Quackenbush’s title win, and this just didn’t have the same energy because of the smaller crowd. ***
November 24, 2007 – Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Alex Pain def. Ares {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the 7th Anniversary Show. The crowd seemed to like this well enough, but they didn’t lose their minds like they did during the Quackenbush match even though they clearly wanted Ares to lose the title. The match was just one dude doing stuff, then another guy doing stuff without much in the way of transitions between control segments. That doesn’t really do it for me. Pain hit an avalanche Island Driver for the win at 19:15. **¾
March 8, 2008 – Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Steven Douglas def. Alex Pain {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Relaxed Rules Match}
From the third annual 16 Carat Gold. Pain dressed as a construction worker, so I hate this already. I also know going into it that it’s going to be long, so I’m filled with dread. The commentators did a lot of the heavy lifting here, deftly explaining away some of the nonsensical things that Pain did early on in the match as the result of being knocked silly by a Douglas headbutt. Great job, fellas. It turns out the dread was unwarranted, because these two worked like dogs to put on a great show for just about the entire match. Yeah, it was probably five minutes over its expiration and they lost the crowd a bit, but even those last five minutes were hard fought. I especially liked that any time either guy got too fancy or too cute, his opponent made him pay for it. Douglas wants to sit Pain in a chair in the ring? Pain is going to bust Douglas open with that chair. Pain wants to swing from a pole to hit a hurricanrana? Douglas is going to block it and powerbomb him on the ramp. In the end it felt like Douglas was hanging on just beyond the point of believability. Pain had the match well in hand, but he went to the top when he should have gone for a pin and Douglas pulled him down and hit him with four side suplexes for the win at 37:10. Fantastic effort. ****
December 13, 2008 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Bad Bones def. Claudio Castagnoli {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the 8th Anniversary Show. Douglas vacated the title a month earlier and this was for the vacant title. Castagnoli had defeated Quackenbush and Bones had defeated Big Van Walter in semifinal matches to get this shot. I’m not sure if the injury that led to Douglas vacating the title was real because he was back to wrestling the following week. It took them a good long while to build up momentum, but once they did this was damn entertaining. Castagnoli countering a spear to a powerbomb was sicker than hell. The finish was dope too, as Bones blocked the Ricola Bomb, held onto Castanogli’s arms while hitting elbows, and then hit an inverted Michinoku Driver for the win at 20:13. There was a major problem with this match in that both guys worked heel, so it wasn’t easy for the crowd to latch onto the match. It took both guys going balls out near the end to get more than a peep out of them. ***¼
March 7, 2009 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Bryan Danielson def. Bad Bones {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the fourth annual 16 Carat Gold. This was the very brief post-ROH pre-WWE stint for Danielson. I’m not sure what Danielson did to earn this title shot, and it’s especially puzzling to me coming in cold as he was in the 16 Carat Gold tournament earlier in the night and lost in the quarterfinals to Zack Sabre Jr. This match hasn’t gripped me. Danielson’s heeling was great, as it was in all of his matches around this time. But Bones brought little aside from shoulder tackles to this match. The final couple of minutes were exciting, but when a match is nearly thirty minutes long I tend to feel like picking things up only at the end is a dirty trick. Danielson slapped on the Cattle Mutilation for the win at 27:43. ***
May 2, 2009 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Absolute Andy def. Bryan Danielson {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Dead End IX Beta. Andy must be a hell of a promo, because his work in the ring and lack of charisma have me baffled as to how he was (and seemingly remained) popular with wXw fans. Danielson’s wXw shtick leaned heavily on stalling. That meant that for most of the match the crowd was more interested in chanting mean things at him than they were in getting invested in any of the action. The combination of Andy’s vanilla strudel persona, a snarky crowd and a champion more interested in the gimmick than in putting on a banger led to a long match that dragged. Things picked up a bit when Steve Douglas and another peripheral heel tried to interfere, but that was so close to the end that I’d already mostly checked out. Andy put Danielson in a Sharpshooter for the win at 26:00. **½
December 12, 2009 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Steve Douglas def. Absolute Andy {wXw World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the 9th Anniversary Show. Oh my god there’s almost an hour left in the runtime of this show and there are no matches listed after this one. Douglas burns time by cutting a promo after the opening bell rings, so I expect there to be a lot of stalling in the name of padding the match time here. The first fifteen minutes of this thing are pure indie nonsense, going back and forth between crowd work and comedy. Then the ref gets bumped, giving me hope that this is near its end. But no, it’s only one-third of the way through and just structured poorly. There were no believable near falls when the referee was out, leading me to wonder if anyone involved understands why ref bumps happen in the first place. Another ref bump ten minutes later leads to Douglas getting a chair, so at least he understands that the trope provides some freedom from the rules. This moment provides a bit of a reset for the match, as it becomes a bit more spirited and serious. On the other hand, Andy wrestles like a confused zombie, so there’s only so much enjoyment to be had. There are a few more ref bumps near the end (which is fine, both guys seemed pretty blown up and needed a break), and then a little guy I don’t recognize runs out and hits Andy with the title belt. That gives Douglas the win at 42:40. That finish is a real kick in the old brown eye after sitting through a forty-minute match. You could get kind of meta and say that they were building to bigger and bigger ref bump consequences throughout the match, but you’d be an asshole for saying that. This sucked. *¼
June 5, 2010 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Zack Sabre Jr. def. Steve Douglas {wXw World Heavyweight Championship vs. World Lightweight Championship Match}
From Dead End X. This is a unification match to do away with weight classes and create one world title. I think that’s pretty neat and I wish NXT would do this with the Cruiserweight title and then turn 205 Live into a commercial-free B-show. Sabre was still in his incredibly awkward phase (rather than the slightly awkward phase he remains in), but even still it’s clear that he and Douglas are about the same size. The commentary on this show was mixed terribly, so the crowd and in-ring sounds are way too quiet. That made it hard to get into the match. I liked that the story saw Douglas mostly control, with Sabre using his counter skills where he could. Ultimately, that won him the match as he put on a cross armbreaker at 19:46. I wonder if there’s a way to see this without commentary because I feel I might be underrating it a little. Tommy End and Big Van Walter attacked Sabre after the match, making me wish they’d moved the title from Douglas to Walter before unifying them here. ***
When we come back, we take a look at the Unified Championship from 2010 – the end of the world.
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 
