ROH NIGHT OF CHAMPIONS

ROH NIGHT OF CHAMPIONS 03/22/03

Christopher Daniels vs. Doug Williams

This is a ROH classic that doesn't get the appreciation it deserves. The meat of it is Williams' focus on Daniels' neck & Daniels' counterattack on Williams' ribs, and it's excellent stuff. The selling of both men is great, and so are those mentioned focused attacks on those body parts. There's some great drama involving Doug's submission holds on Daniels' neck, and of course the whole apex of the match is the finish where he finally hits that Chaos Theory for the win, making his gameplan complete. It's an amazing finish, and the journey there was absolutely terrific. ****1/2

AJ Styles & Amazing Red vs. Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe

This is largely a spotfest, and it's a good one. Everything looks good, and with AJ everything comes with a nice aggressive flavor. The finishing sequence is pretty nuts even in 2020 when tag team spotfests are overdone to death. I do think they could've sold some of the moves a bit more, as it felt like they moved onto the next ones a bit too fast at times, but yeah, all in all this was very good & fun. ***1/4

Jody Fleisch vs. Low Ki

This is somewhat comparable to Ki's excellent match vs. The Amazing Red from Road to the Title, as it follows a fairly similar formula, and there's quite a few similarities between Red & Jody Fleisch. Ki puts Fleisch over big throughout, by giving him a lot of the match & selling big for him, making this feel like a true star-making moment/match for the man, as he totally hangs in there w/ THE major asskicker in the town in Low Ki. It's a charming story to tell, and they tell it wonderfully with badass action -- some notable highlights for me were that awesome springboard sequence where Ki gets the control by evading Jody's springboard attack, and then answering with one of his own immediately, that springboard SSP-piledriver thing Jody did - it didn't look pretty at all, in fact it could be called VERY messy, but it also looked vicious as hell. And I sure prefer it that way when it comes to these super highflying movez -- messy, but vicious looking >>> overly pretty & choreographed. And then of course the match ending super Ki Krusher, which was just killer. Excellent match. ****

Ace Steel & CM Punk vs. Colt Cabana & Raven 

Very solid, angle-driven match. The action is fun throughout, nothing overly memorable or anything, but fun stuff, and the match more than does its job in furthering the feud between CM Punk & Raven. ***

Samoa Joe vs. Xavier

So ends Xavier's infamous title reign! I thought this match was ALMOST booked to perfection. Most of it is Joe just eating Xavier's lunch & laughing to him about it, but there's also quite a bit of Xavier on the offense, and ultimately I thought there was too much of that. His heat segment isn't very interesting, but I can at least appreciate the focused attack on Joe's neck, even if Xavier's output isn't the most interesting stuff, and Joe's selling was extremely good. It was still a bit too much of Xavier on top though, as I think Joe should've dominated him EVEN MORE than he already did, and he sure already did toy with him for a good duration of the thing. It's a good match for sure though, and an important one in ROH history. ***