ROH THIRD ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION - PART 2
Colt Cabana vs. Nigel McGuinness
This is a very good midcard match. Cabana & Nigel compliment each other quite well with their signature in-ring styles. Charming competitive technical wrestling throughout with good little comedic moments in there all in the name of said competitive technical wrestling. ***1/2
James Gibson vs. Spanky
Gibson's ROH debut here. It's a very good showing for him, wrestling a very "ROH style" match & looking pretty great doing so. Really dug his attack on Spanky's arm. Awesome counter to Sliced Bread as well. Sadly I didn't care for Spanky's control work very much, and ultimately that is what makes the match not be greater than it is for me. He has some cool singular moments on the offense, but coming after Gibson's awesome armwork, it falls a bit flat in my eyes. It's still a good match overall though. ***
Alex Shelley vs. CM Punk
It is not often when I find CM Punk the less compelling wrestler in a great singles match of his, but Alex Shelley was really great here. His selling of the arm is consistent & terrific all the way through, and his work over Punk's mid-section rules. I actually think that Punk could've & probably should've done a bigger selljob regarding the ribs given the volume of Shelley's attack over em. If he had done that, this more than certainly would've been truly great, rather than being "just" a borderline great match. Hell of a Shelley performance. ***3/4
Austin Aries & Jack Evans vs. Bryan Danielson & Samoa Joe
This suffers from its unnecessarily long length, but it is a pretty good match regardless. Lots of comedy involving Evans, including the Joe slap which is kind of a famous gif in the wrestling folklore. I liked parts of the comedy stuff (that slap bit for an example), but I do think they ran with it a bit too much, and the match suffered from that when it got more "serious" as it went on. Evans definitely knows how to make everything look extra vicious though between his willingness to bend & bump his ass off. Good teasers between Aries & Joe in preparation for the next night as well. **3/4
AJ Styles vs. Jimmy Rave
It's AJ's first ROH match in a year, and he brings his usual (lovely) tenacity & aggressiveness into the thing. Now I must say that the match never truly hooked me except for the very beginning: that wrist-control sequence was just amazing with AJ holding onto it & sending Rave flying outside. After that the match is just kinda there - both guys have a couple of really nice moments with Rave matching AJ's dynamic offense nicely, but I just never, except for the mentioned very beginning, truly got into what they were doing as an overall flowing n' moving thing. I prefer their 04 ROH match by a mile. **1/2
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