Bryan Danielson Final Countdown tour Report #1

I was live at the 2001 Super 8 tourney, where American Dragon blew on to the indy scene. Having watched some TWA, I remember commenting "This Dragon dude sucks, they should have gotten one of the Board of Education." I was live for the Ki v. Dragon ECWA rematch, the King of the Indies win, and tons of his big ROH matches. It is certainly time for him to move on, but I figured I would review his final Indy run.

Bryan Danielson v. Chris Hero PWG 9/4

These are a pair of guys who have wrestled each other dozens of times over the last 6 or so years, and have never really had a great match. This had its moments, came close, but ultimately fell short. This had the classic PWG flaw, it was a great 25 minute match stretched to 40. Lots of times that means you stick 10 superfluous minutes at the end, or have 10 time killing minutes at the beginning, but this felt like it had 10 meaningless minutes in the middle.

The opening mat work was really great, these are probably the two best US mat wrestlers, and they did a bunch of nifty things to start out. I especially loved all of spots they worked around the punch to the ear. You had this super hot section near the end with Danielson diving face first into a chair, getting busted open and Hero working the cut, and you last couple of minutes were pretty sweet with the triangle choke turned into a nasty stretch. Lots to love about the match, but it had some big problems. Hero’s young KO kid elbows are awesome, they are really nasty sounding, and he has a bunch of different cool variations. Still they are better used sparingly, there were too many moments were he cracks him with a viscous elbow for a close two count. First couple of times are cool, you do it too much it stops mattering. If Hero is going to work 40+ matches he needs to save the elbows, you don’t see Hansen hitting a lariat at minute 6, minute 12, minute 22, minute 25, minute 30, minute 32, minute 38 and minute 40 of a match. It stops being so deadly when you see it so much. That was kind of indicative of a lot of this match they had cool ideas but seemed to be doing basically the same thing multiple times. I didn’t kill me like overstuffed PWG sometimes does (I gave up on the Hero v. Tornado cage match), but I am looking forward to seeing what they do in a hopefully less expansive ROH Match.

Bryan Danielson v. Naruki Doi DGUSA 9/6

I thought this was an actively bad match. Danielson had some pretty cool armwork at the beginning. I especially liked the really awkward looking wrist lock. Still it isn’t like the arm work meant anything, as he switched to the leg in the second part of the match, and Doi didn’t really sell either body part. Dragon had some other nifty individual moments, I thought the ankle lock into a german suplex looked cool, and I though his Goodrich elbows looked pretty badass, still those were small moments in an otherwise poor match.

I don’t get Doi, I really don’t care for the style he works, but even with that caveat he really showed me nothing. I thought there were some moments where he looked physically awkward, especially in the two count roll up series. I also thought his shots looked pretty loose, especially in your big strike exchange. Shit he didn’t even have any cool moves. That Doi fives thing looked like Nova and Kanyon sat around a waffle house table with a sketch pad and some action figures. I mean if we are going to have mindless spot wrestling at least give me some cool spots. This reminded me of watching Eddie Guerrero vs. Adam Flash, with Doi not being as good on the mat as Flash was. Danielson trying to work a indy classic with a really limited guy, and not really pulling it off.