#24: Jimmy Jacobs

by Phil

Jacobs’s 2008 was sort of an interesting failure. In 2007 he was a top 5 guy involved in two great feuds which he booked, that really delivered in both in the ring and out. The Whitmer I Quit match from March 2008 was probably his career match, but that was basically leftover business from 2007. His 2008 was all about the Age of the Fall, which despite some real promise, never really worked out. AOTF was really amusing conceptually, they were a college leftist heel stable. Lacey was your Women’s Studies major who was still a year away from her Lesbian semester, Necro was your older hippy in the Kuchinch T-Shirt who hung around the college kids to either sell or score drugs, Black was your Frat Boy who just read Howard Zinn a month ago and was full of newly formed anger and Jacobs was your manic depressive cutter whose friends confuse his mental illness with profound thoughts. Everyone played their roles really well, and it is a great heel gimmick, but it really only works if your audience went to college and unfortunately your average ROH fan is uneducated. The angle never really went anywhere, and the matches in the Aries and Necro feud were good, but not what they should have been. Basically he was caught in the ROH death spiral, and it dragged down his year. Even so Jacobs is still the best in the world at building an epic brawl, and one spectacular match and a bunch of good ones will get him in a top 25.

2008 Recommended Matches:

v. BJ Whitmer I Quit IWA-MS 3/1
Age of the Fall v. Briscoes/Austin Aries v. Necro Butcher Steel Cage Massacre 9/20
v. Austin Aries Dog Collar Match ROH 11/8
v. Austin Aries I Quit ROH 11/22

Career Recommended Matches:

v. Bryan Danielson ROH 12/1/07
v. B.J. Whitmer ROH 3/4/07
v. Delirious Steel Cage IWA-MS 2/4/05
w/ Colt Cabana v. Roderick Strong/Jack Evans ROH 12/4/04

2009 Outlook:

Not good, ROH is a walking corpse at this point, and he is stuck working fake Raven. It is possible that he can pull a pearl or two out of the shit, or have another good IWA-MS match, but he seems like a guy who will end up lower next year.

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#25: Oficiale 911

by Tomk

The Oficiales were the best unit in wrestling in 2008: three rudos in matching police outfits who attacked in tandems and in sequence. In trios matches they never came across as three individuals but were always a unit. In the past I have mocked the real clear division of labor in many trios teams: the guy who does the flashy exchanges (Coco Verde/Xibalaba), the powerhouse (Cyborg/Coco Rojo), and guy who works more deliberate technical exchanges ( Captain Muerte/Coco Blanco). The Oficiales were three guys all working power forward. None of them fell into the current trap of overly elaborate offense, instead their offense was just relentless. No matter how many times the technicos outsmarted them, how many times they fell, how many times they bumped out of the ring they just kept coming. AK-47 may have been a natural center working power forward, and 911 was a natural swing man working power forward. 911 was the guy you expect to be matched up with Xibalba but instead gets matched up with Captain Muerte, often put in the position of being the team captain which would lead to match ups with Black Terry and didn’t look out of place in either situation.



Recommended matches from 2008:

~Los Oficiales vs. Fantasma de la Opera/Dr. Cerebro/Cerebro Negro 8/28/08

~Los Oficiales vs. Black Terry/Cerebro Negro/Dr Cerebro 9/18/08

~Los Oficiales v Xibalba/Cyborg/Captain Muerte 9/28/08

~Los Oficiales v Rey Cometa/Pegasso/Freelance 10/17/08

~Los Oficiales vs. Jack/Multifacético/Pendulo 12/5/08

Prospects for 2009: Styles make matches and while 911 has impressed in trios title matches, and trios in general, he’s been hit and miss in the big cibernetico and the cage match. The Oficiales have lost one of their two trios titles and not sure how they’re going to be used. Fuerza challenged 911 to a mano a mano sin referi and a mask match. But there has been no follow up and I imagine in the current climate, you need to pay a guy a lot more to take off his mask. It’s hard to make predictions in the world of indy lucha. Guys will show up blow you away, have a nice run and then disappear only to go who knows where or be regimmicked as who knows what. I also have a feeling that as AAA releases more guys, locals may get fewer shots at showcase roles.

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