IWA Mid-South Top 18 Matches, #13: Chris Hero v. Samoa Joe 5/24/04

#13 Chris Hero v. Samoa Joe 5/24/04



PAS: Interesting match which was a real snapshot of its time. Joe was in the middle of his dominant ROH title run and the biggest deal on the indies. Hero was the top guy in IWA-MS, had developed his own rep, but hadn't gone to ROH yet. This was also the start of the "Lets go" dueling chants in a big match (Tomk invented it at an ROH show, but this was the first time the whole crowd erupted in it). Dream match strike exchange, let's go dueling chants indy wrestling is something which became pretty terrible, but it would be unfair to look at this match strictly by what it birthed.

Match itself had some real electric moments, especially early it felt a little like a big inter-promotional match, almost like a poor mans WAR v. NJ singles, as they really went after each other to test their mettle. The crowd was going bonkers too, IWA-MS was in a real indy dream match period here, but this actually came off like a huge deal. I did think Hero went down a little easy, he was toe to toe with Joe in the first part, but got dominated a bit down the stretch. Still I like heated main event wrestling a lot, and it had been a while since I watched peak Samoa Joe and he was awesome back in the day.

ER: Wow, this was GREAT! You watch these guys in so many matches, and then you see something from a decade ago and it's startling how differently they moved. I watch a lot of Negro Casas obviously, and I love current Negro Casas...but then you see Negro Casas from 20 years ago and it's just...my god. The differences would be more apparent if you had taken a 15 year break from watching and then come back, but their changes over the years are gradual. And in this match Joe moves like I never remembered him moving before, and it was awesome. I loved all the battles over the wristlock with Hero, and Joe was going to the mat and doing weird wristlock takeovers that I never remember seeing from him before. Fighting over headlock takeovers, faking leg kicks to instead grab a wrist, rubbing wrist tape in the eyes to gain an advantage on the ground. Hero looked really good here as well, he was really starting to get into shape at this point, and the crowd was rabid. I never got the impression that Hero was being dominated at any point, in fact Hero gets almost all of the offense in the last 5 minutes of the match! Though they did present Joe's strikes as being stronger (odd turn as I associate Hero with KO elbows now). Hero did a nice job of making it seem like he was doing actual moves to set up Joe's trademark offense. I got so tired of guys just running at Joe in the corner so he could do a uranage. Hero loading up the elbow pad before running in and getting caught with it was a nice touch. All of their reversals seemed really organic and they matched up like guys who had fought each other tons of times. I really, really loved this. So much that I watched it twice! I was really pleasantly surprised at how damn well it held up.