Wrestling on the Socials 

I took a look at Sport Indie’s YouTube channel and found a great archive of independent wrestling and Pro Wrestling NOAH from the early 2000s to the modern day. Give the channel a look for individual matches and full events from groups like IWA MS, PWG, ROH, and others. 

10/21/2004 IWA Mid South: CM Punk def. Alex Shelly in 10:27. 

I love Shelley and don’t believe I’ve seen any incarnation of this matchup before, so I figured, why not? You can tell by the match time and some of the antics that they weren’t going balls out or anything here, especially from Punk’s side. He cracked a lot of jokes, including acting like he was doing a job as Shelley to Jeff Jarrett because of TNA. During his comeback, he did this crazy, goofy house of fire spot, and I think he expected the crowd to get it, but I don’t think they did. This era was when it felt like Punk tried to be the coolest guy in the room, which is obviously not cool. Outside of some of the comedy spots, it was a rather pedestrian match and effort by both men. Punk won with a roll-through on a Shelley crossbody off the top. **

11/02/2008 PWG: Low Ki def. Nigel McGuiness by DQ in 8:47. 

This was from night two of BOLA that year, a tournament Ki would go on to win. I saw the match time and was curious; it felt like we got a match that was missing different parts of the story or the overall build throughout. The mat wrestling was good and smooth, and the strikes looked good as well, but it felt more like a collection of sequences than a cohesive story. The finish with Nigel getting DQ’d for hitting a Tower of London on a chair was an awfully lame DQ ending. I was curious how they would make the shorter match time work, but they really didn’t. **1/4

08/23/2008 Pro Wrestling NOAH: KENTA & Taiji Ishimori def. Brian Danielson & Davey Richards in 12:33.

Man, you had four great talents here with a tremendous match on paper. They focused heavily on the Americans dominating each man, really taking most of the match. It’s Danielson and Davey, so everything looked strong, but it was probably disappointing if you were expecting a great back-and-forth tag. Davey and Danielson each had a submission hold applied, and KENTA turned Davey’s sharpshooter into a small package to get the surprise win. I’m okay with matches not following a formula, but this may have gone a little too far in the other direction and lacked some drama, even if everything looked good. Even with all the heat the Americans got on the natives, it didn’t feel like they were imminently about to win the match. **1/2

Closing Thoughts 

The matches here were okay, but there’s so much more to view on this channel. Defintely give it a look!