ROH Showdown in Motown, Novi, MI
Ring of Honor will tell you this show was in Detroit. It was in Novi. I don’t know why I care to be that specific. Anyway, this is for Nigel’s Pure title, a title I hate!
I got to see McGuinness and Castagnoli live at IWA Mid-South shows a bunch in 2004. When I saw Claudio begin to put it together, I thought, “Now this guy rules.” With Nigel, I was mostly, like, “Now this guy is British.” But he turned it up about four notches after I was no longer seeing him live.
Claudio has a recent pinfall, non-title win over Nigel in Cleveland (or wherever close to Cleveland ROH were). Castagnoli starts fast because he hits McGuinness with a clothesline instead of shaking his hand, and Claudio actually takes it to McGuinness. Fans are totally behind Claudio because everyone liked to shout “HEY!” as much as anything.
Castagnoli’s Neutralizer (the submission, not the Gotch-style piledriver he would give the name later) forces McGuinness to use his first rope break. But Nigel’s cross armbreaker forces Claudio to burn his first one moments later. (You get three in Pure rules matches, if you’re unfamiliar/forgot/never cared.)
Claudio with European uppercuts and stuff, and Nigel works on the arm. I still don’t like “Pure rules,” but these two make it at least tolerable, and a crowd being into it mostly helps. They blow a spot where Nigel monkey flips Claudio into the corner, where Claudio wants to transition smoothly into a headstand but doesn’t manage it and Nigel eventually has to just kick him in the back because it’s not happening. It’s explained away easily enough by Nigel’s prior arm work, at least, but I love when something like that happens, and some dork online will go, “Actually it’s good! I like it! Because it seems more real, that way!” Like anyone is stoked to blow a spot for any reason. It’s OK for things to just be bad and get screwed up sometimes and chuckle and move on.
Anyway, Nigel gets an iron (like you do to your clothes) and doesn’t get to use it, so when the ref is turning back around, he does an Eddie Guerrero bit and tosses it to Claudio and fakes being laid out. It works, Nigel wins by DQ because the referee is dumb as referees should be.
Solid match with the rules, because both guys were good and they play the roles well here. Doesn’t go much beyond that, but it’s fun to watch.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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