2008: Danielson Learned A Thing Or Two About Ending A Thing Or Two

2007 was not a great year for Bryan Danielson. He lost the chance to become the first ever two time ROH world champion, got his retina detached mid-match, and had to take a good chunk of time off because of said injury. This was all thanks to one single man, the roadblock our hero has yet to overcome, the most imposing figure in Ring of Honor yet.

Takeshi Morishima is the best possible version of a foreign heel trope you’d want somewhere like ROH. A huge, lumbering beast who flies in the face of everything the company built itself on, Morishima is as great of a fit here as Vader was in UWFi. He does’t see wrestling as a back-and-forth game of human chess, but a big game of king of the hill. Knock everyone else down as fast as possible as often as possible and stay there. It’s a good thing, then, that he spent a good part of his tenure in the company beating the piss out of the supposed best in the world. 

From July to December 2007, Takeshi Morishima made Bryan Danielson’s life a living hell. 

Morishima retains the ROH World Championship from Bryan Danielson, detaching his retina in the process. Credit to ROH 2007.

No matter what he tried, from kicking at the man’s leg to cheap shots to straight up booting him in the groin, Dragon can’t get a clean win over the “second coming of Jumbo.” We’ve already gone over Bryan’s famous eyepatch promo in this series of posts, an injury suffered at Morishima’s hands in their first outing. That injury became a running theme of their rivalry, as the big man went out of his way to target the injury whenever he was on the back foot for a quick, cheap, some would say dirty way to regain the advantage. Thoroughly pissed off that someone damn near twice his size is using such underhanded tactics, on top of Bryan’s own inability to take the behemoth down on his own, led him to lash out at the big man with the aforementioned repeated groin shots. 

After a full year apart from one another, long enough for most feuds to cool down, Bryan and Morishima entered the Hammerstein Ballroom without missing a single step. 

Especially Dragon. 

This series is the closest Danielson has gotten to a Southern brawl in his career thus far. As a major fan of that style, it makes sense that this is my absolute favorite Dragon match. 

It would be a disservice to this match if I didn’t mention how it starts. In one of the most memorable, engagement post tweeted moments of his career, he rushes Morishima while his music is still playing, diving onto the big man in the way only Bryan does, just to step up on the chairs and raise his arm as “It’s the Final Countdown!” blares through the arena speakers. 

The moment itself, presented in glorious 240p. Credit to ROH 2008.

The rest of the match keeps that fervent intensity, heightened further by the Fight Without Honor stipulation. These two are no longer restrained by the Code of Honor, basic morals, or ethics, which lets them bring the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it) possible version of themselves out of one another. Bryan is a ball of vengeful energy to start, hell-bent on showing Morishima that he hasn’t forgotten what the big man did to him. There is a desperate malice to every bit of his movement, refusing to let Morishima gain any sort of advantage lest he come back and treat Bryan the same way he’s treated the man this entire feud. Dragon’s motivation in these opening moments is only matched by his desperation once Morishima lands a single flush blow. 

This momentum swing, and Bryan’s reaction to it, are exactly why these two fit so well together. Danielson cannot even think about going head-to-head with Morishima because, as their history proves, he’ll get flattened. This forces the man to work smarter, implementing different strategies each time to try and solve the big man. Try as he might, these plans always failed, mostly through Bryan’s anger or injuries clouding his better judgment. This time, Danielson’s fighting blood loss pretty much from the jump. The wound opens up more and more as the match progresses, painting Morishima’s right shoulder and bicep early on. You can tell that all possible strategy is thrown out the window when Bryan tries to get into the ring the same way four or five times, only for Morishima to drop him to the floor every single time. Morishima bullies the fan favorite with sheer mass, driven more by spite for this gnat he can’t get off his back than anger towards a rival. The fans in Hammerstein Ballroom are, expectedly enough, fully on Danielson’s side. How couldn’t they be? They watched Morishima detach this man’s retina a year and a half ago, they watched the big man get a DQ win after Bryan got his foot a little too acquainted with Morishima’s crotch, and they saw Morishima return the favor a month later. It would frankly be blasphemous if this happened in any other arena. A good handful of these fans experienced nearly every single match in this series live, and it’s fitting that they get to see its conclusion. 

The cyclicality of Bryan-Morishima doesn’t end there, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Before then, I want to marvel at how this thing is structured. 

In a massive blowoff match like this, there’s always the inclination towards Plunder. Some Fights Without Honor before and after this one fall into that trap a little too much for my liking. 

This match avoids that pitfall by mostly focusing on one single weapon, the true third man in this match: a steel chain. 

It’s a classic wrestling weapon, most often seen in dog collar matches to tie two opponents together, but these two are under no such restrictions. They both use the chain in interesting, destructive ways that fit with their respective characters. Bryan, the cunning mastermind that he is, uses the chain in a dozen little ways to gain or retain the advantage. Morishima, the lumbering brute, is content to strangle his smaller opponent with the steel and wrap his arm in the stuff to throw an even more grueling lariat. 

The reason I call the chain the third man in this one is pretty simple if you’ve seen it already. From the moment it’s introduced all the way until the end of the contest, the steel chain is constantly threatening to turn the tides. Even when these two ignore the weapon in favor of beating one another down with flesh and bone, its presence is enough to remind you that everything can change in a flash. Forget Bryan’s tenacity, forget Morishima’s brute power advantage. At a certain point, all that matters is who controls the steel. 

That’s what Danielson hopes for, at least. 

Even though he controls the weapon for a good portion of the match, not even that can give him a clear advantage over his massive foe. No matter how meticulously he crafts his comebacks, Morishima is just too powerful for that to keep him down for long. Not even tying the big man’s arms behind his back will stop him, an insult so mighty that, once again, Danielson snaps. Unlike every time he’s snapped before though, the ref cannot stop him. He once again boots Morishima in the dick, stomping away at it like he doesn’t want the big man to have kids. He purposefully targets the big man’s eye with his final chain-wrapped elbow strikes, and a Cattle Mutilation knocks Morishima out cold. 

Finally, our hero has overcome his greatest obstacle yet. All it took was a pint of blood, his morals, and one of his retinas. 

This finishing sequence is as well-booked as you can ask for, especially given their rivalry up to this point. It retains that same white-hot anger from their encounters in late 2007, but this time, there’s no ref to save Morishima from the beating he so rightfully deserves. The match pays off everything from Bryan’s eye injury to the constant jump-starts before the bell to the groin strikes all the way up to Dragon not pinning Morishima, not making him tap, but knocking him out cold. 

This was Takeshi Morishima’s final match in Ring of Honor, and what a way to go out. One of the best matches of the decade, and my pick for the full-stop best match ROH ever put on. It’s no coincidence that many of Bryan’s best work in the WWE after his return involves him kicking someone in the dick. 

If it can stop the most powerful man he’s ever faced, it can stop anyone. 

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