If I remember correctly this match was billed as a "strong style" match, which is the sort of thing that makes me groan but also I guess if that's what Daga wants let him do it, you know? So, going in to this I was somewhat afraid that we would get the worst of Daga and Ricky Marvin just going along with it. Thankfully, that was not the case.
This match is worked at a very slow pace, but it is deliberately slow and it works great. Both of these guys can hit hard and can even do a flip or two, and they take their time hitting hard and doing a flip or two.Their respect for each other comes out in the work as neither guys wants to make a mistake and give their opponent too much of an opening. Beyond that, the selling is great. The moves keep escalating and taking a little bit more out of both men. On my 2018 match tracker I rated this 4 stars. It would have been higher but the finish is very sloppy, and when the whole match is worked so tight this really sticks out as a flaw.
Maybe I am just being suckered in by the "strong style" branding, but this really felt like an old 90s NJPW junior heavyweight style match. In fact, since they didn't dick around with matwork that goes nowhere this is better than a lot of 90s NJPW junior heavyweight matches.
There has been some discussion on Twitter lately about pro wrestling as an art, centered around the melodrama of Gargano vs. Ciampa and the Omega/Ibushi stuff in NJPW. While I think that wrestling incorporating dramatic storylines is fine, wrestling itself is what makes up the medium of pro wrestling. It can incorporate drama (or comedy, or horror, or whatever), but at it's base if pro wrestling is an art (and it is) then the art is pro wrestling. This is the sort of match that shows wrestling as an art, as you don't need to know any back story going in to it. There is no story going in to it. Two guys are having a wrestling match and it's fucking awesome.
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