1st Punk- Daniel

ROH Reborn: Stage 1
St. Paul , MN  04/23/04

CM Punk v. Bryan Danielson  Special Ref: Ricky Steamboat- 6

This was ROH’s attempt as a test run for their own PPV streaming broadcast for Border Wars over the weekend, they showed Punk and Danielson’s 1st ever meeting.  Some observations from this match; it was all technical, almost as if they were putting this match on as a showcase for Steamboat, because it’s exactly the kind of match he would have had, minus his own touches and flairs.  Crowd loved Ricky too and were dying for him to become involved but he was complete 80’s ref asking the crowd if Punk broke the rules.  One other major thing I noticed is how soft the ring sounded; the ring must not have been mic’d at all because after a huge superplex late in the 4th quarter of this thing, it sounded like two kids flopped on their bed at night.  I won’t say it made the match worse but certainly didn’t help it.  This was a fun kind of bout, a nice change from the heavy 2.9 counted version of ROH we’ve had for some time now and the announcing was even better, I’d go so far to say some of the best play  by play I’ve heard in ROH since before Kevin Kelly.