[2003-01-17-XPW-New Year's Revolution-Night 1] Jonny Storm vs Jerry Lynn

[TonyPulis'Cap]

This is part of Storm’s brief run with XPW, which came about due to a working agreement with the FWA and resulted in the creation of the XPW European Title (a ‘title’ which would last longer than XPW and be defended in the FWA…well, a briefcase claiming to have the title in would be…). This is No. 1 contenders match for the XPW TV Title and came about due to a double pin in a 4-way No. 1 contenders match at the previous show.

We open with some standard mid 2000s indie standoff stuff, but its more measured than usual, and there’s some decent chain wrestling going on. Lynn is a good base for Storm in this match and allows him to get over with the crowd by basing for his high flying. The early exchanges are good at helping put Storm over to the crowd at the ECW Arena that would have come in perceiving Lynn to be the bigger star.

There’s lots of fun sequences in this, and the match manages to avoid devolving into full on spot fest territory. Both guys are faces, so the simple story is Storm trying to stick and move, while Lynn is able to counter some of Jonny’s high flying as the more powerful of the two. Lynn was very good at this point, coming off his great early TNA run in 2002, and this is a sort of budget version of his matches with AJ Styles from around this time (which is no way an insult, as those matches were great).

Storm ends up getting the win with a wheelbarrow DDT, and while it may be went a little long with a few too many kickouts at the end, this is a good match. It shows the strength of his performance, that while Storm came in as the underdog, there’s a really decent pop when he wins. It’s a shame for Jonny that this is the one time in his career that he was getting a decent push with a US company, and that the company ends up going out of business a couple of months later. (*** ½)