By Mike DeRosenroll, Torch specialist

Last week, Austin Aries became the first two-time ROH champion by winning the title from Jerry Lynn in New York.

Aries started his first title run by ending Samoa Joe's record twenty-month title reign at Final Battle 2004 in December 2004. After winning the title, Aries announced that he wanted to raise its prestige by taking it around the world to defend it. During his six-and-a-half month reign, he defended the title in Europe, Mexico, and Canada (ROH did not yet run its own shows in Canada) in addition to ROH and its Florida-based sister promotion, Full Impact Pro.

Portrayed as a fighting champion who would take on anyone, Aries's first title reign did not feature many personal grudges. He had a simmering issue with Alex Shelley and had a great title defense against Shelley at Manhattan Mayhem in May 2005, but that feud did not really take off until after Aries's title reign. Aries also had an angle with Low Ki, but that only resulted in a single (but excellent) non-match title at The Future is Now in New York in June.

My favorite feud of Aries's first title run was his series with Colt Cabana, so let's look back at it in this week's ROH classic feud.

Feud Overview

Aries and Cabana first wrestled at Scramble Cage Melee in Boston in August 2004. Cabana was about to take a break from ROH to wrestle in Europe for three months, so he put over Aries on his way out to help build up Aries on his road to the title. After the match, they did an injury angle to explain Cabana's absence. Shelley and Roderick Strong, two of Aries's stable mates in Generation Next, held Cabana's arm and shoulder on the mat between two chairs and Aries did a 450 splash onto the chairs. This also furthered the feud between Generation Next and Cabana's Second City Saints stable.

The injury angle gave Cabana a built-in issue with Aries when he returned. As then-ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky liked to do, he booked the Aries-Cabana rematch back where the angle began, in Boston, at It All Begins in January 2005. This was Aries's first title defense. The match was reasonably good, but suffered because the crowd was tired at the end of a poorly paced show. After a lot of back and forth action, Aries got the upper hand on the floor and hit Cabana with a brainbuster on the steel entrance ramp. They teased having the referee call the match because Cabana could not continue, but Cabana crawled back to the ring only to be quickly finished off by Aries.

Backstage after the match, Cabana cut what was arguably one of his best ROH promos on Aries. He accused Aries of needing chairs and steel entrance ramps to beat him, and dared Aries to try to beat him in a steel cage where he would not be able to take the fight to the outside or get a chair involved.

Cabana's challenge led to a cage match at Third Anniversary Celebration Part One in Elizabeth, New Jersey. This was one of the more underrated cage matches in ROH history and deserves to be mentioned among its best. The wrestlers used the cage very well and deployed a couple of very good innovative cage spots. The end of the match featured a number of outstanding near falls and the finish was amazing. I am not going to spoil it for people who have not seen the match, but suffice to say that the finish is something to see. Very often, cage matches that end with a wrestler escaping the cage have flat finishes but this one is an exception and is the best cage-escape finish I have ever seen.

Analysis

Aries's clean wins over Cabana in this feud gave him needed credibility in his early days as champion by clearly establishing his superiority over an established upper-mid-card babyface. Cabana was over enough to not be hurt by jobbing to Aries and smoothly transitioned into a great mid-card feud with Nigel McGuinness that did a lot to elevate McGuinness.

The feud itself would have been helped if Cabana had been mentioned more during his three-month absence. The heat for the Generation Next-Second City Saints feud shifted almost entirely to C.M. Punk after Generation Next took Cabana out (Cabana was hardly mentioned again), so there was not the burning desire to see Cabana get revenge on Aries that there could have been when he returned. A better build up of Cabana's issue with Aries during Cabana's absence, perhaps including some taped promos by Cabana, might have improved the crowd heat at the It All Begins match.

What makes this feud historically notable is the cage match at Third Anniversary Celebration Part One, which I highly recommend getting. Cabana's promo for the cage match after the match at It All Begins was good but not something you have to go out of your way to see. The mid-card match and angle at Scramble Cage Melee were well-executed but not must-see either since they are well recapped in a video package on Third Anniversary Celebration Part One.

-- Must-See Shows: Third Anniversary Celebration Part One
-- Optional: Scramble Cage Melee, It All Begins

PWTorch VIP members have first-look access to all of Torch ROH specialist Mike DeRosenroll's ROH-related blogs in the VIP Forum. His blogs are posted under the M2_Jay screenname.

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