An absolutely amazing match. Bryan tortures the shit out of young Zack - just stretches him out with his vicious submission holds & beats him down with his brutal strikes. ZSJ's selling & bumping is excellent + it looks all the more devastating than it already is because of his skinny frame. He gets pretty much nothing in until he gets fired up as Bryan is delivering corner strikes to him - that's when he gets his big comeback, in which he applies a very good looking armbar, which Bryan sells like DEATH. After that Bryan does his classic wXw spot which is asking the referee to help him check his arm - that was obviously just a little heel tactic by Dragon, as he blasts ZSJ with a vicious forearm while the ref is checking on him. After that he continues his brutal beatdown on the young lad, now also spitting & talking more shit to him, showing no respect - that continues until ZSJ gets that SURPRISE PIN! What a perfectly told underdog story. The perfect match for the crowd - wXw fans hated Bryan, and he got a lot of heat in the match, but my goodness the pop when ZSJ managed to get that win. Terrific dynamic all around w/ Bryan, ZSJ & the crowd. Amazing stuff. Between his brutal offensive assault on ZSJ & his selling of his comeback, Bryan's performance in this is just outstanding. ****3/4

Just to make the point clear - the wXw fans were the heels in this dynamic. What happened was that Danielson returned on 2008-01-20 and because of that some additional fans attended that one show who preferred ROH normally. The core fans were a tad annoyed and weren't that entertained by the workrate/grapplefuck stuff. So, out of curiosity and boredom we decided to troll Danielson. As 16 Carat Gold crowds are "wXw fans on steroids" that led to this fascinating scenario. The fans were the instigators and Danielson was happy to indulge in this ridiculousness. You have to love wrestling because of these things.

"Eye of the Tiger" was picked as a theme by the matchmaker Felix Kohlenberg, never did that sound better for Zack than at the post match celebrations.