The heights of New Hampshire Bryan Danielson & Claudio Castagnoli vs. Jigsaw & Mike Quackenbush 13.09.2009 

The heights of New Hampshire Bryan Danielson & Claudio Castagnoli vs. Jigsaw & Mike Quackenbush 13.09.2009

We have said goodbye to the great state of Massachusetts and say hello to New Hampshire which I'm being told is also a state. Because New Hampshire doesn't have a major sports team I know very little about it. While googling facts about New Hampshire I learned it has the nickname “Switzerland of America” so what a perfect opportunity to talk about a match featuring Jigsaw.

To be specific we are at the Boys And Girls Club in Nashua. I can only imagine why Quackenbush decided to run a show there. It's September 13th 2009 and we've got a match that pits two thirds of the recently formed team uppercut who came in second in this year's king of tiros against good wrestler, better person Mike Quackenbush and his frequent partner Jigsaw.

This will be team uppercuts finale match so please read this piece with respect for what we've lost. 

An interesting note for this match from the commentary is they mention this will be Bryans final tour of Chikara and that he's wrapping up on the indies to go to WWE. Bryan would wrestle for Chikara again, a notable Eddie Kingston match being the pick of the bunch, and he wouldn't really wrap up doing indie dates till late 2010 but there's ideas of Bryan saying goodbye and trying to leave the scene better than he found it. These ideas are only played on slightly but it's a good point to keep in mind.

After some opening scuffling from Claudio and Jigsaw, Bryan tags in and then Jigsaw purposely tags you so we can get Bryan vs Quackenbush. We then get a bit of exhibition between the two wrestlers who in their own ways have come to be known as mat wizards. Bryan is clearly shown as being superior here, Quckenbush needing to go to the ropes. I often roll my eyes at these moments in tag matches, let's ignore all the context of the tag to do a mini match but it’s serviceable here especially when Claudio gets involved to establish Team uppercut as the heel team. 

This exhibition eventually breaks down and after a sick Claudio hot tag which involves powerbombing Quackenbush from standing on the floor into the ring we get to the real meat and potatoes of this match. Taking advantage of Jigsaw's injured knees Bryan and Claudio put on a clinic in limb targeting. Its qualities come from how mean spirited a lot of it feels and how they constantly switch what move they are doing without it feeling like it's being done for the sake of it, like you might find in a Zack Saber Jr match. How many ways they find to target this knee allows for the match to never feel boring. Throw in some stiff forearms from Bryan and something something Raja Jackson joke. Of course none of this would be nearly as effective if it wasn't for Jigsaws fantastic selling  his constant squirmishes to escape and coddling of his knee in the few moments it's free add wonders to match and while it would be too generous to say he follows steamboat rules the moments of fightback he gets are filled with heat. 

However, how this sequence ends shows the flaws with the match. This fantastic working over of the knee, which makes up the majority of the match, is not ended by Jigsaw finally escaping and getting the hot tag but instead by Quackenbush coming into the ring and slapping Bryan. We don't get that great moment of triumph where Jigsaw finally overcomes the heels. It’s here where Chikara tag rules, which I would normally say is a great strength of the promotion, let this match down. I'm confident if that match has traditional tag rules it would be a lot better. After Quackenbush slaps Bryan the match devolves into a fun if a bit hollow sprint of a finish sequence Jigsaw still has some good selling of the knee but the match has lost what made it special, Quackbush end up pinning Bryan, Byran putting guys over on his way out. 

Despite these complaints that stretch where it's just Bryan and Claudio working over Jigsaw's knee is godly. These two would go on to tag as part of the Blackpool combat club but I'd say they never got close to recreating anything as good as this as a team. 

Three ¾ Pumpkins (the state fruit of New Hampshire) out of 5

Next stop Vermont