These two wrestled a few times in 2015, and while they were all fantastic matches, two of them took place in PWG and had a completely different dynamic, laden with story and emotion and animosity because Strong was playing a fairly long-reigning shitbird heel champion there at the time and Sabre was the most popular act in the promotion.
This match was, on the other hand, thrown together at literally the final hour. Another talent booked on the show had travel issues, so the whole card had to be reconfigured. This bout had no feud, no story, not even any real stakes. It was just two great wrestlers trying to decide who was better. And ordinarily, that would tend to be a bad thing. But in this case, what all those missing pieces actually did was give them freedom. Without any confines, they could literally just do whatever they wanted.
And what they did was to put together one of the smoothest and cleanest matches I've ever seen, in the conversation as one of the best indie offerings of all time. Roddy Strong has spent his entire career being the most unassumingly incredible wrestler in the world - unbelievably consistent but never flashy or popular enough to be widely thought of as one of the greats, 2015 was his magnum opus, and outings like this made him my personal pick for 2015 Wrestler of the Year. Zack, for his part, was smack in the middle of his big breakout period - he won his first Wrestling Observer award for Best Technical Wrestler the year prior and has picked up five more since. All of those considerable talents were on display here between two consummate professionals who knew exactly how to play to each other's strengths and build a match with all the brutal beauty that makes up pro wrestling.
This was very very clean and well worked. It's no real secret that I don't really like face ZSJ and dont think Roddy is anything all that special. (Roddy, like Timo, really approaches that "I wouldn't miss them if they stopped wrestling tomorrow" line).
But this was very well done. It felt like the sort of house show exhibition you get from the WWE sorts who are desperately trying to get noticed and break out from the pack. Both guys just experimenting in the ring in front of us with that very mid 90s Mysterio sort of feel.
This felt to me very much like a ZSJ match, but in a good way and with an opponent that was game for matching him move for move. Ultimately this was just an exhibition match but it was very good for what it was. 3.5