Honor Rises: A Look at Samoa Joe’s ROH World Title Reign
30. Samoa Joe vs. Austin Aries (December 26, 2004)
Joe’s reign has continued for 645 days, and it looked like there would never be an end. Austin Aries was a new, rising star, with ROH. At Generation Next, Alex Shelley, Austin Aries, Roderick Strong, and Jack Evans formed the stable Generation Next. For most of 2004, they spent their time dominating the undercard of Ring of Honor.
Aries was a major rising star, and while Shelley was the leader of the group, Aries was the first one to earn a shot at ROH’s World title.
Aries debuted a new, main event style entrance in this match, after kicking Alex Shelley out of the stable. Aries made his way to the ring with supreme confidence, which everyone thought would be the sign of his defeat. Instead, Joe and Aries had an even match, with Aries keeping with Joe every single bit of the way. As the match was coming to a close, Aries hit Joe with a massive soccer punt right to Joe’s face, followed up with a brainbuster, and then a 450 splash for the pinfall.
Samoa Joe was defeated, but he lost after going to war, and Austin Aries managed to unseat the most dominant champion in the history of Ring of Honor.
Samoa Joe, despite losing the title, debuted with TNA Wrestling in 2005 (where he had another 5 Star match with AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels). Joe remained a main event player in ROH, despite never regaining the title, but it was far from the last time he main evented a show. Joe worked in ROH frequently until 2007, and had a one-off match in 2008, all while also working with TNA.
Joe’s run in 2004 saw ROH’s attendance increasing to 16,475 across all their shows, with 610 being their average attendance. While the average attendance was down, the total amount of people at the shows increased. ROH’s push of top stars aside from Joe saw the total attendance for ROH increase to 24,775 in 2005, with an average attendance of 707.
ROH continued to build on the success started with Joe’s reign by having Joe in special matches, one with Kenta Kobashi, that was also 5 stars. It was an absolute war where both men beat each other hard with chops and suplexes, that ultimately saw Kobashi come out with the win.