It's A Jamie Noble Christmas, Charlie Brown!

 

(thanks to @isalrightnow for the santa noble image. santa loves you)

Everybody has their favorite midcarder, that, for one reason or another never truly became a big star in a major company. Some might say Chris Candido, some say Curtis Axel, some may even say Mark Jindrak. My personal favorite has GOT to be Jamie Noble/James Gibson. Nevermind the fact that he’s an absolutely fantastic wrestler (which could be seen in his run outside of WWE in 2005, for example) he always just managed to give something entertaining no matter the era of wrestling he was in. Standing out in dying days WCW’s Cruiserweight division, doing shenanigans with Nidia in the early 2000s, that one odd team he had with Kid Kash which was… actually kinda fun, or even being a stooge for Seth Rollins in 2015 (J&J Security made watching Seth Rollins kinda fun for a time!). Jamie Noble was just an interesting guy. Today, for the Holiday Spirit™, I decided to watch some assorted matches of his for fun.

James Gibson vs. Matt Sydal - IWA:MS A Matter Of Pride (09/09/2005)
Man, I'll admit I've never seen anything of Matt Sydal from before his WWE run, but this match was a real hoot. Sydal and Gibson would normally be considered a styles clash given who we’re talking about here.. but while Gibson tries to wear down Matt so he can’t do his normal high flying moves, Sydal at least tries to work on Gibson’s level with some decent attempts at technical stuff. Gibson, to my understanding, is the babyface in this equation but gets frustrated more and more as the match goes on. Gotta love James’ Octopus Stretch while he repeatedly yells at Sydal to “QUIT, BOY!” The blowoff to this, while I wish this was the real finish of the match, was fun with Gibson getting into Ref Bryce Remsburg’s face over him not finishing the count due to James having Sydal’s tights leading to a rollup attempt from Matt. Outside of that, these two just have a nice fun bout. It’s available on YouTube for free via IWA:MS’s channel so I recommend everyone give it a watch.


Jamie Noble vs. Chad Collyer - HWA TV (09/15/2001?)
This match doesn’t seem to have any kind of record on Cagematch at all for whatever reason, and trust me I spent a few minutes trying to look. The most info I have to go off of is from the description of a DIFFERENT YouTube upload, claiming that it was aired in September 2001. Hopefully this is right, don’t think Jim Cornette will correct me on it or whatever. I just have a fondness for watching matches for some of WWE’s pre-NXT developmental shows because it’s either really interesting, really really bad, or completely unremarkable. Unfortunately, this match is the third option. It’s absolutely FINE, both men do some good technical wrestling to a mostly apathetic crowd of maybe 300 or so people in bumfuck Kentucky, but the most notable part of it is how Cornette and Les Thatcher(?) continuously bring up Mike Sanders’ involvement at ringside, because he’s the manager to Noble due to HWA running a WCW Invasion angle around the same time that WWF were running one with whoever wasn’t already on the main roster at the time. I think Jimmy Yang was a part of this angle? Not entirely sure.

Jamie Noble vs. Rey Mysterio - WWE SmackDown! (10/30/2007, aired 11/02)
Two wrestlers who are effortlessly good at doing TV matches pull off a pretty good TV match, what more could you ask for? Both Mysterio and Noble are part of a group of wrestlers that purely understand television matches, some of Noble’s around this period are also really really fun. It’s a similar idea to the Sydal/Gibson match I watched, being centered around a style difference between Noble’s technical offense and Rey’s high flying. Noble tries to keep Rey on the ground a lot with different kinds of holds, overall just playing a good heel presence for Rey to eventually overcome, even if the match is definitely used as some kind of vehicle for Rey’s feud against Finlay due to Finlay being at ringside during it. A feud that, I’m gonna be honest, I had ZERO idea ever existed until now. Rey’s selling for the submissions and whatnot look awesome, as Rey’s selling usually does and the crowd are firmly behind Mysterio throughout the whole match. Loved Rey’s headscissors into armbar, and the finish of Mysterio doing a 619 and then reversing Noble’s attempt of a reversal on the West Coast Pop was fun. Definitely a hoot.

Jamie Noble & Tajiri vs. Billy Kidman & The Hurricane - WWE SmackDown! (06/27/2002)
Another example to the “Jamie Noble is really really good at television matches” point. It’s basically a crisp, clean, and more importantly compact tag match between these guys and I gotta say… It's really fun to watch. Noble, Tajiri, and Nidia do some great stuff as heels. I’m a big fan of when Nidia pulled Kidman’s leg for Tajiri to also kick him in the back meanwhile Noble distracted the referee. The attempt at Tajiri’s Tarantula looked great also. Shouldn’t be understated that Kidman and Hurricane are also just naturally great in this as well. I love Kidman’s Atomic Drop Facebuster midway through the match and both guys do some great overall double team work. Long enough to keep you entertained but not TOO long for you to hate it. If anything I'm shocked that WWE didn’t run with Noble and Tajiri as a full time team (unless I'm missing something, which I could be) because they feel like a prime Ruthless Aggression-era shenanigans duo.

James Gibson vs. Altar Boy Luke - NWA: Florida Jingle Hells (12/10/2004)
I don’t really know why I chose to watch this match, something about it spoke to me. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Two things are very obvious though: The YouTube upload of this match incorrectly refers to Altar Boy Luke as “The Hardcore Messiah”, which is a name I don’t think he’s ever gone by but granted I'm in no way an expert on the lore of Luke Hawx. Secondly, I would NOT recommend this match if you’re a real stickler for production value because it’s definitely just recorded off of one ringside camera that’s very close to the ring meaning that the audio isn’t great at times? At least, if you’re watching it at full volume. The match itself is primarily based around matwork between both guys, which looks good. Gibson pulls out some good stuff like what looks to be a Camel Clutch (camera makes it hard to tell) and a Surfboard Stretch. I liked when Hawx managed to send Noble into the ringpost, Noble sells it really well. Hawx also does a great looking Spinning Heel Kick as well as a good moonsault from the outside of the ring inside nearing the ending minutes of the match. Honestly, my one real notable criticism is that, again, with how the camera was positioned, Gibson’s Tiger Driver looked odd but otherwise a nice little match done for… I dunno, maybe like 200 apathetic people in what looked like a big ass warehouse. Merry Christmas!