Looking back at an Iron Man match from TNA's early years AJ Styles vs Christopher Daniels

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel, you can find the video here: https://youtu.be/Z6BgNsAK71g

AEW is about to put on its first one hour Iron Man match this weekend, but heres a Iron Man match that maybe doesn't get the credit it deserves. It took place on February 13th 2005 at TNA's first Against All Odds pay per view, and it was a 30 plus minute bout in which AJ Styles defended the X division title against Christopher Daniels.

On of the reasons that this might not get remembered as it should is that around these years AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels were having amazing matches all over the world in various promotions. It was one of the early 'touring indie matches' that promoters would love to bring to their company because everyone was talking about it. I made a video about what a touring indie match was in the early 2000's that you can find elsewhere on this channel. This wasn't even the most famous match Styles and Daniels would be involved in in TNA, or even in 2005 as in September they would be part of the famous three way match with Samoa Joe at Unbreakable, and two sequels after that.

Lets talk a bit about how this match came to be. At Final Resolution the previous month, AJ Styles won his fourth X division title in an amazing Ultimate X match, maybe one of the better ones, beating Chris Sabin and dethroning Petey Williams, who had held the title for five months, which was a record at the time.

On the January 21st 05 edition of Impact Christopher Daniels made a unique challenge. If Styles couldn't defeat him in ten minutes, Daniels would get a shot at Styles' championship at Against All Odds. They had the match and Styles failed to beat Daniels in the time limit with the match being declared a draw. Not only did Daniels get the shot he wanted, Director of Authority Dusty Rhodes made it a 30 minute Iron Man match. This would be the first major match between these two, so the 10 minute challenge Daniels made was a way to build to the Iron Man stipulation, introducing the time aspect in their prior match and extending it to half an hour.

What makes this match so interesting to me is that the X Division style doesn't lend itself well to the pace of an Iron Man match. At the time detractors would claim that X division matches on impact more resembled a video game given how fast some of the matches were, and the sometimes lack of selling in order to whiz through matches and pop the crowds. Lets break down how these two expert wrestlers manage to balance the X division style, with the rules of the match they were in.

In the opening minute of the match Don West notes on commentary that AJ Styles has already done everything there is to accomplish in TNA, being a multiple time X division and NWA World champion. While he's saying that Styles and Daniels are engaging in a very back and forth chain wrestling exchange. There is a clear goal here, because while Daniels had held the NWA tag titles with Triple X, he hadn't won a singles title yet let alone the world title, so a goal was made early on to make Daniels seem competitive despite him not having the accolades Styles had even in early 2005.

The standard strategy for both wrestlers would normally be to take their time and pace themselves in this kind of match, but this is also an X Division match, and that gives an expectation of faster wrestling and acrobatics. The way they deal with this early on are exchanges like this series of arm drags AJ does. He hits the move quickly, then holds on to the arm for Daniels to counter, draining the first few minutes off the clock.

Daniels retreats out of the ring, only for Styles to follow with a dive. AJ then tries to dive at Daniels into the ring, but this moment of cheating allows the pace to slow back down as Styles lands ribs first on the rail. Daniels spends the next few minutes slowly picking away at AJ's ribs, and with his own arm hurting from the arm drags earlier on, both men now have a weakness to go to.

At around the 14 minute mark AJ makes a big mistake, having won a long exchange on the ropes, he attempts a 450, but Daniels gets his knees up, again going after the hurt ribs. Daniels hits his Angels Wings and wins the first fall, giving AJ an uphill battle to win.

With a 1 nil advantage Christopher Daniels begins taking his time and doing a lot of showing off for the crowd until AJ manages to come back again, hitting some bigger moves with just over 10 minutes left on the clock. This also inspired Daniels to hit bigger moves too, in order to keep his lead. Styles even hits Daniels' own Angels wings, but can't get the pin to tie the scores up. With 6 minutes left it's Daniels' turn to make a mistake, as he lifts AJ up only for Styles to counter and roll him up for the pin he needs to stay alive.

In the final few minutes Daniels starts playing dirty again, by throwing Styles into the ring post making him bleed, and going after the cut once AJ is back in the ring. He spends the next few minutes just picking at AJ who seems to be defenceless, but he is unable to get the 2-1 advantage.

With one minute left AJ starts fighting back, but Daniels out of desperation locks in a Koji clutch. With Styles about to fade, the timer runs out and the two end with one fall each.  Post match Christopher Daniels is incensed, thinking that Styles was out and he should have won, but Dusty Rhodes isn't having it, and sends him back into the ring for sudden death overtime, just like Bret and Shawn did nine years earlier. A frustrated Daniels gets back in the ring at attack AJ, but having had time to recover, he somehow has it in him to hit the Styles Clash, and win the match.

At this time in TNA's early history the monthly pay per views each had great matches like this one, and this wouldn't be the last time AJ and Daniels would meet. At Destination X the following month Christopher Daniels would finally achieve his goal of becoming X Division champion, defeating Styles as well as Ron Killings and Elix Skipper in a match known as the Ultimate X challenge. He would hold the title throughout most of 2005, losing it to you guessed it, the phenomenal one in the famous Unbreakable triple threat match.