Jamie Noble

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Shining Wiz]

Great run in ROH that felt like a big deal.

 

Over skilled and underused otherwise.

[rzombie1988]

I truly felt we never got to see him at his best. Money wise, he made the right call by going to WWE. But for this purposes of this poll, staying in ROH would have been the better choice. He looked on par with American Dragon when I saw him and it's a shame he never got a shot.

[Tim Cooke]

Noble was at least good from the get go. I haven’t watched his pre-WCW indy work (I think there is at least one match on You Tube) but from his debut in the fall of 1999 through the end of the company, Noble went from good to very good in a company that was spiraling out of control and didn’t want to feature any lightweights until the last three months of its existence. His fall 99-spring '00 matches on WCWSN and WWW are worth seeking out just to see how much more advanced he was than almost any of the other power plant guys.

 

WCW matches worth watching include:

 

8/13/00 Jung Dragons vs. 3 Count (New Blood Rising - Ladder Match)

• Not a great or even good match, but interesting to see 6 guys try to steal the show despite being saddled with a fairly ridiculous storyline

 

12/16/00 Jung Dragons vs. 3-Count (Starrcade)

• Another ladder match and better than New Blood Rising but not blow away. Still though Noble was a standout with Helms and Hayashi.

 

1/14/01 Hayashi/Yang vs. Noble/Karagious (Sin)

• Evan Karagious was terrible. He made Prince Iakeau look like a master ring general. Jimmy Yang is very green here. Should have been a recipe for disaster but Kaz and Noble decided to work the match primarily with their opponent’s weaker sides and thus made Yang look great and made Karagious passable.

 

2/18/01 Noble vs. Helms vs. Moore vs. Hayashi vs. Yang vs. Karagious (Superbrawl Revenge)

• Noble’s feather in the cap (ditto Helms and Hayashi) from the WCW run. 5/6’s of this match is really awesome and 1/6 is horribly blown spots by Karagious and Yang, some of the worst blown spots I have ever seen. But those 5/6’s of the match that works, really works. Noble and Yang doing the lucha arm drag out of the power bomb spot automatically adds a half star to this for me.

 

WWE

 

5/1/04 vs. Rey Jr. (Velocity)

• By far the best Noble match in WWE. One of Rey’s top 5 WWE matches (Summerslam ’02 vs Angle, March ’04 vs. Eddy Guerrero, June ’05 vs. Eddy Guerrero). This gets a great amount of time, especially for a WWE syndie show featuring an upper mid carder and a jobber. Some mat work, mixed with all of the spots you expect from these two.

 

ROH

 

I emailed Gabe the morning Noble was released from WWE to bring. He was skeptical that Noble was really worth bringing in and if he would work hard in ROH. I was thrilled when he decided to bring him on in Feb. 2005. When he resigned with the WWE later that fall, I was also happy because Noble in ROH was a terrible disappointment. Gabe’s worries about not working hard were unfounded because Noble worked really hard. Almost too hard. Gone were the swinging neckbreakers and tombstone piledrivers. In their place was upping the work rate to mesh into the ROH style. It’s probably in my top 10 “what if’s” in wrestling if someone would have told Noble that his WCW work was so solid that all he needed to do was go back to that formula and combine it with his 2005 wrestling knowledge.

 

He most likely won’t make my list but I can watch the SIN tag, Superbrawl Revenge 6 way, and Velocity match any day and always come away with a smile on my face,

[TRMD]

12/16/00 Jung Dragons vs. 3-Count (Starrcade)

• Another ladder match and better than New Blood Rising but not blow away. Still though Noble was a standout with Helms and Hayashi.

 

Watched the match very recently and came away thinking that Noble put out a very good performance.

[topropepodcast]

For me, Noble's always someone I've really liked, whether it was the Jung Dragons stuff, the mini-Benoit later WCW run, his ROH stuff, the redneck-character, but, and admittedly, a lot of it might be due to opportunity, he's someone that just doesn't feel like a Top 100 guy. The output just doesn't really feel there.

[InYourCase]

Noble's peak is good enough for me. He's finding a spot on my ballot. His 2005 ROH run is really as good as it gets. Love his ROH debut against Spanky, his two matches with Aries from that summer, his Pure Title match against Joe (arguably the best Pure Title match ever), his title change against Danielson, and his farewell against Roddy. There's too much quality in that year to ignore him. Not to mention his FIP run, which was also quite fun.

 

As a Velocity/Smackdown undercard guy he was great. The Rey match from 2003, obviously, is outstanding. If he would've spent another year or two in ROH and maybe toured NOAH, I think he'd be a slam dunk for most people that value ROH. When I look at his peak stuff, there's no way I can't include him.