Welcome back to Dark Match Dungeon! As we established in last week’s debut installment, this’ll be the place where we take a look through the vaults for early footage of today’s wrestling stars. (Note: “The vaults” are usually just YouTube.) On today’s edition, we’re winding back the clock to December 7, 2008… just before TNA’s Final Resolution pay-per-view went live. Take a look at CZW standout Jon Moxley, the man we know today as Dean Ambrose.
What To Look For:
- The conspicuous absence of Dean’s +5 Combat Jeans.
- His original “EXPLICIT” logo (on his trunks), before WWE stole it and lazily slapped “UNSTABLE” on top of it.
- An early affinity for ending matches with DDTs.
The opponent here is some guy named Dr. Porter, and I couldn’t really find much information on him beyond his name. Is he even a real doctor, or is it one of those honorary doctorate situations? Alas, such knowledge may be lost to time. Anyway, this match is about four and a half years into Ambrose’s wrestling career, and it happens a good two and a half years before he ever showed up at Florida Championship Wrestling (WWE’s developmental center at the time). If you had told him back then that Ring of Honor’s Tyler Black would eventually end up curb-stomping him through cinder blocks so he could go film a cops and robbers movie, he probably would have called you crazy.
