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I'm going to see Samoa Joe in his final US match as an ROH regular tonight, and the whole thing is just surreal to me. I didn't start watching ROH until about a year ago. Shit, I hadn't watched wrestling in a few years until about a year ago. Then I got bored, started checking this site out again, and saw a few people talking about this place called Ring of Honor. I'd heard hype elsewhere as well, so I figured it would be worth illegally downloading a few matches to see what it was all about.
The first match that I downloaded was Joe vs. Punk II, because these were the guys I was most interested in after reading about them, and this was the match that was getting all of the hype. Plus, it was in Chicago and that's where I'm from. I was fucking blown away. I've been to every ROH in Chi-Town since last June, and don't plan on stopping any time soon.
My point is this: Joe was a major factor in me getting back into professional wrestling. I thought that I'd grown beyond it (and sometimes still feel that way watching WWE), but ROH, and more specifically Joe and Punk, got me back into it. ROH owes a lot to both of those guys (as well as many others), and I'm glad that Chicago got to say goodbye to both of them.
Hopefully we'll see Joe back in Ring of Honor some day, but for now I understand why he's got to go do his thing. I'm just happy that I got to see the man in some sick matches before he left.
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