I’ll give all of you who don’t want the “spoilers” of last night’s event to scroll away for a minute (I assure you that I won’t be too bad). OK.
Being that this was my first ROH show, all I had to go on were the opinions and stories of others. Bell time was scheduled for 7:30, but they didn’t get started until about 7:45.
After the crowd got really loud with “ROH” chants, an opening “DVD exclusive” match of Brent Albright vs. Tank Toland was announced. It was an enjoyable, albeit short match, with Albright getting the win with a T-Bone Suplex. Toland was totally ripped, and the crowd got on him with the “steroid” chants, but he was working his fitness gimmick pretty well, doing things like jumping jacks during chest stomps. Albright got over by pretty much mocking Toland the whole match.
The “PPV” portion opened with an ROH announcer coming out with BJ Whitmer. The announcer hyped up the crowd again, then handed the mic over to Whitmer. Whitmer decided to issue an open challenge to anyone in the locker room. Out came the ROH champion Morishima. In a short match with a lot of near falls, Morishima went over with the backdrop driver.
After the match, Nigel McGuinness came out to confront Morishima and challenged him to put his ROH title on the line. Out comes the American Dragon Brian Danielson to say that if anyone deserves to challenge for the title, it was him (Danielson) because he had held the title for 15 months, and had beaten a lot of the top flight guys in the business, including McGuinness. Danielson pokes McGuinness one too many times in the chest, and they start to brawl. Morishima helps Danielson, and they beat down on McGuinness. Morishima leaves, but as Danielson stands in the ring, McGuinness gets back up, getting ready to attack Danielson, but Danielson runs out of the ring and escapes up the ramp.
The next match was Marufuji taking on Rocky Romero of the No Remorse Corps. It was a good match with a lot of martial arts style-kicks. Marufuji got a huge pop when he put on the figure-four in the middle of the ring. Marufuji nailed Sliced Bread #2 to end it, and while Marufuji seemed to dominate the match, Romero was working real well too.
Nigel comes back to the ring to do a promo, telling the crowd he didn’t come to NYC with a seperated shoulder and a herniated disc (I don’t know if the is real or worked, but if it was worked he did a real good job because he looked legit hurt). Morishima comes out to fight him, but as soon as Nigel turns his back Danielson comes out with the sneak attack. Just when it looks like Nigel’s in big trouble, out comes KENTA with the big save. Nigel says that since KENTA has his back, the main event tonight should be a tag match. So with that, the main event is set up as Nigel McGuinness & KENTA vs. ROH Champion Takeshi Morishima & “American Dragon” Brian Danielson.
The next match featured Erick Stevens and Davey Richards of the No Remorse Corps. There were a couple of minor blown spots, but the crowd was really into Stevens and his “Choo Choo” gimmick, referring to the Godfather-esque (or maybe A-train-esque) splash into the corner he was doing. Towards the end of the match, Stevens had Richards up on the turnbuckle, but after a few head butts, Stevens went down, Richards locked in a submission (I couldn’t see what it was because I was at a bad angle), and Stevens tapped pretty quickly. Richards got some decent heel heat.
The ROH Tag Titles match followed that, and it was probably the highlight of the night. Claudio Castagnoli came out before the match and did a very crowd-friendly promo. His gimmick involved him constantly saying “Hey”, with the crowd finishing words and sentences that rhymed (like to- “day” or “Jay). Castagnoli announced that his partner in the match would be Matt Sydal. The Briscoes came out, and the match began. It started off pretty slow, but when it picked up it was ridiculous. The Briscoes hit some great double team moves and some really good high spots individually. Sydal hit some great flying moves (including a Shooting Star Press that made me really nervous, having seen people blown that move in a bad way), and even Claudio hit some nice high-flying moves, which was really impressive for someone of his size. After numerous near-falls for both sides, the Briscoes hit the doomsday device on Sydal.
After the match, as the Briscoes were celebrating, the ROH announce team went into the General Admission section on the stage at Manhattan Center. They play mostly to the future “PPV” crowd, but in the middle of the segment, Kevin Steen and El Generico butt in and demand a title shot from the Briscoes, who accept, and the four battle in the ring. Security and other guys from the back pile out to stop the fight, and once the ring is almost completely empty, Steen and Generico take out their frustration on a couple of guys who came out to stop the fight. El Generico then hits a pretty cool spot by flying off of the top rope onto everyone on the ramp. The Briscoes start fighting them again as the go up the ramp. One of the Briscoes (couldn’t tell in the dark) spilled out the side of the ramp into the crowd right behind me, fighting with El Generico. I don’t know if the camera followed them out, but I know I have to get that DVD now to see whether or not I got on.
Another announcer comes out and announces a special guest. Homicide’s music hits, and the place goes completely bananas. “Fuck TNA” chants got really loud after the initial cheers stopped. Homicide stopped short of joining them, but said that ROH was going to be #1. More “Fuck TNA” chants started, but Homicide reminded them of guys who had competed in an ROH ring, like Samoa Joe and Austin Aries. He told the guys in the back to hit his music “for the last time in ROH”. He then laid his bandanna down in the middle of the ring, and the guy who was in the ring with him poured his drink down on it, I guess kind of like spilling some drink in memory of friends lost or something. He slowly went up the ramp, acknowledged the fans, then disappeared up the ramp. I know this won’t appear on the PPV, but the cameras were rolling for the whole thing, so take that as you will.
After a rather lengthy intermission, we were treated to a SHIMMER match between Sarah Del Ray and Daizee Haze. This was match was OK, but a little disappointing. It’s definitely better than all of the Diva crap in the WWE lately, but it moved rather slow, and not much was done. The ladies did put in a lot of effort though, which is awesome, and they definitely have serious potential. Del Ray went over with a roll-up.
The next match was a kind of match I hadn’t really seen too much of before, a 4-way tag-team scramble match. It featured Kevin Steen & El Generico vs. Jimmy Rave & Adam Pearce vs. Mitch Franklin & Pelle Primeau vs. the Crists? (dunno, maybe they go by another name). Total spot-fest, but it was exciting from beginning to end. Pearce even got back at fans who rip on him by calling him “Repo Man” because he resembles the former WWF superstar. He donned the Repo Man mask briefly, and the crowd loved it. Steen and El Generico went over when Steen hit his finisher (some sort of Powerbomb variation) on Jimmy Rave (I think) while Primeau and Franklin held back Pearce outside the ring. The match I would compare this to would be this year’s MITB match, only about 3x as good. There were only a certain amount of things you could do in such a small space with 8 guys, but they made it work.
Delirious vs. Roderick Strong (of the No Remorse Cops) was the next match, and probably one of the more disappointing matches of the night. The crowd was definitely into it in the beginning at at the end, with chants of “BA” and “Roderick” alternating. But there were simply too many blown spots in this match, and while Strong’s reactions to the crowd’s taunting was nice, he definitely over-sold it. Strong eventually went over with a sit-down powerbomb. Afterwords, the No Remorse Corps came out and they all beat on Delirious, including a pretty sick looking spot onto a metal ROH sign they brought out. Erick Stevens came out for the save, and he annihilated all 3 NRC members.
The main event was a good match, and was memorable for some of the spots, but altogether was only an OK match. Like I said before, Nigel was really selling that arm injury, and a number of “blown” spots happened because of it. Some of the more exciting in-ring moments were between KENTA and Danielson who traded hand strikes and kicks throughout. The “Holy Shit” moment of the night, however, has to go to Nigel. He threw Morishima into the crowd, then climbed to the top rope and covered a whole lot of distance to nail Morishima. After that spot, Nigel was out of the ring for most of the rest of this match, and (over)sold the injury and had to attempt one of his lariats twice. The match ended when Danielson made KENTA tap with some sort of crazy chickenwing variation. After the match, Danielson picked up the ROH title and played to the crowd, and when Morishima saw this, the two started to fight. They were definitely teasing a 3-way match between Nigel, Morishima, and Danielson, a 4-way match with all the combatants, or a series of matches involving the ROH title.
All in all, it was a really good show, and as all good things go, left me wanting more. I look forward to seeing a whole lot more of ROH in the future.
– The Penultimate Warrior
P.S.: Sorry for the length, but the way I write can sometimes be stream of consciousness and that tends to lead to some rambling.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Brian Danielson, KENTA, Morishima, Nigel McGuinness, ROH, The Briscoes | 5 Comments »
ageofthefall
JS
justin
demetriusatl
the champ
detroitkittylimits
dloveiii
dmsleak
graant
grav3digg3r
hammerswingjdg
jeyrod
jsnwwf
kanadian
Lex Luthor
loomesy1984
mlldvs
Pissed Off Guy
El Nagual
pwbrandon
scotlandsmvp
shortzandat
sideshowraheem
spikers
Jade
Tim
Aaron
this blog is dead 