ROH in Liverpool Night 1

03/03/2007

So this is the second ROH event I’ve attended and this show had a lot to live up to given we had McGuiness/Danielson Pure and World title unification match. On paper the card seems very good and I’m sure the crowd will be hot so it should make for a good show.

Doors open at five so I figured if I get there for quarter to I’ll be queuing for twenty minutes max. Quarter to six we started moving and by five to six I was inside. It’s a damn good job it wasn’t raining and the entertainment of a couple of kids wrestling and having a football match with a lucozade bottle made the hour pass by pretty quickly. They say queuing is the Great British pastime; I can see why that’s true because there was no problems whatsoever with people trying to push in, this is very unlike Disneyworld where non-Brits don’t get the concept of a queue.

Once inside I was able to get a couple of pints (in plastic cups) down me and after chatting to a few fellow fans half six rolled round and it was bell time. So I took my very good third row seat and waited for the action to start,

Davey Richards vs Homicide
Davey came out first to a decent reaction but the notorious 187 blew his reaction out of the water. They had a decent opening match which consisted of both guys doing a lot of moves on each other. Homicide did a dive into the crowd (opening match!) to a big pop. This was not the most technically sound match in the world but the crowd were really behind Homicide and Julius Smokes comedy, including after a young lad if he had a knife on him, made it a pretty entertaining match. Homicide won after hitting the Cop Killah.

Shimmer Special Attraction Match: Sarah Del Ray vs Alison Danger
Why do the words ‘special attraction’ put sadness into the hearts of wrestling fans? With no offence to the women, they tried very hard, but nobody came to see this. Yes, we clapped at the appropriate times and remained in our seats rather than taking a toilet break but nobody gave a crap about this. Sarah won.

Colt Cabana & BJ Whitmer vs Jimmy Jacobs & Jimmy Rave
One name does not fit and it was abundantly clear. Colt is miles ahead of the three other guys in this match. It started off with crowd brawling and Colt throwing Jacobs into the rail and then BJ giving his a powerbomb onto it. That was absolutely stupidly ridiculous by young Jimmy. They then did the most annoying thing in wrestling history; after a brawl it turned into a regular tag match. I hate that. The heels had the heat on BJ and the highlight was Colt screaming “stretch” when BJ was in their corner. Eventually he got the hot tag and Colt did a double wacky comeback but it wasn’t enough as Jacobs was able to pin BJ to ensue victory for Team Jimmy. It wasn’t the best of matches but the crowd love Colt and he delivered so you certainly can’t fault him for that.

2 out of 3 Falls: Matt Sydal vs Delerious
I’ve had a go at Sydal before for being the most generic babyface ever but my god has he turned that to his favour. He’s now a great cocky heel who has that ‘why don’t you love me?’ type of face. This was a really good match and the crowd were totally into both guys although Delerious was the guy they loved. Sydal was doing some old school heel spots like using Delerious’ ribbon things to choke him and then claming it was part of his own attire. Sydal won the first fall with a low blow and roll up and Delerious evened things up tapping Matt. It went back and forth through the final fall until Sydal was able to hit the Sydal press for the three. I though this would be a total spotfest with my opinion on Matt Sydal but he managed to flip my thoughts 180 degrees and I look forward more from him.

We got a brief interval where two more beers were consumed and more chat with a crazy Fin ensued. After the interval two British women wrestlers, Jetter and Eden Black, got in the ring and tried to cut an American promo challenging the two Shimmer girls to a match the next night.

FIP ‘World’ Title: Pac vs Roderick Strong
Apparently now the FIP title has been defended in two countries it is a world title. I guess to most the UK and the US are the only countries in the world. I thought these two did a really good job considering they got the death spot. The crowd were well into Pac and into Strong’s chops. Pac did a crazy twisting dive off the apron to the outside and this was the factor of getting the crowd into it. After this they mainly did spots and nearfalls with Strong retaining the belt (surprise, surprise) with the Gibson driver. Post match Strong put Pac in a boston crab but Delerious hit the ring and chased off Roddy. The crowd chanted “bring back Pac” to try and send a message to Gabe.

ROH World Tag Team Title Match: The Briscoes vs Naruki Doi & Shingo
This was one of those matches where all guys worked really hard (meaning they beat the snot out of each other) but the lack of psychology meant I didn’t really enjoy the match that much. But, that said the crowd were really into it with loads of “this is awesome” chants. I think the tag style I like is very old school and these guys didn’t really adhere to it but that said the atmosphere was really good and it great to experience that. The crowd went wild for the title change and after the match there Jay challenged Mark to a match the next night as they had some aggression to take out.

Samoa Joe vs Nigel McGuiness
Boy oh boy oh boy was this great. The crowd loved Nigel when he came out but the tide soon turned to Joe’s favour when he hit the ring. The heat was amazing and they had a really good match. It was one of those matches where nobody has the heat for too long and they both kept on doing awesome comebacks in each other. Eventually Joe hit a muscle buster on Nigel to the apron (it looked awesome) and the crowd went wild. Referees came down and carried Nigel to the back but Joe called him a ‘pussy’ prompting Nigel to hit the ring and hit Joe as hard as humanly possible. This was the turning point as the crowd got behind Nigel and Joe beat the fuck out of him. Nigel kicked out a muscle buster at two and got a great nearfall himself with a rollup. But it was all too much as Joe made the Londoner tap. After the match Joe put over ROH and Nigel telling him the company is in his hands and he’s glad he’s leaving it with a guy like him.

After the show whilst waiting for my lift Colt Cabana came out and I asked him where Matt was tonight but apparently he was doing push ups in the garage and couldn’t make the show. Delerious also came out in his mask which was pretty cool but he did speak English to me.

Overall this was a great show. I think any show live, with a great crowd like this makes a show really enjoyable. Some of the matches weren’t great and were spot fests but they certainly weren’t horrible and the crowd was into everything. Unfortunately, I can’t make the Sunday night show, but I wish I could. Was it better than Unified then? I don’t know. Last time we had an awesome main event and an alright undercard but the experience was great. This time we had a great main event and a very good undercard and the experience was really good so I have to say as an event yes, but nothing can touch Dragon/McGuiness from last time. Sorry.