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.

ROH Weekend Of Champions Night 1 Review

28/04/2006
It's night one of the so called weekend of champions. The ROH/CZW war continues and all three champions are defending their belts, should be a good show.

Jimmy Jacobs vs Colt Cabana

They start out with comedy but Jacobs turns it nasty by pulling Colt into the ring post. The basics of the match are that Colt is awesome and if Jimmy Jacobs didn’t have pink tights he’d be instantly forgettable. Colt wins meaning Lacey is going to sack off young Jimmy.

Colt is still in the ring and Jim Cornette with Ace Steel come to the ring to ask for his help in the war with CZW. Colt initially rejects saying he needs to concentrate on learning how to wrestle as his defeat to Danielson at the last show means he’s only opening show material. He then changes his mind, brands Claudio as a traitor and vows to win the war for ROH.

Jay Fury & Spud vs Irish Airborne

Spud (the better looking, younger and cleaner Spike Dudley) is making his debut here in ROH and his main act is a few spinny high spots whilst screaming a lot the rest of the time. It actually turned out to be a decent little match with Irish Airborne getting the victory and seemingly a push in this company.

Super Dragon runs from the emergency exit and attacks an ROH ring crew dude; legging it before the ROH army get to him.

Nigel McGuiness cuts a fun little promo saying he’ll beat Daniels tonight and Danielson tomorrow night proving he’s the best wrestler in the world. I really like his promos because he cuts them as an Englishman, not an Englishman trying to do an American promo.

Jimmy Rave w/Daizee Haize vs Delirious

My god this match is boring. Jimmy Rave is so boring when he’s on offence. I love Delirious but even he can’t save this match. Fifteen minutes ticks over on the clock and we reach a time limit draw. Thank god it wasn’t an hour time limit.

ROH Pure Championship: Nigel McGuiness vs Christopher Daniels

No Alison Danger with the fallen angel tonight as he challenges Nigel for the pure title. They have a fine little match and I love Nigel as a heel, he was doing all of Danielson’s spots here to setup their match tomorrow; awesome. Nigel and Daniels brawl outside and Nigel gets the win by throwing the photographer into Daniels at nineteen meaning he can’t meet the twenty count. The crowd chant bullshit but this is goof heat not bad heat. I love Nigel.

ROH World Championship: “American Dragon” Bryan Danielson vs Jimmy Yang

Yang isn’t a redneck tonight and is wearing the same white tights he wore at Wrestlemania 20. Watching this match makes you realise that Danielson is actually very small, smaller than Yang. I guess that’s why WWE isn’t begging him to come in and it’s the reason I hope he doesn’t ever go. Selfish I know. They have another good little match, it’s not the main event so it doesn’t matter too much but Yang is a decent worker and what they do is fine. Danielson eventually wins with a crossface chickenwing Bob Backlund would be proud of.

ROG Tag Team Championship: Roderick Strong & Austin Aries vs Matt Sydal & Samoa Joe

Yes Sydal teams with Joe. The story is Sydal wants a title in ROH and is in a competitive rivalry with Generation Next. Last week he had AJ as his partner and this week it’s Joe. The match starts off pretty boring as the man of a thousand moves Matt Sydal does a lot of his moves. Eventually Team Sydal turn kind of heel and get the heat. Sydal is a bad heel, he handles the moves where Joe handles the psychology. Eventually Aries gets the hot tag to Strong and a short comeback ensues. Now it’s Aries and Strong’s turn to get the heat. Sydal is much better at selling as the babyface in distress and Aries and Strong are pretty good on offence. We get another hot tag and Joe cleans house until he’s taken out and a bunch of nearfalls happen in the ring with Aries, Strong and Sydal. Joe makes a second comeback and they get a damn good nearfall with a standing moonsault by Sydal. But Joe gets taken out again and the half nelson backbreaker – 450 combo put out Sydal. In the end this turned out to be a damn good little match.

Joe is in the ring alone and calls out CZW. Necro Butcher obliges and they start to brawl. Super Dragon and Nate Webb hit the ring to make it three on one to CZW but Colt Cabana and Ace steel even things up. Joe drags Necro to the back only to be tied up by Webb meaning he’s out of the brawl. Claudio hits the ring to give further advantage to CZW but BJ Whitmer broken neck and all cleans house with a chair and Adam Pearce evens things up. A mass brawl ensues with tons of crowd brawling and Pearce giving Nate a piledriver on the concrete. Back in the ring Necro slams Ace on a chair and covers him for a two count! THIS IS A MATCH? It would appear so who are the competitors? I guess Necro and Nate are and it appears Super Dragon and BJ are as another two count happens between these two. Is BJ booked in this match considering he’s meant to be out with a broken neck? At least they’re not doing a normal tag match now like they would in TNA. Super Dragon, Claudio and BJ tease a spot where Dragon will break BJ’s neck with a chair that Claudio holds in place. Ace breaks it up once and Colt the second time but they eventually hit it and it doesn’t actually look that brutal. Claudio picks up BJ and hits him with Joe’s muscle buster for the pin setting up their match tomorrow. CZW win again.

Overall this show was pretty damn good, especially the second half. For the second show on the trot they’ve done the brawl in the main event and it works. It’s one big fight with guys doing spots and taking crazy bumps but the heat is off the charts. The booking is prefect throughout this whole card; Nigel winning to face Danielson in a title for title match, Sydal just missing out again and CZW winning so we want to see ROH kick their arses. Good, good stuff and I’m looking forward to watching night 2.

7/10

ROH The 100th Show Review

So Ring of Honor reaches it's 100th show and Philadelphia will be the place that gets to witness it. This is the place where I've decided to watch these shows in order, I've seen a load of ROH shows but always random shows and considering how great the booking is in ROH it's a shame not to watch them in order. So, here we go:

Christopher Daniels defeated Claudio Castagnoli
Certainly not a great match but not a bad little opener. The key here is that Daniels finally shook his opponents hand after the match. When ROH first began there was months of angles based on the fact that Daniels wouldn't shake hands therefore disrespecting the code of honor. Notice whose hand he shook and who he showed respect to; this will be important later.

Four Corners Match: Delerious defeated Jimmy Jacobs, Jimmy Rave and Jimmy Yang
Your usual ROH four way with high spots galore and tons of nearfalls. Delerious makes me laugh so much for doing stupid things liek running round the ring and scaring his opponents. The story here is that if Jimmy Jacobs won Lacey (his girlfriend?) would strip naked but he didn't want her to so as he had the win he broke the cover and Delerious jumped in and got the win.

ROH Tag Title Match: Austin Aries & Roderick Strong defeated Homicide & Ricky Reyes
Short but told a good little story. Homicide lost to Colt Cabana at the last show and failed to win this match so is getting pissed at ROH. This is the key here.

ROH World Title Match: Bryan Danielson defeated Colt Cabana
In fact he beat him in four minutes. They did the usual chain wrestling like they would for an hour long match but Danielson rolled him up and pinned him. This was done to teach the ROH fans that matches can end quickly and to send Cabana down to the bottom of the card and have to work his way up to another title shot (which sometime down the road he will get). Colt was angry backstage.

Top of the Class Trophy Match: Derrick Dempsey defeated Pelle Primuea
Two students from the ROH school have a battle. It's a decent little match to have after intermission when the crowd really isn't ready for anything big. Primuea is very small and needs to attend the solarium. Dempsey won with a spinebuster into a bridge for the pin.

After the match Bryan Danielson comes out and takes the piss out of the CZW fans giving the ROH fans things to chant at them such as "you're going to get your fucking head kicked in." I love Dragon. When he finally stops getting heckled with the air horn ("I hate guys who think they're cool blowing air horns") he says as head trainer and ROH World Champion he believes he runs the place, but he's going to be a fighting champion. Because he beat Colt in four minutes he's going to defend the title again against somebody who son in the first half of the show. It's not going to be Danielson, Aries or Strong because he's already beaten them so it's...

ROH World Title Match: Bryan Danielson vs Delirious
This was a very good match with Delerious selling his arse off for Dragon and Dragon just being Dragon. Danielson went after the mask and when Delerious used Danielson's aeroplane spin Danielson picked him up and threw him into the ring post in a nasty looking bump. Delerious kept making the ropes on cattle mutulation and after a great babyface comeback Danielson locked it in again, but Delerious was able to make the ropes, again. So Dragon layed in the forearms leading to a ref stoppage. Delerious looked great here with his mask ripped and bloodied up and the crowd were still cheering him as he left the ring.

The Briscoes vs AJ Styles & Matt Sydal
Decent little tag match with the Briscoes getting the heat on Sydal. After the hot tag to Styles and few high spots Sydal is eventually pinned by Jay courtesy of the Jay driller.

Jim Cornette comes to ring backed up by Adam Pearce and his baseball bat. CZW's John Zandig is out and a great debate ensues. Well not really. Cornette owns Zandig putting over ROH and Philadelphia to loud cheers and trashing CZW with a passion. Zandig tries to take shots at Cornette taking the piss out of Smokey Mountain but he just hasn't got the skill. This was a little bit of fun but it was only to get the crowd riled up for the six man 'tag' match next up. Zandig calls his CZW crew to the ring but Joe and BJ appear on the ramp leading to...

ROH vs CZW: Samoa Joe, Adam Pearce & BJ Whitmer vs Necro Butcher, Chris Hero & Super Dragon
The best way to describe this match is guys doing shit. Lots of shit. My god was it messy. It starts with a huge brawl outside the ring with chairs being used by everyone and people being thrown into the barriers. If this was TNA after ten minutes of brawling all the guys would have got on the apron and had a normal tag match. Luckily this is ROH so the brawl just lasted forever. Pearce get busted open big time by Necro (who I'm sure is just a dude of the street with no training whatsoever) and Super Dragon did a reverse brainbuster on BJ off the turbcukle through a table to the floor. This looked terrifying. The finish came when Zandig interfered beating up Joe. The ROH referee said this was a DQ as in ROH not intereference is allowed but the CZW referee said this was under CZW rules so it didn't matter. Claudio (told you the handshake would mean something) hit the ring to even up the sides but turned his back on ROH and nailed Joe with a boot eventually allwoing Chris Hero to pick up the pin and get the win for CZW. The CZW crew scatter and Joe gets on the mic and warns them the war has only just started.

In terms of pure wrestling this wasn't the best ROH show you'll ever see. But in terms of storytelling and great angles this was a fun show. There were no classic matches but the main event did a great job in setting up the ROH CZW war and the storytelling leading up to this is the key in making the show great.

6/10

ROH Unified DVD Review

I just watched this show on DVD and it was almost as good as it was live. The main event rocked the world with Danielson and Nigel beating the crap out of each other. Nigel's bumps on the ringpost must have given him a concussion or something; my god he headbutted it so hard. Diving into the crowd isn't generally recomended but somehow ROH manage to get away with and Bryan Danielson's awesomeness allow him to do anything he wants in the world.

Colt Cabana continues to be great and this night was no exception scaring Spud at every opportunity in the four corners match. Matt Sydal has the potential to be really great, his spots are awesome but improving how he uses them will make him even better. Plus he's a sound guy after chatting to him at the show so he deserves some recongnition.

Roderick Strong and Austin Aries defenidng the world tag belts against the Briscoes was an awesome match live but seemed to have something missing on the DVD. All four guys are really really good but they're not going to last much longer if they continue to do half the stuff they did here. Chopping each other as hard as they can and being dropped on your head isn't exactly a carrer prolonging activity.

All the other matches on the card were pretty decent undercard matches with Colt doing double duty going against Chris Hero, Robbie Brookside defending his FWA belt in a match that was far better on DVD than it came across live and Davey Richards defeating Jimmy Rave in a match that was good but had far too many near falls.

Overall this show was awesome live and this trnasferred to DVD. You have to love the unification match simply for the passion from both men and the tag title match is excellent. ROH's first event outside the US had to be considered a success and that's why they're coming back!