Official ROH Discussion Thread

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

Hate : Chapter II

[gadge]

From The Ashes - Phoenix, AZ - 26/3/10

 

Colt Cabana vs Johnny Goodtime vs Rasche Brown vs Joey Ryan vs Human Tornado vs Shawn Daivari - The first six man mayhem in ages, it must be WrestleMania weekend or something. Not much to really note here involving no-one you really care about too much. There's some Rasche Brown vs Embassy stuff before Colt Cabana submits Goodtime (who else?) with the Billy Goats Curse in nine minutes. A so-so opener.

 

The Kings of Wrestling vs Scott Lost & Scorpio Sky - Now this is more like it. The SoCal duo of Lost & Sky impress once again and would be a more than worthy addition to the regular tag team roster if ROH felt they could afford the flights. They get some steam on Hero & Claudio here before the Kings Reign Supreme with the KRS-One on Lost in 12:45. I'm really looking forward to Hero & Claudio getting the belts, though they worked parts of this match like faces when they will surely be pushed as the bad guys when their shot at the Briscoes actually comes at The Big Bang.

 

Alex Koslov vs Rocky Romero - While I appreciate both guys getting pre-match promos, Koslov's one here goes on for ages. In Russian. This is going at a million miles an hour and the crowd are eating it up, which makes it feel a lot better than their match at Final Battle 2009, then Koslov rolls through the Diablo Armbar and stacks Romero up for the pin at just 6:55. I'd have liked this to get five more minutes at least, but it was fun while it lasted.

 

Necro Butcher vs Bison Smith is supposed to be after that, but after a good, extended brawl all around the building, the rest of the Embassy come out and lead Bison to the back before he ever gets into the ring. Necro is awarded the victory but there's no official match, though challenges are issued for the show the next afternoon...

 

Kenny Omega vs Kevin Steen - A decent match if a bit unspectacular, mainly as Steen's heel character keeps the crowd going not by action, but with his verbals and by trying to come up with as many ways to gross everyone out as possible. Omega plays the valiant blue-eye well, and the crowd come totally unglued at the end of this long 17:57 encounter when he starts throwing Steen around and trying to set up Croyt's Wrath. Steen avoids it though, and nails a low blow and package piledriver for two, then moves into the crossface for a submission victory. The low blow in the finish was very sports entertainment and unnecessary, but the match was fine overall.

 

Steve Corino vs El Generico - The best Corino match since his return, unsurprisingly. I was surprised they didn't run an angle to segue from the previous match to this. Solid stuff overall, with the highlight being Generico's big comeback up to and including the coast-to-coast dropkick, though at that point Steen turns up and pulls the ref out, and Generico then falls to a roll-up and feet on the ropes right after at 13:02. Another cliche finish. Corino and Steen vs Cabana and Generico is made for The Big Bang afterwards.

 

Tyler Black vs Austin Aries - Part one of the first night of a personal challenge series between Black and Roderick Strong, this started out hot in a similar vein to their previous match with the title change, died off a bit, then was just starting to heat up again when Tyler won with a roll-up at 11:25. Aries jumps Tyler for a brief beatdown then we head straight to part two of the challenge...

 

Tyler Black vs Roderick Strong - Strong declines Aries' offer of the chance to double team Tyler and sends him packing, but then jumps Tyler to kickstart this match. Sadly the crowd are dead for this and to be fair they don't do much to really get the crowd going. Tyler gets a three count after the Buckle Bomb/superkick combo, but Roderick clearly had his foot on the ropes and Todd Sinclair never calls for the bell, then Roderick gets the pin in the middle of the ring after a Yakuza kick and a Gibson Driver at 7:53. I hope the next night's version of this gauntlet is better than this one, as the angle pretty much fell flat here.

 

Kenny King vs Jerry Lynn - Lynn promises an old-school ECW-style fight and we more or less get that here. As seen in TNA over the summer though, those guys that were in ECW are now much older and slower, and that style tends to be severely anachronistic when put in a modern promotion. There's also a bizarre imbalance, as King seems prepared to go into the ROH guardrails, but uncomfortable with taking the ECW-esque spots, so Lynn takes almost all the big blows, and when King is set to be sunset flip powerbombed through a table he doesn't go over properly and the table doesn't break. Lynn follows that with the cradle piledriver on the table for the pin at 12:58. An alright match, I guess.

 

ROH World Tag Team Titles: The Briscoes vs The American Wolves - For the DVD viewer, there's absolutely no chance of the Wolves getting the belt back here with Briscoes vs Kings of Wrestling already set for The Big Bang. The live crowd don't offer up more than polite applause for the first 20 minutes, then bust out a couple of ridiculously undeserved chants of the dreaded "This is Awesome" in the final five minutes. Eddie Edwards kicks out of the Jay Driller (he is the TV champ, after all) before falling to the doomsday device at 26:57. Overall, this would have benefitted from being 5-10 minutes shorter so they could make the match more action packed, as this felt prolonged and never reached anything like top gear. A solid but totally skippable main event.

 

An underwhelming show by the standards of previous ROH Wrestlemania weekend efforts, it started out pretty well but the top four matches failed to deliver anything particularly, well, good. DVD run time is 2 hours, 53 minutes.

 

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Phoenix...

 

Dragon Gate USA: Open The Ultimate Gate - Phoenix, AZ - 26/3/10

 

Immediate comparisons to the ROH show from elsewhere in town - first, the venue here is nicer, though smaller and nowhere near full. Whereas ROH had a sizeable crowd in that could have been approaching a thousand people, the crowd here is probably 300. Production is generally nicer here, with the venue having better lighting and the video quality is better too. The entrance music and mic are both too loud, causing an awful distortion, though it doesn't affect the actual matches. Lenny Leonard is on commentary, which is easier on the ears than the Prazak/Dombrowski duo that have done ROH in 2010, but having him commentating without a partner highlights the fact DG:USA is smaller in scale than ROH. Onto the action...

 

Susumu Yokosuka & Genki Horiguchi vs Mike Quackenbush & Jigsaw - A decent tag team opener hindered more by outside issues than the actual action. Quackenbush & Jigsaw have been on an undefeated run as a team in DG:USA, but in the early going Lenny Leonard mentions Yokosuka is challenging YAMATO for the Dream Gate title on the next night's show, which telegraphs the result. Also, Genki has turned face and joined the WARRIORS faction, and is actively encouraging the H-A-G-E chants again. You have to think Quackenbush & Jigsaw vs Real Hazard would have had a better dynamic. Still, this is good stuff within the confines of a face vs face encounter, and you can always turn the commentary off. Yokosuka defeats Quackenbush with the Mugen at 13:36.

 

YAMATO vs TJP - Again, YAMATO being the new Open the Dream Gate champion telegraphs the result of this one. However, at least TJP can do the underdog face thing pretty well, so there's an obvious story. YAMATO gets the win with his choke-sleeper at 11:23.

 

Brian Kendrick & Jon Moxley vs Jimmy Jacobs & Paul London - Jacobs vs Kendrick/Moxley has been one of the only American-based feuds run in DG:USA so far, but Jacobs has only been moderately successful as the blue-eye. London here completely outdoes him in that respect, even with elements of his wacky spaceman gimmick coming across, including a wander around the ring during his entrance that exposes the gaps in the crowd. In the match itself, London is after Kendrick pushing him athletically as he has in the past, but Kendrick spends most of his time avoiding him, leaving Moxley (who is really good here) to do most of the dirty work, and happily London adjusts to a more aggressive style to combat the bigger man. It's a good performance all round from London in fact, as he looks sharp. Jacobs looks to be taking charge when Kendrick rolls him up out of nowhere for the pin at 13:52. An odd finish that does Jacobs no favours, but a match I enjoyed a lot overall.

 

There's an angle afterwards where Kendrick talks London out of trying to put Moxley through a table, then Teddy Hart comes out for reasons I never really understand, and London and Kendrick combine to wipe Hart out. While Hart gets a big reaction from the crowd, and the swerve was quite good to reunite London and Kendrick, Hart just comes across as a smug bastard to me, and I would much prefer it if he wasn't involved.

 

SHINGO vs Masato Yoshino - The build up to this singles encounter has been excellent, and I was really up for this. It's probably a case of overly high expectations then, as while this is undoubtedly a good match I spent most of it waiting for it to become really great and it didn't *quite* happen. Lenny Leonard annoyed me again when he couldn't figure out the reasoning behind Yoshino targetting SHINGO's arm, even though SHINGO had an obvious bad knee that was taped up. For those paying attention, there's a very good reason - Sol Naciente - and it was no massive surprise when Yoshino got the submission victory with Sol Naciente Kai at 16:06. The defeated SHINGO left with Jon Moxley afterwards in what appears to be a development for the future.

 

Open The Freedom Gate Title: BxB Hulk vs Naruki Doi - This is another match where the matchmaking bothered me a bit. While he may have just lost the ODG title at this point, Doi has been the man to beat in Dragon Gate and his challenge for this title could have been made out to be a much bigger deal. Instead, this comes across as a bit of a throwaway title defense for Hulk. The crowd don't seem to buy into the possibility of a title change at all, and Hulk retains in just 14:01 with H-Thunder. An alright match, but certainly a lost opportunity.

 

CIMA, GAMMA & Dragon Kid vs Jack Evans & The Young Bucks - This is billed as CIMA's opportunity to get his win back from the Young Bucks from the debut show, and with the Bucks now signed to TNA, it again doesn't leave the result wide open to speculation. Jack Evans (who challenges Paul London and Brian Kendrick to a match for the next night before starting this one) slots in quite nicely as the Bucks partner. Unlike some other matches on the show, I had memories of this one being compared negatively with other Dragon Gate six man tags. Of course, billing a match with a team of Jack Evans & The Young Bucks as a Dragon Gate six-man is stretching it somewhat, but I was still pleasantly surprised with the match that I got. A decent effort all round, ending in CIMA pinning Matt Jackson with Meteora at 18:02.

 

CIMA pimps the next night's show in his usual post-show speech, then backstage Jon Moxley is still getting in the head of SHINGO, probably trying to motivate him to actually start winning some matches in DGUSA. That's it until tomorrow night...

 

DVD run time is 2 hours, 15 minutes, but of course you also get another 1 hour, 52 minutes on the second DVD...

 

Bonus matches

 

Four bonus matches can be found on the bonus disc of this one. First is the pre-show FRAY!, a match format I really dislike, which features local guys The Prophet and Chimera, who look okay for the first couple of minutes, The Cutler Brothers who I recently saw for the first time in PWG, Irish Airborne, who still suck, and a couple of others before Brad Allen wins in 15:51. Second is a "lucha" tag team match, seemingly from the main show, which I'd rather gouge out my eyes than ever watch again. L.A. Park & El Hijo De Rey Misterio defeat Derrick Neikirk & G. O. Gallo by Dusty Finish DQ after a painful 22:54. Yuck. Then, there's two decent efforts from Japan:

 

Masaaki Mochizuki vs Roderick Strong - This is from Wrestle JAM, on 10/7/06. Mochizuki and Strong have decent chemistry, better than Mochizuki and Davey Richards I'd say, and have a decent clobbering battle a bit reminiscent of the early Strong vs Erick Stevens battles. It's certain doom for Roderick when Mochizuki kicks out of his gutbuster-big boot-Gibson Driver combo, and indeed Mochizuki wins with a high kick shortly after at 13:46. Good match though.

 

Naruki Doi vs Masato Yoshino - Speed Muscle collide in a battle for the Open The Dream Gate title from 11/6/09. A really corking match that is value for every moment of it's 28:13. Doi retains after a series of Bakatare sliding kicks. Excellent stuff.

 

Overall, Open The Ultimate Gate is a bit of a misnomer, as this is possibly the least essential DGUSA show so far, but when you throw in really cool bonus matches like the Doi vs Yoshino one here, it's still a double disc set worth having. Compared to the ROH show going on at the same time, there's probably better in-ring stuff going on in the DGUSA ring, but it still didn't feel as big a deal as the ROH show. Both promotions putting forth seperate efforts at the same time was definitely to the detriment of both shows, as the ROH show could have really used some DG action and the DGUSA show could really have used the ROH crowd. Never mind. It'll be interesting to see how the next night's DGUSA show looks and if it drew a bigger crowd with the next day's ROH show having gone on in the afternoon.

Edited November 19, 2010 by gadge

[air_raid]

Good reading. Have taken a few deliveries over the last few weeks and as well as some catchup shows from every year since 2005, and the first three volumes of ROH on HDNet, I have received the following shows from 2010, cant wait to dive in :

 

8th Aniversary Show

Epic Encounter III

Bitter Friends Stiffer Enemies 2

Supercard Of Honor V

Death Before Dishonor VIII (& Buffalo Stampede 2)

Hate Chapter 2

Salvation

Champions Challenge

Tag Wars 2010

Fade To Black

Glory By Honor IX

[False Alarm!]

Curious, but what's regarded as the best shows by year?

 

Cheers

[jm29195]

Curious, but what's regarded as the best shows by year?

 

Cheers

 

Personally I would say

 

2002

 

Round Robin Challenge - The Daniels/Low ki/Dragon round robin series, especially, Ki/Dragon with Shamrock as ref

Glory By Honor 1 - Samoa Joe's debut against Low ki in a great matvh

 

2003

 

1st Anniversary Show - Corino/Homicide with a riot, Dragon/Joe, London/Styles/Ki

 

 

 

 

2004

 

Joe vs. Punk II - Joe vs Punk 60 minute match

Testing the Limit - Aries/Dragon 75 minute match

 

2005

 

Manhattan Mayhem - McGuinness/Cabana, Back Tiger/Gibson, Joe/Lethal, Punk/Rave, Homicide/Ki v Joe/Lethal

Joe vs Kobashi - Joe vs Kobashi!

 

2006

 

Supercard of Honor - DG 6 Man, Strong/Danielson, nearly 60 minute match

Unified - McGuinness/Danielson, Strong/Aries v Briscoes

 

2007

 

Good Times Great Memories - Briscoes v MCMG, Shingo/Morishima

Driven - Castagnoli/Sydal, Dragon/McGuinness, DVD comes with Danielson/KENTA

Man Up - Ladder War, Briscoes v Steen/Generico

 

2008

 

Final Battle 2008 - McGuinness/ Marifuiji, Danielson/Morishima

Rising Above 2008 - Aries/Jacobs, Danielson/McGuinness, Black/Joe

 

2009

 

Final Countdown Tour: The Final Countdown- Danielson v McGuinness, Ladder War, Wolves v. Steen/Generico

 

2010

 

Death by Dishonor 8 - Black/Richards, Steen/Generico, KOW v Briscoes

Edited November 21, 2010 by jm29195

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

Hmmm, that's a good one. Here's my pick :

 

2002 - Road To The Title - Jody vs. Johnny, AJ vs Lynn, Doug vs. Dragon ...

 

2003 - War of the Wire - Corino vs Homicide, AJ vs Joe...who cares about the rest of the card!!

 

2004 - Joe vs. Punk 2 - one of the best matches of the decade, plus a cracking tag match - Evans & Strong vs. Homicide & Romero

 

2005 - Manhatten Mayhem - there wasn't a bad match on the card was there?

 

2006 - GBH 5 Night 2 - Danielson vs KENTA, Marufuji vs. McGuinness and the Kings vs. Aries/ Strong

 

2007 - RTTT Night 2 - cracking card from top to bottom

 

2008 - Up For Grabs - probably the best overall card of the year

 

2009 - Violent Tendencies - I know Gadge will disagree with this, but the tag match was the match of the year for me, as well as a solid main and a decent undercard

Edited November 21, 2010 by Dearly Devoted Dexter

[Dil|kid]

a lot of my picks are 1/2 match shows

 

2002 - Era of Honor Begins

 

2003 - War of the Wire

 

2004 - Generation Next

 

2005 - Manhatten Mayhem

 

2006 - Death Before Dishonor 4

 

2007 - FYF Finale

 

2008 - Final Battle

 

2009 - Glory By Honor 8

 

 

2007 - RTTT Night 2 - cracking card from top to bottom

 

a great pick one of my faves, great tag match and awesome final.

Edited November 21, 2010 by joe mills

[air_raid]

Similarly for me I would take the show from each year that had the one or two matches that you MUST see as an ROH fan. Although some of these are obviously personal choices rather than a ROHbot consensus. For example Joe/Punk was an excellent match, but I thought Joe/Aries told the the most compelling story of any match I've seen in ROH. Also some are actually emotional/storyline reasons rather than the absolute best matches, like a turn or defining moment.

 

2002

Crowning A Champion - Low Ki vs Chris Daniels vs Doug Williams vs Spanky (Iron Man match to determine ROH Champion)

- OR -

Glory By Honor - Low Ki vs Samoa Joe

 

2003

Death Before Dishonor - Samoa Joe vs Paul London (ROH title), AJ Styles/Red vs The Briscoes (Tag Team title)

 

2004

Joe vs Punk II - Samoa Joe vs CM Punk (ROH title, best match of the three)

- OR -

Final Battle 2004 - Samoa Joe vs Austin Aries (ROH title)

 

2005

Joe vs Kobashi - Samoa Joe vs Kenta Kobashi

- OR -

Final Battle 2005 - Bryan Danielson vs Naomichi Marufuji (ROH title), KENTA vs Low Ki (GHC Junior title)

 

2006

Unified - Bryan Danielson v Nigel McGuinness (ROH title), Aries/Strong vs The Briscoes (Tag Team title)

- OR -

Glory By Honor V Night 2 - Bryan Danielson v KENTA (ROH title), Naomichi Marufuji v Nigel McGuinness (GHC heavyweight title)

 

2007

Uprising - Nigel McGuinness vs Austin Aries (ROH title)

- OR -

Final Battle 2007 - The Briscoes vs Jimmy Jacobs & Tyler Black (Tag Team titles) - ok, very personal choice there, but I love that match.

 

2008

Driven 2008 - Jimmy Jacobs & Tyler Black vs Kevin Steen & El Generico (Tag Team titles)

- OR -

Final Battle 2008 - Nigel McGuinness vs Naomichi Marufuji (ROH title), Austin Aries vs Tyler Black

 

2009

7th Anniversary Show - Nigel McGuinness vs KENTA (ROH title)

Bollocks, I don't want to think of another. If you offer me only one match from 2009 ROH, I take that one.

 

2010

Consensus at present seems to be that Death Before Dishonor VIII will be the best show from 2010 for Black/Richards.

Edited November 22, 2010 by air_raid_crash

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

Kings vs MCMG was Supercard of Honor 5. For 2010, there's been a couple of good cards - DBD8, SCOH5, and I also thought Pick Your Poison/ Good Friends Stiffer Enemies 2 were both quality shows...I'm sure Gadge and I did a "20 best ROH shows of all time thing a couple of years ago", its buried somewhere in the thread

[air_raid]

GBH IX looks good on paper, but the proof will be in the pudding and I'm nowhere near there yet.

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

Quick question - did the Bravados vs. Super Smash Brothers match ever air on TV, and if so what date?

[air_raid]

A quick Ctrl+F of my results list shows it did not air.

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

Blimey, it must have been shite for them not to air it, that was part of the Tag Wars things too. Just received Fade to Black/ GBH 9 in the mail, working my way through Salvation at the mo.

[air_raid]

I was thrilled when Fade To Black arrived because I mainly bought it for the Danielson match on disc II from New Horizons, didnt even realize THIS :

 

Tyler Black vs. Bryan Danielson vs. Kenny Omega- Bound By Hate 11/8/08

 

was on disc I, what with Bound By Hate being OOP too! w00t!

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

Here's what they said....

 

Kenny Omega vs. Brian Danielson vs. Tyler Black - it always baffles me slightly when a young wrestler is put in a match with someone really good and it