Official ROH Discussion Thread

[cobystag]

Lack of Nigel vs Black Take No Prisoners 08, Nigel vs KENTA 7th Anniversary and Wolves vs Young Bucks from the Sept 09 TV tapings is pretty shocking.

[gadge]

Most of my changes are in the early years, by about 3/4 down the list was a blur. Still, for now...

 

Add:

 

Low Ki vs Christopher Daniels vs Doug Williams vs Spanky (Crowning a Champion)

American Dragon vs Paul London (Night of the Butcher)

Christopher Daniels vs Doug Williams (Night of Champions)

Samoa Joe vs Jay Briscoe (At Our Best)

Spanky vs James Gibson (3AC Part 2)

Samoa Joe vs Jay Lethal (Manhattan Mayhem)

Austin Aries vs American Dragon (Nowhere to Run)

 

Remove:

 

Lo-Ki vs Flash Barker (Frontiers of Honor)

Briscoes vs Colt Cabana & CM Punk (DBD2 Part 1)

Nigel McGuinness vs Delirious (TTMU)

Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles (TTMU)

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

Lack of Nigel vs Black Take No Prisoners 08, Nigel vs KENTA 7th Anniversary and Wolves vs Young Bucks from the Sept 09 TV tapings is pretty shocking.

 

Christ, I'm dying for you to say something positive. Ok -

 

KENTA vs McGuinness - not really a classic. It was compelling and at times disturbing viewing.

 

Tyler vs McGuinness - not really a fan of that one, thought it was a touch overrated.

 

Wolves vs. Bucks - yeah I'll give you that one.

 

EDIT : Re Gadge's additions - I plan to try and rewatch some 2002 at some point in the next few months, so I'll save any of those amendments until then.

 

Lo-Ki vs Flash Barker (Frontiers of Honor) - I thought this was a cracking shoot-style affair. The finish sucked, but still.

Briscoes vs Colt Cabana & CM Punk (DBD2 Part 1) - tremendous 2/3 falls tag match from what I can recall.

Nigel McGuinness vs Delirious - one of Delirious' break-out matches for me, although maybe there a couple of near-falls too many.

Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles (TTMU) - I liked the fact that instead of going out there and doing twenty five minutes as you might have expected, they stuffed a bundle of stuff into 12 minutes.

Edited March 13, 2011 by Dearly Devoted Dexter

[gadge]

I hope you're not going to subject yourself to entire 2002 cards!

 

Fade To Black - Plymouth, MA - 10/9/10

 

World TV Title: Eddie Edwards vs Erick Stevens - Hometown boy Eddie Edwards is first out of the gate, putting his title on the line as befits his new alignment as a proper fan favourite. Edwards and Stevens have a decent enough match here, with the pro-Edwards crowd definitely helping. Stevens puts in a solid performance as well, though his previous overexposure means there's really little hope for him advancing beyond opening match loser. Indeed, probably the only complaint I have is that the finish didn't put Edwards over strongly enough, as he counters Ghanarrea with a backslide for the popular victory at 10:56.

 

Grizzly Redwood vs 'Brutal' Bob Evans - Brutal doesn't begin to cover this either. Right at the beginning, Kevin Kelly is talking about Evans having 16-18 years experience and being noted as a trainer... while they go through some trainee-level sequences. Then, Grizzly gets involved with an encroaching ringsider, that the camera watches as he gets ejected. Grizzly ends up winning with a lame looking rollup at 5:18 that felt much, much longer...

 

Kyle O'Reilly vs Austin Aries - This is billed as a Do or Die match, and A-Double talks up O'Reilly as a big kicker in his obligatory promo. What subsequently plays out has to be considered a disappointment. O'Reilly does get some big kicks in, but the match is at least five minutes too short at 7:38, and distinctly lacking in actual wrestling content. Aries doesn't help matters early on by playing up to the cheers of the crowd with some OTT antics. I will say that the action we get is decent, there just isn't enough of it to really establish O'Reilly in any meaningful way. O'Reilly kicks out of the IED/brainbuster combo, but then takes another kick to the head and taps to the Last Chancery for a submission loss. Must do better ROH...

 

First Blood: The Necro Butcher & Shawn Daivari vs Kevin Steen & Steve Corino - I literally have no idea why this match is happening, let alone under First Blood rules. There is some pretty fun, chaotic brawling to be had here, but the First Blood stip means it was never going to be a long bout. Steen is choking Necro with a chain when Corino breaks a beer bottle open on the ring post and uses it to slice Necro open for the win at 6:51. Yikes.

 

The All Night Express vs Matt Taven & Sid Reeves - Taven & Reeves must be locals, as they have a female cheering squad in the crowd on their entrance. It doesn't do Taven much good as he slips on an attempted springboard in one of his few chances to impress. The rest is an exhibition for the ANX who get a double pin victory in just 6:22.

 

The show is really in need of a chunk of decent wrestling at this point...

 

Roderick Strong vs Mike Bennett - On this evidence, Bennett isn't going to be the one to bring the wrestling any time soon. He has a good physique, nice punches, and drops a few elbows... and that's about it. Strong basically mat wrestles around him at the beginning. They briefly go to ringside, and Roderick mocks a fan in the crowd at one point. Nothing else really happens until Roderick hits a flurry, then uses Tyler's superkick for the win at 9:41. This isn't unwatchable, but it's some way from exciting.

 

World Tag Team Titles: The Kings of Wrestling vs Colt Cabana & El Generico - Now this is more like it. For starters, Cabana's obligatory shenanigans at the beginning are at least based around his wrestling rather than instead of actual wrestling. Generico then takes a beating in a heat segment that the crowd really buys into, which helps immensely. Cabana's cleaning house is a bit goofy, but works, and an appearance in the aisle by Steen and Corino adds to the match rather than detracting from it, adding to the heat for the nearfalls at the end. Indeed, Steen and Corino have returned backstage for a good couple of minutes when the end comes, as Cabana takes one combination of European Uppercuts and rolling elbows too many and is pinned by Hero at 13:35. A good, basically clean title defense for the Kings, which makes up for the inexplicable nature of Cabana and Generico's title shot...

 

Tyler Black vs Christopher Daniels - This one is a bit of a mixed bag when you lay it out on paper, but overall I enjoyed this main event quite a lot. For most of the first third, Black is reacting to the crowd's taunts about his imminent departure, culminating in him threatening to walk only to find Daniels has gone through the crowd, all round the building and is waiting in the entrance way again to force him back in the ring. The match then continues, and you get the smooth action you'd expect from a match with Daniels without it ever going into overkill. Indeed, there's no God's Last Gift from Tyler at all, and both the BME and Phoenix Splash are rolled through. Suddenly, Daniels hits Last Rites but the thirty minute time limit has expired and you wonder where the time has gone.

 

After the match, they do the gimmick where Tyler turns down five more minutes, only here that brings out Roderick Strong to feed Tyler back to Daniels. Strong then follows him in only to lay out Daniels by accident, and bingo you have Daniels set up for when Strong wins the belt. A nice, simple angle that goes to show how easy it is to tell stories without nonsense finishes.

 

Overall - A good main event, and two solid title matches, but most of the rest had serious issues in some way or another. DVD run time for the main show is just 2 hours, 5 minutes, which makes a couple of the shorter matches all the more perplexing. The Boston-area crowd were hot for what they got, which made the good better, but for matches like Aries vs O'Reilly they were seemingly easily satisfied by the star power of Aries alone.

 

It should also be noted that there's a shed load of Tyler Black matches as bonus material, with Age of the Fall winning the tag titles at Final Battle 2007, Black vs Danielson on HDNet episode 18, and Black vs Danielson vs Omega from Bound By Hate filling out disc one in addition to another entire disc worth of stuff. DVD purchase for the main show alone isn't essential, but future Seth Rollins fans could easily use this to catch up on his ROH work...

Edited March 13, 2011 by gadge

[gadge]

EDIT : Re Gadge's additions - I plan to try and rewatch some 2002 at some point in the next few months, so I'll save any of those amendments until then.

 

Lo-Ki vs Flash Barker (Frontiers of Honor) - I thought this was a cracking shoot-style affair. The finish sucked, but still.

Briscoes vs Colt Cabana & CM Punk (DBD2 Part 1) - tremendous 2/3 falls tag match from what I can recall.

Nigel McGuinness vs Delirious - one of Delirious' break-out matches for me, although maybe there a couple of near-falls too many.

Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles (TTMU) - I liked the fact that instead of going out there and doing twenty five minutes as you might have expected, they stuffed a bundle of stuff into 12 minutes.

 

I was bored of Ki/Barker live. Watching it on DVD/VHS(!) was unlikely to change my mind. I enjoyed Joe/Zebra a lot more at the time.

 

I can't STAND the 2/3 falls Briscoes vs SCS match, it still occasionally gets raves on the ROH forums, I remember waiting for it to end. Just a personal thing I guess.

 

The Time To Man Up matches I barely remember, unlike pretty much everything else on the list.

 

As for coby's additions, I'd probably recommend Nigel vs Tyler the first time around too, but I'm with you on the KENTA match. Disturbing yes, great match probably not. Nigel should have lost the title a long time before that, I'd say.

[cobystag]

Nigel vs KENTA still rates as one of my favourite live matches ever. Live bias I know, but I genuinely think it's one of his best matches as Champion. The dude was beat up to fuck and STILL managed to have a match that good.

[JPC]

A quick note. I've been watching Champions vs All Stars and Only The Strong Survive the last couple of days. Caprice Coleman needs to become a full time part of the roster this year. He deservedly got "Please come back" chants and standing ovations on both nights after matches with Colt Cabana and Rhett Titus.

 

TJ Perkins is another they need to bring in every show. Both guys bring experience and talent that the current undercard (Bravado's, Mike Bennett, Andy Ridge) lacks.

 

Edit: Finished these shows now.

 

A really good start to the year. Mostly due to Only The Strong Survive.

 

Champions vs All Stars is saved by three entertaining matches at the top of the card, those being; Colt Cabana vs. Caprice Coleman, Kenny King vs. Kyle O'Reilly and the eight man tag team match. The show also does a good job of setting up the future World title match between Roderick Strong and Christopher Daniels.

 

Only The Strong Survive is top to bottom a strong show and runs a whole three hours. Cole/O'Reilly have an okay opener with the Bravado's (wrong decision, no way the Bravado's should be winning here). Caprice Coleman has a good match with Rhett Titus. Colt and Grizzly have a fun little match, no complaints here. Christopher Daniels and Claudio Castagnoli have an absolute blinding TV title match. Chris Hero and Davey Richards have an excellent technical and hard hitting match. The four corners survival match is entertaining. Roderick Strong vs. Jay Briscoe is a great main event. Jay Briscoe bleeds an insane amount, it's sick watching little pools of blood form everywhere. The quality of this entire show is what you expect to see on iPPV. A very good show.

Edited March 14, 2011 by JPC

[air_raid]

Manhattan Mayhem IV is in the books.

 

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

 

 

EDDIE EDWARDS JUST TOOK DOWN RODERICK.

EDDIE IS THE CHAMP.

 

 

 

[close spoiler]

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Edited March 19, 2011 by air_raid

[Dearly Devoted Dexter]

SPOILER - Highlight the black box to read

Interesting. You have to wonder how much longer Roderick Strong's ROH career is going to last at this point. Well done to Edwards, who's worked really hard to get himself over in the past two years. I'm not quite sure where this leaves Davey Richards though - will he get the belt at DBD 9?

[Dil|kid]

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

Really chuffed for Eddie, really interesting to see how his reign goes and the direction they go with Davey Richards as they are both very popular guys. Cant see there being much for Strong to do now, as much as I like him he definately needs a break from ROH, hopefully he takes the HOT with him.

 

What are the odds on Eddies first two title defenses being against Jay Briscoe and Colt Cabana.

 

Using spoiler tags pretty much gives away the result, do we need them?

 

[close spoiler]

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Edited March 20, 2011 by joe mills

[air_raid]

joe, Chris Daniels is getting the next shot in Atlanta.

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

 

Sure we need spoiler tags. Usually just hide a full set of results.

 

Personally iPPVs aside, I dont understand any ROH fans who do/can stay spoiler free. Not like they are going to not know the result of the MMIV title match until the DVD comes, when going to the website to order it they will barraged with headlines / photos that give it away anyway. In fact by the time this DVD is out, there will probably be a headline of "Edwards v Richards OFFICIAL for Hammerstein" floating around.

 

 

 

[close spoiler]

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Edited March 20, 2011 by air_raid

[Dil|kid]

I managed to watch ROH spoiler free from 2005 (Dethroned was spoilt for me though!) upto early 2007 when they started the PPVs, I think Gabe actually made it easier back then as the site and forum didnt reveal spoilers not that I visited the site much, only to order DVDs. You only have to log onto the main page today and have results spoilt for you

[air_raid]

(Dethroned was spoilt for me though!)

 

Yeah, spoilers baked right in there. Reckon they'll carry on riding the "sequels" horse when the day eventually (and sadly) comes, and knock out "Dethroned II"?

[cobystag]

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

I'm not long since back from NYC, so I'll post some brief thoughts:

 

The opener was decent, Cole & O'Reilly have quickly become a world beater tag team and are fantastic together. Michael Elgin is a power house, and I was very impressed. Mike Mondo was the former Spirit Squad guy who didn't do much, but definitely got a lot of heat from the crowd.

 

Grizz vs Ciampa was a dud. How can Tomasso be seen as a threat if he has a competitive back and forth match with Grizzly fucking Redwood where The Embassy have to get involved to give him the win. His finisher is cool tho, I'll give him that.

 

Mike Bennett truly is awful. Face Corino is..... weird, but it's working. A pre-match angle with Corino not wanting to face Bennett and willing to lay down for him, because he knew facing Bennett would bring back the old Corino, even going as far as accidentally calling Bennett "Kevin" which got a loud Mr Wrestling chant going. Needless to say the old Corino did eventually resurface during the match as the ol thumb in the bum spot got the biggest pop in the first half of the show.... Seriously.

 

I really enjoyed Briscoes vs ANX. I read on the ROH forum that they said a double turn happened by the end of this match.... No. The Briscoes came out as heels, slagged the crowd off, were super aggressive from the get-go and beat the shit out of Titus.

 

Generico vs TJP was a blink and you'll miss it match. I don't even know if these guys went ten minutes, but it was a really fun match, they crammed a lot of action into what felt like not a lot of time, and I loved TJP reversing the brainbuster, trying to capitalize with a dive to the outside onto Generico, only for Generico to catch him and hit the brainbuster onto the ring apron for the shock win.

 

KOW vs LAX may end up getting a lot of praise in the aftermath of the show, but I'll wait to see how it holds up on DVD. What I will say is that this match has almost everything you'd expect out of a KOW/LAX match, Claudio and Hernandez had a battle of strength going on with Hernandez holding up Claudio for a minute plus long suplex, and Claudio hitting the UFO on Hernandez. Hernandez border tossed Homicide over the turnbuckle onto Hero/Claudio in the entranceway and followed up with a big dive of his own afterwards. A very split crowd seemed happy with the KOW win. My fiancee especially who was very pro-KOW and was flipping out at Hernandez for fear he dropped someone else on their head.

 

I loved the hell out of Davey vs Daniels, but I'm sure a lot of people will only remember it for Davey's botched SSP at the end of the match, which was very scary live. But what looked even worse was Daniels draped over the guard rail, and Davey doing a double footstomp from the top turnbuckle DIRECTLY onto Daniels head. Some awesome wrestling, loved how each man used the Pure rules to their advantage, Daniels turning more and more heel as the match went on, and then the crowd got more and more in favour of Davey winning. It is a shame that they had to improvise the pinning reversal from the Angel's Wings as if Davey would have hit the SSP, there wouldn't have been a blemish at all on this match.

 

And then the main event. Oh man the main event. I love Eddie and I wanted him to win, but I still never expected it. I even said if Strong won the night before then that *might* open the door for Eddie to win, but I still had major doubts. Regardless I was going to cheer my little heart out for Eddie, same with my fiancee, as he and Roderick went to WAR. These two brutalized each others with chops and EDDIE, Eddie Edwards split RODERICK'S chest open with chops. Usually it's the other way around, but Eddie was not to be stopped on this night. Eddie was pulling out all the stops, even stuff I've never seen him do before. This was going to be the match of Eddie's ROH career, perhaps even the match of his life. The crowd, while they were not what I wanted, they were there with him all the way, wanting to witness a title change. There was so much good stuff. Eddie did a Marufuji running kick from the outside in. Foot stomps a plenty. Elbow suicida's where Eddie did NOT fuck himself up for a change (as far as I know). I found it strange during this match that it felt more like building Eddie up to a level where you could buy him as ROH Champion, and I was expecting a DQ or interference finish so Roderick could keep the belt. So when Truth Martini got taken out, and Roderick threw EVERYTHING at Eddie and he kept kicking out, emotions began to run high. Eddie even managed to kick out of that suplex backbreaker thing of Roddy's that is AWESOME. After back and forth Strong Hold into Single Leg Crab submission holds each managing to reverse, it was a simple roll up with Eddie holding Roderick down for dear life that saw the Title change.

 

And then the place EXPLODED!!!! Holy shit, did Eddie just win????? I jumped up and down, screamed so hard I lost my voice and me and my fiancee looked at each other in disbelief..... Did Eddie just fucking win?!?!? He's posing with the Title belt, but something's going to happen to screw Eddie over.... Right? Roderick and Truth have left..... Cary's in the ring congratulating Eddie as the locker room empties.... HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE JUST WATCHED EDDIE EDWARDS WIN THE ROH TITLE!!!!!

 

I sex wee'd a little.

 

[close spoiler]

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Edited March 20, 2011 by cobystag

[neil's bitch]

****Spoiler*****

 

 

That makes him the first guy to win the triple i think then? If only the pure title was still around, as Eddie would been a shoe-in for that also.

 

Also also, enjoy these:

 

http://www.wrestlingfigs.com/uploads/artic...462_article.jpg

http://www.wrestlingfigs.com/uploads/artic...463_article.jpg

http://www.wrestlingfigs.com/uploads/artic...461_article.jpg

Edited March 21, 2011 by Bowyo T