My first ROH show + ROH Live Show Discussion Thread

[Rusty Cooledge]

Classic.

I finally saw an ROH dvd the other day, the very first one in fact with Daniels v. Low Ki v. American Dragon.

I thought it was pretty incredible.
_________________

[Jim]

Jay Lethal has been fired.
_________________

[pholby]

[Jim]

I actually enjoyed heel Lethal. So my original stands.
_________________

[SundownMotel]

Lethal on TNA every other week is enough for me. I've had my fill of him for now. He's only like eleven or something though, so maybe in ten years he'll have all his problems worked out (unlikely) and we'll see him in WWE or something tag-teaming with old, fat Shelton Benjamin.
_________________
And this is a promise, because this is true. This is real. This is Straight Edge.

[pholby]

[SundownMotel]

WAHOOOOOOOOOOOO

I was just coming on to post about how fucking Azrieaeal is gone. Hooray. Good for ROH. Good, good, good for ROH. CHicago just got a little bit sunnier.
_________________
And this is a promise, because this is true. This is real. This is Straight Edge.

[pholby]

Last night while talking to Greg H it finally dawned on me that I chose to go to ROH in Detroit over Wrestlemania.

[Lindy]

I see nothing wrong with your decision other than the jealousy I have over it.
_________________
shrieking raccoon on a jetpack

[Justin]

I don't know. Even if you're not drawn in by the spectacle, I've always wanted to start a story with "I was at the Wrestlemania when..." so I guess its a personal decision.
_________________
[quote="Bismark"]Didn't you know? Having uncontrollable shits is wicked scene.[/quote]

[Jim]

I'm inclined to agree with you... any other year. This year, you would be able to say "I was at the Wrestlemania when Boogeyman shoved worms in JBL's underwear."
_________________

[Jim]

So, I got the Tag Wars 06 DVD in the mail today, and









Also, you can faintly hear me screaming "fucking kill him, Dragon!"
_________________

[dlomyhero]

You are definitely yelling "KILL" in the 3rd picture.
_________________
Asked yesterday whether it would eventually release a revised edition of "Opal Mehta," a little brown spokesman declined to comment.

[pholby]

3/25 New York City - The Best in the World

Results in bold, comments below.

1. Jimmy Rave d. Pelle Primeau - This was taped for ROHvideos.com, and in an earlier newswire, Gabe had said something to the effect of "So Nana says no one had better throw any toilet paper." Naturally, he got covered in it. Pelle dies several times in a few minutes, then Rave gets the pin. Pelle's good at dieing, so this was lots of fun. Plus, everyone hates Jimmy Rave. Many chants implying he's a homosexual and good old fashioned booing. Bruce Leroy was sitting at ringside as the guest, and Nana got on the mic and ran him down, then praised Rave saying that nobody could take him down. That brought out Jimmy Yang, leading to:

2. Jimmy Yang d. Jimmy Rave - A decent but short match. Yang is improving, but still feels like a WWE worker in an ROH ring. Yang got the win but Nana and Rave started to doubleteam him, prompting Bruce Leroy to come in and hit some really terrible looking karate moves on Nana, and move to hit Rave but Rave bails. Someone should have told him in ROH people actually land their shots. Still, this was lots of fun, and the whole crowd loved it.

3. Allison Danger d. Lacey, Mercedes Martinez & Daizee Haze in a Four Corner Survival Match - Okay, I totally got Lacey to curse me out. I flipped her off with both hands and called her cheap, and she called me a fucking piece of shit.

/swoon

Now that that's over with, this was a good match. Not great, but good. There were some odd choices made in the beginning, like starting out with Lacey/Haze when they were the two heels, but it smoothed itself out and fell together nicely. Martinez dominated much of the match, but Danger blind tagged in at the end to get the pin on Lacey. Speaking of Martinez, I think she might be a man who had devised a scheme to get ass implants and dress like a woman in order to get more bookings. Go ahead, look her up, you'll see. The crowd wasn't behind this match at first, but they got pulled into it and at the end really enjoyed what they'd seen.

4. Jason (possibly Jayson) Blade and Kid Mikaze come out for their open challenge. The challenge is answered by Chris Hero and The Necro Bucther, who make short work of the two of dumb names and matching tights. - Then Hero calls out Adam Pierce, who of course cut a promo on them in the latest ROH video recap. Pierce gets an early advantage because he sneaks up and throws Hero out of the ring, and then him and Necro go at it around the ring, in the crowd, etc, with some stiff chair shots. Hero eventually comes back and the two of them overwhelm Pierce, and Hero calls out his tag-team partner and best friend Claudio Castignoli to help out. Claudio comes out and looks confused, but when called upon to whomp on Peirce he declines, saying "Fuck CZW" and that he's going to be the next ROH Pure Champion. So him and Pierce run off Hero and Necro. Necro was wearing a t-shirt from some festival that billed itself as 'the superbowl of country music', which I thought was funny.

5. Christopher Daniels d. Alex Shelley - Oh, this could have been a lot better. Shelley stalled a lot at the beginning, trying to get heel heat Jimmy Rave style. He did it over and over and over again, and many people got tired of it. They built to a faster pace and a climax, but in retrospect it seems like they did it too slowly and lost a lot of the crowd. Sometimes it seems like the crowd loves Christopher Daniels more because they think they should than out of genuine affection. There's something that's been bugging me about Daniels as a wrestler for a little while now, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I'll let you know when I do. In the meantime, him and Alex Shelley had a match that would have been a lot better if Shelley just wrestled like he usually does with all the Dragon Gate "inspired" moves and so forth. There's plenty of room to be a dick and cheat in there and so forth.

"Hey Shelley, where's your camcorder?"
"It's in Orlando, you fucking twat!"

Ha ha ha ha ha. Some guy in our section was heckling Allison Danger pretty bad, and she was giving it right back. At one point he goes "You're Corino's kid sister, right? So you come from a long line of suck." After the match was over she comes over and starts yelling at him about how the difference is that Corino gets paid to go to Japan and fuck chicks, something he knows nothing about, and how she gets paid to be in ROH, and he has to scrape together money for the fifth row. Then Daniels pulled her away, and the security guy gave the guy in the fifth row the stink eye.

6. Nigel McGuinness d. Claudio Castagnoli to retain the ROH Pure Title - This was one of the better Pure Title matches I've ever seen. Most people expected Claudio to win, including myself, so it was cool to be surprised when he didn't. They only used about one rope break each, which is nice because the race to the rope breaks thing is usually lame. In fact, this was pretty much a normal match, except it happened to be for the pure title. The only thing that jumped out at me as bad is Nigel's tendancy to go upside down in the ropes for no goddamn reason at all.

Bobby Cruise announced that this is the largest ROH crowd in Manhattan to date, then we went to intermission. That crowd bit is cool, because I was expecting them to draw less than they did for Steel Cage Warfare. But they didn't, which is awesome.

7. Austin Aries d. Ricky Reyes by DQ - This was billed as a grudge match, but they sure took a long time to get to the grudge part of it. Reyes kept going back to the front face lock, which is a perfectly fine wrestling move, but not really a grudge match style manuver. They had a decent but short match that ended when Reyes had the the dragon sleeper on, but Aries made the ropes. Reyes refused to let go, so he was disqualifed. Reyes beat Aries down after the match, until Strong and Evans made the save. The Briscoes then came down and attacked Generation Next leading to:

8. Roderick Strong & Jack Evans d. The Briscoe Brothers - The Briscoes beat the shit out of Jack Evans' leg, but when all your offense is based off of jumping, you'd be hard pressed to have a comeback while still selling. Luckily that doesn't really bother Jack Evans. Roderick Strong seriously fucked up Jay Briscoes chest with some chops. The Briscoes tattoos are even worse than I remember them, because they have some new ones. This match was fun, and the crowd really enjoyed it, but I think if you watched it with a critical eye it wouldn't hold up, mostly because of Jack Evans.

9. KENTA & Naomichi Marufuji d. Bryan Danielson & Samoa Joe when KENTA pins Danielson after "Go To Sleep" - I feel a great emptyness when American Dragon loses, as if nothing is right in the universe. When you watch the tape, everyone else will jump up after the match, and I will be sitting back in my seat with my head in my hands. Conversly, the last near-fall before the fall, when Dragon kicked out of something, I jumped to my feet with an immense "FUCK YES". This was a very, very good match. There were great exchanges all around, and Joe/KENTA was played up a lot, with them constantly antagonizing each other and knocking each other off the apron and shit. Hell, at one point KENTA knocked Joe off the apron and then just followed him to the floor to fight. The best part of the match was Dragon telling Joe what to do all the time. "Get in here Joe" when he was working someone over in the corner, motioning for Joe to come in for a cheap shot while he distracted the referee by pretending there was something in his eye, even going "Set him up for the flying headbutt, Joe." Hell, Dragon was even telling the ref what to do. "Count, referee." 1,2, no. "Count again, referee." After the match KENTA got on the mic and promised he'd be back real soon, and Joe got on the mic and reminded him that he hadn't beaten Joe in singles competition, and he hadn't beaten Dragon in a singles match. (KENTA responded "I don't understand English!" because he is a punk.) Despite a lot of emphasis on Joe/KENTA, I'm hoping for a ROH title match between Dragon and KENTA.

Oh yeah and Lacey totally got in my face and swore at me.
_________________
"You're a pussy, Strong!"

"Woah woah woah."

[SundownMotel]

It's interesting that you mention that something about Daniels bugs you, Pholby, because sometimes I can watch him wrestle and I just think, "Why is this guy one of my favorite wrestlers, again?" But then I watch something like his backstage interview after Curry Man wrestled at This Means War and I remind myself that, as Jules Winfield once so adroitly pointed out, "Personality goes a long way." Some have suggested that his in-ring problem is that he sometimes appears to wrestle with far TOO finesse, sort of negating the fact that he is supposed to be in a grueling battle and thus taking away from the overall impact. I think he's amazing, but every once in a while something just seems...off.

I was wondering what your take is on who will eventually be the man to take the title off of Danielson and whether you see it happening any time soon.
_________________
And this is a promise, because this is true. This is real. This is Straight Edge.

[Jim]

There's something almost sterile about the way that Daniels wrestles sometimes. It looks as if it's a video game. Still, I love the guy.
_________________

[ctoner]

Yeah, that was out of control. The highlight of Chicago's show was when everyone in a chair started winging them into the arena, so there's about 200 (however many of seats) 15 pound steel chairs flying into the ring at all sorts of velocities and angles Colt Cabanna and Homocide were ducking for their lives. Man, what a bunch of fucking idiots. I expected some of the people sitting in the first row to be carted on out stretchers not to mind the wrestlers in the ring that aren't expecting to get pelted in the face with a flying chair.

[pholby]

My extended thoughts on the shows will come eventually, but for the moment I'd like to address ctoner's thoughts.

1) You don't get many chances at participating in a chair riot, son. You pass that one up and your chair rioting days are pretty much over.

2) Homicide told me to throw it. Who the fuck am I to say no to Homicide?

3) The last time ROH had a Chicago Streetfight (in Chicago, of course), they had a chair riot. TRADITION~! This may seem to go against the first point, as in now they've had more than one they'll have another one. But are you going to take that chance?

4) The combination of the fact that I was told by one of the wrestlers to throw my chair, and the fact that it happened previously leads me to believe that everyone involved in the match, from the wrestlers to the ref to Julius Smokes knew what was coming. They were expecting to get pelted in the face with a flying chair.

5) I was in the front row, and I threw my chair and hit the ground, like any sensible person. If I got hit by a chair I would think that was pretty cool, so long as I didn't get a concussion or a broken bone. All told, only about three people got hit.

6) It was fucking awesome.
_________________
"You're a pussy, Strong!"

"Woah woah woah."

[ctoner]

7) While it was enormously stupid, I agree that it was pretty awesome. Chris Hero winged a chair into the ring and hit some woman in the head. To my utter disbelief (and after spending a few minutes crying on the floor, apparently), she pumped the chair to the chant, "SHE'S HARDCORE!" which I thought was hilarious.

I have many more thoughts and ideas, but they'll come later. I'm writing my column about it for the newpaper. I think I even saw some progressive boink people there (at the end), but I was busy interviewing the girl working the lights. The show was on a level of spectacle I couldn't even imagine.

And those Japanese guys were great.

[Lindy]