ROH Rising Above PPV

Delirious vs Albright

Delirious comes out in red and black instead of his usual green and black. He clearly means business. This was only a short match, but it was fun. Delirious is a great ragdoll for Albright to throw around. Albright is a guy that hits a lot of cool moves. Whether that's your thing or not it's undeniable his moves are really cool, such as his backbreaker to dragon suplex combo or his belly to belly suplex into the turnbuckle. To his credit Delirious bumps his ass off to make young Brent look good. Albright's streak of hitting cool looking moves comes to an abrupt end when he hits the worst diving headbutt I've ever seen. I can understand being wary about doing the headbutt after all the information about it fucking up Benoit and Dynamite came out, but if it concerns you so much you're scared of the moves you are doing, don't fucking do it. Hit a splash of something. Or, and it's a radical idea I know, save the top rope moves for the smaller guys to do. Your the biggest worker in the company, why do you have to go up to the top rope in the first place? Delirious wins with a roll up out of nowhere. Short and fun.

Tag Team Scramble

Right, so after the last match Age of the Fall come out for some promo time, then Steen and Generico, then the Vulture Squad. I think. I don't really know. However, I do know that Smokes says they should have a scramble match, and it immediately commences. So, there are at least 12 guys down at ringside and this match has 8 men in it. I have no idea who is wrestling. This match defines the term clusterfuck. Men are literally flying everywhere, hitting all sorts of MOVES. I can see that Jack Evan's offense has improved greatly. I suppose working with the DG boys will do that. Let's hope PAC can learn some of that stuff too. Back to the match and Adam Pearce and BJ Whitmer seem to be dominating. Of all the fucking people in this match, they have to be the focal point? To his credit Pearce does a mightily amusing Flair Flop. Then again, I can't imagine someone doing a Flair Flop and it not be amusing. El Generico teases a top rope BRAINBUSTAH!, but it doesn't pull it off. However Generico and Steen get the win after a package pildedriver to normal brainbuster combo. If you love moves this is the match for you. Actually so far this is the PPV for you.

The Briscoes cut a promo and are quite obviously trying to hold back on the swears. Therefore it is a failure.

Haze vs Del Ray vs Lacey

This match commenced immediately. It is quite apparent that the mindset for this show is ALL ACTION, ALL THE TIME. And that's sure as hell what we are getting. Haze's gear hurts my eyes. Ow. I can never really get into womens wrestling, but this fine. Sunny is at ringside and she is still a slamming hottie. Del Ray kills poor Lacey with a big boot to the chest. That one move has completely sold me on the greatness of Sarah Del Ray. Anyway Haze pins Lacey after a Mindtrip (kind of like a Snapmare Driver). This match won't sell any SHIMMER DVDs, but it was fine.

Stevens vs Richards

They show clips of the No Remorse Corps attacking Stevens on a previous show, and then it's straight into the action! Everything Erick Stevens does looks brutal. I don't mean that in a bad way either. Really his gimmick is that he hits dudes really hard and kills men with his MOVES. Which is a fin gimmick all things considered. If you read my Man Up show review you will know that I love Davey Richards. Actually looking back I didn't profess my love for him nearly enough. He has a great spot where he hangs Stevens in a tree of woe, looks like he's going to run into him and knee him in the face, but instead stops short and cockslaps him. Genius. What a heel this man is. Basically my notes for this match consist of me stating how good Richards is over and over. Anyway the announcers keep mentioning that someone is in the audience distracting the fans. Well as it turns out it's MMA Superstar Daniel Puder. Oh yes. Anyway the cameras cut to young Puder sitting next a smoking hot girl, who looks like she'd rather be anywhere else than there. All this commotion causes Stevens to get distracted and Davey dropkicks him in the back and slaps on the Kimura for the win. Go Davey. Stevens is pissed that Puder distracted him. Puder lacks HONOR! Larry Sweeney than makes an appearance, which brings out Claudio. He chases Sweeney and Sweet and Sour International come out to save their boss which segues directly into...

Castagnoli vs Hero

Surprisingly enough we jump head first into the action. These two cannot fail to have a good match, so I have no complaints about their work here. The problem is that this didn't feel like a huge blow off to a year long feud. It felt like another match tucked away on the undercard. I think part of the problem is that both these guys wrestled a comic style. They should have been trying to kill each not make each other laugh. I don't mean it should be like the blowoff to the Homicide/Cabana feud with all sorts of weapons and blood and whatnot, but Hero and Sweeney tried to take out Claudio's eye for fuck sake. Show a little hate! Another reason is that this match just flowed from the last match. It was just like, 'Oh here's another match,' when it should have been a big marquee event. Now I don't want to be like every other fan and fantasy book the promotion, but I was just a little let down. Unsurprisingly they put on the best match of the show so far. Claudio got the win when he hit a deadlift Ricola Bomb for the pin. A good match, but in the grand scheme of things a little underwhelming.

West Virginia style, son!

Morishima vs Danielson

Big fat Morishima attacks Dragon in the aisle way as he is coming to the ring. No robe for Danielson, which upsets me greatly. They brawl around the ring and Danielson hits his head on a table and blades. At first I thought it was just a little nick on his forehead, but no he bled a fucking gusher here. Forget a crimson mask, Danielson had a crimson vest, and he looked seriously fucked up. Morishima pounded on him for a while then Danielson made his come back, until he got destroyed with lariats and backdrop drivers. Dragon somehow survives and they brawl some more until Morshima decides its time to start stomping balls. He throws down the ref and gets DQ'd and then goes crazy attacking folk. Bryce Remsburg runs down, eats a backdrop driver and dies. Danielson attacks Morshima with the ring bell hammer and screams, 'I'm gonna blind this son of a bitch!' Awesome. As long as ROH still has Danielson, I'll keep watching.

ROH Tag Team Titles 2 Out Of 3 Falls Match: The Briscoes (c) vs Strong/Romero

I'm suffering from Briscoes burnout right now. Seriously they're everywhere. Well NOAH and ROH, but still I'm sick of them. They have a typical Briscoes match. Now don't get me wrong it's fine and perfectly watchable, but I feel like I've been watching the same shit all year. Anyway NRC get the first fall, which the crowd was not happy with. They did a cool variation on the Doomsday Device with Rocky hitting a knee strike to knock a Briscoe off of Strong's shoulder, and Roddy followed up with a Tiger Driver. I'm disappointed that Romero seems to have toned down his kicks. He no longer looks like he could kick his way through a bank vault door. Oh well. I will say that Mark's redneck-fu schtick with never get old. I need Mark in singles match. I think the 2nd fall finished pretty anticlimactically with a roll up, and Jay hits a spike Jay Driller for the 3rd. Briscoes retain and everyone is happy.

ROH Title Match: McGuinness (c) vs Aries

We get proper intros and everything for this match. Not that it really matters much, but it's a nice change from jumping straight into the action. So about 3 minutes in Nigel is chatting to some fans outside the ring and has his back turned. Aries proceeds to deliver the now infamous TOPE FROM BEHIND and Nigel's head cracks into the metal guardrail, busting him open, breaking his nose and scrambling his brains. Now don't get me wrong this was a stupid spot, but all the fucking fuss about missing shows and getting concussions is ridiculous. Sometimes moves go wrong, and that's what happened here. End of. Nigel looks a bit rubber-legged for a while, but he recovers pretty quickly, and they had a fine little match. There was a nice theme of variations on these guys' normal spots which added a bit of unpredictability. For example, Nigel's Tower of London and Top Rope Lariat to the floor, and also Aries' Brainbuster on the guardrail. The finishing run was built around Aries trying to avoid the Jawbreaker Lariat by finding different ways to counter it. He nearly hit his 450º Splash, but Nigel got his knees up. Finally Nigel hit his lariat of doom, which Aries took a sick bump off and that was that. This was a good match, but nothing bordering on fantastic or anything. The crowd was hot, the finish was cool, and it wasn't devoid of psychology. Match of the Show, but overall I doubt it will stick with you.

As for the show as a whole, I've heard people say it was aimed at hardcore ROH fans, because of the way it was paced and the little explanation that was offered, but I'm a big ROH and it was hard even for me to watch. I mean I normally take a break during long wrestling shows, because I have a short attention span, but this was only 2 hours and yet it felt like 4. Succinctly, I'll sum it by saying it was very good, but there was just too much stuff. They need to calm things down and build a show around 5 or 6 good matches and some nice expansive promos. Flowing from match to angle to match to angle sound good on paper, but in practice it just wears out your audience. I definitely need an ROH break after this show and Final Battle 2007 (which was much better and comes highly recommended). Next ROH I'll write about will probably be the next PPV or the 6th Anniversary show, whichever comes first. I can't believe I wrote this much shit about a two hour show.

The Goodness of 2008 #1

Yeah, so I've been a tad lazy of late with doing anything really, but Christmas came around and then I tried to get a real job (and failed epically) and you know how it goes. Maybe this time will be different. Anyway I'm kicking off with some early in the year stuff from ZERO-1 MAX. ROH and DG show reviews to follow. Also if you've any feedback at all please leave a comment or shoot me an email at wheatbox@gmail.com.

Shelley/Sabin vs Togo/Hidaka

1/1/2008 - ZERO-1 MAX

Since I don’t really ever watch TNA I don’t have enough Machine Guns in my life. Whenever I see them I always think, ‘Wow, I should check out more of these guys’, and then inevitably fail to do so. In fact I think the last match that watched which featured them was their one off appearance in ROH last year against the Briscoes. I’ve seen people criticise this match for being too spotty and whatnot, and whilst it’s not a tag classic it’s still quick, slick and entertaining. There weren’t any sustained periods of either team getting the heat, instead there were just a lot of cool double teams, but coming out of the gate you should probably know to expect that. Shelley really shone here, but he took a ridiculous flip bump from a low dropkick to the knee. I mean it looked cool and all, but it struck me as overkill. And that was the story of this match. Sure everyone’s double teams look great, but there was nothing beyond that. I can’t justify saying this was bad match or there was much wrong with it. Togo ruled it as did Shelley, and Sabin and Hidaka didn’t slouch off by any means. However, as slick and modern as this match was, I got left with the feeling that it simply lacked any substance. Some guys did some moves and the Machine Guns won. This wasn’t a heated title bout, nor was it a Match of the Year candidate. It was simply easy to watch pro-wrestling, but no one will be considering it come the end of the year.

Tanaka vs Sekimoto

1/1/2008 - ZERO-1 MAX

I didn’t make any notes on this match; I just sat back and enjoyed it. And it was pretty fucking great. I harbour some huge manlove for Sekimoto. This guy is just so strong and so awesome. Tanaka looks very skinny these days, but I suppose next to Sekimoto anyone would look stick-like. They went through all your typical test of strength spots early on, which was fine because Tanaka really look like he was struggling to rein young Daisuke in and broke into a mighty sweat. They wrestled this match like a standard heavyweight affair, with a few cool junior spots thrown in. Half way through I was thinking that it was a fine match, but nothing special. It felt a whole lot more natural than the tag match however, because their was some actual downtime and not just a constant stream of moves (although I suppose it’s important to bear in mind that the tag match was clipped some). Then Sekimoto just started throwing Tanaka around with these deadlift German suplexes. This man is freaky strong. He hit about four or five and none of them could put Masato away. It was so awesome, because you could tell Sekimoto didn’t really have anything left in his arsenal to throw, so just kept repeating what he’d already done, but to no avail. Tanaka then proceeded to hit a bunch of Sliding D’s, which are basically roaring elbows to a seated opponent, and finally after the third or fourth attempt Sekimoto was vanquished. There’s a lot you could be critical of here, overkill of moves, plenty of no selling, lack of variation; but really the intensity, crowd heat, and Sekimoto’s crazy strength left me loving this match. Not a Match of the Year contender, but one of those matches that reaffirms my love for Japanese wrestling. A simply story well told.