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Welcome to part TWO of this week’s massive double edition of The pROHfile. I’m going to start out by talking about the situation surrounding the ROH World Tag Team Title. Following this past weekend’s events, an angle was done where Jay Briscoe vacated the title, saying that he didn’t want to be a tag team champion with anyone other than Mark. I think this was the right decision because the Briscoes are as perfect and complete a team as there is in professional wrestling right now, and they are dedicated to being a unit. When Mark suffered his motorcycle accident in 2004 and was put on the sidelines, Jay sat out with him until it was time to come back. I’d rather see Jay go it alone, or wrestle singles with Mark in his corner than see Jay team with someone else.
But with that in mind, a tournament has been announced for ROH’s return to Hartford, Connecticut on June 6th. It will be an eight team, single elimination tournament, and the teams announced as participating are: ROH World Champion Nigel McGuinness & Go Shiozaki, FIP Champion Roderick Strong & Davey Richards, Kevin Steen & El Generico, Jimmy Jacobs & Tyler Black, Austin Aries & Bryan Danielson, Ruckus & Jigsaw of the Vulture Squad, Chris Hero & Adam Pearce of Sweet N Sour Inc, and Delirious & Pelle Primeau. While you can argue that tag team wrestling in general is at an all-time low point, it’s hard to make an argument like that where ROH is concerned when you look at the lineup for this tournament. This is an absolutely loaded tournament, so much so that even proven teams like Steen/Generico and Jacobs/Black aren’t guaranteed to win against the stiff competition. Though those two pairings are my favorites for the tournament, I can see any of these teams walking out with the title.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this tournament was specifically given to Hartford, because Connecticut has been a difficult market for them for some time now and may be on its way to getting cut. I think back to Survival Of The Fittest 2006 being used as a last-ditch effort to do something with Cleveland before they made the decision to drop that market, and I can see the same thing happening after Hartford.
Let’s think about this from the perspective of a fan that doesn’t go to every ROH show. Most of the shows ROH has run in Connecticut have been on Friday nights, and the Friday shows have long been criticized as running in ROH’s “B markets†and being consistently weaker than Saturday shows in the bigger markets. If you live in Connecticut, ROH comes through every three or four months and puts on the “75% speed†Friday show, then goes on somewhere else on Saturday in one of the A markets (such as New York or Philadelphia) and puts on a much better show. If you’re going to choose between going to what’s likely to be an inferior show on Friday, or make the drive or train ride to New York on Saturday for a show that blows away anything you’ll ever see in Hartford, a lot of people are going to go to the New York show, or maybe wait until the next time they run in Boston.
So if ROH is now going to give a major show like this to Connecticut and it still doesn’t draw well, we may be looking at the last show in Connecticut for the time being. ROH is at a point where they’re looking to close out the markets they’re not doing well in and move into new markets where they are, but I have to wonder if the Friday shows would perform better and they wouldn’t be closing out of Connecticut and Long Island if they ran more important shows there instead of using the “Friday = Part 1, Saturday = Raging Climax†formula.
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With Brent Albright breaking away from Sweet & Sour, Inc this past weekend, it appears he’s getting ready to step up and take a major part in the main event scene this year. I would imagine he’s going to spend at least a couple of months feuding with the members of Sweet & Sour, but that feud is likely to be a formality before Albright takes a run at Nigel McGuinness. I think this has been a long time coming because the ROH crowd has been heavily behind Albright from the beginning. Unlike somebody like Claudio Castagnoli who, while a very good worker, gets a lot of mileage out of his charisma, Albright’s entire aura is built around his ring work and power. I think that’s why we haven’t seen people tire of him like they have with Nigel at times, and his turn on Larry Sweeney and company on Saturday drew one of the biggest pops of the night.
On the other hand, Claudio is presumably still in the title picture as well. Even though he suffered a totally clean submission loss to Nigel this weekend, he’s been groomed for a run at the top for a while now and I highly doubt his main event run is over after that one loss. Claudio has already worked through his feud with Sweet & Sour, and I don’t see any other obvious avenues for him to go down other than building to another match with Nigel.
So the way I see it, much like Nigel and Bryan Danielson were both trying to be the first to knock off Morishima last year, we have a two man race to dethrone Nigel between Brent Albright and Claudio Castagnoli. While most people expected Nigel to be the one to defeat Morishima, there’s really no clear choice either way here. Both men had their shots at Morishima last year and fell short, but with all the other major players like Morishima, Danielson, and Aries otherwise occupied, Claudio and Albright are the two guys I consider to be the front runners in the ROH Title race.
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Before I go, I’d just like to talk about a couple of things from the “I don’t get what they’re doing with these guys†files.
The first is Erick Stevens. I’ve said in the past (quite often, actually) that Gabe made a totally uncharacteristic move by bringing back Erick Stevens from injury and giving him a huge push, defeating Roderick Strong for the FIP Title, then beating Austin Aries and Bryan Danielson on back to back nights before picking up a three way win over Aries and Davey Richards a couple of weeks later, and then totally negating it by having Stevens lose the FIP Title back to Strong, by COUNTOUT, less than two months after winning it. He’s been on job duty for most of the rest of the year since, and now he’s scheduled for a Fight Without Honor against Roderick Strong in Philadelphia on June 7th. Even if he wins the match, he’s lost so much momentum over the last few months that it will take a lot of rebuilding to do before I can take him seriously as a top tier guy again.
Seriously, what was the point of building Stevens up like that just to knock him back down? I doubt it was malicious because he’s said to be a favorite of Gabe Sapolsky’s, but it is so weird to see him get such a huge push only to have it all taken away out of nowhere so quickly, because you never see that kind of yo-yo booking in ROH. I honestly don’t understand what the plan is for Stevens, and granted, it may be a while before I see the plan unfold and I may get it then, but all I know is I’m seeing a guy with world of potential being horribly misused, and I’m not one to go around whining about people being misused, but he really is. It’s one thing to make Matt Cross look like a jobber because he really wasn’t that good, but Stevens has the potential to be somebody, and I hate to see him getting jerked around like this.
The other move that has me scratching my head is Jack Evans suddenly leaving ROH again to go do some international work. I know that the split was done on good terms and Evans is welcome back, but if I were running ROH, he wouldn’t be. Evans is popular, sure, but he’s picked up and disappeared to go overseas several times now, and it’s at the point where it should be recognized that ROH is not his priority. The guy has been given more “returns†than anyone else in the history of ROH, and always makes a big splash before just dropping out of sight again. This time, he was being booked as the centerpiece of a pretty major stable, and I don’t know what’s going to happen with them now that Evans is gone. Where does this leave Ruckus, Jigsaw, and Julius? Is Mercedes Martinez even still a part of the Vulture Squad?
From ROH’s perspective, though they’ve had they’re setbacks lately, they’re not at a point anymore where they have to jump at any chance to pick up a guy with street cred on the indies. If Jack Evans wants to go work in Japan, then fine, let him go. It can be on the best of terms, and I hope it does go that way. But if that’s going to be his priority, then ROH can’t continue to book him in a position of any kind of importance because odds are he won’t be sticking around for very long. Add to that the fact that he has suffered a few injuries in his time, and his wrestling style creates a higher risk of more injuries. Even if he were 100% dedicated to ROH, how important a role do you want to put a guy in if the odds of him getting hurt, no matter how athletic and talented he is, are so far beyond most other wrestlers?
Don’t mistake what I’m saying, I think Jack Evans is very talented, and the couple of times I’ve spoken to him he’s been a ridiculously nice guy. But I think that Stevens and Evans should swap positions because they’re both in a spot more appropriate for the other. A guy like Evans should be the one brought in for a short title reign and a couple of big victories to keep the rep going for next time he comes back, while Stevens should be the one who’s having the show stealing matches with Necro Butcher.
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And with that, this ROH Double Feature (the column, not the DVD) comes to a close. Thanks for sticking with me through this whole thing, and I’ll see you all next time. Your feedback is welcome, and can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com.
