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In the wake of this past weekend's big tag team tournament and PPV taping, I'm back with the latest edition of The pROHfile! I'm your host and possible transsexual Satan worshiper, Stuart Carapola.
Let's get right into the big news of the week that has everybody talking, which is Bryan Danielson working a dark match this past week at a WWE TV taping. There's been a pretty big debate going on on the Elite message board (and shame on you if you haven't signed up for it) about whether this means Danielson is going to WWE, whether he'd be successful there if he did, and what it would mean to Ring Of Honor if he left, and whether he's even contractually allowed to leave. So now I'd like to give my thoughts on the situation.
Bryan Danielson is a guy who's very proud of the matches he wrestles. Though he's had the occasional bloody brawl against a hated opponent, his real forte is working long, Jack Brisco-esque technical matches. That really isn't WWE's style and he knows it, and that's part of the reason he's never signed a contract with WWE, or TNA for that matter. Even though he did have a WWE developmental contract years ago, he's proud of his style and historically has not wanted his abilities to be constrained by working for somebody who won't let him work to his fullest abilities. Has that changed? I think that's something only Bryan Danielson can answer. I certainly don't think he'd have been there just to work a match if he had no interest in working for them, and I don't think WWE would have brought him in to work a dark match just for the hell of it. If nothing else, I'd look at this situation and say that at the very least, Danielson has opened himself up to the possibility of finally signing that contract.
That said, there are other factors to consider. First of all, I don't take him beating Lance Cade as meaning anything. It was a dark match, and as has always been the case with WWE, if it didn't happen on TV, it didn't happen. It's not like they were thinking that they were going to give him a push by putting him over in a non-televised match. Also, another big thing to consider in Danielson's decision would be what type of contract he was offered. I don't think Danielson would be happy with a developmental contract, I think he's confident enough in his own abilities that he'd turn down an offer unless it was to go right to the main roster. If anything, I think it'd be an insult to Danielson to insinuate in any way that he needs more work when he's spent so much time refining his game.
After all, he's worked long and hard to develop himself into the worker he is today. He's trained under a couple of the best in modern history in Shawn Michaels and William Regal, and he's traveled all over the world to expand his repertoire and learn to work different styles, even adding some MMA moves. He's also become a much better promo since he won the ROH World Title in late 2005. It's possible that, in addition to his desire to create art with his work, another reason he hasn't more actively pursued a contract with WWE is that he didn't want to look for a job there until he felt like he was ready to step right into a respectable role. He may very well have wanted to make sure that when he did finally go to WWE, he was the best, most balanced worker he could possibly be because he didn't want to be one of those young guys who got a job there only to have management later decide that he wasn't ready and cut him.
I think at this point, Bryan Danielson is ready and would be successful in WWE. In fact, I don't see any way he can lose. Before you point the finger at me and tell me that nobody gets over in WWE unless they're 6'8†and 300 pounds, I'm going to pull the Bret Hart/Shawn Michaels card and say that smaller guys can and will get that push and get over if they've got the talent. Say what you will about CM Punk's push or lack thereof, but he's been on every PPV since he came up to the main roster, is a former ECW Champion, and the current MITB title shot holder, in addition to being a regularly featured main eventer in ECW. They recognize his work ethic and desire to learn, and even though he's not going to be handed the WWE Title tomorrow as much as every mark on the internet wants it to happen, it will come eventually. I see the same thing in Bryan Danielson, if he does come in he's not going to get the Jesus push right from the start, hell have to work his way up just like everybody else (and just like he should), but he can work, he can promo, and the best part is that he can carry those less talented. I don't see him suffering the same kind of fate as a lot of other indy guys who have been “buried†and that's because most of those guys have flashy, highspot-oriented styles, and that's not what WWE is about. Danielson is a much more controlled, intelligent worker who knows how to get over without having to go out there and kill himself diving off buildings. I think if he does sign, he'll do fine.
But would Ring Of Honor if Danielson left? The answer, unfortunately, is probably not. In the wake of the loss of most of their main event talent at the beginning of 2007, Bryan Danielson was one of the guys who stuck around and could be counted on to carry the company if need be. He had been around since the first ROH show and had that kind of acceptance from the fans. Losing Bryan Danielson would be a huge blow to ROH right now, because there's a lot of people who will buy tickets and DVDs just to watch Danielson wrestle. Austin Aries and Nigel McGuinness are talented and over in their own ways, but I don't think they'd be able to pick up the slack if Danielson left.
And is he even contractually able to sign a WWE contract right now? The word at the time ROH offered contracts to its workers was that they were one year contracts, meaning they would have expired by now, but now it's coming out that they may have been two year contracts. Gabe Sapolsky had no comment when asked about Danielson's dark match, but ROH later posted a message on its website saying that Danielson worked the dark match with permission from ROH. That would imply that he had to get permission, which means he's probably still under contract, leaving him without the option to sign with WWE.
So to wrap this up, my expert opinion is that Danielson probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but the writing's on the wall: he doesn't want to stay in ROH forever, because as much as he probably loves performing there, he's got the opportunity to do something more in WWE when the time comes. He won't be working 60 minute draws anymore, that's for sure, and he'll probably do some jobs that will have ROHbots climbing up the walls, but he's got the abilities that can take him to the top, and of course the money would certainly be much better than it would be in ROH. It's going to happen, it's just a matter of time.
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The other thing I wanted to talk about today is Age Of The Fall and the kinds of reactions they're getting, specifically Jimmy Jacobs. Jimmy Jacobs and Tyler Black won the ROH World Tag Team Title this past Friday night in Hartford, beating Kevin Steen & El Generico in the finals. This was met with a pretty violently negative reaction from the fans, who started throwing trash into the ring. Incidentally, one jerk near me threw his chair at the ring, and was promptly bitched out by the cameraman and thrown out by security. Just an aside to any potentially overzealous fans: don't do that, ROH doesn't like it and will definitely let you know.
But back to Age Of The Fall. They've come under some fire recently, in particular Jimmy Jacobs. Jacobs has been described as getting X-Pac heat and that he's holding down Black and Necro Butcher. I'm a big supporter of Jimmy Jacobs, and I've got a few things I'd like to say about that right now. I've described him in the past as a smart worker who knows how to tell a story with his matches, and I'd like to expand on that. Jimmy Jacobs is a small guy, and he doesn't have the most impressive physique in wrestling history. Because of that, he needs to make up for it in other ways. Despite often ending up in bloody brawls, Jimmy Jacobs is not a highspot monkey. He does do big moves like the Contra Code off the top rope or a senton off the top of a cage or ladder, but he's smart enough to know when to pull out those moves so that they'll mean something. Outside of a few signature moves, he's got a pretty old school style of wrestling, in that he'll work over a body part like a knee and he'll make it play a part in the outcome of the match. You don't see Jimmy Jacobs matches where a body part gets worked on, and then is suddenly totally fine when the babyface makes his comeback. He knows how to do little things like smack his opponents around when they're down, or smear their blood across his chest to get heat from the crowd. He's not a guy who needs to do anything spectacular or overly dangerous on a regular basis to pop the crowd because he knows how to get heat by working with what he's got.
I also consider him the best promo guy in ROH right now. That's a big claim, but the thing Jimmy has going for him is that he obviously puts a lot of thought into what he's going to say, and he works himself up to a point that he can say what he has to say in a way that he can make himself believe in it. A big part of acting is getting yourself into a part emotionally, and Jimmy Jacobs delivers very passionate promos, and even if you don't agree with what he's saying, you get into them because you feel like everything he's saying is coming from the heart. He doesn't give wooden, “let's-get-this-over-with†promos where he comes out and goes “Austin Aries, you stole Lacey from me. I'm mad, and I'm going to kick your butt.†He'll go on for a bit, but he's got a point to every promo and a way of making you hang on every word.
Go back to the angle he ran with for over a year where he was in love with Lacey, but she wanted nothing to do with him until he finally nearly killed himself for her and ended up winning her over. Every guy has been in the situation where they wanted a girl who wasn't interested in them, and obviously Jimmy has also and knew exactly what to say to bring all those negative feelings out of him in promo form. Even after he won her over and he started doing the “It doesn't take a man to bang the broad, it takes a man to love†promos, that's another thing that every guy can relate to whether they'll admit it or not. Now with Age Of The Fall, he's taking it a step further and expressing his disgust for society because, however it happened, he feels like it has held him down in some way. Again, something everybody feels sometimes. He knows how to tap into legitimate emotions to move the crowd.
All the stuff he's saying is connecting with the crowd in some way, but he's getting the heat he is because people look at him as a whiny kid who wears black and paints his nails because he didn't get what he wanted for his birthday. In the same way he totally connects with every male ROH fan out there, he also pisses them all off for exactly the same reasons. This is why Jimmy Jacobs is such an amazing talent, because he is so polarizing, and that no matter what kind of reaction he's getting, he gets a reaction to everything he does, and by pissing on him the way they do, most ROH fans don't even realize that they're playing into his hands by giving him exactly the kind of reactions he's looking for.
Now, if we specifically look at the tag team tournament in Hartford, he got the kind of reaction he did for a couple of reasons. The first is the stuff I've outlined above, but the other is that you had two huge babyfaces in Kevin Steen & El Generico who fought the odds every step of the way to get to the finals. They beat the ROH World Champion and his top contender in the first round and two more big name indy veterans in the semifinals, and they were beaten and hurt almost from the beginning. El Generico was so badly injured that he had to be carried out of the match and left Steen by himself to face both Black and Jacobs until finally Generico came back to a huge pop from the crowd. Steen & Generico rallied and were so close they could taste it, and the fans wanted Steen & Generico to win so badly that when Tyler Black snuck in and rolled up Generico for the totally clean win, it took all the wind out of the fans' sails.
The best part about this is that Jimmy Jacobs is so good at being a hated heel, that he's helping get Black over as a babyface. The fans see Tyler Black as the “real talent†in the team, and after he cleanly pinned Bryan Danielson to win their first title defense the following night in Philadelphia, the fans were chanting “next World Champ†at him. I'm convinced that part of the reason Jacobs gets the reaction he does is because they see him as holding Tyler down, and that's going to work out great when the inevitable split finally happens, because nothing gets a babyface over better than working against a hated heel, and that feud will probably turn Tyler Black into the biggest babyface in the company.
It's so funny how Jimmy Jacobs is so good at what he does that nobody even realizes how good he really is. The guy has become a legit major heel in an era, and a promotion of fans who consider themselves too smart to fall for traditional wrestling storytelling, and anyone who can move the jaded internet fans one way or the other in today's wrestling landscape has my respect.
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That's it for this week. As usual, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all next time.
