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THE pROHfile LOOKS AT THE FALLOUT FROM ROH'S SHOWS IN VIRGINIA AND NEW YORK CITY AND MORE

A little (lot) late, but nonetheless here I am with my thoughts on ROH’s shows in Manassas , Virginia and New York City from a couple of weeks ago.  I was in attendance live at the Hammerstein Ballroom, and as always it was a great atmosphere in New York, and hopefully anyone reading this was sitting near the Generico impersonator (you’d know him if you saw him) and his friends because they were hilarious.  By the way, if you want to go to a show at the Hammerstein, try to get a seat on the first balcony or lower, because if you’re on the second balcony you’re actually above the lighting rig and don’t get to see a lot of the production effects as well.

But anyway, on to the meat of the column, and we’ll start with Claudio Castagnoli’s heel turn in the main event four way match for the ROH World Title.  After being pinned and eliminated from the match by Bryan Danielson, Claudio snapped and beat the ever loving bejeezus out of Bryan Danielson, finishing up by Pillmanizing his head with a steel chair before walking out.  Danielson was hurt so badly by this attack that Nigel McGuinness was able to sneak in and nail a lariat for an easy pin to eliminate the American Dragon.

Well, it looks like Claudio decided to stick around after all despite blowing not one, but two opportunities to win the ROH World Title in as many weeks.  Forgetting for a moment about the reasons Claudio was turned (which I ranted about at great length last week), I’m looking forward to watching Claudio going forward because I like his work a lot better as a heel than as a face.  I think he does a great job coming off as a really sleazy, smarmy jerk and now that they’ve added a killer edge to him as well, it’ll be interesting to see the direction his character goes in now.  I’d hope that the heel turn will lead to some form of reunion of the Kings Of Wrestling with Chris Hero, but I’m not holding my breath.

But getting back to the four way match, after Claudio and Danielson were gone, it came down to Nigel and Tyler Black.  I was unfortunately forced to miss the Philadelphia show where they had the match that got a lot of praise and have yet to see the DVD, but they had a great match in New York and, even though I didn’t believe for one second that Tyler Black was getting the title that night, he performed very well in a main event position in ROH’s biggest market and the crowd was heavily cheering for him.  That’s always subject to change where ROH’s fans are concerned, but Black had a great showing and this guy has superstar written all over him.

After the match, Nigel got on the house mic proclaiming that with this win, he had officially beaten everyone there is for him to face, but he was then confronted by Naomichi Marufuji, who had been watching most of the match from the entrance ramp, and Marufuji motioned that he wanted a shot at the title.  I think the idea of Marufuji (who already holds a win over Nigel in a GHC Title match from late 2006) getting a shot at the ROH Title is a great idea, he’s an amazing worker who has always been awesome, but has kept improving over the three years he’s been in and out of ROH, and you always know you’re going to get a great show out of him.  I always thought he was a better wrestler than KENTA and should have gotten the megapush that KENTA got in 2006.

Does Marufuji get the title, though?  Well, with all the other top contenders I can think of out of the picture right now for one reason or another, I can think of worse things to do than give Marufuji a short title reign, he’s certainly earned it by using his sheer workrate to get everyone he’s been in the ring with in ROH over even though he’s won almost all those matches.  Maybe have Marufuji beat Nigel for the title in Japan , and then have him run with the strap for a few months before dropping it back to Nigel, maybe at Final Battle in New York City where they’d love to see it happen.

Speaking of Marufuji, he teamed with Go Shiozaki to lose to Age Of The Fall in Virginia (Shiozaki took the fall) and then defeated Shiozaki in a singles match in New York .  I didn’t realize this until a guy sitting behind me at Hammerstein pointed it out, but Shiozaki never seems to win.  He had a strong showing during the tournament at Eye Of The Storm, but ever since then he’s ended most of his matches by looking at the lights.  Shiozaki’s big storyline is that during his one year stay in ROH, his goal is to follow in Takeshi Morishima’s success by winning a title, any title, before heading back to Japan at the end of the year.  I may be the only one, but I find it hard to take the guy seriously as a title contender if he doesn’t ever win.  Yes, he can chop really hard, but that’s about all he can do and any good matches he’s been in, he’s been carried by a more talented worker like Nigel or Marufuji, who both could have a good match with a corpse.  Somehow he has a pretty big following, which just goes to show that it’s not what you know, but how you do it in wrestling, but unless he gets a short run with the tag straps, I don’t think I could take him seriously if he fulfilled his mission.

Also in New York City , Brent Albright defeated Adam Pearce to win the NWA World Title in what I would definitely call the match of the night, and a match much better than I thought Adam Pearce had in him.  The match definitely had a very old school feel to it, and it was really cool to see how a match you might have seen decades ago in Memphis got over so well with the uber smart New York crowd in 2008.  I’ve never been sold on Adam Pearce as anything more than an average, run of the mill midcarder, but he definitely won me over with this match.  I honestly didn’t think he could keep up with Albright, much less appear to be on the same level as him, but Pearce seemed to lead most of the match and it was better than anything else on the show, even the four way.  Great stuff, and if the NWA World Title continues to be featured in ROH, I’d love to see it be used to showcase a different, more old school style of wrestling in NWA Title matches in much the same way the Pure Title used to showcase the mat wrestling.

But now where do both men go from here?  I had Brent Albright on my list of people who could eventually take the ROH World Title from Nigel McGuinness, but now that he’s the NWA Champion, it would seem that he won’t be in the ROH Title picture anytime soon.  However, if they wanted to do something really fun, they could start an angle where the three champions (ROH, NWA, and FIP) could be in some kind of competition to prove whose title is the best.  I think now would be as good a time as any to do an angle like that because Nigel McGuinness, Brent Albright, and Erick Stevens are three worthy wrestlers who could believably match up relatively evenly against one another.  I also think that this would be a great way to put over Erick Stevens (who is just getting back into a winning streak after getting punked out for most of the first half of 2008) and the FIP Title which, with all due respect, is definitely viewed as at least a notch below the ROH Title, and probably even the NWA Title right now.

As for Adam Pearce, I’m not quite sure where he goes from here.  I think having the NWA Title for a longer stretch in ROH would have helped elevate Pearce to a level I don’t think he can get to on his own, and he definitely proved that he works very well in the old school matches that are identified with the NWA Title.  But he was made to look like a weak champion when he had the belt, first getting cleanly pinned by Nigel McGuinness (before the decision was overturned on a technicality) and then was defeated clean in the middle of the ring by Albright.  Unless he gets that title back soon, I think Adam Pearce is the big loser here.

Moving on, let’s look at the latest in the Rhett Titus-Daizee Haze-Delirious love triangle.  After defeating Titus in Virginia , Delirious finally worked up the courage to ask Daizee out on a date in New York City where it all began.  Before he got the chance, however, Titus came to the ring and did the old Rick Rude gimmick where he pulled off his pants to reveal tights with Daizee’s picture on them.  Delirious flipped out and attacked Titus and sent him packing, and then finally asked Daizee out, and after all that, Daizee said no because “they’re such good friends!”  Then she left amid chants of “You’re a c---tease” and left Delirious standing alone in the ring like an idiot.

Now, if ROH wanted to make Daizee the most hated female in the history of ROH, they have hit on the best possible storyline to do so.  Look, you know as well as I do how hard it is to meet nice girls (ones with potential outside Boink Of The Night), and with some female friends you end up with the comfort level and connection that you want out of a relationship, but the girl wants no part of it because “OMG we’re such good friends!”  I think every guy has been in the situation where they had a female friend who they had a thing for, but either never did anything about it because they knew they’d get shot down because “we’re such good friends!”, or made the move and got shot down anyway because “we’re such good friends!”  Yet, in the meantime, you’re forced to sit there watching them go out with wrong guy after wrong guy, and you know they’re wrong but they’re apparently too stupid to figure this out for themselves, and yet you’re the one they inevitably come to, whining about never meeting any nice guys, and all the while you’re sitting there going “Wait, I’m right here!  I’m awesome and I’ll treat you really really well!  What about me???”  But instead you’ve been relegated to the dreaded Friend Zone from which there is no return.  Of course, that’s just you, if she had any hotter male friends she wouldn’t think twice about it because women are stupid, horrible, cruel, heartless demons who say they want one thing, but forego it when it’s right in front of their face and instead go for guys that anyone with half a brain can see right away are bad news, and all you can do is kill them both, flee across the country, and start writing wrestling columns under an assumed name.  But I digress.

In any event, Delirious is now the beneficiary of some pretty hardcore sympathy heat, especially since he’s been getting…ahem, ENGINE-blocked by Rhett Titus (who has now started going around showing off nudie photos of Daizee on his cell phone), and on top of that has now also been screwed over by his “friend” Daizee Haze, whom the entire crowd in Manhattan completely turned on after she shot Delirious down.  If I’m allowed to step away from my bitter resentment over painful memories for a moment, I’d say a good direction to take this in would be to have Daizee just flat out turn heel and join up with Titus, and have Delirious pair up with MsChif.  They’re a natural pairing with the green thing and the insane thing, it would be a good way to get the SHIMMER Title back on ROH shows, and it would also be a good way to cross promote a MsChif-Daizee feud that could run in both ROH and SHIMMER at the same time.  I also think the idea of Delirious and MsChif being romantically linked has the potential to be really funny, definitely better than Delirious and Daizee.  Besides which, MsChif is hotter and has a much better body anyway.

Just a quick aside while we’re on the subject of Delirious: I am very impressed with the striking ability Chris Hero showed during their match in New York .  I had no idea Hero had it in him, but his strikes are very believable and look like they could legitimately lay somebody out.  I guess people learn all kinds of cool stuff during trips to Japan .

The last noteworthy happening coming out of this weekend was the return of the Motor City Machine Guns, as they went to a time limit draw with Bryan Danielson and Austin Aries in Manassas , and then lost to Kevin Steen & El Generico in New York .  Maybe it’s just me, but the luster’s starting to wear off of the MCMG.  They’re an okay team, but I don’t think they’re the “oh my god amazing” team they’re made out to be, and I certainly don’t consider them to be on the same level as the Briscoes.  I haven’t seen the MCMG-Briscoes rematch from this year, but I saw their match from 2007 and I thought it was good, but nothing special.  I definitely didn’t consider it anywhere near match of the year.

The other thing is that they lose too much to come off as a true special attraction that people need to come out and see.  Contrast them with KENTA, who looked like a superstar because he came in and beat everybody thrown into his path before finally losing to Bryan Danielson.  The difference there is that KENTA was made to look unstoppable and even went over Danielson twice in non-title matches, so people came out to see the title match because people thought there was a very real chance KENTA could win the title.  If you threw the MCMG in the ring with Age Of The Fall right now, it’d be a 50/50 whether they could win, especially since AOTF already beat them once.  They’ve almost turned into a Mick Foley type act in that they’re fun to watch, but you doubt they’ll ever accomplish anything significant when they show up.

So that’s it for this column, I’ll be back tomorrow with a preview of this weekend’s swing through the Midwest and maybe give my thoughts on one or two other things as well.  Until then, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com.  Thanks for reading, and see you in a few!