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Before I do though, just a quick word about Jack Evans. I’ve been watching a bunch of his matches later, and it really stuck out at me how much he sucks. Seriously, he is one of the sloppiest wrestlers I have ever seen, and maybe 20% of the moves he tries ever even come close to looking like they hit. I’d personally be embarrassed to have to sell for him, and if you’re going to tell me how difficult it is to hit the kinds of moves he tries, my response would be to not try doing moves you can’t hit! And for the record, I’ve seen other wrestlers hit moves Evans constantly botches with pretty regular accuracy. For example, Matt Sydal always hits nearly everything he does very crisply and rarely, if ever, screws up. Evans is like the Sabu of this decade in that he’s incredibly sloppy and will probably end up nearly crippled one day and have nothing to show for it since no national promotions are likely to pick up a guy so sloppy. And now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, on to this weekend’s events.
This will be a big weekend for grudge matches, mostly centering around Austin Aries and Bryan Danielson. Of course Danielson and Aries will team up in the main event in Chicago Ridge to take on Nigel McGuinness and Claudio Castagnoli. Danielson will be out for revenge after the brutal beating he suffered at the hands of Castagnoli two weeks ago in New York City. The thing I’m going to find most interesting is seeing what kind of chemistry Claudio and Nigel have as a team. They’ve worked against one another so much that it’ll be a little strange to see them on the same side for a change, kind of like the few times the Rock and Triple H were a team following Wrestlemania 15.
Aries also has his own grudge to deal with as well aside from the Chicago Ridge main event, as he will face Tyler Black in Cleveland. These two have wrestled a couple of times, and I’ve only seen the Unscripted III match, but that was a terrific match, especially considering that the entire lineup of that show was changed that day and they only found out they’d be wrestling one another a few hours before the match happened. As I’ve well established, I consider Tyler Black to be a major star on the rise, and with no titles on the line in this match, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Black score the upset.
Also on the Aries-AOTF front, Jimmy Jacobs will have to face his former lackey the Necro Butcher in a No DQ match in Chicago Ridge. Before he gets there, however, he’ll be debuting a new member of Age Of The Fall as his partner against the Briscoes in Cleveland. With Mark back in action after suffering yet another injury, it looks like that feud is ready to go back into full swing again. With Age Of The Fall holding the ROH World Tag Team Title, I’m sure a lot of people are going to expect them to drop the title back to the Briscoes at some point. I’m not so sure of that (I still think the titles are Steen & Generico’s for the taking), but I expect the feud to continue for several more months before blowing off late in the year.
But getting back to Necro Butcher, I’m expecting Jacobs to basically run for his life the entire match before using cheap means to take over. This being No DQ, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see other members of AOTF get involved and cost Necro the match. But with Necro seemingly now a former member of AOTF, I think it’d be really cool if they blew off the feud and the AOTF angle late in the year with the return of Steel Cage Warfare, pitting Necro, Aries, and the Briscoes against Jacobs, Black, Joey Matthews, and whatever fourth member is going to debut tonight.
Titles are obviously not going to be the focus of this weekend’s events, with both tag champs involved in non-title situations and Nigel McGuinness working a tag match in Chicago Ridge, but we will see title defenses by all three World Champions this weekend. Before tagging up with Claudio, Nigel McGuinness will defend the ROH World Title against El Generico in Cleveland. I’m not sure anyone’s really feeling confident about Generico’s chances of actually winning the title, but I see this more as an opportunity to help build Generico up to a top-level position by giving him a strong showing against Nigel. I expect Generico to realize how important this match is for him in terms of his upward mobility, so expect a good match out of these two.
Erick Stevens’ entire weekend is going to revolve around title defenses, with matches against both former Kings Of Wrestling on consecutive nights, first defending against Claudio Castagnoli on Friday and then against Chris Hero in Saturday. I really hope Stevens keeps the title through the weekend because, I’ll say it, they Ortoned him when they had him drop the title back to Strong barely any time after he won it, and then he rarely won any matches before finally getting the title back about a month ago. I think that if they have him lose the title anytime within the next few months, it’ll really hurt him and make him looks like he can’t hang with the big boys.
As for the matches themselves, it’ll be interesting to see how they’re booked, because both Claudio and Hero are at turning points in their careers. Assuming that Stevens beats Claudio, it’ll be interesting to see how Claudio will react to the loss, and losing two shots at the ROH Title caused him to snap. Are we looking at another postmatch attack against Stevens? With Chris Hero, he’s never been above jobbing, even when he’s being booked strong, so even if Stevens has a tough match with or suffers a postmatch attack from Claudio, I think he’ll make it through Hero in fairly convincing fashion.
Finally, Brent Albright will defend the NWA World Title against Go Shiozaki in Chicago Ridge. Again, I don’t see Albright losing the title so soon after winning it, but I will say that I will question the sanity of whoever made the call, whether it be Gabe Sapolsky, Brent Albright, the NWA, or anyone else if they decide to put the NWA Title on Go Shiozaki. Flat out, the guy’s an overrated chump with one move. In fact, I personally can’t wait to get the DVD of this just to watch Albright pound the crap out of him.
Albright won’t have to wait for Saturday to get his hands on Shiozaki, however, as Albright will team with Roderick Strong to take on Shiozaki and Chris Hero in a grudge tag team match in Cleveland. I really don’t see Shiozaki and Hero, even with his pretty impressive striking ability, beating Strong and Albright, who are both looking at the starts of pretty heavy pushes, but I don’t know if Strong will be as successful in Chicago Ridge, where he’ll run the Sweet & Sour Gauntlet. The story there is that Roderick Strong will have to go through several members of Sweet & Sour Inc, and if he is successful, he’ll get a one-on-one match against Larry Sweeney. Since Shiozaki and Hero are already booked in other matches in Chicago Ridge, I’m going to assume that the gauntlet will be populated by some combination of Adam Pearce, Shane Hagadorn, Bobby Dempsey, Eddie Edwards, and if they really want to be entertaining, Sara Del Rey. If I’m fantasy booking this, I have Roderick run the whole gauntlet, but then get laid out right before the Sweeney match, giving Sweeney an easy win.
Also getting some hype this weekend is the debut of Kenny King as a singles wrestler in ROH. I haven’t seen much of King even though he’s appeared before as a member of the YRR (and looked pretty impressive), but apparently he’s in and to stay now. He’ll be put right to the test as he’s being thrown in there with Bryan Danielson on Friday and Kevin Steen on Saturday. I don’t seriously expect King to win either match, but Gabe often puts new guys in the ring with established veterans as a way to gauge how well they do, and I think that’s what we’re looking at this weekend with Kenny King.
Other matches in Cleveland will include a rematch between Delirious and Rhett Titus (during which we’re bound to get some advancement in the Daizee Haze love triangle storyline), Kevin Steen taking on (and most likely decimating) Jigsaw, and Ruckus taking on Adam Pearce. In Chicago Ridge we’ve got a slightly more interesting undercard, which will feature a four way tag team scramble pitting the Briscoes (who, judging by the latest Video Wire, would like to shoot Jimmy Jacobs and Tyler Black in the head) taking on the teams of Ruckus & Jigsaw, Delirious & Pelle Primeau, and “local standouts†Tweek & Dash Phoenix. Also, Tyler Black will be taking on El Generico in what not only has the potential to be a great match, but will also probably play into Steen & Generico’s quest for the ROH World Tag Team Title.
Though they have yet to be booked into any matches, Daizee Haze and Sara Del Rey are booked on both shows, and SHIMMER Champion MsChif will be in Chicago Ridge. While I expect there will be some kind of interaction between these three women involving the SHIMMER Title, I’m still holding out hope that MsChif gets inserted into the Delirious-Daizee-Titus love triangle, I guess making it a love square? Maybe it can be a love trapezoid since Delirious and MsChif are both really out there?
Maybe not, and maybe I should just wrap this up before I get too much further off topic. Thanks again for reading, and as always, your feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com. Thanks for checking in for this double shot of the pROHfile, and I’ll see you next week with fallout from the Midwest, and whatever else I feel like talking about. See you then!
