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But on to the real reason we’re all here, which is to talk about Ring Of Honor. I’m not going to do a single column preview of this weekend’s Japan shows, because the PWInsider Town Hall will be returning, along with the entire gang! So if you’ve missed Gregory, Cliff, and Ashling (I know I sure have...even though I see them all the time in that real life thing), they’ll be back in full force with a preview that will be hopefully going up before the shows actually happen!
So for right now, I want to start by talking about the tag title scene in ROH. Jimmy Jacobs & Tyler Black are the current ROH World Tag Team Champions, with both former champions Jay & Mark Briscoe as well as Kevin Steen & El Generico hot on their trail, and it’s a race to see which of those teams can knock off Age Of The Fall first. Both teams certainly have a history with AOTF.
In fact, Age Of The Fall made their debut as a group by attacking the Briscoes following the Briscoes’ grueling victory over Steen & Generico in the infamous ladder match at Man Up. They hung a heavily bleeding Jay Briscoe above the ring and let him drip blood all over the mat, a scene which was so gruesome that it was cut from the PPV and saved for DVD. Since then, they have attacked the Briscoes numerous times, and even tied up Mark in barbed wire. What’s more, Jacobs and Black defeated the Briscoes to win the ROH World Tag Team Title to close out Final Battle 2007. The Briscoes are so mad that as was seen in the two recent Video Wires, they are more or less threatening to blow Jimmy Jacobs and Tyler Black’s heads off with shotguns. The Briscoes get their shot at the title this Saturday night in Tokyo.
If AOTF makes it past the Briscoes in Tokyo, their next defense will be against Steen & Generico on 9/19 in Boston on the PPV taping. AOTF also has a history with Steen & Generico, going all the way back to AOTF’s debut. Steen & Generico had just lost a grueling ladder match to the Briscoes, and were immediately elbowed out of the picture by Jimmy Jacobs and his cronies. They didn’t cross paths again until the finals of the tag title tournament in Hartford a few months ago when an injured Steen & Generico rallied back from a severe disadvantage against Jacobs & Black, and were literally a hair’s breadth away from putting away Jacobs and winning the title when Tyler Black snuck a quick rollup on Generico and stole the win and the title. Kevin Steen has promised that he will be wearing an ROH Title when ROH makes its return to Dayton, Ohio on 11/21, and since he’s all out of ROH World Title shots, one has to assume he’s got a strong chance to win the tag title with Generico sometime before then.
On the other hand, if the Briscoes defeat AOTF for the title in Japan, then it will be the Briscoes defending against Steen & Generico in Boston. The Briscoes vs Steen & Generico had already been signed for 10/11 in Orlando, Florida, but if the Briscoes win the title then their first meeting in over a year will be moved up a few weeks. This provides a more intriguing scenario as the Briscoes vs Steen & Generico was one of the best feuds of 2007, and the chance for another pair of matches between the two teams would certainly be something I’d look forward to.
The problem with that scenario is that Age Of The Fall, around whom much of ROH has been centered in 2008, would be completely out of the picture. I don’t really see things playing out that way, but I have some thoughts on where this might go. First of all, even if Steen & Generico don’t get the title in Boston or Florida, they still have a weekend in Connecticut and New Jersey, and then a second weekend in Canada to get through before they have to show up in Dayton emptyhanded. Being that Steen & Generico are Canadian, I would be surprised if they didn’t hold off on their title win until they head north of the border in November, and specifically expect them to get the title in Montreal since that’s the area they’re from. Besides, the Canadian shows are the last ones before Dayton and we all know how Gabe loves having guys say “I’m going to win a title by (later time X)†and then have them dramatically win it at the last possible moment.
So where does this leave the Briscoes? Well, I think that since we’re looking at at least one Briscoes-Steen/Generico match in the next month or so, I think this has the potential to develop into a great three way feud that could culminate in an epic three way match at Final Battle, thereby keeping all three teams in the mix until the year’s out and it’s time for 2009’s storylines to begin.
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The other thing I wanted to do today is take a look at Nigel McGuinness’ reign as ROH World Champion. As of right now, Nigel has passed 11 months as ROH World Champion and shows no signs of slowing down. He is at this point the third longest reigning ROH Champion in the history of the company, behind Samoa Joe at 21 months and Bryan Danielson at 15 months. I think Nigel has lasted a lot longer with the title than people thought or even longed that they had hoped, and he's still going strong. The difference between Nigel as champion now and the later parts of Joe and Danielson's title reigns is that as Joe and Danielson's reigns got toward the end, you kind of got this feeling like they had pretty much beaten everyone and done all they could, and you knew that the next big challenger had a good chance of knocking them off. Nigel has beaten everyone, but there's really no other major challengers in a position right now to step up and take the title.
If anything, he's almost turned into a Honky Tonk Man type of champion where, even though he's light years ahead of Honky as a worker, the fans in a lot of markets (such as my home in New York) hate his guts and can't wait to see him drop the belt. So what does ROH do? They give him more and more heat as champion by putting him in the ring with guys the fans would love to see take the title, such as Bryan Danielson, Tyler Black, or Austin Aries, and whatever cheap means he needs to do it, he walks out time after time with the title.
The one year mark with Nigel as champion has really crept up on us before we knew it, especially when you consider that there were a few points early on in the reign where it could have all ended almost before it had begun. First there was the arm injury which mostly kept him out of action for almost two months, and then the concussion in his first match back with Austin Aries that made him miss Final Battle. From there, the fan sentiment against him seemed to lead to this hope that ROH management would decide to cater to them and have Nigel drop the title ASAP to somebody they liked, but ROH decided to go the other way and I have to say that that decision has led to nothing but success. It's gotten Nigel immense amounts of heat with a fanbase that has quite violently turned against him, and every time he beats Danielson or Tyler Black or even Kevin Steen, it just gets them even more over via sympathy than they were going into the match.
At this point, I don't see who's going to take the title from him. He's already gone through every top contender. His next three challengers are Jimmy Jacobs, Roderick Strong, and El Generico, and I don't think anyone expects any of them to get the belt. Danielson, Aries, and Steen have all gotten their runs at Nigel. I still think right now the biggest threat to Nigel McGuinness is Naomichi Marufuji, who would definitely be a solid choice and I have to say would be quite deserving of even a short run with the ROH Title, but if Nigel gets past Marufuji, I think Nigel's going to keep the title for a while yet, and wouldn't be surprised to see him surpass Danielson's 15 months with the title and maybe even approach Joe's record. What else do you think would get Nigel more heat than the threat of him beating the record set by ROH's most beloved alumnus?
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And that's it for me for today. Again, go check out my hotline in the Elite section and if I do get one out this weekend, go check that one out too because I promise it'll be awesome! In the meantime, your feedback can as always be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
