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As my regular readers will have noticed, it’s been a few weeks since the most recent edition of the pROHfile, and while part of it was that most of my free time was taken up doing the Survivor Series year-by-year retrospective, the other part was that the news about Gabe Sapolsky being let go came out literally mere hours after I finished writing the recap of what turned out to be Sapolsky’s final show, and rather than dive right in with my thoughts like everybody else, I decided to wait a bit and see how things ended up unfolding rather than try to play prognosticator. But now that we’re about a week past ROH’s first events under the new creative hand of Adam Pearce, I’d like to talk about some of the changes I’ve seen since Sapolsky left.
The change I noticed right away was on the ROH website, as it now features far more frequent updates. I had actually noticed for quite some time now that there seemed to be a lot less focus on updates than there had been in the past, and at times we got as few as one or two very bare bones updates per week. Since Pearce took over, we’ve missed no more than one or two days of updates, and he’s also putting up more articles on the front page bringing people up to date on storylines while also explaining the motivations behind new matches being signed for future events. I think this is great, because frankly, the fans weren’t being given enough information to stay excited about the product, and even though Pearce has a different writing style than Gabe, he’s doing a good job so far of getting his storylines across. He has also been giving us more frequent updates on the ROH Video Wire to give us a better taste of what’s happening at the live events than we would get just reading about it.
As far as the in-ring product goes, there have been changes there as well. The first thing that hit the fans in attendance in Montreal and Markham was the institution of a 20 count on the floor. Other than Pure Title and FIP Title matches, there were no countouts in ROH, with the idea being that the fans want to see clean finishes, not countouts being used as a crutch to advance storylines without making people do jobs. Indeed, there was one countout finish in Canada as well as a couple of DQ finishes, and word is the crowd pretty much crapped on all of them. I personally prefer Gabe’s idea of no countouts and no DQs except for once in a blue moon, but I understand the idea to institute them to help from a storyline perspective and I think if used PROPERLY, countouts and DQs can be effective, it’s just when they’re heavily relied upon and used as a crutch that it becomes a problem.
We also saw in the Canada shows that most of the undercard worked a much less high impact style, with the really good stuff being saved for the last couple of matches. I absolutely agree with this 100%, because one of the problems I’ve seen that has caused a level of apathy with the fans is that while the wrestling is good, it’s so consistently good that not much really seems to stand out and appear special, so you get this feeling of sameness to the whole product that people have been complaining about for some time. By making this change you not only save the bodies of everybody on the roster (which has been a concern of ROH for some time), but also make the main events really seem like main events and make the really special matches stand out as much as they deserve to.
In terms of the backstage atmosphere, I understand that it had more of a group project feel than when Sapolsky was in charge, because Sapolsky had his vision and he was the sole guiding force and everybody had to follow his vision. With Pearce backstage in Montreal and Markham, he was said to be more open to the wrestlers’ input, and Jerry Lynn and Austin Aries also were more involved with helping lay out the matches and work stuff out with the undercard guys. I think this is a good idea as well because, even though a lot of people love working for ROH and think it’s a great company, human nature says that people are just going to get more excited when their stuff is getting used. One of the things that made the Attitude Era work so well is that, for all his mistakes, Vince Russo was very open to using ideas put forth to him by the talent instead of being rigid and refusing to use anyone’s ideas but his own. While I’m not saying that we’re looking at Vince Russo-style booking here by any means, it’ll be interesting to see how the team effort will steer the ROH ship in the months to come.
With all that said, I don’t think we’re going to see ROH really get too far into Pearce territory for a couple of shows yet, as Gabe surely had his booking plans set up pretty far in advance, which is something he was always good about, so I would imagine that Pearce may make some changes here and there, but still stay within the general framework Gabe had laid out for a while yet, and I wouldn’t expect to see us steer into a different direction until probably sometime around Final Battle weekend.
As for my thoughts on whether replacing Sapolsky was a good idea or not, I would have to say yes, it was. Don’t get me wrong, Gabe is a great booker and I think I’ve said in the past that I pretty much owe my continuing wrestling fandom to the product he was booking, because if it weren’t for ROH, I would have probably stopped following the business years ago, much less be writing about it. But as has been said elsewhere, he had been booking ROH for six and a half years by this point, and as good of a booker as he was, everybody burns out eventually. I don’t know if this means we’ll never see Gabe come back to book for ROH because he may just need some time off to recharge his batteries before coming back for a fresh start, but the ROH product had gotten somewhat repetitive and a change was needed, especially as ROH tries to move in a more TV-friendly direction. I think a lot of Gabe’s objections to Cary Silkin taking his company in the direction he wanted to were a part of the reason behind Gabe’s dismissal as well, and I would imagine that Pearce is more on board with the idea of going national and will book accordingly.
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For now though, allow me to share my thoughts on ROH’s swing through Canada.
Obviously whenever ROH comes through Canada, Kevin Steen & El Generico are going to be focal points of the shows, and they main evented both nights. First in Montreal they were involved in a four way elimination match for the ROH Title that also included Go Shiozaki and ROH Champion Nigel McGuinness. Generico was eliminated early, but Steen was able to eliminate Shiozaki before going down in defeat once again to Nigel. I think at this point some new challengers for Nigel really need to start getting built up pretty quickly, because this is the fourth or fifth time Steen and Nigel have wrestled this year, and Nigel has faced both Shiozaki and Generico more than once as well.
Steen & Generico followed up the next night by successfully defending the ROH World Tag Team Title against the Briscoes. The crowd was surprisingly said to be split on this one, though slightly more in favor of the Briscoes. Steen & Generico picked up the win in a match that was said to have been good, though not quite as over the top as some of their matches from 2007. Thankfully, Steen & Generico came out of this weekend looking better than they did in Danbury and Edison a few weeks ago where they seemed to be positioned on the bottom of the totem pole of the tag division despite being the champions. They made good here by picking up a win over the Briscoes, but one has to wonder where this leaves the Briscoes now, as they have spent so much time with the title that it wouldn’t make sense to put it back on them yet again, but there’s only so many times they can challenge for the title and fail as well. This is a recurring problem for ROH, as other than Austin Aries and Bryan Danielson, I can’t think of any ROH Champions who have really been able to successfully move on without feeling like they were rehashing stuff they had done before, and that includes Samoa Joe.
As I’ve said, there were a couple of DQ finishes over that weekend, both involving the Necro Butcher. Both in Montreal when he was wrestling Brodie Lee and on Markham when he was challenging Nigel for the ROH Title, members of Age Of The Fall ran in and attacked him to draw disqualifications. I guess the Necro-AOTF feud was as good an opportunity as any to test the waters of DQ finishes, but until the fans get a little more comfortable with DQ and countout finishes, I’d try to steer clear of doing them in World Title matches, because when you do it there on the first weekend of a new booking regime, it feels like you’re beating us over the head with it.
Other than the attacks, though, it was a pretty rough weekend for Age Of The Fall as they racked up several losses. In addition to Brodie Lee’s DQ loss to Necro Butcher, Delirious lost to Jerry Lynn while Jimmy Jacobs & Tyler Black lost to Bryan Danielson and Austin Aries in Montreal, and then in Markham Tyler Black failed to win a three way match that also included Bryan Danielson and Kenny Omega, Delirious and Brodie Lee suffered a countout loss to the new team of Kenny King and Rhett Titus (which also was said to have not gone over well), and Jimmy Jacobs lost a Dog Collar match to Austin Aries to even up their three match series at one apiece. I obviously don’t know for sure, but my guess is that Age Of The Fall is going to be one of those casualties of the switch from Gabe to Pearce, as Gabe was obviously 1000% behind Age Of The Fall, but they seem to have started to be pushed down since Pearce took over. Obviously the entire objective at this point is to eventually split Tyler Black off from the group and push him to the main event as a singles, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the rest of thr group, who might not have that much more that can be done with them without rehashing, which is exactly what they’re trying to get away from right now.
Speaking of stables, it was also a rough weekend for Sweet & Sour Inc, as they were almost swept the entire weekend. Aside from Shiozaki’s loss in the elimination match in Montreal, Eddie Edwards and Davey Richards dropped matches to Erick Stevens and Roderick Strong, respectively, and then in Markham Edwards teamed with Shiozaki to drop a tag match to Roderick and Stevens while Richards picked up Sweet & Sour’s lone win of the weekend by pinning Jerry Lynn. I don’t see quite the doom & gloom path for Larry Sweeney’s group as I do for AOTF, because even though ROH is still being vague about whether we’re going to see Steel Cage Warfare at Final Battle, there is still a lot of gas left in the feud between Sweet & Sour and Strong/Stevens/Albright and I do expect some kind of six or eight man tag to close the year.
* * * Much as Barack Obama ran on a platform of change on his road to winning the Presidency earlier this month, change seems to be the theme in Ring Of Honor right now. We’ve obviously got a ways to go before we know for sure what kind of job Adam Pearce will do as booker, but Cary Silkin is no stranger to the business and will hopefully be able to help guide Pearce through whatever rough spots they come to and continue to build ROH into the creative force it had become before it began stagnating.
In the meantime, thank you as always for reading, and as usual all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com, and now you can also catch me on MySpace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider. Take care and I’ll see you all soon!
