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Hello all, and welcome back to the latest edition of the pROHfile, and I’ve got a lot of things to talk about today, and I’m going to start with some brief thoughts on ROH’s debuts in Collinsville, Illinois and Nashville, Tennessee. I apologize for the lateness of these, but I took a week off to go to Florida for some personal stuff and was more or less completely away from the wrestling bubble. It was a nice break, but by the looks of things I really didn’t miss too much as both shows sounded pretty pedestrian to me, so I’ll keep this brief.
The main events of both shows didn’t sound particularly interesting to me. I’m sure the Danielson/Lynn vs Nigel/Claudio match was very good, but nothing screams B-show more than a tag main event which will ultimately mean nothing in the long run. Seeing Lynn get the clean win on Claudio was nice, even if he did end up losing the next night. They took an interesting direction by having Nigel run Jerry down after the match only for Jerry to snap and lay Nigel out, and I think if they play their cards right, we may ben adding Jerry Lynn to the very short list of people in the mix to take the title from Nigel. I didn’t think it would happen in Nashville, but if Nigel gets through Marufuji at Final Battle, we may be looking at Jerry Lynn as a strong contender for the ROH World Title in 2009.
As for Danielson and Claudio’s No DQ match, word is it was a very good, brutal match, but we’ll see if it’s really over or not. Claudio has spent months brutally attacking Danielson and leaving him laying at every turn, so I’d be surprised if this was really the end of it. I’m thinking something more decisive, like maybe a cage match or a last man standing match, or something like that.
Tyler Black scored his first major singles win with a clean victory over Austin Aries. This is a huge step for Tyler Black and, as I predicted, this victory over Aries is signaling that they’re finally ready to move forward with a main event singles push for Tyler. Aries has already challenged him to a rematch, and if their first match last December is any indication of what we’re in for, I really hope it happens Final Battle weekend so I can be there for it.
As I expected, the Briscoes won the Tag Team Gauntlet Match to earn a match with Sasaki and Nakajima at Final Battle. I don’t think anyone was surprised to see the Briscoes win this, as they more than anyone deserve this match, and it’ll give them something to do while they try to figure out where to go next with them. I think keeping them out of the tag title scene for a while would be best, so maybe just throw them dream tag team matches for a while.
Also, I wass amused to hear that Grizzly Redwood and Bushwhacker Luke had a fun couple of outings this weekend, losing to Sal Rinauro and Rhett Titus in Collinsville before going on to Nashville to defeat Irish Airborne. Both matches got generally positive reviews, and while I don’t expect Luke to become a full time worker in ROH, I think they can still be a fun part of ROH’s recently resurgent tag team division.
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Moving on, I’d like to address some subjects which have been brought up to me by readers recently, and I apologize in advance for not having names, but I got these questions months ago and have deleted the emails since, so if you asked any of these, feel free to email me so I can tell you how great you are. The first topic was a request for my thoughts on Age Of The Fall. Are they an underrated success, have they been overpushed, does it just plain stink, or what?
I think Age Of The Fall worked for what it was designed for: a new step for Jimmy Jacobs’ character as well as a storyline reason to bring Necro Butcher and Tyler Black into ROH. Regardless of the reaction the group as a whole or Jimmy individually get, there’s no debating that Necro and Tyler are two of the most popular wrestlers in ROH right now, and you really have AOTF’s existence to thank for that. Necro has been successful and has gotten over very well since leaving the AOTF fold, and most people expect Tyler Black to rapidly ascend to the top of ROH once he splits with AOTF.
On the other hand, there have been some hiccups for AOTF as well, as several guys have been brought in who, for one reason or another, didn’t work out: Joey Matthews, Zack Gowen, and Brodie Lee all came and went and none of them really contributed to the group in any meaningful way. Lacey never meant less in ROH than she did during her stint in AOTF, and except for a one night return during the Aries-Jacobs blowoff, she’s now pretty much gone from the business.
I think a very good question is what exactly is going to happen with Jimmy Jacobs once Delirious turns back to the side of good, Tyler goes off in his quest to become ROH World Champion, and Age Of The Fall dissolves for good? Where do you go with Jimmy Jacobs from here? After the turns his character has taken over the last year and a half, you can’t go back to the happy-go-lucky kid he was while teaming with BJ Whitmer and doing the HUSS gimmick, and you definitely can’t go back to the lovestruck puppy boy he was while under the thumb of Lacey in 2006-07. As great of a talker as I think he is and how good his matches are on a regular basis, I don’t know if the ROH audience at large is ready to accept him as a main eventer or a legit World Title contender. On the other hand, he’s too good to be putting people over in the midcard.
I think the answer is that most people have a certain lifespan in a promotion before they need to go away, even temporarily. Jacobs has already extended his lifespan in ROH by an extra three years, as Gabe Sapolsky wanted to get rid of him after the split with Whitmer until Jacobs came to him with the Jimmy Loves Lacey angle and they ended up running with it for a full year. Gabe obviously ended up becoming a big fan of the guy, but Jimmy and AOTF seemed to be pet projects of Gabe’s that haven’t carried over into the Pearce Regime. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jimmy disappear after AOTF falls apart.
Another thing I was asked about was whether I thought ROH’s policy of not allowing people to bring digital cameras into ROH shows is reasonable. I personally think it is, and basically what it comes down to is that unlike the old days where you took a camera full of pictures and then took a few days to get them developed, and even then only your friends were going to see them, we’re now at a point where digital pictures and videos can wind up on the internet by the time the sun is up the day after the show. This is true of all companies, but especially one whose business is driven by DVD sales like ROH, but wrestling companies these days don’t want footage of their shows being so easily pirated. The technology exists for somebody with enough memory to record an entire ROH show on their digital camera, and not only does this mean that person probablyh won’t buy the DVD, but they could then distribute it online via nefarious means. This goes for pictures as well. Basically, the shows belong to ROH and I don’t blame them for wanting to control its distribution rather than have it taken out of their hands.
That brings me to my next question, which is whether there are too many ROH shows/DVDs in a year. I’m kind of stuck in the middle of this one, because I’m a big enough fan of ROH that I will buy all the DVDs and there are a lot of people like me, but there are also a lot of people who just don’t have the interest, money, or both to get every DVD as it comes out. I’m going to say no, there aren’t too many, but I say that with an asterisk. I think there are enough ROH DVDs coming out that people who have the desire to get that much ROH can do so, but their product is laid out in such a way that even if you don’t get them all, it’s pretty easy to identify which of the shows are the ones you want to make sure and pick up.
I could be a biased New Yorker and say that all the shows that take place in NYC are must grabs, and I really do believe that, but even if you don’t have that kind of pride for New York or wherever you’re from, you can make a pretty safe gamble on picking up DVDs for Death Before Dishonor, Glory By Honor, Final Battle, and the Anniversary Shows. The PPVs are also designed to be top notch shows with their own storyline arcs that allow people to generally follow events if all you’re watching are the PPVs, while also playing into the larger storyline arcs that play out through all the shows. I think that unlike some companies, ROH is very smartly booked in such a way that it caters to both sides of its clientele.
The final topic I’m going to cover today concerns what I think are the most overrated matches in ROH history. The first ROH match I saw that really disappointed me might surprise some people, but I really wasn’t that taken with the Joe vs Kobashi match. It just bored me, and it came off like a 20 minute chopfest. Kobashi was built like a tank, but had obviously been really broken down over the years and didn’t look like he was in the greatest condition when he showed up in New York. The other thing about that match was that there was absolutely no suspense about who was going to win. You knew Kobashi was going over, so even though Joe got his hope spots, they really didn’t do it for me.
Along the same lines, Misawa actually disappointed me so badly that I almost felt insulted by the showings he had. For years I had heard about what a great wrestler Mitsuharu Misawa was, and I was really curious to see what he was going to bring, but what ended up climbing into the ring in Philadelphia and New York was a slow moving, painfully out of shape shadow of what may have once been a great wrestler. Misawa literally moved like a dinosaur in both matches, and he did so little in the tag match in Philly that it was laughable, and the only reason he looked even remotely passable in either match was because he had three guys who work for him bouncing around like pinballs for offense that didn’t look like it could hurt a fly. I understand that Misawa is a Japanese wrestling legend and all, but there’s a reason I don’t want to see Harley Race wrestle now: no matter how good he was in his day (and he was), he’s too old to put on the kind of match I expect in the main event of an ROH show, especially considering the expectations that his name alone would generate.
The last match on my list is Joe vs Punk II, and while it wasn’t disappointing per se, it definitely wasn’t the ***** match Dave Meltzer obviously thought it was. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good match and it’s impressive that those two could keep up for an hour without totally repeating the first match, but it wasn’t the kind of match that made me sit there going “Oh my god, this is amazing!†I actually thought it was the weakest of their three matches. It served as a good transitional stage between the ultra technical first match and the brutally violent third match, but that’s about it.
And with that, I’m calling it a night. Thanks as always for reading, and I’ll see you all soon, either with another edition of the pROHfile or my ongoing retrospective on Starrcade. Until then, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com, or you can catch me on Myspace at www.myspace.com, where I check in frequently with my thoughts on various wrestling news items, as well as post all my columns after they go up on PWInsider. Take care, and I’ll see you all soon!
