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THE pROHfile LOOKS AT THIS PAST WEEKEND'S ROH EVENTS IN FLORIDA

Hi everybody, and welcome back to the latest edition of the pROHfile, as today we take a look back at this past weekend’s events in Coral Springs and Orlando, Florida. I almost wound up in Florida on personal business this past weekend and was throwing around the idea of popping by the shows, but the stars weren’t aligned and I ended up staying in New York. The written results lead me to believe that it’s debatable as to how much I actually missed, but I think I’ll probably have to wait for the DVDs to say for sure because a lot of local talents got tryouts this weekend and it sounded like some of them impressed, so we’ll wait and see. Folks from HDNet were in Florida this weekend, presumably to get accustomed to the ROH product in advance of their first tapings in Philadelphia in a couple of weeks. Anyway, let’s get on to the results and my thoughts.

As I predicted, Nigel McGuinness got out of Florida with the ROH World Title still around his waist, but what surprised me was that he actually beat Brent Albright in their non-title match on Friday. I didn’t think about it too much up until now, but there’s actually been a bunch of non-title matches that Nigel’s won in recent months, and I have to wonder why, if Nigel was going over anyway, weren’t they just made title matches? I think both Jay Briscoe and Brent Albright, just to name his two most recent non-title conquests, could have made for very good challengers, and you could get a total of maybe two or three matches out of each of them had they gone over non-title. That said, Nigel-Albright was said to be a good match, as was Nigel’s title defense against fellow Les Thatcher trainee D’Lo Brown in Orlando. Nigel beat D’Lo after hitting a pair of Jawbreaker Lariats, but after the match D’Lo laid Nigel out and posed with the belt, which seems to indicate that we’re going to see these two matched up again down the line. It would be great if D’Lo made an extended stay in ROH because they can always use veteran influences in the locker room and he’s also a good enough worker and charismatic enough that he can probably make a respectable mark in ROH in his own right.

As I said earlier, an unusually large part of this weekend seemed to go toward tryout matches for new talent, and chief among them was Bison Smith, who finally made his in-ring debut in ROH this weekend, with a pair of squash wins over Sal Rinauro and John Kernon. He was said to have convincingly overpowered and defeated both men in very short order before going on later in the Orlando show to get involved in Bryan Danielson’s match against El Generico. This guy is obviously on track to be a major, major player in ROH in 2009, and just judging from the one time I saw him in Edison a few weeks ago, I’m going to be interested to see how some of the ROH wrestlers match up against him because I stood next to him and this guy’s even bigger and thicker than guys like Brent Albright and Erick Stevens. A lot of ROH wrestlers tend to be on the small size and we might get some matches that are of the Rey Mysterio/Mike Knox dynamic where if the smaller guy gets much offense on Bison, it won’t come off as believable.

Also getting a shot this weekend were the Dark City Fight Club of Jon Davis and Kory Chavis. They faced Kevin Steen & El Generico in Coral Springs and teamed with their 911 Inc teammate Francisco Ciatso against Brent Albright, Roderick Strong, and Erick Stevens in Orlando, and though the DCFC lost both matches, word is they were impressive in both matches and really got over with the live crowds. The Steen & Generico-DCFC match was described as being very competitive, and if you remember back a couple of years, Steen & Generico basically earned a job in ROH with their strong showing against the Briscoes in a tryout match in Philadelphia during the Fifth Year Festival, so with any luck, the DCFC will be able to parlay this weekend into a regular gig in ROH.

After breaking away from Sweet N Sour Inc in Chicago Ridge last weekend, Bobby Dempsey stepped into the ring without Larry Sweeney at ringside for the first time in nearly two years, teaming with Roderick Strong & Erick Stevens to defeat Rhett Titus and YRR members Chasyn Rance & Kenny King. Dempsey picked up the win for his team after hitting Rance with a Death Valley Driver. I’m happy to see Dempsey finally get a shot on his own, and even though anyone who hasn’t seen him wrestle recently is reading this and wondering if I’m kidding, but I’m not. Bobby Dempsey has come a long way as a wrestler and, after seeing him in some recent preshows, he’s developed a pretty brutal repertoire of moves that take advantage of his size and surprising strength. I think once more people start to see him wrestle they’re going to be surprised to see what a convincing tough guy he can be.

Sean Osbourne, Brad Attitude, and the British Lions all got tryout matches as well, but having never seen any of them work before and hearing next to nothing about any of their matches, there’s really not much I can add to the coverage of their matches except to say that other than Attitude’s win over Osbourne, they all spent the weekend counting the lights. I will say that while I appreciated that ROH is trying to freshen things up by bringing in some new faces, people don’t buy DVDs to watch tryout matches, so ROH might want to think about keeping it to one or two tryouts per show going forward.

Jimmy Jacobs & Delirious of Age Of The Fall had another rough weekend with losses to Bryan Danielson & Jerry Lynn in Coral Springs and then a disqualification loss to former AOTF members Tyler Black & Necro Butcher in Orlando. In the Coral Springs match, Jacobs missed a spear and accidentally hit Delirious, allowing Danielson to catch Jacobs in Cattle Mutilation for the win. My reaction on hearing that finish is that with two 100% clean wins by Jacobs over Bryan Danielson, you had a good “guy who shouldn’t keep beating the guy who’s better than him but somehow does” angle that could have had a much better payoff than Danielson beating him fairly easily in a tag match. As for the Tyler/Necro match, it sounded like a pretty wild brawl that continued until Jacobs hit Tyler Black with a chair to draw the DQ. Once again, we’re going nowhere with the Jacobs-Black angle that should be one of the hottest feuds in ROH.

Davey Richards suffered a pair of surprising losses, being defeated by Tyler Black in the main event in Coral Springs, and then losing to Kevin Steen in Orlando. I have to admit that Black-Richards struck me as an odd choice to go on last at the Coral Springs show but I can’t argue with it. Tyler is obviously going to be THE guy going forward, and Davey Richards has a ton of potential that I think has gone sadly untapped in the last year or two, and according to Gabe’s Book Of Secrets shoot interview, he was in line to get a pretty major push before too long, so I was happy to see him get a singles main event even if he did come out on the losing end. As for his match with Steen, I would have put Richards over to build to a rematch for the World Tag Team Title, but if they’re going to keep going with the feud regardless, then I guess it doesn’t really matter.

The aces of ROH, Austin Aries and Bryan Danielson, had another couple of matches worth mentioning, as Austin Aries defeated Necro Butcher and Danielson suffered a surprising loss to El Generico. Aries picked up the win after a distraction from Jimmy Jacobs and a chairshot from Delirious aided Aries en route to picking up the win with a brainbuster. It’s interesting to me that Aries hasn’t yet officially stated whether he’s a member of Age Of The Fall or not, and I think it would be cool if it turns out that Aries is using Jacobs to some as-yet unknown end, but I guess we’ve got a ways to go before we get more clarification on that.

As for Danielson’s loss to Generico, Bison Smith came out to attack Danielson again, but this time Danielson dove on Smith before he could get involved, but the distraction was enough for Generico to hit the Yakuza Kick on Danielson as he re-entered the ring and then hit a brainbuster for the win. After the match, Bison Smith attacked and powerbombed Danielson again. After seeing and hearing so much about Bison Smith’s activities since showing up in ROH, I am really, really looking forward to seeing more of him in the ring and seeing his eventual match against Danielson. I think it’s great that just as Danielson finally finds some closure with the Morishima situation, he now moves on to another big, tough, bruising monster for an opponent. In a way, I find it reminiscent of Hulk Hogan always getting monsters thrown at him, except that Hogan wasn’t 5’9” and 185 pounds. For people who have been complaining about how some people have been booked since Pearce took over booking, I point to Bison Smith as a guy who’s been booked very well since coming to ROH. I expect great things out of him.

I think that between the overabundance of tryout matches and the fact that nothing really major happened elsewhere on either show, this weekend sounded like a couple of shows that you won’t miss much by skipping. A couple of people I heard from said it sounded like an FIP show with the ROH logo on it, and while I’ll reserve final judgment until I see the DVDs, according to people in attendance who spoke to Cary Silkin, it didn’t sound like ROH was in any hurry to come back to Florida anytime soon, so they might not have been too worried about setting the world on fire this weekend. In any event, I’ll have some thoughts on this in a hotline in the Elite section either today or tomorrow, so you might want to check that out.

So with that, I’m going to hit the bricks for today, but now that we’ve got a little break before ROH’s next events, including their first TV tapings in Philadelphia, I’m going to need material for the pROHfile for at least the next couple of weeks, so if there’s any ROH-related topics you’d like me to cover, sned it along to stupwinsider@yahoo.com and I’ll address it sometime in the next few columns. Okay, I’m out. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all soon!