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Hi everybody, and welcome back to the latest edition of the pROHfile. I apologize for not being around much lately, but I’m in the process of moving to another state and am trying to plan a wedding all at once, so things have been a bit hectic for me lately, but I decided to try and at least get in some stuff this week, as the Houston events from Wrestlemania weekend and the latest set of HDNet tapings have all gone down since I last checked in, so let’s get right into the meat.
The biggest news of the last couple of weeks was Jerry Lynn winning the ROH World Title from Nigel McGuinness at Supercard Of Honor IV. I was initially suspicious of the timing since Nigel went into the match that night (as well as New York a couple of weeks earlier) pretty badly injured, but turns out that the plan all along was for Jerry to get the title in Houston, so probably what happened was that Nigel just decided to work through his last few matches before dropping the title to Jerry Lynn and then hopefully taking some time off. I say hopefully because I question whether Nigel actually will take some time to heal instead of just plowing on ahead, but I ranted about that in an earlier column, so I won’t go into it again here.
But in any event, Jerry is now the ROH World Champion, and I’ve been saying for months that it was a two man race between Jerry Lynn and Tyler Black, and it turns out that Lynn won the race. Nigel was a terrific champion in a line of terrific champions, and I’d put his reign right up there with those of Samoa Joe and Bryan Danielson. As for Jerry, time will tell what his reign is going to look like, but now with Nigel out of the picture, it may very well turn into a one man race with Tyler Black, who still holds his Money In The Bank-style title shot, chasing Jerry Lynn to prove that he’s not only better than Nigel, but Jerry Lynn as well.
Getting back to Nigel McGuinness, the night after losing the title, he came out on Take No Prisoners to cut an in-ring interview, at the end of which he shook Claudio Castagnoli’s hand and wished him luck in his three-way match that evening. This led to Claudio attacking Nigel before Brent Albright made the save. This may be the way they’re going to write Nigel out for a little while, and while I don’t have a problem with the way it was done, I do have a problem with the guy they got to do it. This would logically lead to a Nigel-Claudio feud when Nigel’s healthy enough to wrestle again, but this would now be the third time these guys have feuded, and even though they’ve typically had good to great matches, how many times do we want to see them wrestle each other? I though the off-and-on team they had formed over the last year was an interesting new wrinkly to their relationship, but rehashing the feud again isn’t going to interest me unless they finally have Claudio score a series of brutal wins over Nigel to prove that he’s on Nigel’s level.
This then brings up the point where we’re finally getting to the point where Nigel (and to a lesser degree, Claudio) have been in ROH for so long that they’re necessarily going to start repeating some stuff. Gabe mentioned in his Book Of Secrets DVD that after losing the title, Gabe was going to start encouraging Nigel to leave ROH and pursue a bigger money contract elsewhere, and I’m starting to see why. They’ve done everything they can possible do with Nigel McGuinness. He held the Pure Title for a year. He held the World Title for a year and a half, and literally beat everyone in ROH, several of them multiple times. How many more times can we see him wrestle Claudio, or Jerry Lynn, or Tyler Black, or Bryan Danielson, or even guys like Austin Aries, Roderick Strong, or Kevin Steen & El Generico? Taking a healthy amount of time away from ROH might be the best thing not just for Nigel’s well being, but also to keep him from stagnating.
But getting back to Claudio, he and Brent Albright managed to move their feud forward yet still remain even with one another, as each man scored a fall over the other in multi-way matches in Houston, with Claudio pinning Albright in a four way match at Supercard Of Honor IV, and Albright returning the favor the next night in a three way at Take No Prisoners. I have no problem with these guys having an extended feud, they’ve never really worked together to any great degree prior to this feud, and they’ve had some great matches since the feud began. I like how they’re keeping it going with neither man really able to get an edge over the other, and I’d love to see them settle the feud in a two out of three falls or ironman match.
KENTA once again made his presence felt in ROH, defeating Davey Richards in what was said to be a very, very good Match Of The Year contender at Supercard Of Honor IV, as well as teaming with Tyler Black to defeat Austin Aries and Katsuhiko Nakajima in what I hear was another great match. You know, between the Houston weekend and his performance with Nigel in New York a few weeks ago, it’s really too bad that KENTA can’t work full-time for ROH. Not only is he an amazing worker who can have a good match with anyone, but he’s also a guy who’s both over with and very familiar to the ROH audience, yet not to the point of being overexposed. He was a semi-regular in 2006 and was very successful, and it’s too bad that he couldn’t do the Morishima schedule and come in to run with the ROH World Title for a few months, maybe putting Tyler Black over on the way out. A man can dream, can’t he?
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Let’s move on to the latest batch of tapings for ROH on HDNet, which I was unfortunately unable to make it to due to the shows running on Thursday and Friday night, which aren’t normally very easy nights to make round trips from New York to South Philly. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who found the timing inconvenient, as the overall house was said to be down for the tapings, but I would imagine they’d be back up to their normal levels for the next set of tapings in May, which will be on a Friday and Saturday.
The tapings opened with Ric Flair, who was introduced to the crowd as the new ROH Ambassador, and I think this was a great move. Flair is one of the best known wrestlers of all time, and it’s one thing to have him showing up at what I guess at this point have to be referred to as house shows even though they’re being taped for DVD, but it’s another thing to have him appearing on weekly TV for you, and with the announcement already coming out that he’ll be appearing at the next tapings, it would seem like they’ve decided to come up with a recurring role for Flair on ROH TV, which I think is a very smart move. I also thought it was good to have him bring Jerry Lynn to the ring and put him over before doing anything else, it never hurts to have a guy with Flair’s credentials endorse the guy carrying your top strap.
Nigel McGuinness’ promo where he played off of Flair’s presence by saying that just like when Flair lost the title and bounced right back to regain it in the 80s, he was going to be back and wanted his ROH Title back around his waist. The timing of the injury is unfortunate because, other than the matches with Jay Briscoe and Alex Payne, Nigel’s going to miss out on a lot of the early exposure to the TV audience, assuming he takes time off. No mention was made of the attack by Claudio, and it remains to be seen how the TV product will be integrated into the regular touring storylines (which I’ll have more on in a future column), but it seems like they might hold off on bringing the Nigel/Claudio situation to TV, especially given the fact that Claudio is still locked into his feud with Albright, which may turn into another gang war now that he seems to have become aligned with Prince Nana and the Embassy based on Nana and Ernie Osiris’ interference that led to Claudio scoring a win over Albright on the first night of tapings, and then Claudio teaming with Osiris against Albright and Colt Cabana later in the tapings.
Bryan Danielson and Tyler Black went to another inconclusive finish in episode eight, as Danielson hit a dive to the floor on Black and both men were counted out. This was said to be a really good match that got the fans chanting for five more minutes. I like how they’re building the competition between these two, as they’re both obviously being put out there as top guys, yet neither can beat the other within the parameters of the matches they’ve been put in. I would guess this is going to lead to a third match that will have some form of relaxed rules or extended time limit or something.
This then led to ROH Ambassador Ric Flair putting together the first ROH World Title match on HDNet, as Jerry Lynn defended against Danielson, Black, and also Austin Aries, a match which was won by Lynn after hitting a cradle piledriver on Danielson. These guys are obviously being put forward as the four top guys in the company to the TV audience, and I think that’s great news for Tyler Black, who has been the star of the show more than anyone on TV, yet has been pretty much left to twist in the wind on the house shows, which is a subject I’ll get to soon. Mike Johnson wass really high on this match in his live coverage, and this more than anything that’s happened at the TV tapings so far I am looking very much forward to seeing, because it’s a PPV quality main event that will unfortunately be squeezed into the time constraints of a TV match.
And finally, we have new ROH World Tag Team Champions, as the American Wolves finally defeated Kevin Steen & El Generico for the title in a Tables Match on episode 11. I think we all knew all along that it was just a matter of time until the Wolves won the title, but frankly I’m surprised they waited this long. I assumed they would beat them in New York a few weeks ago since it was one of ROH’s big four events, but I guess they wanted to save the moment for TV. It makes sense since I can see why they’d want their TV audience to believe that major events can happen on TV and they’re not just watching an hour long infomercial every week. Congratulations to the new champions, who I see having a great run with the title, and congratulations to Steen & Generico for an impressive, and lengthy, run with the title.
That’s it for me today, I’ll be back before the end of the week with a preview of this weekend’s events in Canada. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all then!
Stuart Carapola can be reached at stupwinsider@yahoo.com.
