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Let’s start with some of the fallout from ROH’s most recent events, as they made a swing through the Midwest a couple of weeks ago, and probably the thing that stuck out to me the most was what appeared to be the end of Jimmy Jacobs and Age Of The Fall. Let’s set things up: Tyler Black defeated Jacobs in a cage match in Detroit to apparently, finally blow off their feud once and for all, but after the match a bunch of masked followers of AOTF came out to the ring and attacked Tyler, leading one to believe that the issue between these two wasn’t quite buried yet. The next night, after Tyler suffered a close loss to KENTA, Jimmy Jacobs came out with his followers again and this time, lowered a chain from the ceiling, from which Jimmy tried to hang Tyler like he had done to Jay Briscoe when AOTF had made its debut almost two years earlier. Instead, Kevin Steen & El Generico came out and broke it up and the three of them then hung Jacobs from the chain, and with Delirious at the controls, Jacobs was raise above the ring and hung upside down in symbolic fashion as Tyler declared the Age Of The Fall to be dead. Eventually Jacobs was lowered, and he got to his feet and began berating his followers, who simply ended up walking out on him and leaving him alone in the ring. Jacobs left through the crowd, left the building, and collapsed in tears outside.
If this really is the end of AOTF and Jimmy Jacobs, at least for the time being, I think this was done well and in suitably dramatic fashion. I also think that this would be the perfect time for Jacobs to take a break from ROH because I’ve been wondering for a while where they could possibly go with him from here without taking him out of circulation for a while. Jimmy’s character has actually gone through some pretty impressively drastic changes over the last few years, starting as the HUSS kid teaming with BJ Whitmer in 2005, morphing into the emo loverboy who gets treated like dirt by his dream girl, before finally getting the girl and seemingly his happy ending, only to abruptly go the other way and start a “revolution†designed to basically bring down the people who beat him up in high school, until finally turning into a nearly insane, deranged dictatoresque cult leader type who had given up on everyone and everything and just wanted to destroy everything he touched. That’s a lot of action over the course of four years, and he’s made it work every step of the way, but where does he go from there? How could he possibly have taken the character further without going too far for prime time? Jimmy has easily been one of the most interesting characters in ROH for the last four years, and at this point is one of the longest tenured guys in the company and absolutely deserving of the push he’s gotten over the last two years.
That said, it’s time for Jimmy to take a break for a few months and then you can bring him back in maybe five or six months and send his character in a new direction. Having him come out unannounced and cut a promo where he starts with “I’ve been sitting home for a while now and have had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking…†and use that to take it in a new direction. Guys sitting home thinking for months lends itself to all kinds of possibilities for new directions that you couldn’t go directly towards without the break, and I think it’d be a good idea to clean Jimmy up a bit and maybe bring him back as a somewhat calmer, if not quite babyface character. I get the impression people were starting to get tired of his AOTF character, and Jimmy’s a creative guy, and I’m sure between Pearce and himself, they can come up with another interesting new direction for him whenever he does return to action.
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And now to go from a guy who’s disappearing for a while to a guy who’s just getting back to action, Nigel McGuinness has had a bit of a rough start since returning to the ring over the last month or so. It looks like they’re building an angle where due to the injuries he’s suffered, Nigel is physically unable to throw lariats, and the inability to perform that maneuver seems to be costing him victories. He lost to Tyler Black at the last set of TV tapings, lost to Austin Aries in Chicago Ridge, and went to a double countout with Claudio Castagnoli, a man he’s beaten countless times, and in each of those matches, it was noticeable that he wasn’t throwing any lariats.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is part work and part shoot. While I’m sure the severity of his situation is exaggerated and that he could throw lariats if he wanted, the flip side is that he’s suffered at least three major bicep injuries since the lariat became such a frequently used part of his repertoire, and I would think that either Nigel made the decision or he was told to cut down on the lariats to help prevent any future injuries. If that’s the case, I’m all for it because ROH has been making a major effort for almost a year to tone down on what’s going on in the ring to curtail injuries, and if you’re going to cut back on guys doing too many suplexes and dives to keep them from getting hurt, the lariat appears to fall under the same category as far as Nigel is concerned.
Plus, Nigel really did get to a point where he was using the lariat too much to make it a really special move. Even though the Jawbreaker Lariat usually only came out for the finish and was seen as THE finishing move, he would often bust out at least four or five other lariats over the course of the match, and even though overusing the lariat was something Nigel used effectively to get heat, it also made it seem like less of a killer move since people kicked out of it four or five times before it finally earned Nigel a win. If he only does the lariat once in a blue moon, it’ll make it seem more special and deadly when he does pull it out, and it can be built up as the big gun he only pulls out in especially desperate situations.
I think this will also be a good opportunity for Nigel to show what else he has in his arsenal and find creative new ways to win matches. Anybody who saw Nigel during his Pure Title reign in 2005-06 knows that he’s a very, very talented technical wrestler, and that style has been greatly deemphasized while he’s been throwing lariats, and I think it’d be good to see him reintroduce some of the technical wrestling into his repertoire, even if he doesn’t have to go back to just doing technical wrestling. Aside from lariats, he’s also made working the arm a major part of his arsenal, including his submission finisher, the London Dungeon. Perhaps if he’s looking to do stuff other than throw lariats, he could work on new ways to attack the arm since the London Dungeon is a very convincing finisher that’s a very suitable alternative to the lariat.
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So I admit that even though I’ve made a point to get to every live ROH show I can possibly get to, even if it means driving to Canada, I’ve been a bit behind on my DVD viewing, and only recently have been able to start catching up on the DVDs since the beginning of the Pearce Regime, and one of the things that’s really stood out to me is how well they’ve done with the direction they’ve taken Claudio Castagnoli. Going back to the end of 2008, he was being played up as this big, violent guy who had lost the feud to Bryan Danielson, and then went on to lose his last match of the year to rookie Kenny Omega, and I made a comment at the time that I wouldn’t be surprised if Claudio was gone from ROH by that time next year. Since then though, he’s become a lot more interesting and showed a lot more character than he had up to the end of 2008.
I have to admit that I really didn’t get into the angry, violent Claudio who tried to put Bryan Danielson out of wrestling, and not just because I liked him better as the fan favorite who went HEY with the fans, but also because I thought that was a character that could last until the end of the Danielson feud and then wouldn’t have much life beyond. I think the only thing you could have done with that Claudio once the Danielson feud was over was reunite him with Chris Hero and form a new, more violent version of the Kings Of Wrestling who liked to hurt people, but they didn’t do that, so something else had to be done with Claudio. I like him a lot better as “Very European†Claudio because I think it fits him better since I have a hard time accepting Claudio as anything other than a generally easygoing guy, even if he’s an easygoing guy who happens to be a pompous jerk.
I’m not quite sold on him as a member of the Embassy, however, even if he’s only an associate of the group as far as Prince Nana is concerned. Claudio’s a guy who has been a top contender to the ROH World Title on more than one occasion, and it doesn’t make sense to me that he’d suddenly decide to abandon his quest for that title in favor of hanging out with Ernie Osiris and being an associate henchman for a guy who’s never managed a champion in his career. I think that if they’re going to keep him with the Embassy for the foreseeable future, he should hang out with them until the end of the feud with Albright and Cabana and those guys, and then he and Jimmy Rave ought to get into the tag title picture. He’s already a proven tag team commodity, and Jimmy Rave has never held a title in ROH, and it would be great to finally see Nana manage a champion.
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One last thing before I go: I think it’s all well and good that Lance Storm is coming out of retirement again to work a couple of matches in ROH, but even though I think he and Chris Hero will have a great match, I don’t know if I agree with putting him in a tag match the night before. To me it just seems like a wasted opportunity, especially since one of the guys across the ring from him will be Hero. Remember, ROH is going to want to sell DVDs of this show, and to me, “Lance Storm & Kevin Steen vs Davey Richards & Chris Hero†doesn’t sell as well as “Lance Storm vs Bryan Danielson: The Rematch Three Years In The Making†or “Lance Storm vs Jerry Lynn for the first time in ten years†or any other possible major singles match. I think that even though it was set up by their paths crossing last year, Hero should have been the easy Friday match to set up a bigger match on Saturday. Unless he’s already committed to other future appearances that have yet to be announced, it seems like a wasted opportunity to me.
Okay, I’m off my soapbox, and that’s it for me today. Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a terrific weekend, and if you’re somewhere with warm weather right now…get outside, it’s a nice day out! Stop sitting at the computer all day! Thanks for reading and I better not see you back here until the sun’s down!
Stu Carapola can be reached at stupwinsider@yahoo.com.
