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But this weekend is gone, and with it go the ROH careers of Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness, arguably the top two singles stars in the company. ROH has lost top guys before and each time they've had to create a new main event crew, and have done so with varying degrees of success. When AJ and Daniels got yanked in 2004, Generation Next was created. When Punk left in 2005, Danielson was brought back and finally became ROH World Champion. Once Joe, Homicide, Cabana, and several others left for one reason or another in 2007, Morishima and Nigel McGuinness were there.
But now it's 2009 and once again those main event spots have opened up. Somebody's going to have to fill them, and today I'm going to take a look at some of the top prospects to step up and become ROH's next main eventers.
Tyler Black: The obvious choice, but if they're going to elevate him to the main event, they've got a lot of work to do in rebuilding him. Fans were screaming for this guy to get the title at the end of 2008 but they decided not to do that, and that's fine because I actually agree that he wasn't ready to be champion yet. The problem is that they've spent most of the last year either sticking him in endless feuds that bored everyone to sleep (ie the Jimmy Jacobs feud, which should have been awesome), or they've put him in big matches against Nigel McGuinness and Austin Aries and had him lose.
If you want to pull the guy back and give him a bit more seasoning before pushing him to the World Title, I have no problem with that. But there's ways to do it without totally destroying the guy's momentum and making the fans stop caring, and to some extent that's what's happened with Tyler. He's gotten clean wins over Danielson and McGuinness recently, but it feels like too little too late. He needs to start winning and winning a lot, and maybe start acting a little more ruthlessly to try and rebuild some of that interest in him.
Davey Richards: While ROH has been pulling back on Tyler, Davey Richards has come out and totally stolen the spotlight from him. While Tyler's been made to look like an idiot who can't get the job done, Davey has been kicking ass, hurting people, main eventing shows, and winning the gold. He's had MOTYCs left and right with KENTA, Danielson, Steen & Generico, and it seems like the guy just can't have a bad match. His intensity is awesome, his moves are crisp and realistic, he's a great promo, and he's in incredible shape. Davey Richards is everything Tyler Black should be but is not.
Yes, he's doing the tag team thing right now and he's been doing a great job at it, but it's not going to last forever. With all due respect to Eddie Edwards, Davey is the star of the team and since I don't see the American Wolves lasting much past the end of the year, eventually Davey is going to go it alone and if he stays in ROH and doesn't get signed away or anything, I see him as THE guy. Not Tyler, not Aries, Davey is THE guy. Bryan Danielson put the guy over after both his matches this past weekend, including the one Davey wasn't in, so I'm not the only one who thinks he's that great. ROH is insane if this guy doesn't get a main event singles push in the next six months.
Roderick Strong: I had all but given up on Roderick Strong a long time ago for a lot of the same reasons I'm ready to throw in the towel on Tyler Black now. He got a HUGE push at the end of 2005 by winning Survival Of The Fittest and the ROH World Tag Team Title, and then all through 2006 with his series of title matches with Bryan Danielson, his long and dominant tag title run with Aries, and winning the FIP Title and carrying it around as basically ROH's secondary title. As 2007 began, he finally made the long-expected turn on Aries and started the No Remorse Corps, and it seemed like Roderick was finally going to get that final push to the top.
From there though, he fizzled out in a big way. He was totally dominated by Aries, had trouble beating Delirious,and was having boring matches where he'd rely on the same three or four tired spots that he'd often repeat multiple times during his matches. It became painfully obvious as the leader of his own faction that he couldn't promo to save his life, and while everyone raved about Romero and Davey, nobody cared about Roderick. His matches were repetitive and drew no heat, and it seemed like all the high hopes were in vain.
This year though, he bounced back in a big way. After the feud with Sweet & Sour Inc finished up, Roderick has been on an absolute tear and has, with rare exceptions, had no worse than the second best match on every show he's been on. He's improved in a big way when it comes to telling a story with his matches, and his promo ability even seems to have improved, albeit in pretaped fashion. He was another guy Danielson put over after the New York match and even though he hasn't had much of a direction this year outside of the end of the Sweeney feud and a series of matches with Jay Briscoe, it would seem he's being prepped for another try at a main event run. Can he finally fulfill all that promise he showed four years ago?
Kevin Steen: Okay, I'll admit he's a bit of a dark horse. He doesn't have the best body, he does sometimes rely just a bit too much on the comedy, and he's spent most of his ROH career in a tag team. But on the flipside, he's got a ton of main event experience, he's got a lot of charisma, knows how to work a crowd, can cut a serious promo as well as he can do a funny one, has good to great matches every time out, and most importantly, the fans are really into him.
If you're asking me if he should get the title I would say no, but he can still be a valuable main event singles star for the company. He's shown that he can do the singles thing as well as the tag team thing, and he's carried the top title for other companies in the past. Plus, how much more can you do with he and Generico as a team? Once the year ends and the Briscoes have the title back, Steen & Generico will be pretty much out of the tag title picture completely, and splitting them up for singles runs might be the way to go. Of the two, I think Steen has more potential to be a top singles star, even if you're not going to make him THE guy.
Colt Cabana: Well, he did say that he was going to come back to ROH one day and win the ROH World Title, and sure enough he did come back earlier this year. He's a guy who's got street cred with the ROH fanbase just based on his history in the company, and he's as good a worker as anyone there right now. I think the fans would accept Cabana if he got the title, but they might not want to do that simply because he might not be around all that long. Yes, he got fired from WWE, but they've shown interest in bringing him back and he's also worked a dark match for TNA, so it's pretty apparent that he's not planning on spending too much time in ROH if he can help it. If he can get a contract in his hand, I expect him to be gone by the end of the year.
That doesn't mean there's not a lot they can get out of him in the meantime, and who knows, maybe nobody will have any interest and we'll get to keep him around for a while. In any event, I wouldn't give him the title because comedy wrestlers shouldn't be World Champions, they just shouldn't. Cabana can get serious every now and then, but he's generally too goofy to be taken seriously as The Man. He has main evented many shows and can have main event feuds though, and I think a couple of wins over Cabana would help give someone like Tyler or Davey that rub they need to further their agendas as main event stars. He's also been a tag team champion before in ROH, and I'd have no problem with him getting a partner and winning the tag straps and taking that route to the main event.
Necro Butcher: I'm honestly surprised Necro hasn't gotten there already. The fans have been behind him from day one, and even when he was working as a heel, he was getting some of the biggest pops on every show. He's a guy who has literally destroyed his body for his career and has now thankfully gotten to a point where he doesn't have to kill himself every night, due in equal parts to a new booker who's telling him not to and also the fact that he's worked so hard that he's over enough that he can save it for special occasions instead of tearing himself apart every night. He's also got that somewhat major role in The Wrestler working for him, and there was some talk about giving him the title for a short run if the movie did well enough.
He's also got a lot of ROH main events under his belt already, both as a huge part of the ROH-CZW feud of 2006 as well as being a part of the Age Of The Fall angle. They had a good thing going with the angle where he was doing it to feed his family, and I think that if they wanted to push Necro back into the main events more regularly, they could use that as his motivation for busting his ass to win matches and move closer to winning the ROH World Title.
I even think giving him the title on a short term basis would be a great idea, because he's the perfect modern day ROH equivalent to what Mick Foley was doing in the WWF ten years ago, and if it worked for Mick I think it would definitely work for Necro. I even envision a similar scenario where he's given a throwaway title shot against some corporate-style heel champion (think Aries or Richards) and ends up pulling out the shock win. If he ever did get the title it should be a short term thing, but I would love to see it, I think it would work and he deserves it for all he's given to the business.
Kenny King: Kenny King, by my estimation, is probably the #3 guy on this list behind Tyler and Davey, and the only reason he's even behind them is because he hasn't been pushed in our face with the future superstar label. Anybody who's seen him wrestle knows how talented he is, and ROH has been very smart to hold him back in a tag team for right now and let him develop and learn from working with Aries instead of pushing him too early and making him subject to the same kinds of expectations that have been heaped on Tyler.
Kenny King's been around a while now and has very quietly developed into quite a star, but nobody's really realized it since he's been spending so much time with the YRR, Rhett Titus, and Austin Aries. He already had the talent, and he's been hanging around with the right guys to develop the cocky, swaggering heel promos and persona that make the Kenny King character work. He's got a great look and I think that when they split him off from Titus and Aries, he's going to break out in a big way. I think Tyler and Davey are going to get the shot ahead of him, but if any more spots open up I think ROH would be crazy not to give him the chance to move up.
There are probably other possibilities because there's always the chance that somebody is going to come out of nowhere and be the next big thing, but if I had to bet money I'd say these are the top seven guys who deserve a main event push. We'll probably have a better idea of how the main event scene going forward is going to shape up by the time we get to Final Battle, but until then we get to witness that entertainingly awkward stage when ROH is going to throw all kinds of stuff against the wall to see what sticks. This ought to be fun.
Stu Carapola can be reached at stupwinsider@yahoo.com.
