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The first of our heroes is Roderick Strong, who's been in ROH longer than nearly anyone at this point and had several brushes with the top, but has never quite broken through in the way a lot of people at one point thought he would. He first came to ROH in 2004 as a member of Generation Next, but was clearly in the backseat to both the group's original leader Alex Shelley as well as Austin Aries, who would go on to win the ROH World Title. Strong spent most of 2005 playing Aries' policeman with people having to go through Strong to get a shot at Aries, but the tables started to turn in mid-2005 as CM Punk was on his way out of ROH and cut promos putting Strong over big time as a future star in ROH. Strong finally started to break through by winning Survival Of The Fittest 2005, ironically defeating Aries to win the tournament, then following that up by defeating James Gibson in a classic in Gibson's last match in ROH. The Survival Of The Fittest win earned Strong a series of title matches against then-ROH World Champion Bryan Danielson and then Roderick and Aries would close the year by defeating Tony Mamaluke & Sal Rinauro for the ROH World Tag Team Title at Final Battle 2005.
Strong's roll continued in 2006 as he would have several more matches with Danielson, including a nearly one hour long classic at the first Supercard Of Honor, and also had several shots at Pure Champion Nigel McGuinness. Strong and Aries were dominant tag champions as well, even holding off the challenge of Jay & Mark Briscoe, who had returned to ROH early in 2006 to predictions that they would cakewalk over Aries & Strong and easily regain the ROH World Tag Team Title. It didn't work out that way, as Aries & Strong defeated them on three different occasions. They finally lost the title to the Kings Of Wrestling in September 2006, but Strong went on to defeat Danielson for the FIP Title not even a month later and with the Pure Title being discontinued, Strong essentially became ROH's secondary titleholder by virtue of being FIP Champion.
Though Strong had not springboarded to the top of the company overnight, he had been slowly and carefully built up into a top star and it seemed like the predictions of an eventual ROH World Title win for Strong weren't so far off. By forming their championship team, the already-made Aries was able to help bring Strong up to his level, and it seemed that the final ingredient that would finally make Strong a bonafide singles main eventer would be a split and feud with Aries. That finally happened in New York at the first night of the Fifth Year Festival, as Strong turned on Aries following their loss to Christopher Daniels and Matt Sydal and cut a promo about how Aries had been holding him back to keep Strong from surpassing him.
Unfortunately, the whole thing fell flat from there. Instead of a straight singles feud between Aries and Strong, the split instead led to the launch of the disastrously boring Faction Warfare period of the company where it seemed like everyone was in some group and everyone was feuding with everyone. Following his turn on Aries, Strong formed the No Remorse Corps with Davey Richards while Aries brought in Erick Stevens and Matt Cross to form the Resilience. The NRC was a formidable group to be sure, but the problem was that while Strong was supposed to be the leader of the group, Richards and Romero easily outshined him and, frankly, made him look bad. As for the Resilience, both Cross and Stevens were good performers but completely vanilla characters and to make matters worse, they lost nearly every match to the NRC which a)made them look like jobbers and b)dragged down the NRC by sticking them in a feud with people nobody cared about for all of 2007. As more factions like the Vulture Squad, the Hangmen Three, Age Of The Fall, and Sweet & Sour Inc joined in the fray, it only watered it down further and killed the heat of nearly everybody involved.
Another problem is that Roderick just wasn't cut out to be a heel. He tried everything from powerbombing Delirious on the guardrail to getting cheap countout wins in FIP Title matches and everything in between, but he just did not come across as a convincing heel. His lackluster promo skills didn't help, as he would continually lose his train of thought and stumble over his words mid promo and again, was overshadowed by Romero and Richards. The NRC and Faction Warfare as a whole was finally mercy killed in mid 2008 when Richards turned on Strong and joined Sweet N Sour Inc.
Things turned around for Strong almost immediately and he started regaining momentum now that he was firmly back on the babyface side. In the year or so since, his ring work has improved 1000% and with the guidance of Adam Pearce, he's miraculously even started to improve his promo skills. He's consistently put on one of the top three best matches on nearly every show this year, and has finally started to pick up some big wins over top guys like Nigel McGuinness, Bryan Danielson, and Chris Hero and has renewed momentum. He's also gotten himself into tremendous shape, dropping weight and getting really lean. He's finally hitting on all cylinders and is on the upswing.
I'll admit that I jumped on board the Roderick Strong bandwagon in 2005, and then jumped off it again in 2007 and all but gave up on the guy. I was disappointed in a guy that I think a lot of fans and management as well had high hopes for. But he's starting to prove us all wrong and finally develop the skills, poise, and look that a top guy needs. Will he ever be ROH World Champion? Probably not, I don't think he's that good but in an ROH that has now lost nearly every top star it's ever had, somebody needs to step up and take the top spots and Roderick Strong has been working longer and harder to get there than anyone, and if he does finally break through it's well deserved and a long time coming.
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Our second story concerns Chris Hero, another man who has seemed to be on the rise several times only to get chopped back down in the end. In fact, Hero's a guy that a lot of people thought should have made it to Ring Of Honor a lot earlier than he did and considered it an insult that he didn't. A lot of rumors abound as to what the former booker thought of Hero and whether that played into him being brought in or not, but the fact is that Chris Hero didn't even make his debut as an official member of the ROH roster, but an outside challenger accepting an open contract to wrestle ROH World Champion Bryan Danielson in January of 2006. He lost the match, but just his appearance in ROH sparked a ton of interest in a potential feud between CZW (who Hero mainly worked for at the time) and ROH, and that one time match ended up being parlayed into one of the biggest storylines in the history of the company, with Hero acting as the storyline leader of the CZW group that "invaded" ROH. After years of being "left out" of ROH, Hero had come into the company and overnight became a main eventer and a headliner in the top angle in the company.
The CZW feud ended, but Hero was back within months, teaming with Claudio Castagnoli to defeat Austin Aries and Roderick Strong for the ROH World Tag Team Title, ending their then-record nine month reign and adding the ROH tag title to their collection which already included the CHIKARA title and would soon include the CZW title as well, an amazing feat to be sure. Unfortunately things fell apart from there, as Claudio signed a deal with WWE and they had to drop all three sets of titles. The worst part was that it was for nothing because WWE fired Claudio before he ever even started with them. Plans were already in place for Hero however, as he was matched up with a new manager in the form of Larry Sweeney and entered 2007 with new focus as a singles wrestler.
Unfortunately, 2007 wasn't the breakthrough year for Chris Hero that a lot of his fans had hoped it would be. He got a shot at then-ROH World Champion Homicide on the first show of the year in Boston, but lost and then tread water for much of the first half of the year, mostly trading wins and losses with midcarders and working a comedy gimmick with his "trainer" Tank Toland and overweight marshmallow and Sweet N Sour punching bag Bobby Dempsey. He lost early in the Race To The Top Tournament instead of making it to the finals to face Castagnoli as a lot of people expected and even though the feud between Hero and Claudio did finally happen six months after it should have, Hero lost nearly all of those matches. He did finally manage to defeat Claudio to win Survival Of The Fittest but despite wrestling a severely injured Nigel McGuinness for the ROH World Title, he still lost and then followed that up with a final loss to Claudio to close the year.
Things didn't get much better once 2008 rolled around, as he lost another series of title matches to McGuinness to start the year before taking some time off to work in NOAH for a while. When he came back he began his matamorphosis from the goofy, funny Chris Hero into That Young Knockout Kid. Still, he lost as much as he won and didn't get any closer to becoming a full on main eventer, and even though he had started out as the crown jewel of Larry Sweeney's stable, he had fallen to the back as Sweeney added Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards, NWA World Champion Adam Pearce, FIP World Champion Go Shiozaki, and Brent Albright to the group.
Things finally started turning around for Hero once the booking change occured in October of 2008, and finally Hero started to slowly but surely build steam as build momentum. He started racking up wins over guys like Jerry Lynn, Roderick Strong and Brent Albright, and by the time summer rolled around he had even picked up wins over Bryan Danielson (a man he had never before managed to beat in ROH) and Lance Storm, as well as coming very close to defeating KENTA on two different occasions. This weekend he may be on the verge of picking up a win against another ROH main eventer when he wrestles Tyler Black, and if he can get the win there it will be very hard to deny that Hero will be in the main event before too much longer.
I think Hero has a much better shot of getting the ROH World Title at this point than he ever has before, because even though he always had the skills in the ring and a ton of charisma, it wasn't the kind of wrestling style or charisma that made a World Champion. Chris Hero is 100% serious now, and learned the same lesson that Nigel McGuinness learned years ago: you can do all the pretty chain wrestling you want and it looks really nice and clever, but until you add some high impact to your style you won't become a main eventer. Hero has done this and moved away from the complicated, Rube Goldberg-esque chain wrestling moves and cravates and has shifted to an unexpectedly impressive looking repertoires of elbows, chops, forearms, and kicks that I would have never expected out of him just a couple of years earlier. Like Roderick, he's also improved his physique in a big way, and has gone from almost completely covering up his body with a shirt and baggy pants to just short tights and while he's still got a little jiggle left, he's developed his physique in a big way and now has the imposing look to go with all the strikes. For the first time ever, Chris Hero comes off as a serious badass.
Assuming he doesn't go anywhere anytime soon, Chris Hero is a shoe-in to fill one of those main event spots Nigel and Danielson opened as far as I'm concerned. At this point, he's been in ROH for nearly four years and has paid his dues. He's come a long way and improved in every important aspect. He doesn't need Sweeney to talk for him, as great a heel gimmick as the loaded elbow pad is he's believable enough that he could convincingly win regularly without it and he looks better than he ever has. With ROH in desperate need of new main eventers, I would be very surprised if Chris Hero doesn't go on at some point to win the ROH World Title.
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Finally, let's do our customary preview of this weekend's events in Collinsville, Illinois and Indianapolis. Jim Cornette, ROH's Executive Producer, will be on hand both nights signing autographs, but you can bet that he won't just be there gladhanding and that he'll get involved in the show somehow, perhaps having another confrontation with Austin Aries. Cornette has already expressed his distaste for the A Double L Double, and with Aries planning to hold another one in Collinsville, I would be surprised if Cornette didn't interject himself in the proceedings and make a match of his own devising.
Regardless of what happens in Collinsville, Aries' weekend won't be over after leaving Collinsville because he's set to team with Davey Richards to take on Jay & Mark Briscoe in Indianapolis in a dream tag team match. These dream matches have been few and far between since Adam Pearce took the booking reigns at ROH, but it'll be nice to see four great wrestlers get together just to have a good match without the outcome really affecting storylines in any major way. Of course Davey and his regular partner Eddie Edwards have a long-running feud going with the Briscoes, but that will probably be secondary to the athletics we're going to see in this match, which I don't see the Briscoes losing.
The other highlight of the weekend will be the Survival Of The Fittest tournament, which will be making its return after taking 2008 off. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the tournament features six first round matches with the winners moving on to a six way elimination finals, the winner of which earns himself a future ROH World Title shot. Only five first round matches have been announced so far as Kenny Omega will take on Chris Hero, Petey Williams will face Claudio Castagnoli, Tyler Black takes on Kenny King, Kevin Steen faces Colt Cabana, and Roderick Strong will battle Rhett Titus. The sixth match has yet to be announced, and from what I've gathered from what I've read in the ROH Newswire this week, that sixth match will be based on what happens in Collinsville so we probably won't even know who's in the match until Saturday night.
Obviously it'll be difficult to make any predictions until we know who those last two entrants are, but we can try and make some guesses based on who's already in. Just looking at the field, I see two participants stand out as potential winners, and those are Kenny Omega and Kevin Steen. Omega's been chasing Aries for months and has two pinfall wins over him but Aries has been ducking giving him a title shot every chance he's gotten. Winning SOTF could be Omega's ticket to finally getting that shot. As for Steen, even though he and Generico are very popular as a team, I can see them splitting up and going their own ways sometime in 2009 and a SOTF win would be a good start to setting Steen off in that direction if that's what they decide to do. Of course the conventional wisdom would be Tyler Black winning to earn one last shot at the ROH World Title, but SOTF has always been more about elevating an up-and-comer, and that's not something I feel Tyler qualifies as at this point.
The dream tag and Survival Of The Fittest pretty much do it for the items of interest in Indianapolis (as if you needed more!), but there's a few more more big matches in Collinsville, as Chris Hero will take on Tyler Black, Davey Richards will face Kenny Omega, and Roderick Strong will battle Kevin Steen. The most interesting of these three matches to me is going to be Steen-Strong since there's no issue between those two, but you can bet that they're not going to hold back when it comes to lighting each other up. Both guys have really been on a roll when it comes to having great matches this year and this could be the sleeper hit of the weekend. Then again, Richards-Omega might beat it out since Richards has been in ALL the best matches this year. With Nigel and Danielson gone Richards is now the top guy in the company from an in-ring standpoint, though some would argue he was the best even before they left. Omega's no slouch himself, and I think we're in for an exciting match. Survival Of The Fittest may be overshadowing everything else this weekend, but these matches will go a long way toward balancing the scale between the two shows.
Interestingly enough, Petey Williams, Ace Steel, Colt Cabana, Delirious, and Claudio Castagnoli all have yet to be booked into matches in Collinsville, and with names like that we're bound to get at least one or two other major matches. I would tend to guess one of them will wind up with a title shot that night, probably Petey based on the way his title match with Austin Aries in New York ended, but I would also like to see them do a Four Corner Survival to really kick the "Jim Cornette's going to make Aries work for it" into gear. Probably what we're going to get though is one of them getting a title shot and the remaining guys going into a Four Corner Survival instead.
That about does it for me today, thanks as always for reading and we're looking for live reports of this weekend's shows, so if you're attending either and would like to do a live review, send it along to any of us and we'll get it up on the site. But if you're not going to this weekend's shows, then how about you just have a nice weekend? That sounds good to me.
Stu Carapola can be reached at stupwinsider@yahoo.com.
