Kevin Steen lays down the gauntlet to El Generico to finally settle their war for good, the Briscoes take on Austin Aries and Rhett Titus, Homicide makes his ROH On HDNet in-ring debut against Tony Kozina and we hear from ROH World Champion Roderick Strong and his “life intervention expert” Truth Martini. All this and more on this week’s ROH On HDNet.
First off, huge apologies for the lateness of this week… or rather last week’s ROH On HDNet. I may or may not watch ROH legally and if for example I didn’t watch it legitimately then I might be restricted by the speed of which pirates (who I totally don’t approve of) can upload the episodes. In this highly unlikely scenario that I’m in no way a part of… OK, it took forever for them to put it up this week so as a result my recap is very late. Sorry.
Opening Segment
A recap of the Kings/Briscoes ruckus from a few weeks back with Papa Briscoe attacking Shane Hagadorn, resulting in him being banned from every ROH building (wink wink), as well as their dominance of the Dark City Fight Club.
Segment 1
Kevin Steen vs. Grizzly Redwood
Recap: Despite taking ample advantage of a few openings, Grizzly was unable to overcome the brute force of Kevin Steen, who finished Redwood off with a huge Package Piledriver after putting El Generico’s mask on the little lumberjack.
Review: This clearly went on too long. I appreciate it when Grizzly isn’t treated as utterly incompetent, but Steen needs to look like an unstoppable monster heading in to Final Battle. In an ideal world, neither he or El Generico would lose a match between now and December 18, but I’ll allow exceptional circumstances (see Survival of the Fittest). Steen really did beat the hell out of Grizzly, with the toss to the outside and powerbomb on the apron as the chief examples, but the match went north of five minutes and Grizzly got in way more offense than he needed to. That’s just from a story perspective though, in terms of entertainment this was one of my favourite Grizz matches. But all good things come to an end, and this was the mother of all Package Piledrivers, and with Steen slapping Generico’s mask on him to boot! Oh, speaking of boots, Grizzly is barefoot no more!
Segment 1.5
Recap: Kevin Steen issued El Generico a challenge for Final Battle. If Generico loses he must unmask permanently. If Steen loses he will leave ROH. Generico stood at the top of the rampway wearing an all-black mask and visually indicated that he agreed to the match.
Review: I treated this as a separate segment because let’s face it, it’s incredibly important to the culmination of the feud of the year. Steen has also been cutting the promos of the year and this one may have been the most crucial of his career. We got the usual overly graphic moment as he talked about choking on his own blood, but that’s not the important part. What is important is the carefully chosen words from Steen. He did not say he would retire from ROH. He did not say he would never wrestle in ROH again. He said he would leave. Leaving is not indefinite. Even when he re-iterated when riled up he made sure to not say anything finite. Dig around all you like, I don’t think you’ll find an official piece of news from ROH or Steen that states his departure will be permanent. OK, I’m clutching at straws here, but I don’t want to see Generico lose his mask. I think it would cripple his career. Then again, I hope he doesn’t keep wearing this monstrosity either:
Segment 2
The Prodigy Vignette
Recap: Jim Cornette and Cary Silkin commented on how they haven’t seen an athlete like Mike Bennett in a long time and believe he will go a long way.
Review: ROH need to be very careful with their push of Mike Bennett. On the one hand I’m in favor of them debuting a legit heavyweight wrestler who could be an immediate threat to the ROH World Title. On the other, there’s no way this guy can be as good as advertised. I mean stating he’s the Mozart of pro-wrestling and having Jim Cornette claim he hasn’t seen anyone with his skill-set in a long time is going overboard. They even had a rare on-camera appearance from Cary Silkin, so all the stops are being pulled out here. I’m not saying Mike Bennett won’t be able to swim, but ROH are throwing him in some very deep water, and if he sinks, he may never come back up.
Segment 3
Roderick Strong In-Ring Promo
Recap: Jim Cornette asked for Roderick’s comments on Davey Richards’ upcoming title shot at Final Battle. Strong dismissed Richards as a threat and denied any interference by Truth Martini had ever occurred during his matches. Martini prevented Jim Cornette from showing footage of such interference. Roderick pointed out Truth had taken him to the top. We are then shown a montage of Truth’s interference.
Review: I personally enjoyed this promo, but if you needed any proof that the fans don’t care about Roderick Strong as the champion then look no further than this segment. Nobody in that arena was even paying attention. That Philly crowd is usually pretty poor, but it doesn’t bode well for crowd responses to the champ. It’s interesting that Roddy has still not witnessed any of Truth Martini’s interference, I thought I was the last one clinging to that angle, but no, it’s back with a vengeance. It’s smart booking because if Roddy as the card-carrying heel doesn’t work out, they can always turn him mid-reign when he finally discovers the Truth. Alternatively, if it starts to go well, he can reveal he knew the whole time and seem all the more evil. Or it sets up his post-championship redemption. So many options. All that being said however, it’s stretching the imagination a fair bit to say Martini has such an influence on Roddy that he doesn’t watch back any of his matches at a later date.
Segment 4
Homicide vs. Tony Kozina
Recap: After numerous confrontations with the referee, Homicide finally put Kozina away with a jumping Ace Crusher, though the victory did not come easily.
Review: The main function of this match was clearly to get over how much of a problem ‘Cide has with authority with three different confrontations with Bryce Remsberg, including the glorious one pictured above. That’s about all this match managed to accomplish however as they squandered a couple of opportunities. For one, if you’re going to debut (or re-debut in this case) a guy against a jobber then they have to murder them and very quickly, otherwise why not have the competitive match be against someone credible? Tony Kozina controlled too much of this match and it went too long. He also didn’t even hit many of his signature moves, something they should have done for the benefit of those who aren’t familiar with him. Another little fault I had here was the outright declaration by Mike Hogwood that Homicide was denied the main event by Jim Cornette because of their storied history. Homicide insinuating it is one thing, having the voices of ROH agree is quite another in my opinion.
Segment 5
Davey Richards Interview
Recap: In a taped interview with Davey Richards he discussed his hunt for the ROH World Title, and how he believes it is his destiny to win the championship. He also called out Truth Martini and believed Roderick aligned with him out of his desperation to win the title, commenting that Roddy is not the man he once knew.
Review: This was essentially Tyler vs Davey Part 2. To combat Richards’ busy schedule they sit him down and pump about 10 minutes worth of slightly depressing insight into his psyche. In the ring Davey is a certified killer, sprinting around the ring at a million miles an hour, overflowing with intensity, frothing at the mouth as he shows no mercy whatsoever to his opponents. Some people get behind that (myself included), but the more casual viewer needs a nudge towards fandom, and these promos are all about humanizing the Wolf.
Main Event
The Briscoes vs. Rhett Titus & Austin Aries
Recap: The Briscoes eventually overcame the strong captaincy of Austin Aries, who used his cunning to suppress the 6 time ROH World Tag Team Champions for a good portion of the match. The ending came when Rhett Titus vaulted to the top rope looking for the Super Sex Factor but Jay sprinted across the ring to prevent it and knock Aries off the apron, leaving Titus exposed for the Doomsday Device.
Review: So many faults, so little time. Chris Gee Schoon Tong, webmaster here at the start told me I wasn’t missing much from ROH this week, particularly the main event, and upon seeing it I agree. This match was just there. It didn’t do anything. At all. Beating a team that don’t tag regularly does nothing to prove the Briscoes can take down the Kings, and with Aries being such a non-entity it made his involvement lacklustre in comparison to what it might have been a year ago. To make matters worse, the match really fell apart towards the end with a few sloppy moments and a ridiculously drawn-out closing stretch. There were about three points before the actual ending where I was convinced they were wrapping up, but they kept going, and sometimes that’s a good thing, but in this case it was not. I wish they’d gone home at the first of these opportunities because even with the extra stuff they did this match was very mediocore. To cap it off all the Briscoes did after the match was celebrate. No stand-off with the Kings, no war of words, no pointing and gesturing. Nothing.
Overall Thoughts
– This was the episode of too-long. Grizzly vs. Steen went too long. Homicide vs. Kozina went too long. The main event way too long. I find that kind of upsetting considering what this episode could have been on paper. Steen challenging Generico to a match to end their war, Homicide’s in-ring debut, Davey and Roddy speaking about their upcoming title match and the continuation of the Briscoes/Kings feud. These things should amount to a terrific episode of television and unfortunately they did not. There was some good stuff here and there, don’t get me wrong, but we had to fight through a sea of bland to get there.
– What was the point in starting the episode with a recap of the Kings/Briscoes feud if it played no role in tonight’s episode? No backstage promo from the Kings, no post-match attack, no challenge from a distance, not a thing. The Briscoes beat a non-regular team (eventually) who are in no way in contention for the titles or related to the Kings. Well done guys, but that means very little. The opening segment sets the tone for the episode, so why was the feud not furthered?
– I did appreciate the plug of Final Battle 2006 during Homicide’s match. Not only does this invite new fans to view the pinnacle of his ROH career, but it directly feeds into the company’s revenue. The biggest criticism of the HDNet product in the early days was how disjointed it was from the rest of the company, how they would never mention the all important live events or plug their merchandise. This demonstrated progress and it only took ten seconds.
– Finally, A-Double. I’m sad that Aries is gone, but he really had become irrelevant at this point. I enjoyed his feud with Delirious but assumed it was just something to keep him busy until the main event scene had settled down. Turns out the only thing for him to move on to was the back door. I hope he returns to ROH some day, but I fear he’s done with the company for good.
– So that’s your fill for last week’s ROH On HDNet, I can’t promise you 100% this week’s recap will be more expedient, but I supremely hope so. Take care folks, come back soon, and feel free to comment.