A whole month’s worth of episodes here for you in one bumper-edition review. Some of the action on the cards: Eddie Edwards vs Christopher Daniels for the TV Title, The Briscoes & Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team vs. The King of Wrestling and the All-Night Express, the introduction of the ROH Top Prospect Tournament, an in-ring confrontation between Homicide and Roderick Strong before their big world title match on iPPV, the first words from Davey Richards since losing at Final Battle and much much more!
– I’d like to start by apologising for missing a whole month’s worth of ROH reviews. Ordinarily I’d have reported to Jerome or Chris and they’d have had someone else cover it, but with HDNet and ROH parting ways shortly I selfishly didn’t want anyone else to be covering the company I love. I didn’t think my technical issues would last this long, but finally I’m back and I can promise I won’t miss another episode.
– But what of the ones I have missed? Well, I present the last month’s worth of ROH On HDNet for you right here in a special bumper edition review. I won’t go into the detail I normally do or this would be the longest article in the history of Pro Wrestling Ponderings. Instead I’ll just present a short paragraph on all the big goings-on, with more focus on the main events. If you’d like to see the regular length reviews, click on the episode dates below to see full recaps on my Blog of Honor.
– Colt Cabana defeated Mike Mondo with the Billy Goat’s Curse after delivering a disgusting turnbuckle gutbuster. Standard Cabana affair, mocking the strange little muscle man and former guest on his podcast. Mondo got a few moves in but Colt never looked worried.
– Michael Elgin was debuted on television by Truth Martini and as his final test before being officially inducted into the House of Truth, he teamed with Roderick Strong to beat Alex Silva and Chrisjen Hayme. Roddy tagged in for all of ten seconds, letting Elgin destroy both men. He finished Silva off with a Spiral Powerbomb. Elgin was impressive in this match but the lack of crowd reaction somewhat ruined it, which is a shame, because they may well have something here in Elgin.
– Sara Del Rey beat Taeler Hendrix with a Gory Special into a Flatliner. Brian Cage-Taylor, eat your heart out. Exactly like their first match a few months ago, Del Rey obliterated Hendrix. Also exactly like their first match, I think Hendrix spells her name in a stupid way. Interestingly, she did kick out of the move that is now known as the Del Razor, something MsChif couldn’t manage on iPPV. Del Rey continues to reign over the Women of Honor and the question remains: who on earth is going to give her a challenge?
– Christopher Daniels defeated Eddie Edwards to capture the ROH World Television Title. The match initially ended in a time-limit draw with Eddie locked in the Koji Clutch as time expired. Edwards himself demanded five more minutes and after an intense exchange Eddie seemed to have Daniels finished off. One Angel’s Wings out of nowhere later and we had a new TV champion. This was a fantastic match and as good as wrestling television gets. Eddie managed to lower his already poor injury ratio when diving to the outside with a moonsault off the apron, but his limp wore off soon after. Eddie’s pair of double stomps were pretty brutal, and his trend of executing top rope moves from the very, very top continued, so it was quite a surprise when Daniels won the match out of nowhere right at the end. I’m still not entirely sure it was the time to take the belt off Eddie, but the Louisville tapings needed something historic, and given ROH may never have TV again, it’s probably for the best the TV title had more than one holder.
– New TV Champion Christopher Daniels and Eddie Edwards were invited to the ring by Jim Cornette where they agreed to have a rematch contested under 2 out of 3 Falls rules and with a 30-minute time limit. ‘The Prodigy’ Mike Bennett then headed to the ring and disrespected both men and put the winner of the match on notice. This was a decent way to book a rematch between the two, and I suppose it keeps their subplot with Mike Bennett going, but Daniels remarking on how Bennett needs more than a good physique in ROH may have held a bit more truth than they intended it to.
– Bennett followed this confrontation with a match against Grizzly Redwood. The Grizz got in a couple of moves but Bennett put him away with a big powerslam. So The Prodigy has beaten Eugene, and ROH’s version of Eugene in his debut matches. Impressive.
– In a chaotic 8-man tag main event that saw the All-Night Express and Kings of Wrestling take on the Briscoes and Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team, the referees had to throw the match out. For the first five minutes the ANX worked with the Briscoes as the Kings refused to tag in until Rhett forced Hero into the match. From there the Briscoes refused to tag Haas & Benjamin for nearly five minutes. This behavior continued until Haas tagged Shelton and Jay at the same time and both men cleaned house. All 8 men hit big moves on each other to leave everybody down but then any semblance of order was lost as the Kings accidentally struck the ANX. King & Titus responded by brawling with their partners, laying out Hero and then leaving. The Briscoes and WGTT argued over who would pin Hero, allowing the Kings to leave while referees separated the Briscoes and WGTT. This reminded me of something the WWE like to do, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It was nothing more than a giant tease to the 9th Anniversary show, and it was kind of fun to see these four teams in the same ring, but it took up a bit too much time in my opinion.
– Jim Cornette introduced us to the competitors in the ROH Top Prospect Tournament (Adam Cole, Kyle O’Reilly, Andy Ridge, Grizzly Redwood, Michael Elgin, Jonathan Gresham and Bobby Dempsey), but Mike Bennett insisted on his own entrance and decided not to wear an ROH t-shirt like the others. He cut a promo about how he was above all of this but he’d play along and win the tournament if he had to. Nice, logical segment, and Cornette did a good job of hyping up each man.
– Homicide defeated Mark Briscoe with a Super Ace Crusher in a match that went way too long for my liking. About five minutes before the end Homicide used some shady tactics, countered Mark Briscoe and then hit the Ace Crusher. Briscoe kicked out and the match continued. This was very much a mistake. Homicide getting the win right there would have worked fine and shaved some time off the match, which is important because the longer a match goes, the more Homicide’s in-ring weaknesses are exposed. Besides going too long this match wasn’t that bad.
– Kyle O’Reilly got the ball rolling in the top prospect tournament by defeating Jonathan Gresham with a triangle choke with some elbows thrown in for good measure. Both men went at it right from the opening bell, and I liked the desperation as it puts over how important the tourney is to them. O’Reilly borrowed a couple of Davey Richards signatures, but his style is different enough to avoid looking like DR-Lite, so it’s a nice balance. I don’t know how wise it is for him to use one of Danielson’s old finishers, but many have labeled him as the next Dragon, so we’ll see. After the match Corino offered O’Reilly some advice to continue his redemption story.
– Chris Hero and Kenny King were supposed to be in the main event, but Homicide hijacked the ring and called out Roderick Strong who proceeded to run his challenger down, demanding he apologise for ruining his title celebration back in September. Homicide instead decided to attack but found himself beaten down thanks to Truth Martini and a shoe. He had the last laugh though, removing the champ’s pants and sending him running away embarrassed. So much wrong with this. Roddy’s aggression was good, and he had a point, but I don’t like them advertising a good main event and instead doing this, I don’t like Homicide being beaten down by a shoe, and I don’t like the silliness of Roddy getting pantsed, especially considering he wrestles in trunks for a living.
– Davey Richards opened the show with an in-ring interview with Jim Cornette. He apologised to the fans for failing to defeat Roderick Strong at Final Battle, pledging to train harder than ever for a rematch down the road, and declared that if he failed to win the title on his next try he would never challenge for it again – not just while Roddy holds it. Some people think this is just retreading the same ground they built Final Battle on, but I think it makes more sense to do it now. Roddy will have the time he needs to flesh out his title reign so that if Davey defeats him down the line he won’t be considered a transitional champion.
– Christopher Daniels made his first TV Title defense against Devon ‘don’t call me Crowbar’ Storm. These two faced off many times in the late 90s and are now veterans of the ring, so I guess it was kind of nice for Storm to get this opportunity. He got in a few licks, but Daniels finished him off with a uranage and the Best Moonsault ever. A little dull.
– In the first part of a singles match challenge between the Kings of Wrestling and the All-Night Express, Claudio Castagnoli defeated Rhett Titus with a big lariat after Shane Hagadorn tripped Titus after he had built some momentum. Titus looked good but didn’t get quite the babyface pops ROH may have hoped and it hurt the finish a little. Claudio should have hit the Ricola Bomb or something after the lariat. King and Hero entered the ring immediately and Titus hit a Thesz Press off the apron to take out Claudio.
– In part two of said challenge, Kenny King managed to upset Chris Hero with a flash pin in the main event. King brought the fight early on but Hero took command of the contest, wanting to avoid embarrassment. Unfortunately for Hero, that wasn’t in the cards and after inadvertently taking out Shane Hagadorn, the rolling elbow was ducked and King got the three count. After the match the Kings of Wrestling beat down the All-Night Express with the help of Hagadorn and Sara Del Rey. This was the last thing anyone saw before the 9th Anniversary Show, and while it was a nice way to build the tag team title match, I think it would have been better to have the Roddy/Homicide encounter from the previous episode in this spot.
Overall Thoughts
– All in all an interesting month’s worth of ROH On HDNet. We had the TV Title changing hands, chaos between the big four tag teams, the start of the ROH Top Prospect Tournament, a showdown between Homicide and Roderick Strong, a huge promise from Davey Richards, and the Kings of Wrestling and the All-Night Express battling in singles matches. Some of the matches weren’t so hot, but I wouldn’t say any of them were flat-out bad. Devon Storm and Christopher Daniels bored me, but everything else was solid. I enjoyed the ushering in of some new stars and I think the TV Title situation was handled well. I’m sorry I missed the month, and I promise it won’t happen again as ROH On HDNet bids us farewell.
– Look out for my review of this week’s episode some time tomorrow, and don’t forget to check out all our podcasts. I have a vested interest in promoting the podcast I did with British wrestler Marty Scurll and encourage you all to listen and support him. He’s faced Bryan Danielson and Eddie Edwards before and will be working with the likes of El Generico, Kyle O’Reilly and Adam Cole in the coming month.
– Also don’t forget to check out the podcast I did with Ari Berenstein reviewing the results of World’s Greatest and the 9th Anniversary Show.