Hey hey, it's Joe the lazy blogger, finally back with the third and final installment of my ROH review.

Low Ki vs. AJ Styles vs. Paul London [Number One Contendership]

This match had some big shoes to fill. The match that put ROH on the proverbial map at the debut show a year ago was the three way main event between Low Ki, Christopher Daniels and the American Dragon. I’m not a fan of three-ways, and I wasn’t there live to see it, so I didn’t like it quite as much as lots and lots of people did. But it was certainly a really fun match and the way they minimized the portions of the match where one guy was lying around selling while the other two fought by involving all three guys in numerous spots and sequences had to make for a fun live experience. This is a little different coming in, because while that match just had three Big Name Indy Superstars wrestling each other to have a good main event on the company’s first show, this match actually has something on the line, as well as back story not only among the three competitors, but also between each of them and the Champion, Xavier. All three have lost to Xavier in a title match once. Low Ki lost the belt to Xavier when Xavier turned heeled and joined up with Daniels. Styles lost to Xavier in early December. And London’s ride from obscurity to main event level star in the company on a wave of tremendous fan support saw him lose a hard fought match to Xavier in late December.

All three were over big as babyfaces on this show, but none more than London. His rise to popularity has been perhaps the most surprising and fun story in ROH’s first year. He hasn’t done it by being remarkably unique or revolutionary. His high-flying style is more reminiscent of the old Jeff Hardy style of using aerial moves because he’s crazy enough to put his body on the line for the win and for the fans, rather than the RVD style of doing aerial moves because they look cool. He’s got the added advantage of looking like the clean cut all-American babyface, rather than the more niche-oriented goth-kid-turned-hobo style of Jeff Hardy. I heard someone sitting near me remark that London has the best babyface facial expressions, and damned if they weren’t right. London’s at his best when he’s taking a beating for a while, only to make a comeback by putting his body on the line with some high-flying maneuver. And during those beatdown segments, his selling really works. I don’t think I’ve seen a match where he’s had a specific body part targeted, and if someone were to attack his knee, it might not work out too well. But his facial expressions and body language are great for general fatigue and trying to fight on valiantly through it all so as not to let the fans down. The fact that he’s the one important guy in ROH who basically made his name here and nowhere else thanks to the ROH fans probably adds something to their love for him as well. He’s not a great wrestler yet, but he’s doing a lot of things right to stay over with the crowd as he improves.

The match was about what I expected. The three-way format basically necessitates some spottiness and abandonment of logic, but, like last year’s three way, these three managed to work within that framework to create an action-packed match that the crowd ate up. They went basically the same route as the previous three-way, using spots and sequences involving all three men to replace the traditional sequences of two guys fighting while another is out on the mat. The keys to a match like this are innovation, execution and constant action, and this match managed to hit on all of those cylinders without a lot of no-selling or completely absurd spots. While the crowd probably would have responded well to seeing them repeat some of the much-praised three-way spots from last year’s match, they kept it fresh and came up with some new and fun spots, mostly playing off of Styles’ bottomless bag of offense. And he hit all of his offense crisply. And there was enough selling that on occasion one man would be down while the other two fought, but these instances were kept reasonably short, not overdoing the selling. And unlike certain spotty matches that I will talk about later, there was very little killing of finishers in this match. Having three men allowed credible finishes to be broken up rather than kicked out of. And it didn’t take anything outrageous to finish the match. All three men were fighting on the top turnbuckle, which led to Low Ki hitting a top rope Ki Krusher on Styles. As always, the impact of this move caused Ki to go flying when he hit the mat and leave Styles alone in the center of the ring to be hit with London’s shooting star press for the win. The crowd of course at this up, both the London win and the match in general. I think the small “match of the year” chant that broke out was a little excessive, but it was certainly a fun match with a crowd-pleasing finish.

But suddenly Xavier announced that if London wanted his title shot, he’d have to take it right now. This continued the odd theme of wrestlers seeming to have the power to book their own matches and interviews, but it fit in well with the quality chickenshit heel character Xavier has developed over the course of his title reign.

Xavier vs. Paul London [ROH Championship]

Xavier’s matches as Champion have followed a basic and time-tested formula of the cocky heel beating on the babyface for most of the match, letting him up for occasional hope spots until it’s finally time for the big babyface comeback. He has proven great at drawing heat with this kind of match, especially against as sympathetic and popular a face as London. I didn’t like this match quite as much as their match in December, in part due to some unnecessary valet shenanigans, but the crowd heat was fantastic and made for a great finishing sequence. The crowd was going nuts on the nearfalls, the best of which being Xavier getting his foot on the ropes after taking the shooting star press from London. London may have been a little too energetic in this match, given that he’d just wrestled a lengthy match, but giving his all for the fans every time he’s in the ring works out well with his character, so it wasn’t too problematic. The crowd was into everything he did, and they don’t really respect Xavier’s abilities as Champ, so there wasn’t any issue of the crowd buying his ability to keep coming and coming despite the beating he was taking. Xavier ended up winning with a rollup, which was good as it doesn’t give the win to the guy who’s already wrestled once in the night, but it also puts heat on a rematch. I hope they keep going with this program and give London a third shot at the title so that he can win it. He’s the most popular thing in ROH and I hope they keep riding him as the top babyface. A title win over Xavier would be sure to make for a great crowd response.

The SAT, Divine Storm, Da Hit Squad & Mikey Whipwreck vs. Special K (Jody Fleisch, Dixie, Izzy, Deranged, Slim J, some other little guys)

This was a really odd choice for a main event, but I guess they figured nothing else on the card could top this for pure action. They were wrong. I knew this match would either be a fun, inoffensive spotfest, or an over the top clusterfuck. I never thought it could go so far in the latter direction. If you decide to buy the tape of this event, and there’s a lot of stuff worth seeing, I urge you to stop the tape before it gets to this match. Trying to find any order in this crap would be pointless, so I’m just going to make a list of everything wrong with it, which will also suffice as a list of everything wrong with indy wrestling.

Length. This monstrosity went over half an hour. When a match has fifteen guys who know nothing but spots, there’s no reason to give them anywhere near that amount of time. They didn’t use this time to inject any kind of story into the match. It just increased the volume of ridiculous spots, which in turned lessened the impact of each individual ridiculous spot.

Nonsensical heel turn. Mikey Whipwreck came out as a surprise partner for the face team because Red, who was originally booked for the match, had to go to Japan. Mikey “trained” the SAT (Jose & Joel Maximo) and Divine Storm (Chris Devine & Quiet Storm), as well as Red, so now that he’s ignoring his retirement of a year ago, it only makes sense that he’d team with this crew. But then, halfway through the match, he turned on them all. They were courteous enough to attack him black ninja style so he could hit his finisher on each of them one at a time. This of course made no sense, as he had been beating on the opposite team for the first half of the match but was now apparently in cahoots with them. The only thing I can figure is that he entered the match as a face, but got so upset with his team impugning his ability as a trainer by wrestling like shit, that he got fed up and decided to beat them up. If he comes out and explains that his heel turn was a result of his students being shitty wrestlers, I will retract any bad words I have said about this angle. But I don’t expect that to happen.

Finisher killing. There were like fifteen people in this match, and even more at ringside. So you’d think if a guy got dropped directly on his head, instead of kicking out, someone would come and break up the pin. You’d be wrong. One of the Maximos has this horrible move where he does a piledriver, doesn’t let go, and hits another piledriver, repeating until he’s hit three or four. This is all in spite of the fact that ROH tries to promote these guys as having something to do with lucha libre. Anyway, whichever little guy he did this move on in this match had to kick out of it. It wasn’t the finish and all of his teammates were apparently otherwise occupied, so he just sold it as if his neck were impervious to pain. That’s just one example. This match was fully of outrageous deadly moves being kicked out of like they were nothing. Which of course leads to…

Selling. Or, lack thereof. This match was over thirty minutes of pure offense, with some of the most ridiculous moves you’ll ever see, and yet, by the end, everyone in the match was still able to run and jump and flip at full speed, as if the match had just started. I don’t understand the mindset of coming up with all of these absurd, nasty moves if you’re just going to shit on them so no one cares about them. These guys have been wrestling for a little while now and yet they still haven’t learned how to put their insane moves over as anything but a meaningless two count.

Ridiculous moves. I’ve touched on this already, but one of the trademarks of these type of matches in ROH is that, once a match, everyone will all of a sudden congregate on one turnbuckle and a bunch of guys will superplex a bunch of other guys, while getting powerbombed by another bunch of guys until everybody hits the mat in an indistinguishable mass of bodies. The crowd chants “holy shit” and I shake my head wondering what the hell just happened. These spots make zero sense, even compared to the rest of the match. It makes me wonder if these guys learned to wrestle by watching gymnastics and competitive cheerleading. This match had nothing to do with professional wrestling.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, but I urge you again, don’t watch this match. The match finally ended when one of the Hit Squad guys hit a second rope Burning Hammer. That’s a fine finish for a match when every other offensive maneuver has been rendered meaningless, but the crowd has turned on this match by then and mostly didn’t care about this devastating offense maneuver. Maybe if these guys learned how to build to their crazy offense, people would care about them. But I guess that would require some actual thinking, and who needs thinking when you’ve got flipping and head dropping?

Overall, this was a really good show, marred by two really awful parts. Still, it’s an easy thumbs up with all the good matches and great crowd heat for all the stuff that deserved it.

I left the show and walked to the subway entrance at which I had arrived, but the door was locked. So I had to walk all the way down to the next entrance, which was luckily open. I was able to get on the E train which took me all the way back to Penn Station and everything was smooth sailing from there.  ¶ joe | 4:22 PM |