I very often post things on this site without proofreading them. In fact, the longer it is, the less likely I am to have proofread it. So, if you saw some typos or sentences that didn't quite make sense in the first part of this review, that is the cause. I promise to consider proofreading this before I post it.

Homice & Da Hit Squad vs. Samoa Joe & CW Anderson & Jack Victory

Yes, that Jack Victory. It's like the undead corpse of ECW reached up through the ground and grabbed me by the ankle. But I digress... Victory was replacing Michael Shane, who apparently was dehydrated and had a stomach virus. Luckily for me, this was really more of an angle than a match, and therefore I don't have to review it! I'll just tell you that there was another stupid "riot", although there was no danger of anyone buying this one as real, and the match was a short, chaotic brawl, which ended in a No Contest. And thus, I still don't have any idea if Homicide is as good as everyone says he is. There's good news on that front for next month's show, but I'll leave that for the end. In short, this match isn't worth more than a paragraph of my time or yours.

The Carnage Crew (Loc & DeVito) vs. Mase & Hotstuff Hernandez (accompanied by Buff E)

Hernandez is a giant behemoth of a man, and I don't mean he's fat, he's just a huge individual. So his coming out with a blue feather boa around his neck was pretty amusing. This wasn't much of anything, but Mase and Hernandez playing a comically mismatched duo, like Al Snow and Steve Blackman, but with more overt homosexuality, was fun enough. The only thing I really remember about the match was Hernandez doing an absolutely monstrous running plancha to the outside. And then Mase got pinned with a piledriver off of the second rope. Perfeclty fine comedy fare to bring us back from intermission.

AJ Styles & The Amazing Red vs. Mark & Jay Briscoe [ROH Tag Team Championship]

This match was part of the progression of spotfests that I alluded to earlier. This, like the SAT match earlier, was mostly about wowing the crowd with flashy moves, but they at least built to the moves somewhat, and there wasn't too much in the way of finisher killing, so it was a significant improvement. Still, the appeal of the match lay mostly in the spectacular nature of the spots, and thus I won't spend too many words discussing it. I will say that that the Briscoes' execution looked tenative at times, but this was their first ever tag team match in the state of Pennsylvania (wink, nudge) so I will cut them a bit of slack. They had a decent spotfest that the crowd ate up, but which reminded me of flashy ECW matches that got raves at the time, but were short on substance, and thus haven't aged well. Fun to watch live, nothing you need to go out of your way to get a tape of. The finish saw Red hurricanrana one of the Briscoes off of the top rope into the waiting arms of Styles, who then delivered the Styles Clash. It looked great and the crowd went nuts, but given that Styles had to stop the Briscoe's momentum completely after catching him in order to set up and hit the Styles Clash, the hurricanrana didn't really accomplish much outside of adding flashiness.

This match did serve to illustrate an interesting point about AJ Styles. He seems to always wrestle to the level of his opponent, which leads to a wide variance in the quality of his matches. In with this gang of CZW veterans, he brings all his flashiest and most complicated spots. But when he's in with someone like Low Ki or the American Dragon, he proves very carriable and willing to ditch his more complicated or cliched spots in order to tell the story they want to tell. He looks perfectly natural in a more mat-intensive match and that led me to rave about his ability the first time I saw him in ROH (against Low Ki). That match was certainly flashy at times, moreso that Dragon/Styles, but he still seemed to display the ability to work a relatively smart match. Whether he's just willing to have whatever kind of match his opponent wants to have, or he actively tries to wrestle to the strengths of his opponent, I don't know. But it is an interesting phenomenon, and a reminder, to me at least, to predict the quality of AJ Styles matches based more on the quality of his opponents than on his presence.

Low Ki vs. Jody Fleisch

And this was basically the last step in the evolution of the spotfests throughout the night. With Fleisch present, this was obviously going to be flashy as all get-out, but this match did bring more flow and build to the big spots, as well as more selling, than any of the spotfests that preceded it. But what really struck me about this match was how much it seemed like some sort of ECW on TNN midcard-beyond. Specifically, it seemed like a better and more spectacular version of your standard Tajiri vs. Highflyer match. The Psicosis match specifically came to mind, but not having watched that one in a while, I can't point to any specific similarities. But it had a souped-up version of your standard ECW opening of inconsequential, but really cool-looking matwork and counter-wrestling. And after each such sequence, the two men would jump to their feet and stare at each other, soaking in the crowd's applause while Chris Lening shuddered, not knowing why, three thousand miles away. They did two sequences like this, and even injected a little comedy, which I would expect out of Tajiri, but not Low Ki, as Fleisch tried to respond to Low Ki's brutal kicks in kind, to which Low Ki responded just by grinning at him. After this, it was basically Fleisch's flashiness vs. Low Ki's brutality with the enormity of the spots being ramped up throughout the match. Low Ki of course brought flashiness of his own, but it was with his strikes and suplexes that he really gained his advantage over Fleisch. I must mention the most spectacular spot that Fleisch very nearly pulled off. Low Ki was standing in the middle of the ring and Fleisch was on the apron. Fleisch went for a springboard shooting star press into the ring, having already hit one to the outside of the ring earlier in the match, which was amazing enough, but he attempted to land face down on Low Ki's shoulders and grab his head for a tornado DDT. He didn't land quite cleanly and it didn't work out quite right, but it was an outrageous idea and worked well enough that he did wind up spiking Low Ki more or less on the head. And Low Ki sold this huge, whereas if his last name were Maximo, he might have kicked out at two and popped up to run the ropes and hit a dive to the outside. But in the end, things came down to a battle on the top turnbuckle, which nearly saw both men slip off and fall to the floor, eventually won by Low Ki, who hit a brutal top rope Ki Krusher for the three count. All in all, it felt very much like an ECW spotfest, although a very good one and one without any silly table or chair spots.

Raven & Colt Cabana vs. CM Punk & Ace Steel

Before the match, there was some lenghty but excellent mic work from the newly heelish CM Punk extolling the virtues of the Straight Edge lifestyle and chastising the crowd and its lifestyle of substance abuse, as represented by Raven. Raven came out and responded and while his mic work didn't quite match that of Punk, it was still good stuff.

The match itself was basically a formula tag with some weapons added in for the ECW twist. It went a bit longer than it probably should have and the crowd began to lose interest after a while. It's not that the work was bad, but it wasn't anything spectacular, and following two extremely flashy spotfests, a match this long wasn't likely to play well with the crowd. I assume the bookers expected Raven's popularity to keep the crowd hot for the match, but the length of the match as well as its generally ordinary quality served to burn out the crowd somewhat. Raven pinned Steel with the DDT, which he's continued calling "The Raven Effect".

After the match, Punk backed off on confronting Raven and Raven repeatedly DDTed Steel in an attempt to get Punk to get in the ring with him. Punk eventually did, but Cabana turned on Raven, explaining that Punk is his best friend and Steel is his trainer, and the three beat Raven down in the middle of the ring. They should make for a good stable, though I don't know who Raven will bring as back up. I hope there aren't too many more ECW retreads on their way in.

Xavier vs. Samoa Joe [ROH Championship]

Joe entered the match selling a neck injury, which I assume occured in the match/riot earlier. This gave Xavier something of an opening to bring the bigger man down to his size. And they did play up the size disparity pretty effectively as Xavier used unusual amounts of high-flying in addition to neck-based attacks (and in one case, both at once, as a tope suicida turned into a tornado DDT on the floor). Joe sold this very well to make the playing field seem more even and make it appear that Xavier had a chance to slay the giant. And of course Joe used his size and brutality to gain the upper hand. They worked this story well in this somewhat short match (around 11 minutes, I believe). But in the end, Xavier's crafty assault wasn't enough to overcome Joe's power, and Joe followed up some nasty knees to the head with a rear naked choke, choking Xavier into unconsciousness and winning the title.

I was somewhat disappointed in that Paul London's excellent chase of Xavier didn't get to have a proper conclusion, though a Tag Title win probably would have been used as such at the previous show had London been able to wrestle. But Joe is an excellent choice for Champion, as not only is he one of the top wrestlers on the ROH roster, but he's the only real "big man" among the top of the card wrestlers, so he has the ability to provide a great chase for a smaller babyface or build up the credibility of the title with a series of decisive victories. There have been some questionable booking decisions on recent ROH shows, but Joe as Champion will prove to be a good one in the long run, I think.

So, overall this was a very solid show, with Daniels/Williams being the one thing you should really do whatever you can to get a hold of. The next show is on April 12th, and I'll have a more detailed preview of it in as it approaches, but right now I'll just note a few things. Low Ki vs. Paul London and CM Punk vs. BJ Whitmer were among the first matches announced and should both be very good. Dusty Rhodes, Homicide & "his crew" vs. CW Anderson, Jack Victory & "some bar room brawlers" in an "I Quit Bunkhouse Riot Not Booked By ROH" frightens me. And just today, not only was it announced that the American Dragon Bryan Danielson has been added to the show, pleasing me significantly, but also Homicide will finally get a singles match against a good opponent, as he takes on Christopher Daniels, and Samoa Joe takes on Hotstuff Hernandez in a non-title match. This show is shaping up to be another good one with some good stuff we haven't seen before, including the ROH debut of "Reckless Youth" Tom Carter.  ¶ joe | 3:06 AM |