My travel to Philadelphia for Ring Of Honor's show on Satuday was without incident, so I'll just get right into the review.

BJ Whitmer vs. Matt Stryker vs. Dixie vs. Alex Arion [One Fall To A Finish]

This was a fine opener. For most of it, Whitmer, Stryker and Arion just brought your generic indy mat wrestling, with Dixie coming in on occasion to add a bit of character and comedy to the proceedings. This was perfectly fine, and I'll take ordinary mat wrestling over high flying with no regard for selling or fundamentals and day of the week, so I was satisfied. After a while, Whitmer began to distinguish himself a bit with some nice strikes. Dixie played the role of flashy comedy jobber, which worked well in small doses and with the other guys being solid enough wrestlers to not let him get out of control with the spottiness. Then after a while, they somewhat abruptly went into a near-fall section with each guy hitting a credible, but not outrageous, finishing move and having the pin broken up by someone. Fairly soon after that, Whitmer hit a nasty wrist-clutch exploder suplex on Dixie for the win. The opening segment was fairly basic and the finishing segment was somehwat rushed, and neither Stryker nor Arion showed much of a character, but this was a perfectly acceptable opener and the crowd appreciated it, so it worked well enough in all respects.

Then Gary Michael Capetta came out to once again play the role of Mic Stand, this time for Mikey Whipwreck to explain why he turned on his students in February. He called the SAT and Quiet Storm out and gave a rather lame explanation, calling them "geeks" and "squares" long enough for Izzy, Deranged and Angel Dust to attack them from behind, leading to...

The SAT (Jose & Joel Maximo) & Quiet Storm vs. Izzy & Deranged & Angel Dust of Special K

I actually managed to notice that the SAT have their names on their ass, so I could tell which was which. I've since forgotten it and it doesn't really matter. This match was a spotfest (obviously) and a shitty one at that (probably also obviously). Part of the reason the SAT do absolutely nothing for me in their spottiness is that they exhibiting absolutely no character whatsoever. They're just those guys who do some high flying and some head-dropping. Quiet Storm isn't good at wrestling either, but at least he's got the "angry midget" thing going for him. Special K's gimmick is wildly over the top, but that's appropriate for this kind of match. If you're going to skimp on the structure and the selling, you've got to do something to connect with the fans. In spite of those minor potential positives, this match still sucked. It was short and it was a mess and had the absurd finisher-killing I've come to expect from this crowd. One of the Maximos did something like a quintuple-powerbomb, finished off with something resembling a Ganso Bomb. This sequence of course was entirely unrelated to the finish. The finish saw Special K distract the ref while Whipwreck entered the ring and hit the stunner/whippersnapper on all three of his students. This was the worst kind of spotfest, as they were seemingly just doing moves that looked cool to kill time until the finish. The spotfests would get gradually better throughout the evening, luckily enough.

The Backseat Boys (Trent Acid & Johnny Kashmere) vs. The Ring Crew Express (Dunn & Marcos)

This was unannounced and was actually a hell of a lot of fun. If you're unfamiliar with Dunn & Marcos, their gimmick is that they're a couple of really small guys who love 80s hair-metal (they enter to Poison's "Unskinny Bop" and Marcos sports a Guns N' Roses jean vest) who fancy themselves "the top tag team in Ring Of Honor" despite never getting any offense, and always promise to "rock [their opponents] like a hurricane." Anyway, this was fantastic, because they actually got in a bunch of offense and had a real match! Now, I'm of the opinion that if you've seen one Backseats match, you've basically seen them all, or at the very least, you've seen this one, as it was basically just them running off their various super-choreographed sequences and signature moves in under ten minutes. But the reason why this was fun, and the SAT match was boring, is that both teams have massively over-the-top characters, adding much-needed charisma to their repetitive spots and getting the crowd involved in a big way. Also, they don't drop each other on their heads with no regards for selling, but that's another story. Anyway, this match was nothing special, just both teams trading periods of offense and passable selling until the inevitable T-Gimmick for the Backseats' victory. But the Backseats' constant posing and playing to the crowd, which annoys me sometimes, was a lot of fun here, in part because Dunn & Marcos got to respond in kind and were treated like real wrestlers for once. There's not really much more to say on this, and it's probably something that won't be nearly as much fun on tape as live, but live, it was a hell of a good time for a Dunn & Marcos mark like myself. And of course, eschewing the standard post-match handshake for jumping high-fives was the cherry on top.

After the match, the Backseats say they'll be back on 4/12 to warm up for CZW's Best of the Best later that night, and they issue a challenge to ROH's tag teams. I don't think they have anywhere to go but down after how much fun this was, but we'll see.

Doug Williams vs. Christopher Daniels [FWA Champion & ROH #1 Contender's Trophy]

Williams and Daniels have faced each other three times in Ring Of Honor. First, in the fantastic four-way in July to crown the first ROH Champion. Their first singles match was in October and was good, but not of the quality I thought they were capable, based on how good they looked in the four-way and how good they generally look against everyone else. And then they had a good six-man tag in November. But this, this was the match I thought they were capable of and more. It was a fairly simple storyline, but they worked it to perfection. The match started with Williams going for some flash pins and Daniels going outside of the ring to stall. This didn't have all that much connection to the storyline they'd work later in the match, but it established Daniels as something of a cowardly heel in contrast to Williams' role as the aggressor. Williams had the size advantage and proved to be the more powerful striker of the two, as well, so this dynamic was maintained throughout the match.

Early in the match, they did a bit of countering of each other's trademark sequences, building off of their previous encounters. But the main thing that was so simple and worked so well was each of them picking a body part to work on and just tearing it apart. Williams went for Daniels' neck, setting up both his Revolution DDT, which is basically a mid-match nearfall move, and the Chaos Theory German Suplex, which has been established in ROH as his finisher. So he just went to town on Daniels' neck, mostly using his wacky British mat attack to put it in all sorts of uncomfortable positions. And Daniels' selling of this was fantastic. Even on offense, he never stopped selling it, clutching it after every offensive maneuver and never really doing anything that would put any serious strain on his neck. And when on offense, Daniels spent most of his time working over Williams' midsection. Williams' selling of this wasn't quite as demonstrative as Daniels' selling of the neck, in that he wasn't constantly clutching at his ribs during every rest period, but it was still solid enough and he never did anything offense he shouldn't have been able to do in his condition.

For a while I was having trouble figuring out exactly why Daniels was working over the ribs, as his finishers are all more neck-oriented. I supposed he could do the Angel's Wings in a way that the impact was more on the midsection, or perhaps bring the Spicy Drop out of the Curry Man closet, as his opponent usually lands flat on their face in that. But then, late in the match, he hit the double-jump moonsault for a near fall and reminded me that yes, that is one of his moves that he does every match, and I am a moron. It didn't seem like all that credible a near-fall, and I didn't even recognize it as the thing he was working toward until thinking about it later, but it's the best I can figure. There is also the added aspect of wearing down the midsection to try to get the larger man winded more quickly, but I think it was mainly the moonsault he was going for. That the point of Williams' assault seemed more obvious to me, and the assault itself more effective, did reinforce Williams as the aggressor, the one in control of the match with Daniels having to play catch-up and pick his spots more.

Anyway, it was clearer was Williams was going for, and he even teased the Chaos Theory once, with Daniels blocking, to make sure we got it. And in the end, he hit it to a big reaction to win the FWA and the #1 Contender's Tropy, earning him a shot at the ROH Champion (to be determined later in the night) on the April 26th show just outside Pittsburgh. This was one hell of a match and is the kind of thing that makes me willing to sit through all the bad and mediocre that indy wrestling can bring. They didn't have to drop each other on their heads or no-sell a bunch of finishers or come up with some move no one's ever seen before to pop the crowd. They established their characters, built a story logically toward a finish and executed everything well, and the result was an excellent match that the crowd ate up. This match was worth my price of admission and you should get a tape of it. I know I will.

Well, that's about the halfway mark (although technically that's only four of ten matches, I just don't have as much to say about any of the rest of them as I did Daniels/Williams) so I'll call that Part One of this review and return with Part Two another day...

In Part Two: Nobody cares about another stupid riot angle! Philadelphia loves homosexuality! The Briscoes finally tag in Philly without masks! Low Ki and Jody Fleisch approximate ECW midcards! Raven and CM Punk disagree on the value of controlled substances! Samoa Joe is large and angry! All that and more, when this review continues!  ¶ joe | 2:34 AM |