Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Taped 4/10/09
Original Air Date 5/30/09

Here’s the deal: whether it’s the fault of Time Warner Cable or Crazy Mark Cuban, Steve Kriske can no longer get this show. In order to see anything, he’d have to surf the web or use other means (good thing he came out to see the six episodes that will begin airing June 13th in person). We’ve been alternating weeks of writing up by-the-numbers reports, but since I can watch the episodes more immediately, and these types of reports take me much longer than they should (I’m a stickler for this type of shit), I’m going to be writing about the episodes in a more casual manner, mixing facts and opinions while discussing things in my own order. Steve will likely add his thoughts to things later when he sees them, so I’m holding onto the BSWH tag.

This week’s episode was capped off with the Tables Are Legal main event, with the American Wolves winning the ROH World Tag Team Titles from Kevin Steen & El Generico in what was a really good match. The table spots (and the amount of destruction, as some tables set up diagonally early didn’t give) built really well throughout, ending with Steen sent crashing through two tables stacked up at ringside and the Wolves getting the duke on Generico with the doomsday ace crusher through a table set up in the ring. The stacked table spot was especially good since they were set up several minutes prior to coming into play, as several spots happened (including Davey Richards pulling out his rarely seen shooting star press and Generico taking out Eddie Edwards with a splash through another, separate table) between the two tables getting stacked and providing a rough landing for Steen. Fans were hot, there was an appropriate amount of chaos for this match in their feud, and the Wolves completed their journey to dick-head dominance.

The rest of the in-ring action paled in comparison. Opener was Roderick Strong defeating Rhett Titus. This reminded me a lot of Titus’ matches with Brent Albright here, as Titus got a lot more offense than I would expect, plus it ended virtually the same way as their match at Injustice II: Titus took too long posing, allowing Strong to fight back with a flurry of moves, ending with the running yakuza kick for the pin. One thing I didn’t think about that kind of serves this match well is that for new viewers of Ring of Honor (if there are any), they wouldn’t know that Strong has so much experience and tenure than Titus. They would likely see them as equals, what with their similar builds and Titus having a height advantage. There were some dandy lines in the commentary here, as both Hogewood and Prazak made note of the Vampira lookalike that Titus gave a key card to, and Hogewood gave us his “Slap the Porpoise!” line with the caveat of it not to be taken the wrong way since Titus was present. Awesome.

The Women of Honor had a three-way match that essentially meant nothing, outside of maybe continuing the issue between Jimmy Jacobs and meddlesome harlot Daizee Haze. Jacobs’ gal and SHIMMER Champion MsChif got the victory over Haze and Sara Del Rey, pinning Haze after a face full of green mist and the Desecrator. If there’s anything more to learn from this, it’s that the spot where Del Rey catches Haze flying at her and slams her should be eliminated from their repertoire. This was the third time I’ve seen them do this spot, and they’ve messed it up each time.

Then there was Erick Stevens getting a victory over Sami Callihan in a quick match. I take it that fans there knew what outcome to expect, hence so little reaction to it, but Callihan got in more offense than I remembered. Most memorable stuff was in their Smacktalk promos, with Stevens adding a bunch of train cliches beyond “choo-choo” to his vocabulary and Callihan starting off his rather crazy promo by spelling out “horror.” Prazak did the same thing the last time Callihan popped up, so I take it they’ve taken notice of fans joking about “horror” sounding to much like “whore” when spoken (C’mon Ned, this isn’t a whorehouse, it’s a whore-orhouse!).

Not that all of the promo work was silly. Austin Aries and Tyler Black talked about next week’s World Title match in their own separate segments, with Aries doing pretty well at incorporating his cocky demeanor into something more serious. Nigel McGuinness, his spiked hair still in tact here, spoke with the announce team via satellite about the World Title match, providing answers that were 80-90% babyface while still maintaining that edge of his (think Bryan Danielson circa 2007). Also, we had a paid announcement by the Embassy – presented as such as actual paid air time not in conjunction with ROH nor HDNet – in which Prince Nana puts over Bison Smith and Jimmy Rave, Claudio Castagnoli is introduced as an associate, and Claudio himself dubs the Embassy as being “very international.” Fantastic.

A pretty good episode when all was said and done. I’d give it a marginal thumbs up for the various promos and storyline advancements, and especially for the main event paying off in spades after three weeks of TV build.