Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Taped 4/10/09
Original Air Date 6/6/09

Good thing XBox Live and Playstation Network members who don’t have HDNet can download these Ring of Honor shows now. Just a matter of the episode catalogs getting updated so that those people can get a hold of episodes like this.

The first televised ROH World Title Match finally aired, and I stand by my statement that this is the best ROH TV match to date… until the Bryan Danielson-Tyler Black three-quel airs next month; if this match was a wrestling equivalent of an epic movie, than that was of an even better sequel building to a hopefully awesome conclusion. Mistakenly called a Four Corner Survival early, Danielson, Black, Austin Aries, and defending champion Jerry Lynn simply went at it in and out of the ring, trying to steal pins and implementing simultaneous submissions. Aside from the common indy trapping of the multi-man submission chain (in this case, a chain of chinlocks) that has reached the point of parody, plenty of awesomeness abounded, including another crowd dive by Danielson on Black to tease a count-out victory for Aries before Lynn sneaked back in to break the count. Now granted, Lynn isn’t at the level of his three opponents here, but he was well capable of holding his own and not looking out of his league here, so the anti-Lynn sentiment (still coming through on TV and apparently catching Mike Hogewood really off-guard) still bothered me. Certainly would have been fine by me to see one of the other three take it, but when you think about it, this was only a week into Lynn’s title reign, they just had another title change hands on TV last week, and I’ve gotten more satisfaction out of guys winning titles in singles matches. Following the still-cool finish of Lynn catching Danielson in the cradle piledriver as he was locking into Cattle Mutilation on Aries, they kept the cameras rolling as Danielson sold the hell out of that piledriver, Aries tried to snatch the title in an ever-so-devious fashion, and Lynn showed respect to Danielson and Black.

This whole episode was pretty great in how nearly everything was focused around the title match. The first half of the show, in addition to two other matches, replayed abridged versions of the four wrestlers’ interviews about the match, then the announcers spoke with Ric Flair “via satellite” about the match. Flair, in what is likely his last televised appearance for Ring of Honor, talked about what it takes to hold the title more than anything, how the challengers have more pressure to win the title than Jerry does to keep it, and put over the promotion again. Certainly nice of him to do so despite not really proving to be more beneficial than what ROH itself brings to the table.

As for those other matches, they were enjoyable for what they were and didn’t detract from the episode. SO nice to see Colt Cabana here, teaming with Brent Albright to defeat Claudio Castagnoli & Ernie Osiris in tag action (with Cabana making Ernie tap to the Billy Goat’s Curse for the victory). Despite being the ROH veteran, he seems like a breath of fresh air after returning; the humor, the World of Sport influences, the Flying Asshole, and now his tremendous new singlet really add some levity to things. His exchanges with Claudio were great, the Claudio-Albright exchanges were kept to a minimum, the match didn’t overstay its welcome, and Kyle Durden got a face full of shoe. What’s there to hate? Hogewood implied that Cabana and Albright could be viable challengers for the tag titles, though since this match, Albright has apparently formed a regular team with Erick Stevens. Other match saw Bobby Dempsey plow through Sal Rinauro. Now Dempsey, Cabana, Albright, Claudio, Stevens, Roderick Strong and a dozen others can wait for ROH to introduce a possible TV Title to the mix.

Next week begins the set of shows myself, Steve, and John attended live last weekend. Talk about your quick turnaround. I was bummed to realize when I was there that Cabana was absent (realized this when pondering other matches to take place those nights), but apparently they filmed some vignettes for him at the Boston and Edison shows last month, so he’ll still have a presence.