Pro Wrestling Chronicle

ROH TV coverage returns for a limited time for a special reason.

Previously, I gave up doing written recaps of Ring of Honor’s HDNet program because, after attending the tapings in person, relaying the results to Steve, and talking about them in detail on BS With Honor, watching the finished televised product in a timely manner and writing about it felt like overkill. However, I was unable to attend the tapings from September 10th, and those episodes will be airing over the next three weeks. For the first time, I’ll be seeing content taped for TV with fresh eyes, so I figured I write about what happened since these episodes lacked my live texts (plus it feels good to write on a Monday night instead of rotting my brain with Raw).

The show opened with clips from last week’s show of Jerry Lynn getting injured by Kenny King & Rhett Titus’ spiked piledriver and being helped out of the ring. This week, King came out with the newly trimmed World Champion, Austin Aries. Aries gloated about beating Bryan Danielson “last week” and proving he’s the Greatest Man That Ever Lived, and King gloated about taking out Lynn as if he was Old Yeller. Out came Tyler Black, nursing an injured neck at the time and, at this moment, suffering from severe mic feedback. Black remarked how King is a marked man, so he held a lottery of his own (Prazak cried gimmick infringement) with a bunch of names wanting to get a hold of him. Eddie Kingston got the nod, so that was our main event. Kyle Durden interviewed Kingston later on, who said he’d rather have Chris Hero but will still make do, and he’d be glad to get revenge for Lynn. Flash-forward to that match, it was Eddie’s most competitive match since he joined the roster full time. Pretty decent overall, with Kenny getting some good offense in and Eddie fighting back with suplexes and throws into the guard rail, but I was expecting something better. Someone who I thought was Rhett Titus but was actually a very buff Hero came out and distracted Kingston before he could hit the backfist, allowing Kenny to hit the double knees and the Coronation for the victory.

Believe it or not, the best match on the episode wasn’t this main event, but the match before it between Brent Albright and D-Lo Brown. Brown did his Twitter gimmick in a backstage segment and plugged his account (dlobrown75) for his real thoughts on Jerry Lynn (somewhere, BJ Penn cried gimmick infringement), and he wrestled most of the match in his shirt, but he still had one of the best matches of his ROH stay. A lot of guardrail throwing on the outside and hard-hitting action inside, and the crowd was really into it throughout. Whether it was the crowd’s energy for it alone or something else, things really clicked here. The finish saw Brown hit the powerbomb into a pin attempt, but Albright kicked out and immediately applied the Crowbar. Brown, following Albright’s old advice, attempted to get out but decided to tap out, making him 0-3 in his TV matches against major ROH names. Kudos to these two.

Only three matches this week, the third being an opening four-way bout with Sonjay Dutt, Delirious, Joey Ryan (w/ Prince Nana & Ernie Osiris) and Necro Butcher. Pretty fun and fast-paced for the brief time it had. Delirious and Sonjay obviously went at it, while Necro and Joey paired off on the outside to start, stemming from Necro’s issues with The Embassy and his last TV appearance where he fought all over the place with absent monster Bison Smith. A couple big spots saw Delirious hit his suicide flip off the top to the floor (getting a gash on his shoulder in the process) and Dutt give Necro a sunset flip powerbomb off the apron to the floor. I didn’t think Necro would even get in the ring, but he eventually did and hit his shitty Tiger Driver at one point. The heels worked together for most of it aside from Dutt trying to schoolboy Ryan (they quickly made up), and one moment that had me laughing was Dutt attempting a pin while Joey jogged around him and showed for the camera. Necro dived on Joey on the outside toward the end, and Delirious got the win after hitting Dutt with Shadows Over Hell. Mike Hogewood claimed it was payback for his woman.

Lots of other extracurricular factors throughout the show. Hogewood (twitter.com/slaptheporpoise) and Prazak mentioned that Jim Cornette has come aboard as the executive producer (previously mentioned in the bottom screen crawl a few weeks back), pictures of him in New York were shown, and they promised he’d make his presence felt in the coming weeks. They plugged a main event of The American Wolves vs. Bryan Danielson & Roderick Strong in two weeks as part of Danielson’s Final Countdown Tour, and they began a series of segments where Danielson talked about his favorite ROH moments/matches. Number Five was the 2/3 Falls Match with Aries at Testing The Limit (my first ROH show over five years ago) that lasted over 70 minutes. “Skullkrusher” Rasche Brown (the new Brown in town) got his own coming soon vignette in the Arena’s parking lot during the day, where he cut a promo about beating up a truck, promising even worse and laughing in the camera. So 80s, so awesome. Last but not least was Durden talking with Colt Cabana, who was excited to main event an HDNet episode and got confused on the Spider-Man mantra. Next week is Cabana vs. Nigel McGuinness in his final televised match as Nigel McGuinness.

A busy episode for a lot of guys who weren’t wrestling, and the matches in general were good.