1. I demand to be presented with anecdotal evidence supporting Dave Prazak’s claim that Shawn Daivari is “one of the toughest individuals on the [ROH] roster.”
2. The opener wasn’t great, but it was better than I expected. The Dark City Fight Club had a second consecutive solid showing, Daivari impressed me, and Osiris . . . kept it from being an official handicap match. The result was a given, and I still think Cheech & Cloudy would have been a better team here than The Embassy, but this was decent enough.
3. These 10-Minute Hunts are giving Eddie Edwards a nice opportunity to develop his character (which he’s doing very well), but as someone who expected the TV Title to be defended on TV on a semi-regular basis, I’ve been a tad disappointed so far. Hopefully once the 10-Minute Hunt storyline wraps up, title defenses will become more frequent.
4. I like the twist to the Achilles Lock where Edwards repeatedly stomps on his opponent’s head. Hopefully he’ll continue to do this even once he gets past these squash matches. I do wish the referee wouldn’t stop he match so quickly once Edwards begins stomping, however (that definitely won’t fly in higher-profile matches).
5. Rasche Brown’s promo work isn’t my cup of tea, but I can see why some people would like it. I can’t fault his intensity, even though I tend to not enjoy shouting promos.
6. Entertaining match between Delirious and Kenny King tonight. These two will make nice building blocks to a strong TV Title division, once ROH decides to feature that belt on its weekly show. I’ll be interested to see what they do with Delirious once the Aries feud is over, as there doesn’t seem to be much left to do here.
7. After watching the video hyping next week’s Black-Daniels match (yes, please!), I was going to say Black doesn’t appear on TV frequently enough for a champion, but then I went back to some of my 10 Thoughts columns and realized he does, actually, appear quite frequently. I don’t know what the fact that I couldn’t remember him on TV much says for his title reign.
8. Claudio Castagnoli is awesome. Even his work with Brent Albright, who I didn’t love, was still good. The WWE really dropped the ball by not hanging on to him, or bringing him back after letting him go. He probably would’ve been saddled with some stereotypical Euro gimmick (think leather pants, shiny shirts, and techno music), but best-case, he could be doing Drew McIntyre’s act, only actually doing it well.
9. I could complain about Castagoli and Chris Hero, more accomplished and experienced singles competitors, dropping matches to the Briscoes, but it worked on several levels. First and foremost, both matches were quite good. Second, both matches had roll-up finishes, which suggests a less dominant and decisive victory (at least in this case). Finally, the singles victories give the Briscoes a logical claim for one more shot at the tag titles.
10. Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin vs. Kings of Wrestling on September 11 makes me giddy. I don’t know if this is the start to a nice, long ROH run for TWGTT or just a “special attraction” type of deal (I suspect the latter, knowing of the brewing Kings-Wolves feud), but I really hope we also get matches against the Wolves and the Briscoes down the line.
