Let me tell you that I am glad this week is coming to an end finally. I’ve had to work eleven out of the last twelve days at work, I’ve been trying to fight off a cold, and to make matters worse there has actually been some nice weather lately but I haven’t had the time of the energy to enjoy it. But enough of my whining as you my loyal readers have come here to read about RoH and not myself.
3/12 from Woodbridge, CT
Colt Cabana defeated Delirious
Dunn & Marcos defeated Alex Law and Rickey Landell
Spanky defeated Jack Evans
Azrael & Dixie beat Deranged & Izzy to win the “Special K” name
Homicide defeated Roderick Strong
Allison Danger defeated Cindy Rogers, Daizee Haze and Lacey
Dan Maff & BJ Whitmer defeated Colt Cabana and Nigel McGuinness to retain the ROH Tag Team titles
James Gibson defeated Rocky Romero
Samoa Joe & Jay Lethal defeated Spanky (replacing the scheduled Steve Corino) & CM Punk
Quick Thoughts – Well I did a bit better with my picks this week going five for six and only missing the Special K pick, but I think that shows more the predictable nature of the show than any special insight on my part. Now the fact that the show was more predictable in nature does not detract any from it as most wrestling shows are this way to those of us that have been watching wrestling for a good long time now. Other than that I have heard nothing but positives about the quality of the matches on the card, and the main event pushes for James Gibson and Spanky, including Gibson now being granted a title shot at the 4/16 show due to his recent record.
There is always room for some tidbits
Tidbit: The WWE’s Stevie Richards attacked CM Punk at the 3/12 show and it looks like he will also be appearing at the 4/16 and 5/7 RoH shows.
-Now this is something that I am excited about. I am a big fan of Richardson’s work, and I think that he fits in quite well with the RoH mentality. The one that has me puzzled is why the WWE would allow any of their contracted workers to show up to a RoH event. I know that Richards is just a small cog in the giant WWE machine, and that RoH is nowhere near the size of the WWE”¦but still you would think that someone who is often thought of one of the most ruthless business men out there would give any aid to his competition, no matter how insignificant he might consider that completion to be. Always makes me wonder if we have another WWE/ECW relationship happening.
Tidbit: The Special K name is no more in RoH as after Azrieal & Dixie won the rights to the name they announced that wanted to move on to a more serious stage of their respective careers and so would no longer use the Special K nickname. The losing faction of the former Special K will now be known as Lacey’s Angels.
-Special K was a great gimmick RoH, but it had gotten to a stage where there was really nowhere else to go with it. And so instead of allowing the gimmick to continue and become stale in its nature RoH did the right thing for its workers and decided to move them on to other gimmicks, (although I doubt that the Lacey’s Angles gimmick will be to different that the Special K one).
Tidbit: The 4/2 RoH show is coming together as they have found a new location for the show in the Asbury Park Convention Center, and we now know the eight competitors who will be involved in the Junior’s Tournament, (James Gibson, Bryan Danielson, The New Black Tiger, Matt Sydal, Roderick Strong, Spanky, Alex Shelley and Dragon Soldier B).
-First off I am glad that RoH has found a worthy location for this show. As for the tournament itself I think that it should be a great one as the six workers that I actually know of all are great workers. Right now if I had to pick a winner I would hesitantly guess Alex Shelley, but I could easily change my mind in the weeks to come.
And while we are on the subject of tournaments I just wanted to quickly talk about the best yearly tournament in sports, the NCAA Tournament. I don’t know what the hell I was doing this year when I filled out my bracket but I ended up with no number one seeds in my final four as I got Wake Forrest, Kansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma State. As a result I turned in my bracket with a bad feeling that I had already lost before the first game even tipped off. Okay mini-rant over.
Tidbit: After losing their tag title match at the 3/12 show, Nigel McGuinness has challenged Colt Cabana to a future match.
-This could develop into a nice mini-feud between the two workers due to their contrasting personalities. In fact I hope that RoH allows this to be more than a one match deal as I think these two could put on a series of solid matches going into the summer.
The RoH E-mail Bag
This week’s e-mail comes from a man who a gentleman who is one of my loyal readers”¦
Once again, another great column. I do have one question about the following comment you made:
“Outside of the tournament I am glad Lethal won the Pure Championship, which was something that needed to be done well before Walters ever showed up on Raw last week.”
Is this because of Walters being the ECWA champion or something else entirely?
To be as brief as possible I based this statement based off of three different trains of thought, all of them being about equal to one another. Reason 1, with Walters as the ECWA champion he obviously had other commitments than just RoH. While I have no problem with this, I just feel that his more limited availability made it tough for him to build momentum in RoH. Reason 2, despite being booked as a member of The Embassy, (hell he was the Embassy’s crown jewel when he first joined them) I just never felt that his character had a strong direction. This also ties into reason 1. Finally I have been feeling for quite awhile now that Jay Lethal deserved a title of some sort, and I felt that the Pure Championship was the perfect choice as it gives him a chance to elevate the belt and with it his own stock. I hope that was helpful in explaining exactly what I meant last week, and hopefully now nobody will think that I meant what I said as a dig at Walters.
A trip down memory lane
Ooh, a new section feature in my column. In an attempt to show a bit more of my own views on the RoH product I have decided to share some memories I have of RoH with you. While most of these memories will be good ones there will be others where I felt let down by RoH or puzzled as to what RoH is trying to accomplish.
For this weeks memory I would to start where it all began for RoH. After finally deciding to purchase The Era of Honor Begins I popped in the DVD and got myself for what I thought was going to be some great wrestling. Ten minutes later I thought I had completely wasted my money as in that time span I had witnessed Da Hit Squad try to get fans waiting for the show involved in various chants, and then watch them destroy The Christopher Street Connection in a sports entertainment segment that filled with homophobia. The most ironic part of that particular segment was that RoH was trying to establish that they were not about sports entertainment right off the bat, but used sports entertainment as a tool to try to get this point across. Luckily as the show progressed RoH was able to draw me into what they were doing, but how they did that will have to wait for another column.
And with that we have another column to add to the annals of history”¦but before you close out your window may I recommend that you first check out Eric’s Daily Pulse from this past Tuesday as it is a great read and displays once again why he is my favorite columnist. And after that if you feel the need to read a wrestling based column how about trying out Haley’s Comment as he back in the swing of things and once again producing solid columns after a brief hiatus from the internet.
