A Ring of Honor centric week, even for me as I compare “Respect is Earned†to “Sacrifice.†Come see which company put out the better product for your cash.
News of Honor
The Kings of Wrestling will re-unite June 9 in Philly to challenge the Briscoes 2/3 falls
The Kings of Wrestling are Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli and for a while they were easily the most dominant, and during any other era would have been the very best without question, tag team in the American indies. They had a Match of the Year Candidate with the Briscoes at Final Battle 06, but broke up. Reuniting to face the Briscoes, now dominant tag champs, will be great wrestling.
Nigel McGuinness has a herniated disc and separated shoulder, but will miss no time
Since he’s finally being pushed as the main face of the company, his refusal to take time off isn’t surprising. It doesn’t hurt anything that he’s a tough bastard.
Homicide had TNA’s blessing to appear on the ROH show and address the crowd, but his interview will not be on either the DVD or the PPV
This is a shame, not only because Homicide’s promo was so passionate and emotional, but also because he is so hard to understand and re-watching would have helped.
June 23 will be the second ROH Pay Per View Taping
The show is headlined by the Briscoes against Kevin Steen and El Generico as well as Bryan Danielson against KENTA. I’ve never been so sure two matches on one card will break ****1/2.
In Other News
The NWA reclaimed its belts
Hopefully the NWA can make some noise. The more competition for WWE’s stale and TNA’s rushed product, the better.
Rob Van Dam might be done in WWE as of last Tuesday’s ECW TV show
Rob is actually probably more technically sound, if less flashy, than at any point prior in his career. He would add a ton of intrigue to the ROH title chase and has a ton of interesting opponents there, while in TNA he could instantly revive the X-Division. I hope he’s done with WWE.
Sabu was released
Sabu will always have a place in Japan as such an innovator of interesting violence and ways of taking an insane beating. TNA’s hardcore (although it was never officially called that) division seems to be pushed to the side right now, so Japan would be perfect for Sabu.
Colt Cabana reported to OVW this week
While I dislike Colt generally, he’s still a ROH original and I wish him the best, including a speedy call-up.
MVP is impressing backstage and a protégé to Benoit
See Eric, he’s really working at it.
Jericho might be back for the season premiere of Raw
Well, that’d spice things up at the very least. I miss Jericho, but if he returns, he really needs to be a big deal.
This is actually some interesting stuff about how WWE views their performers. Check it out.
This Week on Pulse Wrestling
Andy Mac discusses whether the second ROH PPV is coming too soon or not. I care, but not as much as I would were the top two matches of that card not so amazing.
Puro Pulse has a great deal on how Inoki continually messes things up.
Mark Allen writes a good column every week and I’m really digging his format.
In A Look on the Brightside Murray’s first 5 Smackdown comments are mostly negative. Welcome to the dark side Steve. Wait until you get ROH shows.
Brashear does a great job with a Goldberg angle so obscure I barely remember it.
Blatt covers an episode of ECW so boring and uneventful that not even his writing can save it.
Keith Rants on ROH’s 100th Show, giving it two 4 star matches and two other 3 and a half star matches. If you read Scott’s site and regularly post there, lay off. At least he’s reviewing the stuff and giving his opinions. He could stay silent and uninformed on the ROH product. Would that be better?
Column of Honor: Why ROH should soon be the number two promotion in America by Joshua Grutman shows exactly why ROH has such a great product right now and how badly TNA is wasting their potential currently. Since Grut looks at it in the abstract, I think I’ll compare what will appear on ROH’s first Pay Per View “Respect is Earned†with this last Sunday’s TNA “Sacrifice†Pay Per View specifically.
A Modest Response: ROH’s “Respect is Earned†vs. TNA’s “Sacrificeâ€Â
Here’s my full live show coverage of “Respect is Earned.â€Â
The ROH Pay Per View Match lineup is as follows:
ROH World Champion Takeshi Morishima defends vs. BJ Whitmer
Rocky Romero vs. Naomichi Marufuji
ROH World Tag Team Champions The Briscoes defend vs. Claudio Castagnoli and Matt Sydal
Roderick Strong vs. Delirious
Takeshi Morishim and Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness and KENTA
Since there are five matches here, I will pick the top 5 matches from TNA’s card to compare them with. This gives TNA a bit of an advantage since we’re picking and choosing their best, but that merely evens the playing field.
The top 5 matches of the TNA Pay Per View card were as follows:
X-Division Champion Chris Sabin defends vs. Sonjay Dutt vs. Jay Lethal
Chris Harris vs. James Storm
TNA Tag Champions Team 3-D defend vs. LAX vs. Tomko and Scott Steiner
AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe
TNA Champion Christian Cage defends vs. Sting vs. Kurt Angle
Match 1: ROH World Champion Takeshi Morishima defends vs. BJ Whitmer faces off against X-Division Champion Chris Sabin defends vs. Sonjay Dutt vs. Jay Lethal
First the X-Division title match was very good. The match started slow and storyline focused, but really picked up and had a hot middle portion. Sabin carried the pacing and psychology here, letting Dutt focus on his flips and Lethal focus on the old Randy Savage spots. It worked because of Sabin’s willingness to be a heel and do the dirty work. The match was about ***, but was on pace for more. The finish was focused entirely on storyline, completely ignoring the flow the match had built until that point. It’s like a fun movie that completely skips the climax and just finishes, so it has to be penalized for it.
The ROH World title match was a fast paced introduction to the World Champion, a beast of a man named Takeshi Morishima. BJ Whitmer got some good, high powered offense here, but that was mainly to make him look stronger so that when Morishima triumphed, it looked impressive. It worked, ‘Shima looked like a beast and BJ didn’t look like a jobber. This is about *** as well, but gets the advantage because it built as a storyline introduction to the champion AND a match, unlike the TNA match which had some good stuff in the middle but totally forgot the build and sacrificed it at the alter of the storyline.
Score: ROH 1 – TNA 0
Match 2: Rocky Romero vs. Naomichi Marufuji battles Chris Harris vs. James Storm
This was almost certainly TNA’s Match of the Night. This violent brawl between the former members of America’s Most Wanted started off very slowly but built to quite the bloody brawl. It fell short of being a classic, and the bad booking going in handicapped this a bit, but the match itself was about as good as you’ll get from two workers of this caliber, which is to say both are good, but they were in a tag team to hide their weaknesses as workers, which are exposed in a match of this sort. *** ½ stars is about right for this very good, but unmemorable bout.
Marufuji showed in this appearance why he is a former GHC Champion. He and Romero started off fast, almost Dragon Gate style and then went to body part work. Romero attacked the arm, building to one of his many arm submissions, while Marufuji sold like a champ. Then Marufuji attacked Romero’s leg with fun, innovative spots. That pulled the match up to immediate great status, but Romero nearly ruined it. Although his left leg was brutalized and he was limping, Romero continued to attack with it. This is where Marufuji really shined. Instead of going back to the leg and calling attention to the miscue, Marufuji instead uses the limp to his advantage and turns up the speed. Romero isn’t able to keep up and thus loses the match. Great storytelling and this little match with no build manages to, completely in ring, tell a great storyline that draws the audience in for ****. That they did all of that without the background build is what gets ROH the point here.
Score: ROH 2 – TNA 0
Match 3: TNA Tag Champions Team 3-D defend vs. LAX vs. Tomko and Scott Steiner vs. ROH World Tag Team Champions The Briscoes defend vs. Claudio Castagnoli and Matt Sydal
Team 3-D and LAX were involved in a hot feud for the TNA Tag Titles. The matches were decidedly mediocre, due to the limitations of everyone involved but Homicide, but the angle was still going strong thanks to both acts strengths in other areas. Tomko and Steiner were introduced to freshen things up and try and gain more gold for the Christian Coalition. This might have worked, but the focus was immediately switched from the hot angle to Tomko and Steiner worrying whether or not they could trust each other. The match booked at the Pay Per View became service to the Steiner and Tomko angle, with the Tag Titles as window dressing. With so many bad workers in the match, it’s no surprise that this was ** bad.
Compared to an angle in which the titles were second, the Briscoes vs. Castagnoli and Sydal was a breath of fresh air. This was all about two former tag champions uniting to take out a common enemy and regain the gold. The Briscoes are the best team in the world right now and just would not lose the belts, using ferocious double teams to counter the challengers’ continuous assault. This was fantastic, just like everything the Briscoes have done lately and is about **** 1/2. Obviously ROH gets the point in the biggest blowout of the evening.
Score: ROH 3 – TNA 0 – And ROH has won the competition no matter what, but let’s see how this continues and maybe TNA can make it interesting with the top of the card.
Match 4: Roderick Strong vs. Delirious against Samoa Joe vs. AJ Styles
Joe and AJ wrestled their worst match ever. The pacing was off and neither man seemed to especially care. Luckily, this is Joe and AJ Styles, so even not really caring, it’s pretty good. Most of the match was going through the motions, but a nice touch of booking with Joe stealing a page from Styles and faking an injury and it leading to the win for *** ¼.
Delirious and Roderick Strong had a very slow match. The spots were there and the build was there, but because the pacing was not, the crowd never got into it. Delirious also failed to properly introduce his crazy comedic character in the match, a major drawback for an introductory Pay Per View. Still, technically this was perfectly acceptable and about ***.
TNA finally gets on the board here as the workers they had going here were simply higher caliber than the ROH guys and so could get away with their mistakes more readily.
Score: ROH 3- TNA 1
Can TNA make the top of the card, the portion conventional wisdom states draws the buyrates, all theirs?
Match 5: TNA Champion Christian Cage defends vs. Sting vs. Kurt Angle matches up against Takeshi Morishima and Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness and KENTA
Christian has been an excellent heel champion, playing cocky and seemingly unbeatable due to his trickery, but this match is built around Angle and String’s growing dislike for each other. Since both are such big names, neither needs the title to draw for a feud, so conventional wisdom had Cage winning here. Russo apparently scoffs at conventional wisdom. Here we get a muddled match with a muddled finish as Christian was pinned while he submitted to the Ankle Lock. Christian and Angle can both be very good and Sting is solid, but this went nowhere and the ending was the definition of poorly conceived. It’s supposed to build drama, but endings like this are so overdone that all they do is piss wrestling fans off, leaving this match at **.
Everyone in the ROH Main Event is a world class caliber worker. This match stole its format directly from 1990s All Japan Pro Wrestling, one of the best eras ever, but added some more spots. Everyone has crazily good chemistry with each other here and introduced their style and spots perfectly for the new audience without offending the longtime fan. Some botched spots and Nigel being hurt drag this down a bit, but it’s still a **** effort. ROH destroys TNA’s Main Event.
Score: ROH 4 – TNA 1
ROH absolutely rocked TNA in the head to head department here, even with TNA having the advantage of having their best matches chosen. If you doubt my objectivity on this because of my ROH fandom, I welcome anyone to do the same as I just did on July 1 when the ROH Pay Per View airs and send me their analysis. I’ll run any I receive unedited and we can discuss which is more worthy of your hard earned money. That said, from this analyst’s point of view, the ROH effort easily trumped TNA’s. Since ROH now has Pay per View, it’s finally time to form your own opinion.
