The ROH Outsider – Some Blatant Flame Bait and a Review

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Guess which one I enjoyed writing more.

Top 10 Thoughts On Blatant Attempts to Rile Up ROH-bots

1. Bryan Danielson can never draw in a real wrestling promotion (i.e. WWE and solely WWE) because his skin type is translucent, his body makes him look like a shaved famine victim, he has the charisma of Lance Storm on horse tranquilizers, and he has not learned a single dance step from Saturday Night Fever, meaning he is unfit to have a match with the Honky Tonk Man that the masses want to see.

2. All Brisco Bros. matches are like watching a dimestore, minis version of the Undertaker and Kane with more springboarding.

3. The 10 good minutes of the Joe/Angle series combined are better than all 120 minutes of Joe vs. Punk 1 and 2 combined.

4. Nigel McGuinness is a poor man’s JBL who watched a lot of William Regal tapes.

5. Austin Aries was more interesting when he was in TNA and dressed like he got his entire wardrobe from Jesse Ventura’s garage sale.

6. CM Punk is overrated. I mean, not even in a damning way, just that he’s not the greatest guy in the history of guys. That’s guaranteed to get Glazer going.

7. Matt Sydal is better in ECW than he ever was in ROH. Oh wait. That one’s taken. Any time Bones mentioned ROH got Glazer and Vin going, really.

8. Larry Sweeney is not as entertaining as you all seem to think he is. Wait, I actually believe that. Because his mere presence annoys me. So, again, he gets heat either way and good for him, but I hatehatehate him based solely on one appearance. So, he’s a bush league gimmick and if you like him you smell.

9. ROH being the best of the indies is like being the valedictorian of summer school.

10. I’d rather watch WWE Divas matches on YouTube instead of ROH.

That last one is 100% true, actually, even if I don’t mean it as an insult. That said, I was able to recently tear myself away from grainy copies of Candice Michelle epics to watch an ROH match, provided as always by my Mysterious Benfactor via torrents. It was also my first exposure to a guy all of you piddly indie worshippers have taken to calling The Best in the World.

Bryan Danielson vs. Jushin “Thunder” Liger

I had a treasure trove of Danielson matches to choose from here. I asked old MB for them explicitly, because he’s the one ROH regular I’ve never seen wrestle outside of his jobber days on Velocity. I went with this one first because Liger’s a guy I’m familiar with, and it’s an interesting pairing besides.

What I got out of it was that it felt a lot like the indie/puro/technical wrestling version of Hogan vs. Michaels at SummerSlam ’05. Now, Danielson didn’t carry the match to the extent that Shawn had to carry that one (i..e he did not wrestle himself), but it was obvious who had more left in the tank. Of course, Danielson’s in his physical prime and Liger’s middle aged and worn down from years of, well, being Liger, but still competent. Where as the dynamic in Hogan/Shawn was one of a nearly crippled guy who was already limited in the ring vs. a man well past his peak physically who’s still able to pull off *** with pretty much anyone through will power, talent, and/or the Power of Christ. But I like that analogy a lot and you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.

That story here, which ROH-Bots always geek out over, is that Danielson has never beaten Liger in all their meetings worldwide and he desperately wants to go over in his home promotion. Liger, being Liger, was too proud to let that happen without a hell of a fight. On that level, it worked fantastically, and explained how they were able to kick out/escape from each other’s big moves on sheer will power.

The in ring psychology, on the other hand; well, as a fan, that’s kind of low on my taxonomy of importance. I mean, I get annoyed when Batista or whoever forgets which leg their supposed to be selling or ignores a serious injury to do their big comeback, but the build of working on a body part is generally perfunctory at best and tedious at worst for me; it’s cool and all, but not that important to my enjoyment of a match. Kind of like subtext in literature. Or at least Grant Morrison comic books. It’s nice that it’s there, but I can’t get excited about it. But really, I don’t remember much of it. Danielson tried to set up Cattle Mutilation, but he didn’t focus on it to the exclusion of all other moves. He hit a lot of suplexes that went after Liger’s neck/back, but again, he didn’t focus on working that body part over. Which, from my perspective, is fine, because the story was less “Danielson tries to rip Liger’s arms off so he has to say ‘I quit’ in Japanese, which would be a might dumb plan if the ref didn’t speak Japanese” and more “Danielson will do anything to finally beat Liger”, which included trying to tear his mask off.

MB told me that Danielson had yet to develop a personality. He’s helpful like that. But I saw flashes of the persona that makes all the “he has no charisma” charges thrown at his feet so much crap. My favorite example (and my favorite part of the match, really) was this exchange between Danielson and the ref:

Ref: Get off the mask!
Danielson: What? Tear off the mask? Okay!

Awesome. So, he has flashes of being more than a great technician, but his performance here is more akin to Chris Benoit, whom the announcers (who were some sub-Michael Cole weiner named Jay Bauer and a very solid color man in CM MF PUNK ESQ.) compared him to often. It was very fitting, and not just because he busted out the diving headbutt. It’s nice that that particular spot does not creep me out like the crossface and rolling germans do. Could be that everyone from Liger to Bam Bam Bigelow had used it well before Benoit became a U.S. mainstay. Well, and Dynamite, but that brings up the spectre of Benoit again. At any rate, Danielson is comprable to Benoit for all the right reasons, and that was before he really became the man in the indies. I can see why so many of you folks are so gay for him solely for this. I can’t imagine how I’ll feel about his best work.

If I used stars I’d give it a solid *** at least. Had a beat and you could dance to it, and it was cool seeing Liger work against someone of Danielson’s caliber, especially in such an intimate setting. I generally find the indie aesthetic romanticism risible (come to ROH live! The grapes in the wine are crushed by Necro Butcher himself ringside!) but it’s always cool to see a world class star like Liger in what looks like a flea market. It’s a warm, novel kind of cognitive dissonance.

So, all that was cool, but it didn’t blow me away. No ROH match I have watched yet has. Of course, they all have to go up against some absurd expectations the indierati have created and that I will unfairly hold them to, despite trying really hard not to. I have an idea why this is; I find the obligatory opening ten minutes of every match kind of boring.

Let me explain that. I can understand why they do the whole chain wrestling counter reversal thing in the opening minutes, and do a lot of mat based stuff to establish the psychology. But since, as I said, I am not big on psychology, I find that stuff to be filler. I totally cop to that being my WWE Mark showing, as most chain wrestling in WWE matches it total filler. Only in instances like that awesome amatuer sequence between Benoit and Angle at ‘Mania XVII has that kind of stuff ever meant much.

So, the beginnings of the matches kind of make me twiddle my thumbs and wonder if they have that match between Candice and Torrie with all the water balloons on youtube, but the endings are so awesome it split the difference. But I have yet to fall in love with this promotion the way the converted have (or the way I have for Candice! Well, at least parts of her, to quote the immortal Michael Kelso). And now, for something… well, completely similar, save medium.

Legally Obtained ROH Review Short Form Abberviated Reviews

Don’t flay me in your column, Eric! Or do. It would kind of validate my existence. Anyway, I promised to pick up the ROH Greatest Hits DVDs if I found them, and I found two at Sam Goody for $7.99 a piece. Which makes my ROH collection a third of my WWE one, oddly enough. I’ve only gotten around to watching two matches from the disc so far.

Samoa Joe vs. Homicide

I appreciated that the opening ten minutes of this one were mostly Joe and ‘Cide kicking each other in the face. Hell, a lot of the match revolved around that. In other words, it is Chris Sims’ platonic ideal of a wrestling match. But, again, the match as a whole left me cold.

I mean, the ending sequence was again awesome. As a fan of Joe solely based on his body of work in TNA, it was pretty crazy to see anyone kick out of the Muscle Buster, and it had some great spots all around. It just never connected with me on a level beyond “technically sound.” I think big part of that is the greatest hits nature of these things; while the announcers (and MB) do a great job of giving you all the pertinent background info on the storylines, it doesn’t act as a substitute for actually seeing all the stuff that preceded the match. Which is why I’ve always wanted some promotion to produce a DVD solely based on an epic rivalry, giving you not just the key matches and interview but everything associated with it.

I mean, something like the first Flair DVD comes close by giving you a lot of background info on the stuff with Steamboat (going back to his comeback match in WCW that kicked off their feud) and Funk, but I’d love to have DVDs solely devoted to that kind of feud on the indie level, like Punk/Raven, Joe/’Cide, Danielson/Nigel, et al, where I’m not intimately accustomed to the players as I am any given WWE or TNA match.

I also watched AJ Styles and Jimmy Rave’s fight over the Styles Clash. There were some cute touches here (no ref, so thankfully not even a whiff of a screwjob, the mere presence of Mick Foley scaring off Prince Nana) along with the stuff that goes over my head (Weapons of Masked Destruction?), but that match itself was not good. The awkward table spot did not help, but in general it was just a typical ECW-esque brawl between two guys who shouldn’t work that match style.

Again, I think if I had been invested in the storyline here, the match would have meant more. In the case of Joe/’Cide, that means the difference between *** and **** and change in ratings. In the case of Rave/Styles, it means the difference of like **1/2 and maybe *** at best, because the style of the match just hamstrung them. Not as much as the dumb gimmick matches in TNA tend to (and Rave’s dumb gimmick in general; I mean, I like Guitar Hero quite a bit and it mortifies me), but still. AJ Styles Clashing Rave through a table was a rad spot, though, and this earned its spot for the cool Foley promo post match. Well, and they had to have an AJ match on there somewhere.

So, that’s a round up of my recent ROH musings. Toon in sometime maybe for more of those possibly. That’s the best cliffhanger I can come up with for all this piddly indie stuff (is that catchphrase stuff over yet?).