1. ROH blew a chance to elevate someone through the Austin Aries Lucky Lottery by not having one of the supposed “joke” challengers give Aries a hell of a fight before losing. Here’s hoping they don’t make the same mistake with the “Eddie Edwards 10-Minute Hunt”.
2. Eddie Edwards showed some nice personality on the mic tonight. When he messed up his challenger’s name, it reminded me of when Jericho (circa 2000) would do the same thing (e.g., Kirk Angel, Vivian Garcia, Mitchell Cole), which always made me chuckle.
3. I’m completely on board with the All-Night Express. It gives Austin Aries a new, interesting direction. It gives Rhett Titus some direction. And while some may argue that it stunts Kenny King’s rise, I don’t think there’s a permanent spot for him in the main event scene right now, so it gives him something relatively high-profile to be involved with. I do wonder what their “ceiling” is, considering a heel team is currently dominating the ROH tag scene.
4. I don’t understand the point of having Sara del Rey do a pseudo-squash (although a strange one, in that she needed outside interference to win) when ROH doesn’t have the women wrestle even on a semi-regular basis. Doesn’t ROH have a working relationship with SHIMMER that would result in more women making HDNet appearances. Given the limited TV time they have, however, would they want to?
5. Wow, Ricky Reyes got entrance music AND a good amount of offense on Rasche Brown tonight. Could this possibly mean he is going to appear more regularly? As I’ve said before, I’d be OK with it, as he is a solid enough hand in the ring. However, I can’t see him factoring in to any current storylines or factions, so he’d be around just as someone to have the occasional solid TV match to make another guy look good.
6. If he keeps stepping up his game and getting over with the fans, Brown could be a real asset to ROH as a resident “powerhouse” (I like Erick Stevens, but Rasche has a far more intimidating look). Maybe someday, Brown can take part in some interesting “big man vs. little man” ROH World Title matches, so long as he sells well enough for the smaller wrestler attempting to “chop him down”.
7. Speaking of Brown and Stevens, I think they could have a decent power match together, and if that’s what ROH is moving towards, I’m certainly on board with it. It sounds more compelling than Stevens. Necro, who, while a big guy by ROH standards, doesn’t have much of a power game.
8. I loved how Aries managed to turn a crowd that was chanting “Aus-tin A-ries!” into one that was chanting “shut the f*** up!”. And you know I marked out for the return of the Digi 75 XS HD camera!
9. Two good bits of storytelling from the main event tag match: Delirious going straight for Aries once he got tagged in; and Jerry Lynn calling for a spike piledriver – the very move that put him on the shelf. Nice to see the individual storylines factoring into the match.
10. The in-ring action in the main event was decent enough, but they told some good stories and, most importantly, the right team went over. The All-Night Express simply couldn’t lose their televised debut.
