My apologies to everyone for getting this in a day late. Fortunately, however, Kyle Sparks had you taken care of with another great review of this week’s show if you came on the site this morning looking for your ROH fix. Kyle is very familiar with and passionate about the ROH product, and I enjoy reading his reviews after writing my 10 thoughts to compare notes.
Now, without further ado . . .
1. Solid promo from Steve Corino and Kevin Steen to open the show. Obviously if you tuned in you already wanted to see the street fight, but this got me really excited for it. Steen does a great job going back-and-forth between “quiet psycho” and “over-the-top psycho”, and Corino is just awesome at pulling Steen’s strings.
2. Cheech & Cloudy can have really good matches with the right opponents. Unfortunately, The Set are not it. The opener consisted of the teams taking turns hitting double-team moves until Cheech & Cloudy hit their finisher and won. I like the effort going towards making Cheech & Cloudy seem legit, but the match was nothing to write home about.
3. Speaking of Cheech & Cloudy, I don’t understand why ROH couldn’t find a spot for them at Tag Wars 2010, unless they were simply not available to be booked. The fans like them and ROH’s been trying to get them over on TV, and yet you’re telling me they’re not a better choice than one of the Embassy teams, or the Bravado Brothers? They wouldn’t even have to advance, but a strong showing against one of ROH’s household tag teams would have been nice.
4. All things considered, ROH does a decent job of promoting things between the TV tapings and the big weekend shows. However, the fact that they’re announcing the Tyler Black-Kevin Steen title match six days before it happens (on TV, at least) pretty much telegraphs the result. World Title matches simply MUST get more hype.
5. Sara del Rey’s squash of Jamilia Craft was perfectly watchable as far as squashes go, but did this match have to be a squash in the first place? Craft looked very capable in her debut against Daizee Haze, and having her give a game effort before losing to del Rey would have helped elevate her, and thus the Women of Honor “division” (I use that term loosely).
6. As I told Kyle last week, while I still wasn’t a fan of Truth Martini’s first promo as Roderick Strong’s “life intervention coach”, I can easily see him helping Roddy get the heel heat he couldn’t have otherwise gotten on his own. This week’s promo, while shorter, was actually better.
7. Not a fan of the Dark City Fight Club coming to Rasche Brown’s aid, because we’ve never been given a reason for it. as Prazak pointed out, the DCFC have no issue with the Embassy, that we know of. Hopefully this will be explained in a couple of weeks, because otherwise it just looks like babyfaces helping babyfaces for the sake of it, and I prefer a better explanation.
8. I’ve complained about ROH’s at times excessive (and often repetitive) use of video packages before. I understand that a few months ago, they needed to fill up air time because of the set of tapings that was put off because of the blizzard in Philly, but what was the excuse this week? Their air time is already sufficiently limited that they have more feuds than they can further on a weekly basis (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), so they should make better use of it.
9. Holy shit, the street fight was amazing – probably my favorite main event since the finals of the TV Title Tournament finals. I can’t praise it enough. Steen was absolutely fantastic here, serious Cabana makes me happy, and I can’t believe Generico didn’t get knocked loopy from the Ki Krusher-like move on the chair. Corino also showed great presence of mind by suplexing Cabana quickly for the finish, because it looked like the table they were on was about to collapse. This feud really can do no wrong.
10. It was a good idea to have Black attack Steen for the show’s “go home” shot. ROH is already behind in promoting the title match for Chicago, so it certainly made sense to at least dedicate the show’s last image to it. Plus, they continue to show us that Black is not the sap he was before he won the title.
