Ring Of Honor Wrestling review – Airdate: 7/26/14
By Nathan Neumann @Headliner5 on Twitter
Before I start this review, I figured I would introduce myself a bit to the people who may not know who I am. My name is Nathan, and I have been a wrestling fan since the age of three. My earliest memories are from Wrestlemania 5 back in 1989, so I have been immersed into the business for quite some time now.
I was introduced to Ring Of Honor by a friend of mine back in 2002 when it first started, and I followed it as much as I could although not religiously. My first live ROH show was back in 2004 when they came to the St. Paul Armory and I loved it. The second would come the weekend of Wrestlemania 22 (Which I was at live as well) on April 1st 2006 with the featured bouts of Bryan Danielson defending the ROH World Championship versus Lance Storm and Colt Cabana facing off against Homicide in a fight without honor. That would be the last ROH event that I would attend for seven and a half years. That was before they came to the Hopkins Eisenhower Community Center with an event titled A New Dawn and I really enjoyed it. I most recently attended ROH Aftershock which took place on July 12th of this year and it was a great time.
As you can probably tell Ring Of Honor is something I am very passionate about and although I wasn’t able to follow the company regularly until the launch of their TV show back in late 2011, I wouldn’t change a thing. I still have yet to miss an episode of ROH TV in its almost three years of being on the air. It’s the best hour of wrestling every week on a continual basis.
Before this review gets underway, allow me to tell you a bit about my reviewing style. I will tell you what a match was, who was involved, who won, the finish and my thoughts. I will not go in depth about the matches because the matches are so fast paced sometimes it’s hard to take it all in for a simple review. You have to experience the match in full to understand the action. Now onto the review of Saturday's ROH show.
ROH TV this week opened with their signature video package to introduce the show. I have no problem with this, but I wish they would update the thing. There are guys that are still included in the intro that no longer work for the company and they could be replaced with talent that currently works there, but I digress.
Match 1
Monster Mafia (Ethan Gabriel Owens and Josh Alexander) vs. reDRagon (Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish)
Result: reDRagon win the match defeating Monster Mafia with Chasing The Dragon (Brainbuster/head kick combination)
Thoughts:
I thought this match was very well done. I had the privilege of seeing an earlier match that these two had against each other at a show I attended last year. While this match was good, I felt the one that I saw was a bit better. I’m not trying to be biased by saying that, I’m just comparing and contrasting the two matches. The match I saw was at a house show, so they didn’t have the pressures of TV. With the match on Saturday night being a TV match, they had more constraints but the match was still very well done. I hope that Monster Mafia stick around because I would like to see more of them. Needless to say, with the win in this match, reDRagon proved why they are one of the best tag teams in the world today.
Match 2
Hakim Zain vs. Moose
Result: Moose defeats Zain with a Spear in an extremely short squash match.
Thoughts:
I have more to say about one of the competitors in this match than the actual match itself, because the match was too short to even be able to describe. It was pretty much a train wreck. For those of you who don’t know who Moose is, he is a huge 6’8’’ 300 pound monster with the charisma of a toaster oven. He did an interview introducing himself at Best In The World this past June and it was beyond terrible. I think they got it right though because after the match was over Veda Scott made her way down to the ring and offered her services to Moose. The big oaf didn’t give an answer but I seriously hope he accepts it because he cannot talk to save his life. If they were to do this, Moose would be tolerable, because Veda could be the mouthpiece as he just runs through people. That would be something I'm fine with. Moose isn’t great by any means, in fact he’s close to being bad, but I guess I really shouldn’t judge as I’ve only seen two matches of his and both were less than two minutes long. So that’s a combined total of probably four minutes ring time, so for me it’s a wait and see kind of situation. Do I think he could become a useful part of the roster? Possibly yes, but I’m not a fan of big huge guys that don’t fit the mold of the company, and he seems like he would be better off in a different company.
Main Event – Match 3 The Decade (Roderick Strong and Jimmy Jacobs) vs. War Machine (Hanson and Rowe) vs. The Briscoe Brothers (Mark and Jay Briscoe) vs. Bad Influence (Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels)
The Winning team becomes the number one contenders to the ROH World Tag Team Titles.
Result: Bad Influence
Thoughts:
This match was a bit of a mess. It was still good, but these matches tend to lose me at points. The reason why is a lot of the time, there is way too much going on and it takes away from the match. It seems like everyone is trying to get their stuff in and look good while still putting on a good match. One thing I made sure to mention during my tweet session of the show was how much I can’t stand Hanson’s finisher. He didn’t actually do it during this match it still bothers me. In case you are unfamiliar with him he’s another 275-300 pound guy and his finisher is a standing spinkick called the “Spinkick of Doom” and this doesn’t work well with me at all. Hanson and Rowe are now tag team partners, but earlier on in the year they were opponents in the finals of the top prospect tournament. While I like both guys, I thought it would have been better if Rowe would have won the tournament. I’m just glad that Rowe ended up getting signed because I have liked what I have seen out of him, even more so than his partner Hanson.
I’m starting to get a bit annoyed by the Briscoes, while they are a good team they are just sort of there to me at this point. I'm starting to feel like they don’t really bring anything to the table. I guess it’s because I’ve been watching their matches for what seems like years and they never do anything different. I feel they would be better suited on their own and then they could always come back together for the occasional family reunion type deal which seems to be a popular trend in wrestling.
On to the finish Bad Influence won and will receive another shot at the World Tag Team Titles (Their first was at Best In The World this past June). They came up short in their first attempt to gain the titles, In my eyes it’s a foregone conclusion that Bad Influence will be the tag team champions after the upcoming Field Of Honor event which is where they will receive their title shot. Stay tuned for more ROH reviews in the future from me. Thanks for reading!
-Nathan
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