ROH: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
National Guard Armory
Cambridge, MA
March 15th, 2003
ROH Champion: Xavier (Since 9/21/2002 - 4 Defenses)
ROH Tag Team Champions: The Prophecy (Since 9/21/2002 - 2 Defenses)
Backstage, Prophecy members Christopher Daniels, Xavier and Allison Danger stand by. Xavier cuts another super awful promo. I refuse to give this guy a break. Daniels notes how the more things change the more they stay the same. There’s a world title contenders match tonight but there’s also a tag scramble to determine who faces Daniels/Xavier for the belts tonight (since Donovan Morgan is AGAIN not here…but also, who cares?). He says the more things change the more they stay the same is right. ROH thinks they can try and throw a wrench in the Prophecy’s plans by catching them off guard tonight but not a chance. He sees all the new faces around here like the Backseat Boyz and Hotstuff Hernandez and CM Punk and Colt Cabana and BJ Whitmer and Chad Collyer and Matt Stryker. But he’s seen a thousand of them come and go and The Prophecy is still in control of ROH. World Champ since September, Tag Champs since September, because the more things change…the more they stay the same. He says he hasn’t forgotten Steve Corino and urges him to cast the first stone he keeps talking about. Allison Danger talks about the traumatic childhood Steve put her through and she warns that if Corino does cast that first stone, she’ll reveal every secret she has on him. Daniels says when they come, they will be ready, and THAT is the gospel according to the Fallen Angel.
Match #1: Chad Collyer vs. Matt Stryker
I enjoyed this more than their first match but it does go a little too long for me to really get behind it. The crowd is super annoying too, they’re really trying to get themselves over with the “TWO” chant on a kick out, and it sucks because these two work every single pinning combination known to man it feels like. Good to great mat wrestling, above average counters and reversals that just look nice and crisp. They piggyback on a lot of the style at the time of guys like Angle and Benoit and even Bryan, and while they’re certainly not on their level, they at least don’t look like a tribute band playing the hits. Stryker tries ending it numerous times and comes close. He’s got answers for everything Collyer’s throwing at him this time around, which is a nice touch on the story from last match. But Stryker still didn’t prepare for the Cloverleaf, as Collyer gets him coming out of a roll up and traps him for the submission win.
**3/4
While these two observe the code of honor, Gabe drops his first hints on commentary about Ring of Honor creating a Pure Wrestling Division in 2003.
Backstage, Low Ki and Da Hit Squad are standing around talking. The camera guy gives them the go ahead and Mack tells Ki to cut the promo. But Maff stops and asks why Ki gets to cut the promo? Maff tries to change subjects and start the promo but Ki asks if there’s a problem. Maff says he understands the situation. Low Ki is Mr. ROH, and DHS are just two midcarders, it’s fine. Mack is really confused and asks his partner where this is coming from and Maff says to just cut the promo. Ki singles out Special K for DISRESPECTIN’ THA LOCKA ROOM~ and the code of honor and they’re going to beat some respect into them tonight and all they can do is — AND MAFF INTERRUPTS KI WITH A BOOYAKA! And he tells Special K to get ready because they ain’t playing no games. Ki looks super annoyed and Mack again plays peacemaker. Ki then asks them if it’s true Homicide is bringing those thugs here again tonight, and Mack says not only is it true but he’s heard they’re already here in the building. Mack takes Ki to go work out and Maff tells Mack he’s going to just stay behind.
Gabe announces that Styles/London were set to team tonight in the tag scramble but London collapsed last night and needed emergency nasal cavity surgery so he is OUT. AJ has requested Red as his replacement partner but Red is already wrestling tonight so Red may have triple duty!
Match #2: Amazing Red vs. Slim J
There was a point in this match where I was starting to become really disappointed because I was expecting something great instead of just good. And then right around the halfway point, they really get cooking and start to deliver. It’s the exact spot fest you’d expect but they intertwine it with a half decent story with some callbacks to earlier spots in the match including Red creatively blocking a right hand from J that almost ended it earlier:
Slim J is put over as resilient as shit in this match and he will not give up at all. Red is able to stop J on a submission attempt and hit this crazy ass finish, I don’t even know what it is or if it existed before right now but I’m also a dummy:
***
Post match, both men sell the effects of the grueling affair and Gabe puts over Red still having 1-2 more matches left tonight. Red tries to check on Slim and respect the code of honor, BUT SLUGGA GETS IN AND LAUNCHES RED UP HIGH AND HITS THE BODYBAG TO LAY HIM OUT! Now Red is hurt!
GMC is in the ring after a cut and he welcomes out CM Punk. Punk says his name is CM Punk, and he is straight edge. He's drug free, alcohol free, and straight edge means he's better than you. And straight edge also means that he's better than Raven. He says he’s never been to Boston before, and he never wants to come back here. He thought Philly was bad, but when he flew into Boston, he could see the cloud of filth rising into the air. Crowd is hating him right now. Punk says that their hero Raven isn’t even here tonight! That's what he thinks of them, so his opinion of them is even higher than Raven's opinion, and they should be happy, because he would have gotten hurt or worse, stunk the place up worse than Konnan in Philly. NICE. He challenged Raven on tape last month and Raven didn't have the balls to show up. Whichever gutter Raven is in right now, Punk says he doesn't have the heart to walk the straight edge to save himself. He's your honor, respect, and integrity. Everything he believes in is tattooed on his skin. When the fans go to jobs they hate, come home at night to a woman they don't love, go to church on Sunday’s to worship a god he knows does not exist, he wants them to think of CM Punk, because they can aspire to be just like him. Drug free, alcohol free, and better than RAVEN. QUOTE THAT. Punk leaves and goes to head to the back but as he gets to the curtain…
FANTASTIC. RAVEN IS HERE. Raven chases Punk back to the ring and then sits in the corner to a big pop. Raven says Punk made some interesting points, but it's too bad he's full of crap. Raven freely admits that he is older now, maybe time has caught up and maybe he isn’t the man that he once was. But he's not capable of being worse than Konnan in Philadelphia. YEAH KEEP SHITTING ON HIM.
Punk gets back on the mic and says all the drugs have worn him down and Raven could never even beat him in a normal wrestling match. Raven says maybe he's right, so how about Raven's Rules for their match tonight? Punk says that's like him to try and take the easy way out. But Punk says he could even beat him in that. Raven says he'll make it interesting for him then and says that if CM Punk can last 10 mins with him in the ring, then it becomes Raven's Rules Match after that. He repeats his great closer from last show of “Sometimes in life, we make our own choice. Other times, a choice is made for us. Other times, there is no choice. Welcome to Raven's Clockwork Orange House of Fun. QUOTH THE RAVEN…NEVERMORE.” Raven goes to leave, BUT PUNK TRIES A CHEAP SHOT. RAVEN FIGHTS BACK AND ALMOST GETS THE EVENFLOW, but Punk drops down and backpedals out of there and yells that there will be no DDT!
Match #3: The Backseat Boyz vs. Carnage Crew vs. The SAT vs. AJ Styles [Tag Team Scramble]
AJ is going solo with London hurt and Red just attacked. This was the definition of a spot fest. The type of spot fest, however, you’d run at a house show where everyone’s having fun, Maggle. Everybody in quick succession does their own unique dive out onto the pile on the floor but Styles steals the show:
LONDON STAR PRESS AND HE SHOUTS OUT “PAUL” AS HE DIVES. Carnage Crew especially look good here and commentary points it out. Good, fast paced finishing run and AJ wins when the Styles Clash is blocked by Jose Maximo so AJ reverses it and hits a snap powerbomb to get the win.
**3/4
AJ will get a tag team title shot later. But will the Amazing Red be okay by then?
Post-match, the Outcast Killaz come out and cut a promo on the SAT and they want to take their spot in ROH. The two teams brawl and then SAT hit Tortuga with the Spanish Fly. Alright.
Special K come out for their match. Dixie, Deranged & Angel Dust are going to be wrestling but Hydro, Brian XL and Slim J are there too. Ki & DHS come out and stand side by side at ringside and the camera very purposely picks up a man in the front row screaming something at them and my god it’s JULIUS SMOKES. They briefly get distracted by him, and Hydro, Brian & Slim tease doing stereo tope’s on them, but they get caught, so they drop to their knees and beg for forgiveness, BUT THAT WAS A SET UP FOR DIXIE, DERANGED AND ANGEL DUST TO DO STEREO SPRINGBOARD SOMERSAULT SENTONS DOWN ON TO KI AND DHS!
RULES.
Match #4: Low Ki & Da Hit Squad vs. Special K (Dixie, Deranged & Angel Dust)
Alright this is one of the craziest, surreal matches I think I’ve ever seen. After that initial dive sequence, Special K go to do it again but they get caught by Ki and DHS. And that’s where Ki and DHS go to work. DHS are their usual stiff selves, but Low Ki looked like he worked this match pissed off, because god damn. His strikes were BRUTAL, these kids were dying on every shot. It felt like when Bob Holly roughed up Matt Capotelli on Tough Enough. Here’s some gifs of this insanity, including Monsta Mack attempting (and failing) A VAN TERMINATOR DIVING HEADBUTT:
Mack hurts his knee so they have Special K use the weapons for a DQ. They celebrate to the back but once Mack feels ok, Ki & DHS say it ain’t ending like that and to restart the match. Special K are against that idea so Ki & DHS go out after them and beat them back to the ring. Dixie offers Low Ki some ecstasy, and surprisingly Ki takes it! He starts dancing, and then collapses! Special K help him up and start dancing with him, UNTIL:
INCREDIBLE. Ki & DHS continue the beatdown and end it with the Ki Krusher/Steiner Screwdriver/Burning Hammer simultaneously on the original 3 Special K dudes. Fantastic.
Ten Million Stars (actually **3/4, but what an ass whooper)
Continuing his streak of ruining everything cool as quick as he can, Gabe rushes to let us know that “ROH is NOT sports entertainment, but that proves that ROH can do sports entertainment better than anyone else does sports entertainment, and ROH is not sports entertainment.” That is almost an exact quote. Die.
Backstage, GMC is with Carnage Crew to talk about their impressive performance tonight but also to note how at the last show they pissed off the TWA kids and the reformed CSC. Not sure how they pissed off the CSC, they returned to attack the Crew? Anyway, they repeat all their same points about their shitty real jobs and Loc’s fat ugly wife and DeVito’s skinny crackhead wife and all of their stupid kids but even if they get pinned in matches they still win because they’re away from them.
We then cut to…GMC also backstage but now with Raven. But before he can ask Raven anything, Trinity walks by. Raven stops her and hits on her, and says he wants to hang with her later but he also wants her to valet for him tonight. And she agrees.
Match #5: Quiet Storm & Ghost Shadow vs. Dunn & Marcos
This is awful. Zero reason this should’ve made tape let alone been the match you came back from intermission with.
1/4*
Match #6: CM Punk vs. Raven [Raven’s Rules]
Punk isn’t there quite yet. He’s certainly very good and he is getting there. But he’s not there yet. Because of that, and the fact that Raven spends these first ten minutes doing actual wrestling after coming off a mostly horrendous WWE run, the match suffers a bit. You could feel these two are capable of more and of better and this isn’t their last confrontation so I have full faith. Once the ten mins are up, this switches to Raven’s Rules and Punk’s able to one up Raven and bust him open early, and Raven gets one hell of a gusher going. Punk at one point attacks Trinity and puts her through a table on the floor with a diving leg drop. Raven goes on the offensive for a finishing run but has a tough time with some ref bumps. Raven has it won at one point, the refs down and Raven goes to get him up allowing Punk to low blow him and get him in the Devil Lock, and RAVEN TAPS OUT. That’s HUGE. Punk is made.
**1/2
Post match, Punk offers his hand and Raven’s willing to admit he got bested at his own game. But as he shakes, Punk tries a cheap shot. Raven blocks it and pulls him in for an Evenflow, but the ref stops it and points to the ROH on the turnbuckle, some code of honor nonsense, and Punk bails. Out of frustration, Raven hits the ref with the Evenflow and then goes to check on Trinity.
During the entrances for the next match, Samoa Joe is called out by Julius Smokes and the other thugs in the front row and he invites them to get in the ring. And when Homicide comes out he daps the thugs up.
Match #7: Samoa Joe vs. Homicide vs. BJ Whitmer vs. EZ Money [#1 Contd’rs Trophy]
God fucking damnit STOP with the EZ Money shit. Honestly, my hating aside, this should’ve just been Joe/Homicide II for a lot of reasons. Money was so out of place and actively stunk at points. I don’t know enough about BJ to know if he ever gets “it” but he certainly does not have “it” yet. But the Joe/Cide portions of this were great and violent, and a big step up from their disappointing match a few months back in Boston. Good ending where Joe and Cide are fighting to get the win over one of the lessers, and Joe’s just a second better by getting Money with The Choke and Cide being a second too short to break it up as Money taps.
**1/4
Post-match…
They continue to jaw at one another after Joe is handed the trophy. Homicide gets in Joe’s face, and Joe makes the trophy kiss Homicide’s forehead. Everyone observes the code of honor and leaves to let Joe celebrate. We can see in the background of one particular shot Julius Smokes cheering Homicide on vigorously. Homicide yells to the camera that it ain’t over with Joe and it definitely ain’t over with Steve Corino.
Joe goes to leave and Smokes starts running his mouth again. At one point he tells him to “take his fat ass back to California now”. Joe gets down and gets into Smokes face and invites him to step up and do it. Smokes takes off his wave cap and jewelry and is ready to do it, but refs get between them.
Joe heads up the aisleway to the back, and in that time, Smokes circumnavigated the crowd and goes RUNNING at Joe by the entryway but he’s cut off by security who tackle him to the ground. Joe goes through the curtain and immediately starts brawling with Homicide as security and the locker room are trying to keep Smokes and the other thugs at bay. It keeps going on, and now DHS are going after Joe and people are having to hold them back. Meanwhile, security gets Smokes and the thugs and pushes them out of the back door into the parking lot. Gabe is at the door way and is again SHRIEKING (he really should not be yelling on camera so often it’s so hilariously bad) and he yells that they’re going to press charges on them.
This was fine but it was nowhere near as good as the riot in NYC. Again, I don’t know what ROH’s distribution was like back then, so I don’t even know if this crowd was fully aware of what happened in NYC, and if they were, were they aware that it was or wasn’t a work. They really didn’t react to any of this too much outside of some general cheers because they didn’t have a reason to care. This is Boston, not NYC where Cide and them are from. Not to mention, nobody did anything heelish except for Smokes and them. There was no Corino to drop verbal bombs on the crowd to get them to that riotous state. Again, this was fine and it advanced the story while Corino wasn’t here, but it was nowhere near the level of the Queens Riot.
For the main event, Amazing Red does indeed come out with AJ!
Match #8: The Prophecy (Daniels/Xavier) (c) w/ Allison Dangervs. AJ Styles & Amazing Red w/ Alexis Laree [ROH Tag Team Championships]
This was a bit long but I don’t hate it entirely. The whole idea behind it is AJ and Red discovering and developing their chemistry as a team while the Prophecy has been together for a while now. Plus AJ and Red both wrestled grueling matches earlier so Prophecy has them on stamina. AJ/Daniels bits in this are awesome, Red is good and Xavier is passable. Xavier gets knocked silly by a kick from Red at one point and I don’t know if this match would’ve continued in the modern era, like he remained dazed and sloppy the rest of the match, so that hurts the bout overall. Kind of a sloppy finish too when AJ stops Daniels from hitting Red with a move on the ropes by grabbing Daniels down and hitting him with the Styles Clash. Xavier is early with the late break up (if that makes sense) and it looks like the pin *was* broken up, but they pretend it wasn’t, and the ref calls it and AJ/Red have beaten the Prophecy and won the belts!
**1/2
Backstage, Homicide tells the camera that this ain’t over. Steve Corino may say he’s done with the Notorious 187, but it ain’t over. And anytime Joe, CW, Shane or anybody wants to make a move, then make it, because he’s got his peoples there with him and they’re going to be at every show moving forward incase shit pops off. Julius Smokes, some random dude, and my GOD a young Becky Bayless, all walk over. MY FLESH MY FLESH MY BLOOD MY BLOOD. Smokes addresses the camera and asks if they think they forgot about what happened in Queens? Smokes says they’ve got Cide’s back. The random dude asks what the deal with Low Ki is and Smokes says Ki forgot where he came from. Smokes says he’ll take care of him. HE’S THE DEVIL’S SON IN LAW. YEAH YEAH YEAH BBBBBDAT BBBBBDAT.
Elsewhere, the camera tries to get a promo from Christopher Daniels, who is sitting alone and dejected backstage. He refuses to cut a promo because this company keeps trying to screw him and he calls the pinfall tonight into question. So maybe Xavier did do it right and it was supposed to be like that. Idk. Daniels chases the camera off.
And lastly, CM Punk appears to be…in a dumpster or holding cell or something, I dunno. He says he doesn’t drink or do drugs and his only hobby is crushing the human spirit. He said when Raven tried to DDT him after the match tonight, all that did was force Raven to show his hand and he knows he’s in Raven’s head. Next weekend at ROH’s next show, ROH has made a tag team match where they get to pick their partners, and Raven’s picked Colt Cabana. He says he knows Colt better than he knows himself. They’ve been the best of friends and the worst of enemies, and Raven has a partner he can’t trust. Meanwhile, he’s picking Ace Steel and he knows he can trust Ace. Punk says it’s funny because next week, they’re in Philadelphia, the place where many say Raven was born. And next week, it’s where his time in ROH will go to die. Quoth THAT.
NEXT WEEK: Low Ki/Jody Fleisch! Raven/Colt vs Punk/Steel! Xavier/Joe for the belt! YES.
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