411’s Buy or Sell 3.12.10: Hero and Hidaka Highlight EVOLVE 2, RoH’s Big Bang Main Event Set, More!

Welcome everyone to Week 148 of BUY or SELL. For those of you who haven’t been with us since the beginning, here’s the Reader’s Digest version of what this column is all about. BUY or SELL is very much like 411’s long-running Fact or Fiction column. The main difference is that BUY or SELL focuses on topics like the U.S. Independent scene, Lucha Libre, Japanese Wrestling and pretty much anything else that isn’t mainstream wrestling, WWE and or TNA. This allows for these areas to get a bit more press and for you, our loyal readers, to learn even more about the sport of professional wrestling.

Questions are sent out on Monday Night.

BANNER!

(Special thanks to Jasper Gerretsen)

Outside of the elimination CHIKARA-style tag match, EVOLVE 2 will end up being very unimpressive.

Steve Cook : SELL. I’ll be honest, the card doesn’t do a whole lot for me. There’s some people I like, such as the Kings of Wrestling, Jimmy Jacobs, Quack & the CHIKARA peeps, but there’s also a bunch of people I either don’t know or don’t care about. Yes, the show could stink the joint up and leave people wondering why sites like ours spend time covering EVOLVE instead of other similarly-sized promotions. I’m willing to cast my skepticism aside and not say that the show stinks until it happens. And even though I’ve been critical of some of EVOLVE’s more ridiculous aspects and am not convinced that their vision of pro wrestling is one that’ll be successful for the long term (or even the short term), at least they’re trying something different and not turning the clock back to 1999. So they’ve got that going for them.

J.D. Dunn : BUY. The early hype around EVOLVE was that it was going to be a vehicle for Gabe Sapolsky to turn Davey Richards into the next Bryan Danielson, but we all know how that got derailed in a hurry. Chris Hero is a good guy to build around for now if they truly intend to build a promotion and not just run a series of shows with revolving talent. The smart marks, who this promotion will cater to, want to see Davey Richards, though. That’s not to say the matches themselves won’t be good. Bobby Fish has moments of greatness in the ring, but at this point, I’m not plunking down $10-15 to see Claudio Castagnoli vs. Bobby Fish.

0 for 1.

EVOLVE having the WSU Women’s World Title defended on their shows without an established championship of their own in a mistake.

Steve Cook : SELL. If I was still the type of wrestling fan that cared about names of titles I’d scoff at WSU calling their belt a world title, but what’s the problem with a little co-promotion? The CHIKARA people say hello. I’d question how many extra people Martinez vs. Sakai is going to draw to the show, but I don’t see how this rates as a “mistake”.

J.D. Dunn : SELL. There’s really no downside, given that the talent is roughly the same in every women’s promotion in North America. It’s not like the match is going to overshadow everything else just because it has a title involved. This is a WSU exhibition, at best, and Gabe has never been above booking foreign titles even early in ROH.

1 for 2.

Jushin Linger facing Naomichi Marufuji could very well be NJPW’s match of the year.

Steve Cook : SELL. The past of Japan’s junior heavyweight scene vs. its present/future is always a great match to book, no doubt about it. MOTY, though? I don’t know about that. This may be a bit sacreligious to mention on a wrestling website, but Jushin Liger isn’t exactly in the prime of his wrestling career. Listen, I hope I’m in as great of shape at the age of 46 as he is, (heck, I’d settle for his shape now) but he’s not the wrestler he was 20 years ago, 10 years ago or even a few years ago. I like Marufuji a lot more than many internet analysts do, but if this ends up being New Japan’s best match of 2010, it’ll be a long year for New Japan fans.

J.D. Dunn : BUY. Muta says, in his shoot interview, that Lyger always wrestles to his competition because if the match sucks, people will know who’s responsible for that by now and if the other guy is good, he knows he deserves the effort. Marufuji has established himself as one of the most consistently great big-time wrestlers in the world. Whatever Lyger has left will be left in the ring, and that means this could easily be the best match this year.

1 for 3.

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Ryota Hama will be a main eventer with All Japan Pro Wrestling by the end of the year.

J.D. Dunn : BUY. Hama is the protégé of the company president, and he’s already been pushed to the moon. The only things lacking are a sledgehammer and marrying Mutoh’s daughter. I’ve only seen a handful of his matches – most memorably, against Zodiac and Akebono – and what I have seen is unimpressive (sort of a poor man’s Vader + Yokozuna). Some people rave about him, though, and All Japan is starting to resemble the Star Wars cantina scene, so Hama should fit right in at the top.

Steve Cook : BUY. Haven’t seen a whole lot of All Japan lately. But Hama is a big fat Japanese guy and I love big fat Japanese guys. OK, I’m more partial to Morishima-style fat than Akebono-fat, but Japanese + fat usually = win in my book.

2 for 4.

Shawn Daivari is a perfect fit for the Embassy.

J.D. Dunn : BUY. A million times buy! The best fits for the Embassy are guys who are essentially comedy characters but who are totally serious about it to the point of douchebaggery. See Rave, Jimmy. See Shelley, Alex. Daivari is decent in the ring and a great interview outside of the ring. I think he’ll have great chemistry with Nana. Now let’s go eat some steak!

Steve Cook : BUY. The Embassy has always been a good place to stick random mid-card talent with no direction. I don’t know how well Daivari’s previous characters would take to the luxurious mansions and the rubdowns from beautiful women that previous Embassy members have received as rewards, but maybe that’ll be ROH’s way of re-tooling his persona.

3 for 5.

Ring of Honor is overbooking the Tyler Black, Austin Aries, and Roderick Strong tri-feud.

J.D. Dunn : SELL. For ROH, yes, it feels overbooked, but frankly, it’s refreshing not to see A) things drag out for months on end, and B) the same old two-men-enter-one-man-leaves mentality of booking the main event. It would be nice to see that in the other two major promotions on occasion, but ROH has been overly dependent on transitioning from singles feud to singles feud without much in the way of interesting backstory. This three-way feud at least has some verve to it.

Steve Cook : BUY. Did you read their announcement for the series of matches with these guys at the Phoenix shows? That gave me a bigger headache than anything else I’ve read on a wrestling website this week, and that’s saying something because I read Small’s news column. They’ve got two shows in the same town on consecutive nights. One night they get Black vs. Strong & Black vs. Aries. The next night they get Strong vs. Black & Strong vs. Aries. So pretty much the same crowd is going to be sitting through pretty much the same matches on two straight nights. Why is this a good idea?

Then on their Big Bang show they’re throwing all of them into one match. The thing I liked about the old regime is that while you’d have various feuds ongoing, they’d try and spread out the matches some. I suppose that was predicated by their business model back then…not many people were going to buy 40 straight DVDs with Danielson vs. Joe on them. Some would have, but not many.

Eh, when it comes right down to it I’m pretty much tired of the interview segments on the HDNet show. Only one of these guys can talk, so they’re pretty painful to watch and I hope they move on to something else soon.

3 for 6!!

The 148th edition of BUY or SELL finishes at 3 for 6 as these two finish dead even on their agreement! Stay tuned for next week as two new people step up to the plate on Buy or Sell!