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Column of Honor: 12.10.11: Record-Setting Time
Welcome to the Column. It’s been a busy week, filled with concerts, Bat-Mitzvahs and other general frivolity. It’s time to catch-up to the world of Honor and all the honorable honoring honorably happening here. I’m also beginning to work on my Final Column and Best of 2011 ROH Matches Features, though no set timeframe on the latter because I still need to watch a few more shows on DVD before locking in this year’s selections. As well, I’ll be working on a Year-In-Review podcast for Pro Wrestling Ponderings and of course I’ll have the link up for that once it drops.
Two weeks until Final Battle 2011 though and that’s very exciting—as always I’ll be there for an ROH event in NYC. I’ll have my preview in an upcoming edition.
The Winning Team in Greensboro, NC. $10,000 to be traded in for Monopoly Money.
Ring of Honor presented their “Northern Aggression” show last Sunday in Greensboro, North Carolina, featuring a main-event eight-man elimination tag match with a two-hour time-limit that went a total length of one hour, eighty minutes and thirty-three seconds. The team of ROH World Tag Team Champions Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin along with current number-one contender to the ROH World Title Eddie Edwards and El Generico outlasted a team of current number one contenders to the ROH World Tag Team Titles The Briscoes, Roderick Strong and Michael Elgin, with Edwards making it as the sole survivor of the entire epic encounter.
ROH is claiming that the eighty-minute match is a record length for a match in a modern and major promotion, and it could be the case. This past year’s WWE Royal Rumble was timed at 69:11 according to The Wrestling Observer’s February 7th, 2011 issue. The 2002 Rumble which set that match’s length record was 69:22. According to Dave Meltzer, the only other WWE matches that were reportedly longer were Bruno Sammartino vs. Waldo Von Erich in 1964 which does not have any official documentation of time and Sammartino vs. Morales in 1972, which “is listed as a 75 minute draw but was actually timed at 65:05”.
The claim of “modern”, as in current, certainly helps ROH in their assertion as to the time record. However, Chris Hero and CM Punk did do a very famous ninety-minute draw for IWA-Mid South February 7th, 2003 on a show titled “When Hero Met Punk”. So that is probably part of the reason why ROH added the qualifier “major league” to their record claim, although one can be argumentative about if ROH qualifies as a “major”, both in the past and right now under the SBG umbrella.
The match for sure beats the former ROH record, which took place at Testing the Limit on August 7th, 2004 in Pennsylvania. That was two-out-of three falls with a ninety-minute time-limit and went 75 minutes. The match apparently was planned to go even longer than that, but both men just went with the flow as opposed to strict time cues and ended up going shorter.
There are many questions that arise out of ROH doing the record setting match this past weekend. First and foremost, what was the point of it? Secondly, what do they get out of it? And why now?
From the outset, it seemed highly likely that the match was going to last a long time given the two-hour time-limit that was heavily advertised as part of the lure of the match along with a short undercard consisting of only five other matches, some of which didn’t even feature regular ROH talent. ROH’s top stars were placed into this match and therefore the weight of the show fell upon them to deliver the goods. There were many positive reviews about the in-ring fighting and the efforts of the main-event players, but as could be expected there were also some complaints about the length of the match and the negatives that come with booking such an event.
Reportedly a majority many of the fans stayed to watch the match in its entirety, although some left (especially those with children) as the match wore on into the hour-plus territory. The first half of the match was a gigantic brawl around ringside and throughout the building. The first elimination wasn’t until the forty-eight minute mark. It’s difficult to imagine forty-eight minutes of crowd brawling and chaos, although ROH certainly had moments in the past of longer stretches of matches or post-match encounters—the brawl between Samoa Joe, Jay Lethal and The Rottweilers at Punk: The Final Chapter in 2005 comes to mind as does similar fracases on shows such as Transform (Vulture Squad vs. The Age of the Fall) and Respect is Earned I (Steen & Generico fighting The Briscoes).
There is the thought that Ring of Honor did this match just to do it—which is not a great reason at all, at least not in professional wrestling. In professional sports, sure, records are made to be broken and a player will pursue that goal (along with winning championships and earning lots of money). However, there is no immediate gain to a professional wrestling company breaking a longevity record just to say they have the record, although it seems like ROH will use it as a feather in its cap.
It doesn’t seem like the increase in prestige or reputation would come naturally as a result of running longer matches, except that ROH wants to be known as a company that provides its clientele with quality wrestling that is worth their time and money. ROH runs longer match times when compared to WWE and TNA, not just in their main-events but also in the undercard. Just this past week on Monday Night Raw, there was a one-minute Divas tag match and Alberto Del Rio vs. Daniel Bryan, which was only given three-minutes of match time. This is the same Daniel Bryan who when he wrestled in ROH as Bryan Danielson carried the flag for the company as a place of “wrestling freedom”. He would often wrestle in quality-length matches, not just as the ROH World Champion but even when he was used in the mid-card or away from title bout situations.
The difference between ROH (and many other non-mainstream wrestling promotions) and WWE in giving the time and freedom to wrestle is clear. If you are not in the main-event of a WWE show, don’t expect to be given a lot of time especially on television. It has been that way for WWE ever since the Attitude era in the late 1990’s and it is doubtful that will change in the years to come. ROH wants to lure fans in with the idea of giving fans quality wrestling and paying respect to what’s happening in the ring—the way it used to be. Perhaps it is an antiquated notion and likely it won’t appeal to a majority of WWE or TNA fans. Fact of the matter is this paradigm isn’t a whole lot different from what ROH has brought to the dance ever since the beginning in terms of differentiating themselves from the mainstream promotions and branding themselves as an alternative to that product.
However, there does seem to be another, less broad and more specific purpose or at least a use for the match, not just as a stand-alone record-setter. ROH announced that they would take the footage of the match, condense and present it on an upcoming episode of Ring of Honor television. That presentation is interesting, because ROH has done hour-long shows on HDNet before focusing on just one feature attraction match, but they have never done one where the entire hour will be one match that is longer than the show’s actual running time.
The counter-point would then be if one has to shorten the length, why show it to the public in the first place? Well, the answer to that is to further DVD sales, ideally. If fans like what they see in that hour, they will want to pick up the DVD of the show to watch the match in its entirety. Of course, there is always the chance that the edited version ends up better than full-length, but one wouldn’t be able to judge that unless watching both the short and the long versions.
ROH has shown the tendency to go too far in the other direction. Instead of not giving enough, sometimes it gives too much. The promotion has not shied away from booking longer matches this year. There was the thirty-six minute Best in the World 2011 showdown between Eddie Edwards and Davey Richards, which was eclipsed on that show in terms of time by the forty-five minute long four-team elimination match for the ROH World Tag Team Titles. Edwards and Strong went forty-five minutes at Death Before Dishonor IX this past September for their two-out-of-three fall Ringmaster’s Challenge. That match included a fifteen-minute Iron Man fall and a near ten-minute Sudden Death Overtime period. Some reviewers lauded these matches for their quality, while other criticized ROH for going too far over the limit when perhaps some editing could have been done to provide for a better overall match.
There has been a history in Ring of honor of booking longer matches at times, usually when appropriate. The Aries-Danielson match mentioned above was the result of a promotional build between the two men that arose out of the inaugural Survival of the Fittest tournament. The question loomed as to who was the better athletic wrestler. Those matches were the beginning of a years-long rivalry between the two in ROH that provided great fruit-fantastic and competitive matches that were some of the best “wrestling”-centered battles in the promotions’ history.
ROH has also done several high-profile sixty-minute draws, usually as defenses of the ROH World Title. The first two and the most famous of them were the Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk hour-long draws that not only put a lot of attention on the promotion at a time when they needed it, but also helped to cement the status of both Joe and Punk as two of the best North American independent wrestlers. It wasn’t long before both men were signed to the bigger promotions, WWE and TNA.
ROH also booked several other sixty-minute matches. Some were very well received and accepted, such as the Bryan Danielson vs. Joe ROH World Title match at Fight of the Century in June 2006. The other two sixty-minute draws that occurred that summer with Danielson were more predictable and therefore somewhat more tedious to sit through, though they each did provide a measure of intrigue (Danielson’s shoulder injury and Cabana gaining the first fall helped give an added sense of drama to their match at Gut Check). Then of course there was the “one hour draw that wasn’t” at Injustice II, where Tyler Black and Nigel McGuinness went only fifty-minutes or so before the bell rang claiming that there was a sixty-minute draw. That match may have been accepted had it actually gone the full time-limit, but as it was there was a whole lot of egg on the face as a result of that time-keeping error and the shenanigans of multiple run-ins throughout the entire last half of that match.
Of course, some will remember the controversy generated by ROH for their Final Battle 2009 draw for the ROH World Title battle between then-champion Austin Aries and challenger Tyler Black (now wrestling as Seth Rollins in WWE developmental league Florida Championship Wrestling). That match featured Austin Aries running away the entire last half of the match in order to gain the draw. Sure, that was a brilliant heel strategy, but it was also completely boring and infuriating to the fans live in attendance that night. It’s not a surprise that while there have been several matches in the thirty to forty-minute length since then, there has not been a match that long until this past week’s elimination bout.
Testing the patience of fans isn’t necessarily something one wants to do-because there is always the chance for backlash and criticism. Under the Gabe Sapolsky era, for instance, ROH became known for running very long shows, upwards of four-to-five hours. Some fans liked that because of the feeling one was getting more value for the money spent on a ticket, but some fans were burnt out due to not being used to such long durations of a wrestling show (most WWE shows are no longer than three-and-a-half hours in running time, except for Wrestlemania). When Adam Pearce took the booking reigns, show time went in the opposite direction-closer to three hours and sometimes even less for most events except for major territories such as New York City, Chicago and the HDNet television tapings. ROH has generally found the balance between going too short and too long, but even now there will be events (mostly the new TV tapings) where they seem to be going too far.
On the other hand, ROH has shown a tendency to book in the other directions-specifically short fifteen-minute time-limits for their TV Title defenses. There have been several time-limit draws in that division this year and with the exception of the first El Generico vs. Jay Lethal match for SBG television none of them had distinct and clear resolutions. That lack of a decisive finish has drawn the consternation of some ROH fans who don’t necessarily like to see draws constantly booked in the promotion. The fifteen-minute limit is meant to tease the fans into wanting to see more in that division, creating a desire to see more of the TV Title in action. It was a principal used in the mid-1990’s for WCW’s TV Title division, when the likes of Arn Anderson and William Regal would defend the title and often do a number of draws before defeating the contender and moving onto the next challenger (or conversely, losing and having to work towards regaining the title.
However, nearly fifteen years have passed since the last heyday of the WCW TV Title as a draw and the booking methods used for that division may not have the same currency and appeal to the ROH audience. If the draw is used too much (as it seems to be with Jay Lethal’s current run with the belt), then that appetite for action is curbed by the notion that the matches themselves aren’t worthwhile pursuits since there is no definitive resolution, either a win or a loss.
These are matters of opinion as to if some matches and shows are too short and some matches are too long. So what is the solution for dealing with these opposite extremes of the time-limit spectrum? Is there a happy medium between too short and too long (get your mind out of the gutter, friends) or can nothing be done to curb the discontent from either giving too much or not enough to fans who paid for the show?
Imagine the Cage of Death match going five minutes instead of sixty—fans wouldn’t have nearly the kind of notoriety and fondness for it. There would be no way to fit in all the dramatic events and moments that happened during that match—it wouldn’t have the emotional power of Danielson’s betrayal of ROH, Homicide’s insertion into the match and even the post-match situation with he and Cornette would not play out the same way and wouldn’t be nearly as effective. All of the violence he and others inflicted would be sandwiched together and wouldn’t have nearly the impression on the fans watching as it did when given more time to breathe and allow those insane and epic moments to unfold.
As always, the answers have to provide a compromise between excess and restraint—and that is not an easy path to take and certainly will not please everyone at the same time. Match length should be context-sensitive—that is wrestlers should be given a lot of time if the match and the rivalry being promoted dictates that it is needed. A special stipulation match like Steel Cage Warfare, Ladder War or the Cage of Death from Death Before Dishonor IV needs the extra time both because of the epic nature of those stipulations and because the feuds that have led up to those matches (Generation Next vs. The Embassy, Briscoes vs. The All-Night Express, CZW vs. ROH) demand that kind of attention and effort be paid to them. As well, if a wrestler has the talent and ability to go for a while and keep the fans’ attention, then ROH (or really any promotion) should naturally give a showcase to that wrestler and showcase it as his or her strength. It’s a lot to ask to create that kind of balance—no easy task for any booker, regardless of their experience or skill level.
As for the eight-man elimination tag match—judgment on using it to break the time record and if it was worth it will have to wait-but not too long, considering the match will make airwaves in January and the DVD release won’t be too far behind.
News broke this week that The Asylum Arena—formerly the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) ECW Arena on Swanson and Ritner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—would be closing down. Reportedly, it has been sold to new ownership and the plan is for the venue to become some sort of concert venue. While that doesn’t necessarily preclude wrestling from happening there, it does put into doubt the future of the Philadelphia wrestling scene, which for decades has revolved around wrestling shows taking place in that building.
It was the home of the original Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion owned by Todd Gordon and Paul Heyman and then when that promotion closed down hosted a number of different independent promotions that sprouted in its wake, including CZW and 3PW among others. Most recently, CHIKARA had a great deal of success running its King of Trios weekends and other feature events. CZW put up large numbers for its Cage of Death annual show just this past weekend. CZW and EVOLVE will run their scheduled double-shot in January at The Arena, but future shows are very much in doubt not just for them but for all promotions.
Ring of Honor began running shows around the corner in the memorial hall, but even they eventually packed up bags and found a home in the Arena. The first show from that location, Arena Warfare in March of 2006, was part of the “Milestone Series” of some of ROH’s seminal events. It was notable for the CZW take-over at the end of the show (as a transition to CZW’s own show that evening in the venue) where then CZW owner John Zandig and other CZW roster members destroyed BJ Whitmer and other ROH wrestlers and then tore apart the ROH ringside area, including spray painting the canvas with the CZW logo and colors.
In later years, ROH would decide to house their television tapings at The Arena. Most of the episodes of ROH on HDNet were recorded there (with the exception of a series of shows from The Davis Arena in Louisville, Kentucky towards the end of the series). Therefore some of the seminal moments of the TV show took place there, like the Bryan Danielson vs. Tyler Black series, The American Wolves winning the World Tag Team Titles in a tables match, the TV Title tournament, Tyler Black vs. Davey Richards and the last-ever match for HDNet that aired this past March.
In a small way, it’s a blessing HDNet canceled the TV show so that ROH stopped running the Asylum. Constantly doing television tapings had burnt out a lot of the Philadelphia faithful. Often ROH had to paper the crowd with casual fans, including family and children and that didn’t always provide for the best reactions to the in-ring work. After the show went off the air, ROH took a year off from holding shows in Philadelphia to let the earth lie fallow. They return next month for The Homecoming 2012, which will take place in the Philadelphia National Guard Armory, which was a very popular site they used before going to the Asylum on a more permanent basis.
Many who attended will note the crummy neighborhood around the building and the even crummier interiors (don’t ever go into the Arena bathroom was a long running joke among fans). However, there was something great about that place as well that will make it hold a special spot in wrestling history. It was a place where extreme amounts of violence occurred and could be gotten away with, where the fans would tell you exactly what they thought of you, where they could embrace you and make you a star or tear down a match or a show viciously with derogatory chants, or in some cases with their absolute silence. It was the epicenter of independent professional wrestling and it had the attitude of raw and unfiltered rebellion, take it or leave it. For now, it looks like the latter will take place.
Hopefully the likes of CZW and CHIKARA will be able to find new venues to run, but even if they do, it will be different than it was before. Maybe it will be better and maybe it will be worse, but definitely different.
–Davey Richards defeated Tommy End in Barcelona, Spain on 07/04/2011.
–Davey Richards defeated Chase Owens in Kingsport, KY on 08/04/11.*
–Davey Richards defeated Colt Cabana in Carrolton, GA on 08/06.11.
–Davey Richards defeated Roderick Strong in Chicago, Illinois on 08/13/11.
–Davey Richards defeated Daga in Tulancingo, MEX on 10/15/11.
–Davey Richards defeated El Generico in Chicago Ridge, IL on 11/19/11.
* These matches are not as yet officially recognized by Ring of Honor on their records page, but as they did occur as billed “ROH World Title” matches for the live crowd in attendance they are listed here for posterity.
–Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas defeated Jay & Mark Briscoe in Toronto, ON on 5/7/11.
–Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas defeated The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero & Claudio Castagnoli), Jay & Mark Briscoe and The All-Night Express (Kenny King & Rhett Titus) in New York City, NY on 06/26/11.
–Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas defeated El Generico & Colt Cabana in Richmond, VA on 07/08/11.
–Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas defeated The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero & Claudio Castagnoli) in Chicago, IL on 08/13/11.
— Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas defeated Future Shock (Adam Cole & Kyle O’Reilly) in Collinsville, IL on 11/06/11.
— Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas defeated The All Night Express (Kenny King & Rhett Titus) in Chicago Ridge, IL on 11/19/11.
–Jay Lethal went to a time-limit draw with Mike Bennett in Louisville, KY on 10/01/11.
–Jay Lethal went to a time-limit draw with El Generico in Louisville, KY on 11/05/11.
These wrestlers have earned a future title shot in the following ROH title divisions.
The Briscoes steal the show just by Jay eating a bagel (it is a bagel, isn’t it? Maybe a hero, or a roll) and Mark shaking his head. Elgin is pretty good here as well, short and sweet but effective in his message.
ROH Video Wire: November 28th, 2011. I appreciate starting with the tribute to Bison Smith-very classy and poignant to do so. Other than Truth and Elgin, some pretty horrible promos on this one. Lethal and Benjamin were like runaway trains there. The Bucks’ promo was fine but not really worth watching again. I like ROH showing Corino refusing to cheat against Generico and how that resulted in earning Generico’s trust. Gotta love the ROH fan base too. Generico extends his hand—boooos from some in the crowd “Don’t do it”. Corino shakes his hand—the polite applause from the rest of the audience.
#DemBoys #NuffSaid
A fairly solid follow-up from the Delirious Sale video. Though it could have used more Delirious.
Inside Ring of Honor Episode 10. I’m happy that ROH is releasing these newsmagazine segments for free through their YouTube account…these are fantastic personality pieces that shed the criticism that ROH doesn’t have “character development” or “angles”. It always and ever was a bunch of rubbish. Whether or not a viewer personally likes those characters and angles is up for debate, but they are there.
-Results for last weekend’s shows are available here for Spartanburg, SC and here for ROH’s results from Greensboro, NC. Crowd levels were not great for these shows, as reports of 350 for Spartanburg and 375 for Greensboro are well below average levels for even mid-range ROH shows in areas like Detroit and Dayton.
-New matches announced for Final Battle 2011 include a five-team Gauntlet Match with The All-Night Express (Kenny King & Rhett Titus), Future Shock (Adam Cole & Jyle O’Reilly), The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson), C&C Wrestle Factory (Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander) and The Bravado Brothers (Harlem & Lancelot Bravado). Two teams will wrestle against each other and the winning team moves on to face a new team, until there is just one team that made it through to the end. The winning team earns a future ROH World Tag Team Title match for sometime in 2012. Putting all five-teams in a Gauntlet is a decent call given the card was very packed to begin with and splitting these teams up into a triple threat or four-way wouldn’t leave enough room on the card for other undercard matches. So long as there are some good combinations and the booking provides time (there’s that word again) and opportunity to provide for some quality combinations. I can imagine one or two quick falls but then getting a longer match between the two final teams.
That leaves Michael Elgin, TJ Perkins and Tommaso Ciampa without firmed-up matches. ROH ran a newswire bit about Ciampa receiving a challenge from an outside source, so that could leave Elgin and Perkins together in a match, which sounds good to me. Also, Roderick Strong still has an open challenge so he needs an opponent as well. It could be anyone, from Bobby Dempsey to Nigel McGuinness to someone from ROH’s past making a return. Hopefully whoever it is will be a crowd-pleasing decision and a memorable moment for ROH. It’s the year-end show, not to mention an iPPV and a New York event, so going with Andy Ridge (or Dempsey) will not be looked upon favorably by anyone.
-ROH is running a newswire storyline where The Bravados are on “thin ice” due to lack of wins and their lone victory this past weekend being gained via cheating tactics. The official wording is “it is expected that if the Bravado’s don’t impress at “Final Battle 2011″ in the Tag Team Gauntlet it may result in an extended hiatus for the Bravados in order to make room for better competition.”
-Following up on their effort with Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards and The Briscoes, ROH will release a new best-of set DVD for Roderick Strong, entitled “Messiah of the Backbreaker”. More from the ROH Newswire: “Contained within these 2 discs are bouts against James Gibson, Matt Hardy, Davey Richards, Bryan Danielson, Austin Aries, and more, as well as Roderick’s debut match for ROH. Keep an eye here at ROHWrestling.com for a special promotion we’ll be running in conjunction with this release.”
-I watched the last two weeks of the ROH SBG TV series after missing a few episodes (I’ll catch up on those soon) and was generally happier (but not completely satisfied) about the video quality and presentation of the show, especially last week’s episode that featured the return of Kevin Steen in an ROH venue and the main event of The Young Bucks vs. Future Shock. The contrast and saturation levels were far more solid and evened-out than compared to previous episodes and the camera work was largely more professional, capturing the action without any miscues. However, white-lighting is still an issue (maybe one that can never and will never be dealt with completely) and the previous week’s episode still had the problem of lighting over exposure with the camera point directly into the lighting rig. So whether or not this improvement was a one-shot deal remains to be seen, but hopefully it is the beginning of a turn-around for the better regarding the in-ring segment.
I did not think I would like the Dan Severn interview segments…and I still am hesitant regarding his insertion into the Richards-Edwards angle. Severn is a legend of wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts, for sure. That has to be respected and even appreciated. The fact is that he is old and I don’t believe he is relevant to ROH’s current audience or that he would connect to the new TV fans. Ken Shamrock was still very connected to both wrestling and MMA when he made his guest referee appearance on ROH’s second show in 2002. However, Dan Severn in 2011 is far removed from the mainstream spotlight and I don’t think current UFC fans who may happen to watch ROH as well necessarily give Severn the same currency as ROH’s fans did for Shamrock in 2002.
However, I will state that I did like the interview and training segments with Severn and Edwards more than I thought I would. Severn is a good talker—not great, but he did explain the tension between Richards and Edwards and help to get over their situation leading into Final Battle 2011. He also gave Edwards interesting advice, pushing him to put aside his friendship with Richards with the ROH World Title on the line. Its sound logical reasoning that a coach would say to someone who had to battle his friend-you can be friends before and after the match, but once the bell rings, the friendship goes out the window.
Now, ROH did a great job explaining his past and his reputation and why both Richards and Edwards would have wanted to train with him. They did at times seem more like a UFC infomercial though, with constant shots of his UFC belts and old posters. It seemed to me that ROH was pushing the UFC brand name too much, whether overtly or subconsciously through displaying these memorabilia. Yes, ROH’s brand name is plastered all over the program and one does need to mention Severn’s past accomplishments, but there is a balance and I think ROH went over that line in these segments. Hopefully the focus remains on Edwards / Richards 3 throughout the final weeks of ROH TV leading into the big show.
Roderick Strong is just blossoming with his open invitational promos over the past few weeks. The meme about keeping Roddy away from the microphone will likely remain forever because some people just can’t be swayed from their first impressions. However, everything is FINALLY coming together for Strong now. He is coming off like an arrogant heel prick, like he was in the No Remorse Corps, but now with loads more confidence than back in those days. Plus, having the beautiful girls around him absolutely helps to sell the persona of a “frat boy who gets the chicks and what are you gonna do about it, fat boy?”
Speaking of blossoming, ROH using The Blossom Twins as merchandise models is the best usage of any OVW talent on their TV show ever—that’s either high or faint praise depending on how you look at it.
Quick props for Tommaso Ciampa and Caprice Coleman, both of whom nailed their promo time and are quickly emerging as some of my favorite wrestlers on the ROH roster to hear (and watch). Ciampa’s gravelly voice provides an extra intimidating factor and I think he came across as super imposing on the training video they showed. Meanwhile Coleman continues to float like a butterfly and stings like a bee with both his words and his movements in the ring. His promos are fantastic, no doubt honed from his years of experiencing hosting his ministry and doing public speaking. I think keeping Coleman as the statesman of C&C is smart because Cedric Alexander’s greatest strengths right now are in-ring. Coleman has plenty of charisma on promos to carry that side of the team and in the ring the two work together very well and are very promising additions to the tag division depth roster at the end of this year and for 2012.
The Briscoes have also been amazing on promos for the TV series-just letting it all hang out and being themselves…and having some damned good points about how they’ve been persecuted and not Haas and Benjamin.
As for Kevin Steen, seeing him in action on the microphone is just a sheer pleasure to watch. Steen has been a fantastic justified villain throughout all of this and the fans can’t get enough of watching him weave his chaos back into ROH programming. He and Steve Corino went at it very well in the war of words between the two. It isn’t easy to explain a feud that sprung out of two year’s worth of storylines at this point and involved events from another ROH TV series. They explained it all very well, never getting too deep into exposition but letting their emotional reactions and exchanged threats explain to the fans, new and old, what happened, what was going to happen next and why.
-I know among several of my colleagues the habit has been to blame Jim Cornette for making changes to the ROH product under the directive of new ownership. Certain talents with Cornette affiliation or approval have been pushed over others (some of whom are hardcore ROH fan favorites or are more deserving of the push and spotlight), certain markets that have Cornette connections have been given more spotlight and attention over previously loyal markets (and that hasn’t worked well to ROH’s favor thus far). Kevin Steen has taken the “CM Punk Voice of the Voiceless” role to some extent to speak out about those supposed injustices and Cornette’s hand in them. I wonder if anyone has considered this to be a deliberate move on the part of Cornette and ROH, to further the Steen saga and move ROH into whatever direction they’re headed in for 2012? The extent to which wrestling companies can manipulate the fans (and even the critics) who are not on the inside towards having certain reactions and feeling certain feelings about wrestlers, angles and the product itself is still a great deal more than some would give credit. Whether or not that works out for business remains to be seen, but there have been times over the last six months when I definitely feel like some of that has been happening, though to what end I’m not so sure. Again, that’s why we’re on the outside and not the ones in charge of the roster or the storylines. Ultimately, the Steen storyline and how it plays out in 2012 needs to be worthy and quality enough to balance out or overpower the complaints and criticisms levied against ROH ever since the Sinclair era began.
At the beginning of the year, “The Prodigy” Mike Bennett vowed that within one year that he would become the Ring of Honor World Champion. Then he extended it to include ALL ROH Titles. So let’s see how he’s done so far, eh?
ROH World Tag Team Titles Won: 0
ROH TV Titles Won: 0
Days Left to Reach Goal: 21
Three weeks and counting for Bennett’s countdown to winning a ROH title, although thinking about it, really two since ROH runs Final Battle 2011 on December 23rd, 2011. That’s right before Christmas. Will it be a lump of coal or Santa’s finest presents the day after the show for Bennett? I wonder if Maria will be dressed in an elf costume.
Twitter me at: http://twitter.com/AriBerenstein.
-Shawn S. Lealos reviews this week’s ROH SBG TV featuring the aforementioned return of Kevin Steen and the TV main event of The Young Bucks vs. Future Shock.
-Kevin Ford goes back to his CHIKARA roots with his review of Flight of the Great Condor DVD.
-T.J. Hawke interviews Adam Cole , discussing his independent wrestling career and his time in ROH. Meanwhile T.J.’s long-awaited Part Two with Kevin Steen was posted to 411mania this week as well.
-Ryan Byers gives 411’s own Mathew Sforcina the spotlight along with the Australian Wrestling Federation in this week’s Into the Indies column.
Thanks everyone for reading and for the comments.
BROOKLYN!
DAH EM BAH SEE FOR-EVAH!
–Ari–
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- Drew McIntyre Confirms Injury, Reveals Why He Didn’t Just Leave at WrestleMania 40
