411's Second LIVE ROH - Long Island Report 4.13.07
Posted by Sam Caplan on 04.14.2007
Even more thoughts on last night's ROH show!
I just got home from Ring Of Honor's return to Sports Plus in Lake Grove, Long Island. If I had to estimate the crowd size (which I'm terrible at), I'd guess it was somewhere in the 700-800 range. I normally dislike the
Long Island crowd because they tend to be incredibly direspectful, but they mostly behaved themselves tonight. Mostly.
Anyway, on to the matches:
-Kevin Steen defeated Pelle Primeau. This was a straight up squash, and made Steen look like a monster. I mean, he totally killed poor Pelle.
-Daizee Haze defeated Sara Del Rey. I was surprised at the outcome since they had wrestled on two or three ROH shows before, and Sara always won. Daizee caught her on a fluke rollup and got the win. Sara looked pretty pissed over losing and backed Daizee into the corner on the post match handshake and presumably said something to the effect of "I'm unhappy that I lost and intend to defeat you the next time we wrestle."
-In a Four Corner Survival, Erick Stevens defeated Jason Blade, Eddie Edwards, and El Generico. I was really impressed with Stevens, because he's gotten himself in great shape and looks 100% better than he did in the early FIP DVDs, both in terms of look and ring style. After the match, Austin Aries came out and congratulated all four men on a good match and told all of them except Stevens to leave. He told Stevens that he sees a lot in him, especially after he defeated Roderick Strong in FIP recently, then asks Stevens to join his group, which he has now named Resilience. Stevens accepts, but this draws the ire of Roderick Strong, but Roderick's appearance leads to an attack by the other members of the No Remorse Corps, who attack Aries and Stevens from behind.
-Delirious defeated Colt Cabana. These two are comic geniuses, and they put together a comedy match that I can't do justice to here. Delirious gets a sitting cradle for the win. Crowd was way into the match, and especially Cabana, who got the requisite "Please don't go", "Thank you, Colt", and "We will miss you" chants. I will say that Cabana doesn't seem as sorry to be leaving as Joe did.
-Claudio Castagnoli defeated ROH World Tag Team Champion Jay Briscoe clean with his cross-legged Burning Hammer thing (the something Water Slide, I think it's called). Totally clean victory, and after the match Claudio says that with this win, he is due a World Tag Team Title shot. This brings out Kevin Steen and El Generico, who point to their great showing against the Briscoes during the Fifth Year Festival as qualification for them to get a title shot as well. Mark Briscoe, who was at ringside for Jay's match, tells them both that they've got title shots. He turns to check on Jay, but gets suckerpunched from behind by Steen, with the idea being that Mark is supposed to be healing from a concussion and Steen might have messed him up again. This leads to a three way brawl between Jay Briscoe, Claudio, and Steen and Generico.
-Brent Albright defeated Homicide. This started out as a straight-up match, but quickly turned into a wild brawl in the crowd, and they actually brawled right in front of me when Homicide tossed Albright over two rows of chairs and right into my seat. They ended up back in the ring and Albright beat him clean with a pair of half nelson suplexes. Shane Hagadorn runs out after the match and attacks Homicide while he's down, but Julius Smokes makes the save and he and Homicide spike piledrive him on a chair.
-Intermission time. ROH returns to Lake Grove on July 27th.
-Jack Evans defeated SHINGO. I was quite surprised that Evans pretty much dominated the whole match. I give Evans a lot of credit, he's worked really hard to make his offense look believable over the last year or two and it's worked. Evans put SHINGO away with the 630, which I cringe every time I watch him do it, especially after Mark Briscoe's spill a couple of weeks ago.
-The No Remorse Corps defeated Resilience in a six man elimination match. This was probably the longest match of the night and, while I didn't get to check Green Lantern Fan's stopwatch, it felt like it went at least a half hour. The NRC eliminate Erick Stevens and then Matt Cross, then after a brutal three-on-one beating, Romero puts Austin Aries away with the Tiger Suplex. This was a really dominating win by Roderick's team, and made Aries and company look a little silly by being dominated.
-In the main event, the team of Nigel McGuinness and Doug Williams from the UK defeated Chris Hero and ROH World Champion Takeshi Morishima. I was happy to see Morishima back, but he didn't cut loose as much as I was hoping he would. I guess he's saving it for tomorrow night's title match against Nigel. End came when Nigel was going for the Jawbreaker Lariat on Morishima, but Williams threw Hero into Morishima and knocked him out of the way, setting up Hero to take the Lariat instead for the win. It looked like everyone was taking it easy in this match, and nothing really spectacular happened.
I have to say that this was a pretty lackluster show, easily the weakest ROH show I've been to in months, which is kind of disappointing considering how strong the card looked on paper. They return to Edison, NJ tomorrow night, headlined by Takeshi Morishima defending the ROH World Title against Nigel McGuinness. I'll be there live and I'll have the live report as soon as I get home.
