ROH 373 – Conquest Tour: Chicago – 14th March 2015

There was plenty of debate about who ROH did and didn’t book Samoa Joe against during his all-to-brief return to the company in 2015. The one match I don’t think anyone disputed is the main event this evening – pitting the Samoan Submission Machine against ‘Unbreakable’ Michael Elgin. With Adam Cole injured, this is perhaps the only fresh match against one of the ‘new breed’ of ROH stars that could compete with rematches against guys he’s battled previously in the company (Jay Briscoe, Jay Lethal, Roderick Strong, AJ Styles etc). The rest of the card seems rather volatile and fluid at this point. The TV and Tag Champions are booked into ‘Instant Reward’ Proving Ground matches – against Cliff Compton and RPG Vice respectively – meaning both could have to wrestle twice and defend their belts this evening. The World Title will also be on the line as Roderick Strong, Matt Taven, Silas Young and Mark Briscoe compete in a fourway to determine who faces Jay Briscoe later in the show. If that weren’t enough, we’re also getting ACH against Jimmy Jacobs in a match which could steal the show if they don’t get screwed for time. Joe Dumbrowski and Steve Corino are in position for commentary in Chicago Ridge, IL.

Truth Martini opens the show with a promo accepting Cliff Compton’s challenge to make his Proving Ground Match with Jay Lethal later tonight a Street Fight.

J. Diesel vs Will Ferrara
I know the roster is pretty thin for this weekend, and Matt Sydal having to pull out through injury didn’t help matters – but is this really the best they have for an opening match? These two met in the first round of the 2015 Top Prospect Tournament and it was the plucky, fiery Ferrara who picked up the win. Diesel is clearly frustrated by that, and envious that Will actually went all the way to the finals. He looks for some revenge this evening…

Dumbrowski pimping that this is one of the biggest attendances in the history of ROH in this building as this sad, sad match opens the show is rather depressing. Imagine how crazy this crowd would be if ROH had the kind of product it had ten years ago. Diesel dominates Ferrara as you might expect, and actually shows some improvement in that he has ditched some more complex spots and is sticking to a straightforward, simplistic but well-executed beatdown. He dials up the intensity by countering a victory roll into an electric chair drop for 2. Will uses his Taz-taught intensity to battle back, hitting his tornado DDT then a bridging German suplex. Eyes Wide Shut blocked into a DVD, giving JD the win at a lengthy 05:25

Rating - * - Significantly better than it could have been, but I’m not sure what the purpose of this was. Diesel is a secondary character and barely tolerable as the muscle of the House Of Truth. I’m not sure he really needed to crush someone who ROH has been getting behind as a rising star. Two weeks ago we were supposed to consider Ferrara a genuine Top Prospect – so seeing him destroyed by someone who didn’t make it out of Round One seems counterproductive.

Jimmy Jacobs vs ACH
He can try to be a heel, but Ring Of Honor has been running Chicago Ridge for a long time.Jimmy Jacobs gets a respectful, grateful babyface pop from the loyal Chi-town fans for his entrance. We know all about his past issues with ACH too. We know he finds ACH annoying and disrespectful in the locker room – and it is the mantra of The Decade to beat the respect into wayward young talents. Can he maintain is wayward relationship with BJ Whitmer long enough to focus on the match? ACH brings Matt Sydal to ringside with him to help counteract the threat BJ poses…

Steve Corino walks out rather than commentate with Whitmer at ringside. Jacobs wisely favours a slow pace, getting into ACH’s head then stomping him into the ground during the first few minutes. ACH responds with some of those cocky flips that The Decade hate so much and is punished with a head-first trip into the guardrails. Jacobs hits a springboard elbow drop off an open chair on the floor…but is one-upped in the high risk stakes as ACH runs all the way around the ring, springs off the apron then swings AROUND THE RINGPOST INTO A HEADSCISSORS! He doesn’t get long to celebrate after Whitmer distracts him and enables Jimmy to hit the spike DDT in the ropes. Zombie Princess starts to attack the neck, before making another error trying to go aerial and colliding with ACH in mid-air as they both look for crossbody blocks. Whitmer pulls Jacobs out of the way of Air Jordan…so ACH gives him the PK Kick! RUNNING SUICIDE DIVE BY JACOBS! Contra Code blocked, but so is Hero’s Grip and Jimmy goes close getting a nearfall with the rebound cutter. SPEAR COUNTERED WITH A LEAPFROGGING DOUBLE STOMP! 450 SPLASH MISSES! END TIME! ACH refuses to be choked out! COUNTERED TO A BELLY TO BELLY TO THE FLOOR! RUNNING MOONSAULT OVER THE ROPES wipes out both Whitmer and Jacobs! Double stomp misses! SPEAR gets 2 for Jacobs! Contra Code blocked again, then the rebound cutter is countered with a SUPERKICK TO THE NECK! 450 SPLASH NAILED! ACH WINS! 13:51 is your time

Rating - **** - What a great weekend for ACH. Outstanding in defeat against Samoa Joe in Milwaukee, he follows that with a great showing here too. He and Jacobs fit well together as opponents and everything they did had a natural chemistry to it. The second half in particular was outrageous, with both men hitting all kinds of spots and counter sequences. This should have opened the show.

Yet again Jimmy Jacobs wants to follow the Code Of Honor and raises the ire of BJ Whitmer. Jimmy puts ACH over and says he is shaking his hand because he has proven he ‘belongs’ in Ring Of Honor. Tensions threaten to boil over within The Decade before they eventually walk out together. They would later go on to mutually agree that it is best for them to settle it with a singles match at Supercard Of Honor.

Silas Young vs Matt Taven vs Roderick Strong vs Mark Briscoe
The winner here meets Jay Briscoe later in the night with the World Title on the line, so the stakes are seriously high. Roderick has made it known that he is desperate to return to the summit of ROH, Taven has issues with Briscoe stretching back endless months, and we know how much Jay and Mark like to fight once they get into the ring with each other. Young, meanwhile, is in the second night of his comeback from injury and is something of a bad tempered wildcard.

Old foes Strong and Briscoe get us started, wrestling as seamlessly as you might expect for two guys who have been on the roster together for more than a decade. The heels try to barge their way into the match but get unceremoniously dumped to the floor by their adversaries. Mark tries a cannonball senton off the apron...only to be caught by all three opponents then dumped onto the apron by Strong. Taven hits a springboard lariat off the guardrail! The heels try to form an alliance to isolate Briscoe which is, of course, doomed to fail. They barely make it past the one minute mark before Roderick gets a tag and absolutely EXPLODES into action. SUPERPLEXES ON ALL THREE OPPONENTS! Taven SUPERKICKS Young halfway through the Pee Gee Waja Plunge! KILLER COMBO ON TAVEN! URINAGE ON SILAS! Froggy Bow gets knees, and Young rolls up Mark using the tights to earn the title shot at 12:13

Rating - *** - Chaotic at times, fun for the most part, and ending with the right choice for a filler title shot here tonight. Silas isn’t going to be World Champion at this point, but he is a fun act and presents a fresh match for Jay Briscoe – as opposed to facing Taven for the millionth time or giving away a potential ‘big draw’ World Title Match of Briscoe/Strong or Briscoe/Briscoe unannounced. Everyone got their big spots in, nobody looked a weak link and the frantic pace kept people entertained throughout. These four corner matches can be hit or miss, but this one was very decent.

Jay Lethal vs Cliff Compton – Street Fight
Remember, this is also a Proving Ground Instant Reward match meaning the returning Compton gets an immediate TV Title shot if he can beat Lethal. We haven’t seen Cliff for a year or so (and there hasn’t been anyone clamouring for him in his absence), but clearly he remains on good terms with the ROH office and has been brought back for a major opportunity in a town he is very familiar with. Just 24-hours removed from tapping out to Kyle O’Reilly in Milwaukee, how pleased will Lethal be at his manager accepting the challenge to make this a Street Fight on his behalf?

It’s always amusing when a wrestler comes out for a Street Fight dressed in a buttoned shirt and smart trousers. Cliff immediately tries to piledrive Martini through a table…and in the melee Lethal inadvertently superkicks J. Diesel through it instead! The two competitors take turns swinging chairs at each other and spill out into the crowd much as Truth Martini promised at the start of the show. There isn’t a lot of light at times, but we see Jay hit a suplex onto the hard wooden floor of the building before Compton finds another chair and uses it to batter the TV Champ all the way back into the bleachers. He dumps an entire trash can over Lethal’s head next, and clobbers him with a clothesline as he stumbles around covered in bin juice. Back in the ring Lethal gets some payback, nailing Cliff with a garbage can after a distraction from Martini and Diesel. The challenger is flogged with Lethal’s belt (as in trouser belt, not the title)…but removing his belt means he is vulnerable to having his pants pulled down by Cliff. All of a sudden Lethal has a lot of exposed skin for Compton to flog! Media Blitz gets 2, before Diesel and Martini pile into the ring to rescue Jay. Diesel desposits Compton on a table outside the ring. HAIL TO THE KING THROUGH A TABLE ON THE FLOOR! Cliffy kicks out! Martini tosses powder into his eyes, as Lethal hits the Lethal Injection for the win at 13:45

Rating - ** - I can appreciate that a lot of effort went into this and both guys took some pretty rough bumps along the way. The hard work and that awesome Hail To The King table spot mean this definitely isn’t a waste of time…but it’s also nowhere near as violent, exciting or epic as ROH are trying to put over as. The logic here was sound – bring in a guy with a reputation but will put people over, and book a match which can establish Jay Lethal as a ‘tough’ guy. He’s about to start feuding with Jay Briscoe. On paper, giving him a big win in a hard-fought, no rules match such as this makes a lot of sense. But the lay-out was horrendous. Lethal only ever seemed to get any kind of advantage when he got outside interference. Cliff isn’t even a ‘part time’ act in ROH and he’s not even that over in Chicago. He didn’t need to be protected, he needed to put up a fight then stare at the lights to put over that Lethal can be a bad ass on top of being a great wrestler. That’s why this one wildly missed the mark for me. Lethal standing around in his underwear and needing the help of Truth Martini and J. Diesel to beat a guy nowhere near good enough to get onto the regular ROH roster doesn’t help him at all.

Beer City Bruiser vs Cheeseburger
Well this is going to suck. Neither of these two should be anywhere near the ROH roster. They are both joke acts, except neither have any comic value at all and rather than laugh you’re just left questioning why you even watch professional wrestling in the first place.

Imagine how bad some of the people must be at these ROH training camps is Bruiser is one of the guys who made it to TV. Despite his opponent weighing less a drug-addled hooker, it takes BCB three attempts to get a good enough grip to swing him into the rails. The hip attack/fatty cannonball combo scores (and, as usual, exhausts the Bruiser), allowing BCB to stroll around with his ass hanging out drinking beer. Fatty cannonball off the apron MISSES! That’s a lot of weight to be flipping into a bump on the hard floor! Cheese appears to attempt the West Coast Pop, which seems absurd. He eats the Hair Of The Dog lariat but survives to hit an improbable bulldog from the second rope. Two Day Hangover gives BCB the win at 07:26

Rating - DUD - Beer City Bruiser’s entire ROH career has consisted entirely of ‘worst match of the year’ candidates. At least Dru Onyx only got booked once. Not to spoil it for anyone, but neither of these two are going away either. Beer City Bruiser has a number of bookings already in the diary, whilst ROH have already started taping stuff for a Cheeseburger/Brutal Bob feud too. Crap like this is why it’s so easy to answer when I’m asked why I seem so much less enthusiastic about Ring Of Honor in 2015 than I did back in the day.

Tommaso Ciampa is in the ring before the next match takes place. His promo has been edited out of the VOD/DVD release for some reason. He is out of action with a rib injury sustained at the 13th Anniversary, and is apparently now dangerously unstable. He has to be escorted out after being goaded by Silas…

Jay Briscoe vs Silas Young – ROH World Title Match
The deck is stacked against the challenger here. He’s already competed once, and he doesn’t have the years of experience at Ring Of Honor main event level that Jay Briscoe has. But if he needs inspiration, he should look back to Tyler Black at 2008’s Take No Prisoners pay-per-view. That night Tyler was put in a very similar position with Nigel McGuinness, but nearly took the belt from him that night and left having cemented his legacy as a frontline player in the company. Can the Last Real Man upset the odds tonight?

Young starts like a man determined to make the most of such a colossal opportunity – taking a cheap shot on the champion then emphatically battering him into the canvas. Briscoe isn’t one to hold back from a fight, and retorts by violently Cactus Clotheslining him to the floor. Several mandatory trips into the guardrails ensue for the challenger, to the extent that he seems glad to take the fight back into the ring. He channels his inner Nigel McGuinness by crotching Jay on the top and leaping into a rebound McLariat for 2. Briscoe is ferocious in his kicking and elbowing but Silas withstands his best shots and floors him again with the Killer Combo soon afterwards. That’s the theme for the match – Briscoe dishing out some of his best shots but continually finding himself on the receiving end of rugged, uncompromising and unrelentingly aggressive manoeuvres from the Last Real Man. Pee Gee Waja Plunge gets knees though, and Briscoe retains with the Jay Driller at 09:47

Rating - * - What the hell was this? A World Title Match that actually felt fresh, unique and interesting…so ROH blow it by giving it less than ten minutes which, even by house show standards, never got out of first gear. A huge, wet fart of a missed opportunity to really make Young a star. This was a total non-event and, even by the lowered-bar standards I judge Sinclair-owned ROH against this was supremely disappointing. I understand Delirious is missing a LOT of talent for these shows but there really isn’t an excuse for this. Maybe one of them was carrying an injury?

reDRagon vs RPG Vice
Our final Proving Ground Instant Reward match of the evening, and the omens are good for Fish and O’Reilly having seen both Jay Lethal and Jay Briscoe successfully leave the building with their championship reigns still intact. They should be no strangers to at least half of the team standing across the ring from them. Their battles with Rocky Romero and the Forever Hooligans, both in ROH and New Japan, were memorable. Now they face Rocky again, with his new partner Trent Beretta joining him on his Ring Of Honor debut weekend. Romero has experience taking the ROH Tag Titles from reDRagon, and reDRagon themselves have experienced dropping the belts in this very building before (to the Young Bucks last year). Will history repeat itself in more ways than one tonight?

Romero and O’Reilly start, predictably with plenty of faux-MMA skits. They’re both pretty good and shoot-influenced wrestling though and the early minutes fly by. Romero is sent packing after narrowly avoiding the Arm-ageddon. ‘We’re REAL best friends’ – O’Reilly to the crowd as they jeer Bobby Fish for backing out of a fight with Trent. RPG Vice actually outwit the more experienced team, with Beretta jumping Kyle from behind leading to a double team sequence and the ring being cut in half to prevent a tag. A flying knee off the apron by Rocky wipes out Fish and caps an impressive period of time for the potential challengers. O’Reilly mounts a fightback by snapping Trent’s arm over the top rope then utilises a series of aggressive stretches to press his advantage home. Fish is even more aggressive – sweeping Beretta’s legs and causing him to land neck-first against the top turnbuckle. Somehow Trent escapes after double stomping Bobby’s face. Romero and O’Reilly trade strikes at second rope level before Rocky SPRINGBOARDS INTO A FRANKENSTEINER! ‘I need you Bobby, help me!’ – O’Reilly as his partner hits the ring and comes to his aid. Tope suicida by Romero! Axe & Smash COUNTERED with a jumping enzi by Beretta! Kyle falls backwards into the Jawbreaker Lariat, but it’s countered again into a superkick. STRONG ZERO NAILED! RPG Vice win at 13:44

Rating - *** - I wish they’d have ditched the stupid Instant Reward gimmick (which has spectacularly bombed tonight) and just worked a straight non-title match. As was, the convoluted stipulations meant that this felt like watching the first three quarters of a pretty solid tag match, then a rushed finish which killed their momentum rather than felt like a natural conclusion to their work. Quietly Beretta and Romero have worked a couple of extremely solid tag matches during their debut weekend as a team in ROH. They are certainly preferable to the tired Forever Hooligans gimmick and I hope they get booked with a degree of regularity when they’re not in Japan.

reDRagon vs RPG Vice – ROH Tag Title Match
Of course, the Instant Reward for Trent and Rocky means that they go straight into their Tag Title shot. Can Fish and O’Reilly rally against this promising debut team and pull off the victory they need to keep their belts? Or will they once again experience losing them in the Frontier Fieldhouse?

The champs try to leave with their belts, meaning the challengers have to sprint up the aisle and physically retrieve them from the locker room. O’Reilly drags Romero off the apron as they set up Strong Zero then hangs Beretta in the ropes with a triangle choke. His arm gets the double stomp treatment, causing him to rocket backwards in pain right into the path of the Bobby Fish moonsault. STEREO ARM-AGEDDONS! Beretta blocks Chasing The Dragon with a swinging DDT. JAWBREAKER LARIAT ON ROMERO! Who recovers to INTERCEPT O’Reilly’s missile dropkick off the apron with a running dropkick of his own. ROPE RUN GERMAN SUPERPLEX BY TRENT! TOP ROPE SUICIDE DIVE BY ROMERO! GOBSTOPPER KNEE STRIKE! O’REILLY SAVES! ELEVATED DOUBLE ARM DDT…INTO A LAUNCHPAD GERMAN from reDRagon! And STILL Beretta blocks Chasing The Dragon! A desperate O’Reilly catches him sleeping with a shock small package – and the champs escape with the belts at 06:50

Rating - *** - I’m not a fan of the Instant Reward stuff, but it has to be said this was a killer little segment and a really fun pay-off to all the groundwork they’d laid in the first match. A great reminder of why reDRagon are one of the truly elite tag teams in professional wrestling today, and a terrific conclusion to RPG Vice’s ROH debut weekend. I’m already checking results to see when a rematch is going to be booked.

Although disappointed to lose tonight, Romero takes the microphone and promises that it’s not the end of their pursuit of reDRagon. Trent, meanwhile, challenges the Young Bucks to a match (although I’m not sure if he wants it in ROH or NJPW).

Michael Elgin vs Samoa Joe
The bitter reality is that ROH are nowhere near as good at churning out hot new stars as they used to be. There really wasn’t a long list of guys that have become ‘top talent’ in Ring Of Honor since Joe’s era for him to wrestle. That list becomes even smaller when you consider that Kevin Steen (who technically debuted during Joe’s time anyway) has left and Adam Cole is injured. The one fresh, hot, ‘dream match’ they had for this run was Michael Elgin, and we’re getting that tonight. There was a time when Elgin was compared to Samoa Joe. His power coupled with a dynamic, explosive and dominant in-ring style made him seem like a natural successor to the heavyweight main event void that in truth hasn’t been filled properly since Morishima. Somewhere along the road Elgin lost his way though. Soured by an unpopular World Title reign, what we see now is a jaded, introverted and aggressive Elgin. Loathed by the fans and the majority of the locker room, he will resent the fact that he is being used as nothing but a mere warm-up act to Joe’s World Title showdown with Briscoe in California. But that hurt will motivate him in this collision between ROH’s past and present. Two former World Champions do battle, one respected and beloved by the fans even after leaving and spending years in rival promotion TNA – the other hated and dismissed. Will the bitter, young lion have his day at the expense of the battle-hardened dominant male? Can Elgin, so insecure and so desperate to approval, make an emphatic statement by defeating the greatest Ring Of Honor Champion of them all?

Fighting Joe means Elgin’s entrance gets an actual response from the crowd and he can barely hide his delight. Dumbrowski may leave disappointed – he expects this to compare to some of Joe’s most storied matches in this building (which include Joe vs Punk 2 by the way). Elgin tries to frustrate his opponent by repeatedly using rope breaks, then makes a huge statement by flooring him with a single reverse elbow strike. He can even muscle the Samoan up for his strong vertical suplex – delivering that with such authority that Joe actually leaves the ring. Elgin dodges the Ole Kick, only for Joe to duck the Back Fist. OLE KICK NAILED! The bombardment of strikes is too much for Unbreakable to withstand, particularly as the crowd really start to get behind Joe. Realising he has to quieten the crowd again, Michael silences them with a German suplex into the turnbuckles then crushes him again with a double knee smash. Does he have the power to hit the Elgin Bomb? Apparently not – Joe counters with a back body drop before rattling off his tried and trusted atomic drop/big boot/senton splash sequence. ELBOW SUICIDAAAAAAAA! Wisely Elgin returns it to the ring and dumps Joe on his big neck again with a snap German. SOMERSAULT LEG DROP TO THE NECK! This has suddenly become an intriguing battle, with Elgin looking to break Joe’s neck before he loses to the Joe ‘greatest hits’ package. SPINNING BACK FIST! POWERBOMB…for 2! DEAD-LIFT F*CKING GERMAN NAILED! Joe gets up again! ST-JOE! Muscle Buster blocked into the flying Codebreaker! CHOKE! Elgin breaks by driving the neck into the turnbuckles…BUT JOE HOLDS ON! THEN KNEES HIM IN THE FACE! HEAD DROP CHOKE-PLEX! CHOOOOOOOKE! Elgin is choked out at 19:21

Rating - **** - I preferred Joe/ACH if you’re looking for a comparison, but once again this was a lot of fun. In a repeat of last night it was actually extremely interesting to watch how another Ring Of Honor athlete works around Samoa Joe’s standard routine and moveset which he doesn’t tend to deviate from too often these days. Yesterday we saw ACH get cocky and heel-ish. Today, as with all of Elgin’s best performances recently, we saw him ditch all the unnecessary ‘look how strong I am’ crap and concentrate on beating the sh*t out of his opponent. With the crowd firmly in Joe’s corner and the former World Champion reliving his glory days reeling off his favourite spots like a Metallica concert bouncing from ‘Enter Sandman’ to ‘Nothing Else Matters’ – Elgin realised he needed to shut that sh*t down. Firstly he pissed off the crowd by stopping Joe hitting some of his more popular moves, then he did all he could to break his damn neck. The first half was a little dry, but as I said in play-by-play, in the middle portion of the match things got really interesting as you wondered whether Elgin break Joe’s neck before inevitably getting caught with the Choke or the Muscle Buster.

Joe does the ‘thanks and goodnight’ promo better than anyone – and goes on to say that Jay Briscoe has his title and he wants it back.

Tape Rating - ** - The last three shows have been frustratingly underwhelming. After the delights of the Winter Warriors Tour shows in Atlanta and Dayton, the 13th Anniversary ppv and this Conquest Tour weekend have hit ROH’s 2015 momentum hard. To defend Delirious, the talent roster for these shows is perilously thin. Of course they have Joe, but without AJ, the Bucks, Daniels, Kazarian, Bennett, Cole, Ciampa, Sydal, Hanson, Cedric and more it doesn’t leave the booker with too many options. Having said that, this was apparently a huge crowd for ROH in Chicago – and they deserved far better than this show – which reeked of cost-cutting before Sinclair have to fork out big bucks to bring all the New Japan crew over in a few weeks time. I thought Joe/Elgin was a really good main event, but such is the talent those two men possess you’d probably say they only hit a par score with their match. ACH/Jacobs was a gem on the undercard, and the RPG Vice/reDRagon segment entertained too. But I’m not sure that justifies spending your money and sitting through a card which, again, ROH couldn’t be bothered to push to three hours. J. Diesel, Will Ferrara, Beer City Bruiser, Cheeseburger and Cliff Compton are all on this show. Hard working and nice as they may be – when those five guys all get matches you know it’s not a strong line-up. Gabe Sapolsky used to manage obvious B-shows like this very well. He’d always have someone on the roster (Low Ki, Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe, Davey Richards etc) who he knew he could count on to give twenty minutes to, with anyone on the roster, and he’d deliver a match that could sell DVD’s. Delirious has Roderick Strong – and could have done the same thing tonight. Why not give Roddy and Silas 20-minutes to beat the crap out of each other? I guarantee that would have done far more for Young’s reputation than the crappy World Title Match he was involved in tonight. I could continue to vent my annoyance, but I’ll wrap this up by saying that, in terms of in-ring product this was pretty similar to the Milwaukee show the previous evening…but had far more booking problems, a more inconsistent undercard, and Samoa Joe (clearly the only performer Delirious really cared about this weekend) had a better match with ACH. This was totally skippable – which is simply not good enough for one of the biggest crowds in ROH’s lengthy Frontier Fieldhouse history.

Top 3 Matches
3) reDRagon vs RPG Vice (***)
2) ACH vs Jimmy Jacobs (****)
1) Samoa Joe vs Michael Elgin (****)

Top 5 Conquest Tour Milwaukee/Chicago Weekend Matches
5) Michael Elgin vs Josh Alexander (*** - Milwaukee)
4) ACH vs Jimmy Jacobs (**** - Chicago)
3) Samoa Joe vs Michael Elgin (**** - Chicago)
2) reDRagon vs Jay Briscoe/Jay Lethal (**** - Milwaukee)
1) Samoa Joe vs ACH (**** - Milwaukee)

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