ROH on Sinclair – Episode 137 – 3rd May 2014
Tonight the action from WrestleMania weekend continues with a punchy double main event. Tommaso Ciampa looks to rebound from his TV Title loss when he faces The Decade’s Roderick Strong, whilst #1 contender to the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, Michael Elgin, faces New Japan’s Rocky Romero. Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino are in New Orleans, LA.
Roderick Strong vs Tommaso Ciampa
There must be a lot crammed into this hour of television as the two wrestlers are already in the ring as the intro credits finish. Ciampa lost the TV Title to new House Of Truth member Jay Lethal at Supercard Of Honor so will want to rebound here. His opponent is no stranger to the HOT – former World Champion and self-proclaimed ‘Mr ROH’, Roderick Strong. Unfortunately for Roddy, he’s also no stranger to losing recently. He’s successfully bullied some of the younger members of the roster like Cedric Alexander and Adrenaline RUSH, but his record in high profile singles matches is less impressive – including losses against both AJ Styles and Chris Hero. If he wants to get back in the ROH Title picture himself he needs to be winning matches like this.
Tommaso ceremonially handed his knee brace to Lethal yesterday to indicate that he was fully healed from the knee injury he sustained against him in 2012. In nice continuity from that, he competes without knee braces again here. Roderick doesn’t look like he’s taking the match too seriously until Ciampa starts biting his hand – sparking him into life and kicking off a fast-paced back and forth exchange. The Sicilian starts taking control, targeting Roddy’s midsection on the floor – then swinging him VICIOUSLY from the apron to the rails before a commercial break. When we get back we have Ciampa looking for a grounded octopus only to be knocked back and peppered with signature Strong chops. Roderick lands on his chest again as he misses a rebound crossbody…with Tommaso then capturing him for ROLLING GERMANS! HEAD DROP GERMAN! BARE KNEE STRIKE! Strong avoids defeat there so gets an Air Raid Crash! Olympic Slam scores in response for the Decade member, who has been thoroughly rattled by Tommaso. He lands Death By Roderick but is very obviously slow to follow up on it. End Of Heartache is blocked…so Adam Page tries to climb in and gets a KNEE TO THE FACE! That was so sick the referee leaves to check on Page – so Cedric Alexander runs in to corkscrew kick Strong! PROJECT CIAMPA! Tommaso wins at 09:07 (shown)
Rating - *** - I think this is a relatively generous 3* rating, as the early portion of the match was pretty lifeless. There wasn’t necessarily much wrong with what they were doing, but after high profile matches the previous night they were pretty clearly going through the motions and taking it easy for what they knew was merely an undercard match on the TV show. I’m sure ROH management has no problem with that either – such is the landscape of Ring Of Honor in 2014. Personally, on WrestleMania weekend I expected much more from this – one of the biggest matches of the TV tapings on paper. Maybe that’s just me
SIDENOTE – ROH should have shopped around and booked a smaller building for the TV-tapings evening of their NOLA adventure. The large venue didn’t look great for Supercard yesterday, and for TV the crowd looks positively miniscule. They are silent and extremely echo-ey too, because the arena is simply far too big. It looks and sounds horrible…
Roderick calls Cedric out…but gets beaten out of the ring by Ced before fleeing up the aisle. Alexander challenges him to a rematch at Global Wars.
Michael Elgin (sporting his stupid ‘Fear The Mullet’ shirt and probably still wondering why NJPW passed on him when he had a try out) plans to send a message to New Japan tonight when he beats Rocky Romero…before going on to become IWGP Heavyweight Champion in New York.
Romantic Touch vs Silas Young
If I were a casual ROH fan, whenever Romantic Touch’s music hit would pretty much be my cue to change the channel. The joke was kind of funny for a while, but he is starting to get really over-used (probably because Rhett is cheap to book) and his matches are crap. Silas had some heated exchanges with him at Flyin’ High, and he’ll look to take out all his frustration over his Supercard Of Honor loss to RD Evans here.
‘Boys don’t kiss boys’ – Silas. Despite being given that very vocal warning, Touch tries to kiss his hand during the Code Of Honor…and is dispatched to the deck resoundingly. Snuggle-monkey Flip blocked, but Rhett gets his boot over the top rope to boot Young in the face. Sadly for him his attempt at a slingshot splash is blocked as well, allowing Silas to put the boots to him again. The Last Real Man is focusing his onslaught on the ribs – emphasising that with a knee deep into the sternum. Romantic ducks the backbreaker/lariat combo and hits the dropkick to buy himself some time. A discus lariat follows for Rhett, softening his opponent up so he can finally hit the Snuggle-monkey Flip. Austin Aries-style springboard rebound elbow strike gets 2…although as he goes to the corner the camera pans across the building to reveal exactly how empty the arena is. Young survives that and delivers the Pee Gee Waja Plunge for victory at 05:27
Rating - ** - A good performance from Silas carried this. I really like his character, and it seems like ROH are getting behind it to judging from how hard Corino and Kelly push him on commentary. His wrestling here was excellent too, working the ribs like an old bastard in preparation for his finisher. Romantic was pretty much along for the ride, but he did ok and didn’t make any obvious mistakes.
THE FISH TANK – Highlights of the second episode of reDRagon’s chat show are shown. They cancelled their scheduled guest, Tom Selleck, to complain about ROH bringing in a NJPW team to take the Tag Titles from them for a second time. They have a rematch with the Bucks at War Of The Worlds
NEXT WEEK – A special live episode of The Fish Tank
Jimmy Jacobs vs Corey Hollis
We’ve seen Hollis appear on a number of occasions – usually as part of Alabama Attitude. However, that team appeared to end when he and Mike Posey faced each other in the 2014 Top Prospect Tournament and he gets a chance to make a splash as a singles worker here. Unfortunately his opponent is miserable veteran Jimmy Jacobs – who will have no intention of helping him look good or get a spot on the ROH roster. The big surprise pre-match is that Tadarius Thomas joins Adam Page at ringside as a second Decade young boy.
Jimmy has his face towelled by Page pre-match, and he tosses the same towel into Hollis’ face to get a jump on him as it begins. He hits a body slam on the outside then sits Corey in a chair out there. PESCADO THROUGH THE CHAIR! Jacobs nonchalantly struts around the ring, hardly breaking a sweat as he casually drops Hollis into a neckbreaker. Finally he takes a break to berate Tadarius for trying to join commentary…and is taken down with a RUNNING satellite headscissors from Hollis. Spear countered to an airplane spin…then a HEAD DROP implant DDT for 2! Jacobs doesn’t like that and scores with the rebound cutter/spear combo to take the victory at 03:56
Rating - * - A rather emphatic and inoffensive squash. Although I understand the reasons why he was allowed to get some offence in, personally I’d rather have seen Jacobs decimate Hollis here. The whole story of the match was Jimmy and Tadarius Thomas as the new young boy. Why dilute that by trying to get Hollis over when he’s being squashed too?
Rocky Romero vs Michael Elgin
We used to see Rocky compete as a singles wrestler on a semi-regular basis in ROH, but as his international commitments have grown and the time he spends in this company declined it has happened less and less frequently. He has a unique style and can pose quite the threat to opponents unfamiliar with him. Here he faces Michael Elgin – who has announced that he plans to use this match to send a message to the NJPW office before he takes their top prize at War Of The Worlds. Those are big words which Unbreakable is now under pressure to live up to.
Romero indicates he has no intention of being Elgin’s stepping stone to the IWGP Title as he slaps him in the face then drops him with a diving knee from the apron. Elgin struggles with Rocky’s MMA-influenced, strike-heavy style and is rattled around the ring taking an assortment of heavy strikes. Eventually his power comes into play as he catches Romero trying a slingshot move…and dumps him with a powerslam. 60-second suplex gets 2 before the final commercial break of the show. Rocky desperately strikes at Elgin with punches…then cranks up the pace by hanging in the ropes then taking to the skies with a tope suicida. A springboard dropkick lands right on the neck as Michael pokes his head between the ropes trying to get back into the ring. And next he uses his supposed superior cardio-vascular conditioning by running and running (and running) in circles around his opponent before finally catching him in an anklelock. Unfortunately he’s not strong enough to keep him down and Unbreakable hits back with the dead-lift German. SUPER RANA takes Elgin down for 2! He continually ducks Elgin’s increasingly lumbering lariat attempts…before Michael switches hands and levels him with a left-arm lariat which drives him all the way to the apron. DEAD-LIFT SUPERPLEX GETS 2! Buckle Bomb blocked though, with Romero taking it to the deck and nearly out-witting his larger opponent and stealing the win. A dragon screw in the ropes slows Elgin down further, but the weary Hooligan takes so long getting up the ropes himself that Elgin catches him with a SHOTEI! Another kick to the leg drops the Canadian off the ropes…into the ANKLELOCK! Elgin drags himself to the ropes and tosses Rocky away with the ST-Joe. BACK FIST! BUCKLE BOMB! ELGIN BOMB! It was a hell of a fight, but Elgin finally emerges triumphant at 10:50 (shown)
Rating - **** - I’ve gone generous on my rating (it was probably only ***1/2 at best, but I don’t do half stars) because I really liked their approach to this match. Elgin was willing to make himself look stupid and slow, in order to promote just how dangerous a fighter Romero is. Rocky used his experience, intelligence and speed to repeatedly bewitch the ROH competitor. He made Elgin look cumbersome and thoroughly out of his depth at times as he floated around him, peppering him with strikes and easily taking him to the mat. And in emphasising exactly how dangerous an opponent Romero is it makes Elgin’s victory over him (coming when the Canadian finally managed to latch on and hit a flurry of high impact, power moves for the first time) all the more impressive.
Tape Rating - *** - The middle portion of this episode may have dragged, but the start and end were strong enough that I really came away having enjoyed the show. Elgin/Romero exceeded my expectations as it presented Romero as a world class worker in his own right (rather than the slightly comedic tag team worker he is usually showcased as), and thus gave Michael Elgin a significantly more memorable victory as a result. Strong/Ciampa wasn’t anywhere near as good, but it was a fine start to the show and provided the back drop for an effective way of setting up Strong/Alexander II at Global Wars. Even the middle third wasn’t a total bust, with a decent showing by Silas Young and the revealing of Tadarius Thomas as The Decade’s new young boy in there. Personally I think trying to cram four matches into a TV show as short as Ring Of Honor’s is a mistake though. I’d have preferred to see a match cut and the extra time split between matches at the top and bottom of the hour that we really wanted to see.