Wrestling’s 4R’s 09.30.11: ROH, Raw and NXT Reviewed!

By: Jeremy Thomas

ROH Television 09.24.11:

QUICK RESULTS:
Future Shock def. The Bravados [** 1/2]
The World’s Greatest Tag Team def. The Kings of Wrestling [***]

WELCOME HOME, NIGEL: For the first episode of ROH Television, we had Kevin Kelly in the ring announcing that the main event would see the Kings of Wrestling taking on the WGTT for the Tag Team Titles. But first he brought out his color commentator in Nigel McGuinness. The crowd was hyped for Nigel’s return and he delivered a good, solid promo about how he was happy to be back and he wouldn’t have been Nigel McGuiness without Ring of Honor. This was a pretty good babyface promo and it definitely got the crowd hyped without overstaying its welcome.

FUTURE SHOCK vs. THE BRAVADOS: Before the match we got some pre-taped comments from both teams which were okay, but didn’t do much to introduce who they were to the new TV audience. There are a lot of people potentially watching who don’t know these guys, and there needed to be something a little more to define the two. The tale of the tape did a little to help with that though. This was a solid opening bout between the two tag teams that saw some good, fast-paced and ingenuitive spots early on to really get the crowd going and give an idea of what kind of wrestling you might expect to see from the show. It slowed down a bit fairly quickly into a more even-paced match once the Bravados took control. That allowed the high spots that came later to have more impact and I appreciated it. The set of rolling butterfly suplexes into the assisted DDT was pretty impressive, and that eventually led into Future Shock getting the win. This was good, solid stuff with both teams (and the promotion) giving their all in their first match on television. Good stuff.

BEST OF THE WORLD REPORT: This was a decent idea from the promotion to get new TV fans interested in getting the i-PPV’s and attending shows. This came across pretty well, and showed a lot of dramatic in-ring moments as well as introducing some of the feuds and storylines. Plus it helped get fans familiar with Davey and Eddie while the actual show focused on the tag teams. Sounds good to me.

THE KINGS OF WRESTLING vs. THE WORLD’S GREATEST TAG TEAM: There was a good amount of promotion leading up to this match on the show, including the Best in the World show where the WGTT won the belts and the Briscoes attacking post-match. They also had Nigel interacting with the crowd as he got the opinion of a fan as to who would win and the Briscoes interrupting a commercial moment with Kevin Kelly to say they were going after the belt. The match had a good, solid fifteen minutes and both teams put forth a great effort here to show ROH’s fans, old and new, why they should be watching the show. The announcers did a good job of explaining the situation around these guys, who Sara Del Ray and Shane Hagadorn were and so on. This made for a great main event and even though we “smarts” knew that the WGTT would be winning, the match maintained a lot of drama as to the result and had some good solid wrestling to boot. Great work by both men and I thought it was a great way to cap off their first show.

INTRODUCING THE PROMOTION TO THE NEW FANS: There were things that I liked here and other places they could have done it better. As I said elsewhere some of the pre-taped vignettes were a bit lackluster in introducing the talent, while others (like Jay Lethal’s) went very well. I liked them introducing the Code of Honor, as that was fairly essential to understanding the promotion. I think they overdid it just a wee bit on the promotion of the website. I get what they were going at and I understand why they have to do it, but as much as you saw “www.rohwrestling.com” on the screen you might as well have thought you were watching an infomercial. It wasn’t a huge downer, but it could have been done a wee bit less obtrusively.

Nada.

Nada.

By: Jeremy Thomas

Raw 09.26.11:

QUICK RESULTS:
Cody Rhodes won a Battle Royale [**]
Beth Phoenix & Natalya def. Kelly Kelly & Eve [* 1/2]
John Cena def. Christian by DQ [**]
Dolph Ziggler def. Zack Ryder [* 3/4]
Zack Ryder & Air Boom def. Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger & Mason Ryan [** 1/4]
CM Punk def. Alberto Del Rio [***]

‘H PISSES EVERYONE OFF: Raw kicked off with the announcing team consisting of JR, Michael Cole and Booker T, as Lawler was out with injury. You know, I don’t think that’s an improvement. Anyway, the Chief Operating ‘H made his way down to the ring to explain why he fired Miz and Truth, which was basically over the whole referee assault and some video from WWE.com where they laughed at doing so. Basically he’d used the fine as a stalling tactic so he could get one more main event out of them, and you know what? I’m totally okay with that. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would expect out of the H-Man and it made sense for him to use them. He also noted that Mark Henry was getting fined $250,000 for attacking JR and Jerry Lawler; this whole segment was about ‘H laying down the law and getting wrestlers pissed at him. We had Dolph angry because he got punched by Hugh Jackman, Cody was angry because Randy Orton beat his face in on Smackdown and Christian was angry because Sheamus cost him the chance to win the World Title. All of these guys did good, solid work on the mic and ‘H’s “Ain’t havin’ it” attitude was entertaining, at least. This moved the storyline along nicely regarding the discontent among the talent and established three matches tonight. That’s all I ask for from an opening segment…entertain and set up the show.

JERRY LAWLER HAS ANAL BLEEDING: Thanks for Magnus from Sweden for sending this in, because it’s pretty much perfect:

Yeah…that about covers it. I could say more, but that would ruin the specialness of the moment.

DAVID OTUNGA, PhD: So, this was fun I suppose. Are we to believe that David Otunga has been wearing bowties all of a sudden and we haven’t seen it, or did he get dressed up in that to make his lawyery case to Johnny Ace? Anyway, this was a pretty abrupt gimmick switch but it wasn’t so bad that it seems really out of place; we just learned something about young David that we didn’t know before. He was better on the mic here than we’ve seen from him before; though he certainly wasn’t great, he sounded more natural. Maybe someone’s been getting lessons from an Oscar-winning wife. And anything that keeps him out of the ring makes me happy. I’m also not going to complain about them dropping the whole Ex-Us vs. Lawler feud…or at least, I hope that’s what this means. Anyway, between his bit with Johnny Ace and his talk with Christian, Cody, Vicki and Dolph this was more entertaining than we’ve seen of Otunga yet and while I won’t say he was great by any means, he didn’t make me want to flip the station.

MARK HENRY vs. MURDERS THE GREAT KHALI: Oh good gods. This was about the worst combination you could ask for in a match, even in Henry’s current run with the belt. Henry is good because he’s being utilized effectively, not because he suddenly became Kurt Angle in the ring. However, this was also booked as effectively in that it wasn’t an actual match. Instead, Henry nailed Khali, showed off his impressive strength by picking him up for a World’s Strongest Slam and left it at that. That was actually quite effective and allayed all my fears about how they might start thinking we want to see Henry in longer matches (or any match at all against someone like Khali). I’m not counting this as a match since it really wasn’t one.

ZACK RYDER vs. DOLPH ZIGGLER: Listen guys, I know a lot of you had your hopes on Zack winning this one, but it’s too soon. The crowd doesn’t buy Zack as a credible guy and they wouldn’t accept him with the title yet. So of course he had to lose here. To their credit however, they did a decent job of building Zack up with the audience as he looked competitive against the United States Champion. I thought that Zack and Dolph had a good match, even if it was way too short, and Swagger helping Ziggler get the win worked as it protected Ryder. Plus, this played into…

ZACK RYDER & AIR BOOM vs. JACK SWAGGER, DOLPH ZIGGLER & MASON RYAN: Not gonna lie folks, I had hopes of Mason Ryan making Vicki’s stable grow to three. But what we got worked too. This was obviously a much longer match and it was well-plotted out and paced. Evan played the face-in-peril that he always plays quite well while the heels had their time of dominance before the hot tag and Ryan deciding he was going to destroy Vicki’s Boys. I enjoyed the match and I enjoyed Zack getting the rub by beating Dolph in the tag match; I’m not sure where this works with Ryan’s character but all in all this played out well.

ALBERTO DEL DIO vs. CM PUNK: This was of course our main event and I was looking forward to it. Both guys can obviously go and they had a good ten minutes or so in which to work. Cena was out for commentary and once again proved that one guest commentator is better than two. As expected they had a good, enjoyable match that saw both of the competitors get chances to excel. This was a back and forth match that played to both men’s strengths; Del Rio and Punk definitely click in the ring and the crowd stayed into the match throughout. Giving Punk the win but Del Rio the post-match dominance attack gave both their own version of momentum, and the way that the post-match stuff played out with poor Ricardo eating a couple finishers while Del Rio prepped his attack was well-done and played into ADR’s character nicely. Strong way to end the show and I certainly have no complaints.

INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE BATTLE ROYALE: This was our first match and involved Cody defending his IC title against nine guys for backtalking the Game. The nine guys consisted of Ted DiBiase, Ezekiel Jackson, Drew McIntyre, Sheamus, Sin Cara, Alex Riley, John Morrison, Daniel Bryan and Justin Gabriel…but I prefer to call them “Ted and His Posse.”

Anyway, this was an okay battle royale for the four-and-a-half minutes that it got. Poor Drew got eliminated in a matter of moments, as did Sin Cara thanks to the Cara II interference, and here is the problem with ten guys in the ring and giving them less than five minutes; you end up having a ton of people getting tossed out in a matter of two minutes so you can get down to the last few guys. That’s what happened here, but the ring work was decent for the time that it got. Cody winning did put him over, as he lasted through nine guys to retain his title, and it advanced the Sheamus/Christian feud and the Cara’s feud a bit. Works for me.

TRIPLE K & EVE vs. The DIVAS OF DOOM: You absolutely knew that the DoD had to win here. If not, what little credibility they had left would have been pretty much crushed. The two teams had a pretty decent match as far as the Divas go. The DoD were dominant the early minutes and that submission move by Nattie was convoluted yet ingenuitive, and Triple K got her hot tag in which she wasn’t terrible before Beth got the Glam Slam for the win. That’s about all there was to this, and that’s all we needed, some momentum for Beth going into the PPV. It was not a great match, but it served its purpose.

JOHN CENA vs. CHRISTIAN: ADR and Punk were out to do commentary for this one, with Punk returning to his sports jacket ways since he was behind the booth. Awesomeness. Now, I have to say that the two of them being at the booth was just like any situation where you have two rivals at the booth; they spent too much time arguing with each other and it took away from the match just a bit. It wasn’t as bad as, say, MnM and Cryme Tyme back in the day though, and they did take some time to talk about the match during which they were quite good. As for the match, it was a pretty standard Cena match for most of it with the heel getting some offense in until Cena made his comeback. This ended all chaotic thanks to ADR, and it did put Del Rio over. This could have been much better, but I wouldn’t call it wRong.

JOHN CENA’s PPV PROMO TIME: So, we have Hell in a Cell this weekend and so we needed John Cena to come out on the mic to try and sell the main event. It’s like clockwork, really. Cena delivered one of his Intense Promos© about how the title’s been mired on controversy, Hell in a Cell, Devil’s Playground, Cena’s fired up, yadda yadda. He always comes off as trying WAY too hard during these promos and this one was no different. Cena’s promos work better with humor as a rule, and I just felt this didn’t work.

Nada.

By: Tony Acero

WWE NXT 9.27.11:

QUICK RESULTS
– Jinder Mahal Defeated Yoshi Tatsu [NR]
– Maxine Defeated AJ [**]
– The Usos vs. Darren Young and JTG [**1/2]

PERCY VS KIDD: This match went surprisingly well. Ok, not surprisingly, but still better than I originally thought it would be. I’ve long said that Percy was the definite stand out and I think that him minimizing his personality just a tad did wonders for him since now we can take him a bit more seriously. This match helped his in ring credibility a bit more as we all know by now that Kidd is the go to guy to really get a good match out of anyone.

USOS VS YOUNG AND JTG: This really showed that The Usos are ready. It was a good enough match with some solid tag team action. It’s a shame that the push of the Usos may very well be over considering recent happenings because if this match showed us anything, it’s that they may be ready. Young was truly the weak link here making quite a few mistakes. I don’t know if it was nerves or he just had an off night, but he didn’t look too good. That’s really the only complaint I can make as the match as a whole was good. Again, it’s a shame that The Usos won’t get that push they were most likely going to get.

AJ VS MAXINE: Another match with more restholds than actual moves and damnit does that bother me. I’m glad AJ got the win, but Maxine needs to work on her offense because it is extremely formulaic and boring.

TONY’S NXT REPORT: Tuesday Night, I was unable to catch NXT live so I went to my usually trusting YouTube channel to watch NXT. Unfortunately, I either a) got a bad episode or b) WWE royally fucked up as I did not get the Mahal vs. Yoshi match at all AND I saw numerous mistakes throughout the show. I’m going to go ahead and blame both my version of the vid and WWE just cuz I can but I do want to apologize to anyone who was expecting a thorough report. I feel like I did a crappy job for missing an entire match like that, so sorry guys!

NOTHING

Until Monday, keep on kickin’ it…

…and remember to stay grounded!