The Best Of The Rest 9.12.07: Volume 13 – The Brisoces Vs. Kevin Steen & El Generico: Chapter Three

The Week’s Spotlight:
The Brisoces Vs. Kevin Steen & El Generico: Chapter Three
Much like Bad Boy this feud can’t stop won’t stop. Coming off the heels of the cage match, and the Briscoe’s taking the 2 out of 3 falls match 2-0 it is now time for these two team to compete in the first ladder match in Ring Of Honor’s five-year history. When the end of the year rolls around and I’m giving out my “feud of the year” award you better believe that this one will be in top contention. The feud has helped Ring Of Honor as a whole on many levels.

1. It has made the Briscoes look tougher than ever before. Working the concussion angle with Mark was a great idea and helped show that he will risk his life to defend his brother and to hold onto the ROH tag titles.

2. This feud put Kevin Steen at the top of the food chain and helped build him as a top heel in Indy wrestling. Prior to his time in ROH many fans knew that Steen was an excellent heel but was never able to apply his craft on the main stage, through this feud he has been put in a more serious light and shown what he can do.

3. The biggest thing, in my opinion, to come out of this feud is the legitimization of El Genercio. Genercio has always been an amazing talent and I have always put him in the top ten on the Indy’s, but he was always a mid-card or sometime main event comedy act. He always had excellent matches, but he was still regarded as a goofy character. Thought this feud, and his performance in the Race To The Top tourney, Generico has become a serious wrestler in the eyes of many fans. Like I mentioned before about Mark, in this feud it has looked like Generico will do anything for gold.

4. Finally the ROH Tag Team Titles have benefited the most from this feud. These two teams have damn near killed each to hold this gold. In the case of Mark Briscoe, it has made these belts look more important than life.

Could this feud end with the ladder match this weekend? Can Steen & Generico final capture gold? While those question remain to be answered. We already know that this feud has benefited many parties on different levels.

The Plug Zone:
Who: Combat Zone Wrestling
What: Best Of The Best 4
When: July 10, 2004
Where: Where Else? Philadelphia, PA
Why You Want To Own This DVD: I have put over this show on a previous edition of my column but have never officially “plugged” it so here we go. This show featured one of the most stacked cards in the history of CZW. Jack Evans, Alex Shelley, Roderick Strong, Jimmy Rave, Petey Williams, Sonjay Dutt, Homicide, Ruckus and other big Indy names like B-Boy, Bobby Quance, Nate Webb, and the late Chris Cash were all on this card. While this isn’t exactly a DVD you go to for great story telling, but you’ll have fun with all the matches from this event. Cause let’s be honest, who doesn’t like a spot fest every now and then? To me this was the BEST of the best at the time, and the quality in some of the 2nd and 3rd matches shows that. Elsewhere on the card there was a solid match between my hero and savior Chris Hero and Hotstuff Hernandez. While CZW has never been known to produce awesome nights of wrestling, I feel that this show and BOTB 5 surely top the list of their “best shows ever.”

Better Days Ahead For TNA?
This past Sunday TNA presented “No Surrender” and while it wasn’t an amazing show, it was very solid which is more than we can say for most TNA PPV’s so far this year. With the exception of the SilverDust-Wildcat match, I enjoyed what I saw. Now I’m not saying that I’m happy that Team Pacman won the tag straps, but seeing the possibility of a real Sting Vs. Angle match made me very happy. The Kaz-Roode and Rhino-Cowboy matches exceeded my expectations. Angle-Lethal was a great match, and it surprised me greatly when “Black Machismo” won clean, props to Angle for doing the JOB on PPV. The Angle-Abyss match, I thought, was excellent that showed Kurt was an animal and that Abyss was damn near willing to risk life and limb for the title. As far as my favorite match of the night, I thought the tag battle was great and made the younger talent rather than the ex-E talent look good. Team 3D and VKM were eliminate with ease, were as Hernandez of LAX, the MCMG’s, and AJ Styles looked great. The angle of Tomko and AJ working together is finally paying off. This show laid down a great blue print for Bound For Glory. If TNA can produce more overall solid events like No Surrender we may begin to see more of the TNA of old and less of the Russo-riffic.

The Stoppage:
UFC 75 is in the books and has broken the record for the most watched UFC in history. While it was a solid show, some disappointments came along with it.

-Houston Alexander Vs. Alessio Sakara:
All the doubters have been answered for the time being. Joe Rogan exclaimed “Houston Alexander is for real” after just over a minute of action. It seems that Rogan is right. Houston still displayed his like of battling on the feet, but showed that he can finish on the ground. It was a sick knee followed by ground and pound that ended the fight at 1:01 of the first round. Next time we see Houston back in the octagon expect it to be against a more upper tier fighter.

-Paul Taylor Vs. Marcus Davis
Easily the most exciting fight of the night. Davis has been on quite the tear as of late and looked to keep his streak going, but a swift head kick from Taylor looked to have turned the tides. But Davis regained his composure and was able to start reigning down elbows from side control, from there he took the mount and looked to finish, and right when it looked like Taylor was going to slip out Davis secured an arm bar for the win. An excellent display by Marcus Davis and an all around very exciting fight.

-Cheick Kongo Vs. Mirko Cro Cop:
Well, it looks like the loss to Gonzaga has really affected Mirko psychological state in the fight game. Cro Cop looked so tentative here and appeared to be almost afraid to unload on Kongo. Where as Cheick looked better than ever and absolutely picked Mirko apart. I didn’t realize until I saw Cheick put up against Cro Cop just how big of a mofo that this guy is. A very impressive display by Kongo and an extremely disappointing outing by Mirko. At this point I wouldn’t be shocked if Cro Cop were on the prelims next time around.

-Michael Bisping Vs. Matt Hamill:
Wow, even a Bisping fan like me should be able to admit that he didn’t win this fight. He didn’t. While he did look good at times, he did push the pace and was more aggressive in the stand up by round three; Hamill still should have won by unanimous decision. That was obvious when even the fans in London were booing the call.

-Quinton Jackson Vs. Dan Henderson:
This was a very good fight and looked very close at times. That being said, it wasn’t the star-studded war I had hoped for. But both men stayed busy and both looked in control at certain points. Rampage once again came out with his game face on and with good reason, and at the end of the night he could call himself the undisputed Light Heavyweight Champion of the world. I don’t know how much more argumentation you could make, at this point he is the best LHW in the world. Shogun, Chuck and others will soon be gunning for that belt but for the time being I surely hope Rampage is enjoying his status.

Well let me tell you a story, about a place you don’t wanna be at…
This Week’s YouTube Sendoff:

Well that’s it for me this week. In the weeks to come we’ve got Ultimate Fight Night Live and the premier of The Ultimate Fighter, UFC 76, The TPI, and Bound For Glory so we MMA/Wrestling fans have got our plates full all that will be covered right here on BOTR.

As always feedback and questions are welcome at [email protected]. Any and all will be addressed here on next week’s column.