Hitting Below The Beltway 11.11.07: Glory By Honor VI: Night 1

This was the best booked undercard I’ve ever seen

The first half of Glory By Honor VI: Night 1 was incredibly well thought out. This is exactly how to make good use of your undercard. Just to refresh you all on what went down.

Match 1: Kevin Steen and El Generico defeated the Hangmen 3 of Brent Albright and BJ Whitmer. After the match the Hangmen 3 beat down Steenerico with help from Shane Hagadorn.

Match 2: Claudio Castagnoli defeats Hallowicked.

Match 3: Davey Richards defeats Delirious

Match 4: The Briscoes defeat the No Remorse Corp of Roderick Strong and Rocky Romero. After the match the Age of the Fall come out and attack the Briscoes. The Vulture Squad come out to the help the Briscoes leading to….

Match 5: The Age of the Fall defeat the Vulture Squad.

After AotF defeated the Vulture Squad one of the largest brawls I’ve ever seen in pro wrestling broke out. By my count, there were twenty people involved in the brawl and just about all of them got a chance to shine in it, busting out a huge dive or crazy move. The remarkable thing about it was that everyone who was in it belonged in it. The Vulture Squad had issues with AotF and the NRC. Delirious had issues with the NRC and Hangmen 3. Steenerico had issues with the Hangmen. Daizee Haze had issues with Lacey. The Briscoes had issues with the NRC and AotF. The only people featured on the undercard who weren’t in the brawl were Claudio and Hallowicked and they had no logical reason for being in it. Everyone involved came out looking better for being involved in it, particularly the Vulture Squad, who gained some legitimacy for being the last team standing in the ring.

The Stable Wars in ROH are finally starting to heat up

For the past several months I’d been waiting for the stable wars in ROH to build up some momentum. As I sat waiting for the show to begin it seemed like ROH had sort of given up on the stable wars and moved on to other stuff. The Resilience had been decimated, but Austin Aries defeated Roderick Strong solo so that feud seemed resolved.

By the end of the first half of the show it was clear that I was completely wrong about my pre-show assumptions. There are now several strong groups in ROH with the NRC, AotF, the Vulture Squad, the Hangmen 3, the Briscoes and the makeshift group of Delirious and Steenerico. More importantly there is now a ton of heat flying around between the different factions.

At Saturday’s show Austin Aries officially announced that the Resilience has disbanded. A couple of months ago I was concerned that the Resilience was the only face group in ROH. Now with the Briscoes and Delirious/Steenerico in the fray, and the Vulture Squad clearly aligned as faces, the sides have evened out. While I’m a huge Aries fan and have high hopes for Erick Stevens, the Resilience never really caught on. Now Aries is free to focus on challenging for the ROH World Title. It’s good to see that ROH is going to bring Erick Stevens back. Stevens has a ton of potential and it would be great to see him come back looking for vengeance on Aries for abandoning him. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Stevens emerge as a serious contender for the ROH World Title by late 2008.

Bryan Danielson has the best crowd interactions in all of pro-wrestling

When Bryan Danielson first started out in Ring of Honor he was received tons of praise for his wrestling, but was criticized for being bland and lacking charisma. I first saw Danielson in the three-way at Era of Honor Begins he didn’t particularly stand out to me. He seemed like a very solid wrestler, but being mostly a WWE-watcher at the time, he seemed to lack any sort of flash. He wore awful plain white trunks and didn’t have any of the flashy moves that Low-Ki and Christopher Daniels showed off in the match.

Since returning to Ring of Honor to win the ROH World Title at Glory By Honor IV, Danielson has been dramatically improved. He’s gotten better in the ring, but it’s the other parts of his came where he has really made huge strides. It starts with his entrance. Under normal circumstances, a wrestler coming out to Europe’s The Final Countdown would seem totally ridiculous, but Danielson has gotten it totally over. It’s amazing to see a crowd of 1,000 singing along to Final Countdown. Europe can’t even get that kind of reaction for Final Countdown anymore. It’s a credit to Danielson’s overall awesomeness that he seemingly chose a joke of a song, just to make the crowd love it out of its association with him.

Dragon’s promos are solid, but it’s his interactions with the crowd where he really shines. Nobody in ROH comes close to having as many signature chants as Dragon. When he shouts “best in the world!”, the whole crowd shouts along with him. Whenever he locks in an illegal hold the crowd joins him informing the officials that “I have until five, referee!” And there is no chant in wrestling that comes close to matching the uniqueness and originality of “You’re gonna get your fuckin’ head kicked in!”

Nigel McGuinness is one tough son of a gun, may be too tough for his own good

Assuming Nigel’s torn bicep is legit, which I believe it is, then it took a tons of guts for him to come out and wrestle against Chris Hero. Torn muscles are extremely painful and wrestling puts you in serious danger of making them worse. Considering the extent of his injury, Nigel was able to put on a very solid match with Hero. They did a great job of playing off the fact that Nigel couldn’t use his good arm, and thus couldn’t throw his trademark lariats. They really had the crowd believing that Hero was about to win the title. I’d say Nigel did a great job selling the arm, but I don’t know if selling is an accurate term if you’re actually in pain.

While I admire Nigel’s toughness and desire to prove himself to the fans, I’m concerned about the effects that wrestling injured could have on him. Any time you work injured you run the risk of injuring yourself even further, possibly doing permanent damage to your body and your career. More distressing, is that given what we’ve seen lately in the wrestling business, a wrestler attempting to work through pain is likely using painkillers to help him do so. I’m not accusing Nigel of anything as I don’t know him personally and have no inside information, but it’s an unfortunately common-place occurrence in the business we all care about so much. The best thing for Nigel health-wise would be to get the surgery and take the time off to properly rehab his arm, but that would require several months off from wrestling during which he would not be paid and he may not have the health insurance to cover it. Nigel may not have many options, but I don’t want to see him added to the long list of wrestlers who passed before their time.

Davey Richards has been getting too much criticism from ROH fans

Richards came into ROH getting a huge push as a face. After repeatedly defeating Jimmy Rave and becoming KENTA’s American protégé, Richards began receiving a backlash from ROH fans who felt he was being shoved down their throats. After stagnating for a while Richards turned heel, joining Roderick Strong and Rocky Romero in the NRC. It was definitely the right move to turn Richards heel as he’d grown stale as a face and has the natural arrogance and cockiness that makes him hateable.

Still, even after his heel turn Richards is still taking a lot of crap from ROH fans. Some of the criticism he’s taken has been deserved, but a lot of it isn’t. Richards is only 24 and has only been wrestling for 3 years now, so it’s not surprising he still has things he needs to work on. His selling isn’t great and his facials still need work, but he’s also got a lot going for him. He’s an outstanding technician with a great moveset. He brings tremendous intensity to every match he wrestles and his style fits perfectly with the gimmick of the No Remorse Corps. I haven’t seen him have any bad matches since Death Before Dishonor IV against AJ Styles. His match at Glory By Honor VI: Night 1against Delirious was a very good back and forth match. Davey showed signs of understanding how to work the crowd during brawl. Instead of just joining everyone else in breaking out a huge dive, Davey signaled for the shooting star press and went to the top rope before coming back down and mocking the fans for falling for the fake-out. This really drew the ire of fans and did a lot more for him as a heel than piling on to the parade of dives would have. That’s a smart, veteran move. I expect to see him continue to improve and eventually live up to the extremely high expectations placed on him when he first entered ROH.

Misawa may have been the big draw, but KENTA and Marufuji stole the show

Going into the Misawa/KENTA vs. Morishima/Marufuji match, I was really wondering what kind of match Misawa was going to put on. While he is undoubtedly one of the best wrestlers of all time, age and injury have taken their toll on him and he’s been known to phone it in on occasion. Misawa coming to ROH seemed be far more about Misawa honoring the ROH fans with his mere presence, than about the actual match.

Of the four men in the match, Misawa spent by far the least amount of time in the ring. That makes sense given Misawa’s age and the big singles match he had the following night against KENTA. Misawa put in a good effort when he was in the ring and was solid overall. However, the real stars of match were KENTA and Marufuji. The segments between the two juniors were off the charts. They were so fast and sharp with all their moves that it was like watching a scene out of the Matrix. I really hope to someday see a singles match between the two of them in ROH. Marufuji has moved into the elite class of wrestlers, where he needs to seriously be considered amongst the best in the world. He’s a great worker and I was impressed with how funny he was, especially considering he speaks little to no English.

I would have liked to see the match have a decisive outcome, but it didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the experience much. The biggest problem was that it was pretty obvious in the last ten minutes it became pretty obvious that the match was going to a draw. At 25 minutes the match didn’t seem to be approaching a finish. Misawa didn’t get the hot tag until about 29 minutes and 30 seconds expired. Even if he’d run straight in, hit a finisher and went for the cover he probably wouldn’t have been able to score the pin. It was still a very good match, even with the lack of drama at the end. It’s unfortunate that such a good experience had to end with a “bullshit” chant from an otherwise good crowd. My motivation for going, and I believe that of most of the fans, was to get to see a legend first-hand. And from that perspective, I was totally satisfied with the experience. It didn’t match the amazing event that was Samoa Joe vs. Kenta Kobashi, but it was still great stuff.

Philly had a great crowd, aside from a few wise-ass smarks

The larger than usual crowd in Philadelphia was hot all night-long. ROH made a good decision sending Steen and Generico out to start the show, because they got the crowd going right off the bat. The only time the crowd was really quiet was during the Mitch Franklin/Ernie Osiris match, which was mainly just there to get the fans back in their seats after intermission.

As usual in ROH, the biggest problem with the crowd was the few wise-ass smarks who felt the need to draw attention to themselves. These are the people who give ROH fans a bad name. Cheering for the heels doesn’t make you cool. Shouting rude comments at wrestlers who are busting their asses and risking their health doesn’t make you cool. And shouting racist jokes at guys who have flown 5,000 miles to entertain you definitely doesn’t make you cool.