411’s Buy or Sell 04.11.08: Hero Leaving Sweet ‘n Sour, El Generico, Briscoes vs. MCMG, and more!

Ryan Byers : SELL . . . . at least I hope not. Larry Sweeney is going to be entertaining no matter who you stick him with, and Chris Hero is going to be entertaining no matter who you stick him with. In that regard, I can see the company wanting to split the two up, as that way you can get a decent angle out of each instead of concentrating two awesome personalities in the same storyline. However, they work together so well that I think it’d be a damn shame to end this perfect union. That means if I want to see Sweeney I’ll more than likely also have to watch Adam Pearce, which is not something that I’m sure I want to do. (Plus the custody battle over Bobby Dempsey would be far too messy.) So, I don’t want them to do it. Will they do it? Fortunately, I doubt that my fears will be realized. I can’t see Hero ever being a face in Ring of Honor, and it would be bizarre for Sweeney to become a good guy so quickly after aligning himself with a new batch of baddies. I suppose you could technically have them go their separate ways with both guys remaining heels, but what would the fun in that be?

Matt Short : SELL . Not by the end of the month, but I do feel as though the storyline is heading in that direction. Sweeney has been finding new friends to play with and with Hero being the egomaniac that he is probably not going to be real happy that he won’t be the center of the universe anymore. Under the right circumstances though Hero could be turned face to fight against the Sweet ‘n Sour Inc take over. Yeah, it’s a huge longshot but Hero has been a heel in the East Coast indies for so long that I think some people forget how good he can be at playing a face. He’s just as good at playing the sympathetic face as he is playing the asshole heel. If he does leave SnS Inc though, I will miss the “Chris is awesome!” entrance music.

1 for 1.

Ryan Byers : BUY . The fact that this question even has to be asked puts one of my least favorite aspects of ROH on full display. In theory, there shouldn’t be a problem with a guy wrestling a street fight the night before he wrestles in a regular singles match for the World Title. Why? Because professional wrestling IS A WORK. Two men should be able to have a street fight with one another with the risk of injury increasing only marginally. Unfortunately, guys like Steen, Butcher, and numerous other indy wrestlers decided that it would be a good idea to actually brutalize each other instead of working together. Do this for long enough, you’re practically required to force these men to hit each other as hard as they can and do numerous other stupid spots in order to get a crowd reaction. As such, the risk of injury goes up, and the risk of the company not being able to follow through on its scheduled World Title match goes up. Just tone down the style and this sort of thing wouldn’t be an issue.

Matt Short : BUY . I can see where they’re going by booking this match before the World Title shot. Steen can lose and claim that he wasn’t 100% when he faced McGuinness because of the brutality of the street fight. But Ryan hit the nail on the head with this: there’s a very real chance that Steen won’t have to sell any injuries because the style of match he’s about to work with Necro Butcher pretty much demands that he kill himself in order to get a crowd reaction. Just look at how this weekend has already been changed due to the head injury to Aries. And the last thing ROH needs is to risk canceling another promised title match on the same weekend.

2 for 2.

Ryan Byers : SELL . Maybe it’s just me, but I think that Steen actually needs to get AWAY from Generico, not closer to him. Even though ROH takes tag team wrestling far more seriously than any major American wrestling promotion of the last ten years, I think that there is still a general perception among fans that a wrestler can’t be a high level singles threat if he’s a “tag team guy.” Thus, if the company wants audiences to take Steen seriously in the ROH Title picture, the promotion should send the unequivocal message that any association between Steen and Generico is over and done with. If you want to do a cute little singles feud as a nod to their days as a team down the road, fine. However, at this stage of Steen’s development as a single in ROH, the focus needs to be on his present and his future and not on his past.

Matt Short : BUY . Okay, the title match is already shot, so to me you’d be better off giving the fans an exciting match and from the way the match is structured now El Generico is the guy I most want to see face Nigel McGuinness. No, he’d have no chance of winning but you could get a lot of drama out of the match since fans are very connected to Generico. I imagine you’d get something to the effect of the Danielson/Delirious series and add extra heat to Steen’s title match. I also don’t think it’s time to start breaking up Generico and Steen. If Steen doesn’t win the title, he still can win tag team gold with Generico to keep his promise to win ROH gold in 2008. I don’t think he’s going to win the ROH title, but he and Generico are perfect to be champions. Fans are really into their chase and want them to win it. While matches following a break-up between Steen and Generico would be a lot of fun, it’s been overdone at this point. Keep ’em together.

2 for 3.

[Editor’s Note: More coverage of ROH’s big weekend shows is available in the newest podcast over at The Cool Kids’ Table Dot Net.]

SWITCH~!

Matt Short : SELL . The Briscoes don’t need to be tag team champions to be over and they definitely don’t need to be champions to sell this match to fans. The selling point of this match is their previous encounter which received very high praise. They won when the belts were on the line because that was what The Briscoes did through 2007. Because they’re not champions now that adds an extra layer of drama to the match where you don’t know who is actually going to win. If Mark and Jay have the belts I’ll bet that the rematch will be for the titles and we can all guess who would probably win that. Even if MCMG were to win a title match it would just mean ROH would have to shell out more money to book them again down the line. While people might want to see more of Sabin and Shelley in ROH, they don’t need to be handing money to TNA and putting over guys they can’t show on PPV. Also, the belts should stay with the NRC and stay within the frame of the faction wars. It gives some direction to all these stables and a reason for them to fight each other.

Ryan Byers : SELL . Matt hit the nail on the head in just about every regard. Even though the No Remorse Corps has on several occasions bored me within an inch of my life, it makes far more sense in this situation for them to walk away with the straps. Besides, unless I’m mistaken, a big part of the reason that the Briscoes lost the championship in the first place was that they had done virtually everything that a team could do as champions. Nothing in the division has changed to give the brothers new challenges or new storylines while holding the straps, so the change would be pointless both in the long and short terms.

3 for 4.

Matt Short : BUY . I buy this statement, but I would take out the “didn’t deserve” part. Strong and Stevens are in the middle of a blood feud that escalated in Orlando. Their focus should be on each other and their story would have taken away from the overall point of the match which is winning the ROH World Title. So I wouldn’t really say they don’t deserve title shots, but they shouldn’t have been booked together in this match in the first place. Their feud was more or less going to be used as a sideshow to the Aries and McGuinness interaction. I do feel that changing the match probably meant that something big was going to happen if they didn’t want the match to go forward with only one guy out of it. At the same time it doesn’t say much for Stevens’ and Strong’s positions in the match.

Ryan Byers : SELL . Multi-man title matches in which some participants have no chance at winning due to their extracurricular activities are booked all the time in wrestling. (Be it ROH or elsewhere.) Does that mean that the participants who are taken out of the equation by other angles don’t “deserve” title shots? Not really. It just means that they’re occupied by something else. Though a title reign for Erick Stevens would be a bit premature at this point, he certainly wouldn’t be the worst guy on the roster to put the belt on. Hell, if you ranked everybody in that regard, he probably wouldn’t even be in the lower half of the list. Strong, though many people seem to think that he peaked during his series of matches with Danielson and has just gone downhill since, still has enough credibility that I think he could pull off a brief reign.

3 for 5.

Matt Short : BUY . I’m a big Ibushi fan so I very much want to see him return in the future. I think he will be able to impress the fans since he’s got a lot of the things that Ring of Honor fans like. He hits hard and he does flips and best of all, he’s been improving himself so that he relies a lot less on high spots to get through a match. Ibushi is very good for a young Japanese indy worker and if he performs at the level he did in the NTV Cup Finals at the Budokan last year he will definitely leave a good impression and be invited back. Of course he could always fall victim to the PAC effect and choke. I don’t think that will be a problem since he’s used to the big match environment.

Ryan Byers : BUY . Unlike Short, I have yet to see Ibushi work. What can I say, my puro viewing in general has been significantly down over the last several months. I’m sorry. However, he has been getting very good reviews from a larger number of people whose opinions I respect, which means that he’ll in all likelihood have a fine match with Claudio and that he may even be able to drag something good out of Davey Richards, who hasn’t exactly been lighting my world on fire lately. Besides, ROH management seem to be marks for all things Japanese, so, once they get their hooks into Ibushi, they’ll probably try to drag him back at all costs.

4 for 6!

The fifty-first edition of BUY or SELL finishes at 4 for 6. Stay tuned for next week when two new men will go head to head with a whole new set of topics.