The Best Of The Rest 12.03.08: Volume 68 – The Essentials – ROH Good Times, Great Memories

Event:
ROH Good Times, Great Memories
April 28, 2007
Chicago, IL

Event Card:
Colt Cabana Vs. Adam Pearce
ROH World Tag Team Title Match:The Briscoes Bros (c) Vs. The Murder City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin)
ROH World Title Match:Takeshi Morishima (c) Vs. Shingo
Roderick Strong Vs. Jack Evans
Rocky Romero Vs. Austin Aries
Christopher Daniels Vs. Erick Stevens
Tank Toland Vs. Alex Payne
Homicide Vs. Brent Albright Vs. BJ Whitmer Vs. Jimmy Rave
Gran Akuma Vs. Delirious Vs. Jigsaw Vs. Hallowicked Vs. Mike Quackenbush Vs. Pelle Primeau

Event Highs:
Where to start? The opening Six Man Mayhem match featured ROH newcomers Gran Akuma, Jigsaw, Hallowicked, and most importantly Mike Quackenbush. Quack has been one of the best wrestlers on the indies for years and it was really special to see him in an ROH ring and the fans reacted as such. The match was decent, but was rather over-shadowed by the presence of the new talent. Christopher Daniels and Erick Stevens had a solid match with a memorable ending (more on that in a bit). Rocky Romero and Austin Aries has an intense, competitive contest, but that is to be expected with these two. Roderick Strong gave Jack Evans entire body an Indian Rug burn. The ROH World Title match had a lot of significance heading into it, being that it was a Pro Wrestling NOAH guy Vs. a Dragon Gate guy, but on paper it looked iffy. Takeshi Morishima and Shingo put on a title match that was 100% better than most were expecting. No one gave Shingo a chance, rightfully so, but there actually points in the match that people were buying into the idea that he might pull off the upset. I wasn’t expecting much at all, so imagine my surprise when I saw how well this battle of behemoths turned out. Moving on we had the epic tag team showdown between the Briscoes and the Murder City Machine Guns, I’ll go into detail about that in a moment. Finally we had the perfect sendoff match for Colt Cabana as he took on the always entertaining Adam Pearce. “Scrap Iron” played the old school heel to absolute perfection in this match. Post-match we got a great farewell speech from Colt and that was a wrap. It has all the ingredients you could want for a professional wrestling show and, like I said, in my opinion it turned out to be one of the best shows ROH has ever put on.

Event Lows:
I’m for sure not one of that fans that thinks that nothing on ROH shows isn’t worth-while or that ROH can do no wrong, but I was hard-pressed to find the low points of this DVD. I’ve never been a fan Tank Toland and I thought his bit/match on the event was pretty bad. I also felt that the Four Corner Survival wasn’t as good as it could have been. Given the talent involved I expected a little bit more than what we got. Other than that there weren’t too many lulls in the event and I have a hard time complaining about the event given how well it turned out.

Match Of The Event: Briscoes Vs. Shelley & Sabin
When this match was first announced many fans were salivating at the mere notion of it. It was one of those matches that you could not wait until. And when the time had finally arrived the anticipation was at a fever pitch. Both teams had cut some good promos prior to the match, but the time for talking was over, dare I say… it was time to MAN UP? This match just had a great blend of classic and new-school tag team formulas. We started off slow and methodical and the match just kept building and building and building until an explosion of action happened and the match kept going 200 MPH for the rest of its duration. Whatever you like in a tag team match, it’s all here. Like technical wrestling? They did it. Brawling? They did it. High flying, (sick) double-team moves, false-finishes, etc. it was all represented in this one. These four took this match to a level that I didn’t think they could reach, and they gave us a top runner for MOTY in ’07. The event is very solid on its own, but this match took it to a “must own” status. If you haven’t seen this match (or event) yet, put this DVD at the top of your wish list for Santa.

Promo Of The Event:
Christopher Daniels hands down took this award home for the night. After he wrestled Erick Stevens to a time-limit draw Stevens wanted five more minutes but was denied by Daniels because Daniels had something “to get off his chest.” Daniels says that he should have never returned to ROH. It had been 2 years since his return to the company and he felt that he had been taken for granted by the company and by the fans, and that is pretty much true. Daniels talks about when he and Matt Sydal won the tag titles the fans didn’t give a shit and just viewed them as transitional champs, which is also true. He goes on to ask the fans “Why did you give up on me when I never gave up on you?” Then he asks “was it TNA?” which received a huge amount of heat. After this Daniels completely runs down the fans and makes plenty of valid points: he says just because he was in TNA doesn’t mean he didn’t bust his ass when he worked ROH – True, he says that the only people that truly believe there is a rivalry between TNA and ROH are the ROH fans – True, and he says that he made the right decision in the first place choosing TNA over ROH – True. From here he incites the fans by stating the reasons that TNA is superior to ROH, he even went as far as to say “Why don’t you take my bank statement and compare it to Bryan Danielson’s bank statement?” and “Do you think I can feed my daughter because you idiots chant *this is awesome*?” Shit was intense. He closes by saying he won’t stay in ROH because he knows the fans will use him up and forget him just like they did with Samoa Joe and CM Punk. The fans start the “na, na, na, na hey, hey, hey goodbye” chant, just further validating everything that Daniels had been saying about the fans and their demeanor. All of the emotion Daniels expressed in this promo seemed legit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. At this point in time the ROH fans were reaching their worst with the ROH > everything ever business and many other fans and many of the wrestlers were growing tired of it. Christopher Daniels is one of the absolute best professional wrestlers in the world he was looked at as inconsequential by the ROH fans, no doubt about it, and that was a huge injustice. Of course look at where he is at today, but that’s another topic for another day. Whether this promo was scripted, from the heart, or both it truly was epic and was something that needed to be said. This DVD is worth checking out alone for this promo.

MVP(s) Of The Event:
Without question Mark & Jay Briscoe along with Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin took home these honors. Many fans knew these four were going to deliver something memorable but I’m not sure anyone could have foreseen the bout turning out as amazing as it did. I don’t think those who give this match five stars are out of line in anyway. As I said this match single-handedly took “Good Times, Great Memories” from a great event to an absolutely must-see show. These four deserves tons of praise for giving us one of the best wrestling matches in the world in the year of 2007.

Well that’s it for me this week.

I’ll see you right back here next week for another edition of “The Best Of The Rest: Used To Perfection.”

Remember feedback, as always, is welcome at [email protected] or directly below.

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