wrestling / Video Reviews
Dark Pegasus Video Review: Ring of Honor — Proving Ground
March 14, 2008 | Posted by
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| Ring of Honor — Proving Ground by J.D. Dunn The YRR are Kenny King & Jason Blade, the FIP Tag Champions. Pelle is returning from an injury after the Hangman 3 attacked him. Blade hits Edwards with a few flashy moves, but Edwards chops him down. Blade freaks out and tags in Kenny (you might remember him from Tough Enough). King no-sells Pelle’s wristlock and turns him inside out with a clothesline. Pelle plays face-in-peril. King hits him with a uranage backbreaker, but Pelle hits a surprise DDT and makes the hot tag to Edwards. Edwards knocks Blade silly with a Backpack Stunner and powerbombs Pelle on him for two. King makes the save and enzuigiris Edwards off the top rope. Sweet! That sets up a Dominator/DDT combo (not sure if it has a name) from the YRR at 8:21. Solid enough for an opener. The YRR will make a good addition if they become regulars, although they kind of have Sweet ‘n’ Sour in the same role. **1/4 Thatcher looks significantly yummier than I remember. They take it to the mat early, but Thatcher takes over with a sideslam. A suplex gets two. Haze reverses an O’Connor Roll for two and hits a missile dropkick for two more. Thatcher reverses a waistlock and drops Daizee on her head with a German Suplex. Daizee gets serious, hits the heart punch, and finishes with the Mind Trip at 4:43. Not bad, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me. The mat wrestling didn’t go anywhere, and it feels a little desperate when wrestlers do those mat sequences just to tell the audience, “Hey, we’re versatile!” ** Talk about a difference in styles. Ruckus always bothers me because everything he does seems overly choreographed – and this is a guy in a stable with Jack Evans! Claudio tries to ground him in between European Uppercuts, which goes okay for a while. The crowd cheers every move Claudio makes. Huh. Boston is Castagnoli Country? Ruckus tries his roll-through suplex, but Claudio counters to his own suplex. Ruckus blocks the Ricolabomb and hits a moonsault legdrop. Claudio catches that, though, and turns it into a Giant Swing. Big pop for that. Claudio finishes with an uppercut forearm at 9:55. I’m still not sure why Ruckus is so highly regarded when he’s just as spotty and inconsistent as the highly disregarded Special K guys. Claudio dominated most of the match, so it wasn’t so bad. Ruckus added a lot of moves starting with “rolling” and “flipping.” **1/2 Sweeney lets us know that Chris Hero injured himself while trying to break the record for consecutive backflips. Claudio wants to wrestle Puder, but Sweeney won’t let it happen. Mike Bennett comes out to try his hand. Puder quickly makes him tap with a leglock at 0:22. So much for Bennett. 1/4* Danielson has nothing better to do, so he calls out Albright. Albright is unimpressed with Danielson’s reputation. Well, that was his first mistake. He says he won’t shake Danielson’s hand until Dragon proves himself worthy by beating him. This goes as you might expect, with Albright using power moves early and Danielson getting progressively more pissed off and nastier. The tide turns as Danielson goes up, but Albright just shoves him off. Danielson bangs his shoulder on the way down, so Albright has his opening to go after the arm. Albright actually shows personality, beating Danielson down in the corner and professing that he has ’til five. Danielson comes back with a missile dropkick and kips up (with his bad arm). He hits a tope and peppers Albright with kicks. Albright catches him out of nowhere with a cross armlock. Danielson reverses to Cattle Mutilation and the Trapped Elbows. He’s using the injured elbow, though, so he can’t get the win. Instead, he hops on Albright’s back and tries from that position. Albright knocks him down and applies the Crowbar, but Danielson escapes quickly. Albright applies Cattle Mutilation. What a cheeky bastard he’s turning into. Danielson blocks a superplex but misses the diving headbutt. A Half-Nelson Suplex gets two, and Albright presses Danielson into the Crowbar. Danielson rolls through and counters to the Triangle Choke. He adds some elbows (with the good elbow), and that’s enough to get the win at 18:35. Albright still refuses to shake hands. He showed significantly more personality here than usual. Hopefully, that’s a sign of things to come because he’s in desperate need of ring presence. ***1/4 New tag team champion Jimmy Jacobs explains that Necro is here to soften up Kevin Steen, who is one of his potential challengers. Should an iconoclast like Jacobs really be shilling Necro’s new shirt? Doesn’t that go against the Age of the Fall’s anti-capitalist message? More importantly, why does Necro’s new shirt have an ROH logo on the back of it? Steen charges the ring and blows snot on Lacey. Steen and Necro try to claw at each other, and Necro rolls him up in the ringside mats. He hops on top of the mats, which is one of the sillier spots in wrestling, especially because Prazak now has to say, “Well, er, those mats are actually quite thin.” Necro steals Bobby Cruise’s shoe and beats Steen with it. Back in, they fight over a chair, and Steen turns the struggle into a Codebreaker for two. To the floor, Necro crotches Steen on the railing and sets up some chairs. Steen knocks him back into the chairs and tries a somersault plancha on him, but Necro gets out of the way. Steen crashes on them instead. Back in, Necro sets up more chairs and backbreakers Steen on them. Steen slugs his way off the top rope and hits a Swanton for two. Necro challenges Steen to hit him in the head with a chair, so Steen does. Necro no-sells and challenges him to do it again. Steen winds up… and kicks him in the nuts instead. Good strategy. That sets up the Packaged Piledriver at 14:42. Some street fights are brutal brawls filled with hatred and psychology surrounding the two guys’ efforts to kill each other. Others are just excuses to hit each other with chairs. This alternated between the former and the latter. **3/4 Delirious is back to fun-loving green Delirious. He’s so fun-loving, in fact, that he offers to hump all of the YRR’s chicks. Blade interferes just enough to let Rinauro hiptoss Delirious into the buckle. Sal’s offense isn’t particularly impressive (outside of that cool springboard Pélé), but he’s far more entertaining here than he was as “Saved by the Sal.” Delirious misses Shadows Over Hell and gets tripped up again just long enough for Sal to hit a superkick. Delirious slams Sal onto the YRR. Sal tries to springboard back in, but Delirious rides him down into the cross armlock and segues to the Cobra Stretch for the win at 10:27. I have a stockpile of FIP waiting to be watched, and now that I see this Sal, I might have to take a look sooner rather than later. He looked more comfortable here than in his babyface role and as part of the Embassy. **1/2 Generico has a bee in his bonnet or something because he comes out more aggressively than usual, dropkicking Roderick right in the head off a backdrop attempt. Roddy blocks his charge and takes him down into a bearhug. This match has a hard time getting out of the gate. Nice spot as Strong chops Generico so hard that Generico is able to catch him with a huracanrana because his legs were flying up so high off the force of the chops! Strong blocks the Turnbuckle Brainbuster and hits a lightning legline. He hits a press gutbuster and finishes with the Tiger Driver at 9:18. Never really clicked. **1/4 Steen: (seeing Generico slumped on the floor) Um, Mom, I’m going to have to call you back. (to Becky) What happened? You were supposed to be watching him? Generico: Los – Los Hangmen. Steen: I don’t speak Spanish. This was supposed to be a battle of former Resilience stablemates, but Stevens won the title so they’ve kind of dropped that aspect. ROH also announced that the FIP World title will be a second title (not secondary title) in ROH, which sounds like a HUGE mistake to me. I get that they want to give the title more exposure, but instead of making the FIP Title more important, I fear it will diminish the importance of FIP. Anyway, this is a mirror image of the Danielson/Albright match with Stevens using power moves and Aries using his quickness and cunning. Stevens misses the choo-choo charge. He does hit the press powerslam, though, and tosses Aries over the top to the floor. Aries backdrops him into the crowd and flies off the top onto him. Neither man can make it back into the ring before the 20 count, so the match is a DCOR at 16:07. Stevens says he’s not going to allow that, so he wants referee Paul Turner to restart the match. Aries makes him pay for that with the surprise corner dropkick and the Brainbuster. Stevens gets his knees up to block the 450-splash, though. He counters the Horns of Aries into the TKO for two. Aries blocks the Doctorbomb and counters a suplex to the Horns of Aries. Stevens powers out and hits a lariat. Aries counters a Doctorbomb to a huracanrana, but Stevens stays with it and finally hits the Doctorbomb for the win at 21:06. The last five minutes had as much action as the previous fifteen, and it saved the match from the doldrums. The early part of the match was a missed opportunity as they could have played it as Stevens trying to earn Aries’ respect and show him he made a mistake in breaking up the Resilience, or Stevens could have been resentful and angry about the break-up. Instead, it was more like Stevens reverted to his FIP character who doesn’t have much history with Austin Aries. The last half of the match, though, is excellent. *** Scramble Fall: No tags are necessary in this fall. Everyone hits dives early, leaving Lacey and Mercedes in the ring. Mercedes brawls with her all the way to the back. The Vulture Squad doubleteams one of the Briscoes for a while, and then all hell breaks loose with everyone hitting finishers. Whitmer and Jay team up for a Springboard Doomsday Device on Jack Evans, but Jack reverses to a rana on Whitmer. Albright ends the fun with a Half-Nelson Suplex on Jigsaw to send the V-Squad packing at 5:13. No DQ Fall: The Age isolates Mark; the Hangmen doubleteam Jay. Jimmy Jacobs and BJ Whitmer come face to face and threaten to stab each other to death before Jimmy decides it would be better to eliminate the Briscoes first. The heel teams work together until Black accidentally superkicks Albright. Whitmer gets pissed, tosses him out, and then realizes that he’s alone with the Briscoes. They swarm him and doubleteam BJ. The Age of the Fall has no particular inclination to help him out. Jay hits Whitmer with the Jaydriller, and Mark adds a flying splash off a ladder to eliminate the H3 at 11:48. Tag Title Fall: Mark is loopy, so the Age of the Fall spend the first few minutes of the fall doubleteaming Jay. Mark recovers with a springboard sidekick and the springboard Ace Crusher on Tyler Black. Jay blocks the Contra Code and turns it into a Cradle Falcon Arrow for two. The real Falcon Arrow gets two. Mark sets up for the Cutthroat Driver on Jacobs, but Black makes the save. He tosses Jay into the End Time from Jacobs. Jay powers up, though, and the Briscoes hit the Springboard Doomsday Device on Jacobs. Black makes the save and tosses Mark. That leads to the Contra Code and Phoenix Splash on Jay as the Age retains at 18:54. Wall-to-wall action. ***1/4 |
The 411: This is one of those tweener shows where there isn't really anything bad about it, but there's nothing to go out of your way for either. The wrestling is decent enough, and Gabe seems to be setting up a few things for 2008 here with the YRR and Austin Aries, so this might be worth a look just to see where ROH is headed in '08. Mildly recommended. |
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| Final Score: 6.5 [ Average ] legend |
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