THIS MEANS WAR

October 29, 2005

Life is full of surprises, and if there’s one thing that pro wrestling always manages to do it’s attempt to surprise their fans. It’s to the point where we expect to get swerved, just to see how the bookers try to make logic out of the nonsensical turn of events. And even ROH, the beacon of ‘real’ pro wrestling in the U.S. manages to surprise us now and then.

Alex Shelley . . . surprises us with tearing down the house with an amazingly fun pure wrestling match.

Austin Aries . . . surprises us with a disappointing showing in a ‘dream match’ with AJ Styles.

Curry Man . . . pleasantly surprises us by once again showing up when Christopher Daniels couldn’t make it.

ALEX SHELLEY vs. CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI

If you’re looking for a hot opener, full of fun stuff, then you won’t be disappointed. The Nigel McGuiness promo before the match starts granting Claudio a Pure Title shot if he doesn’t lose, and praising Shelley as a great pure wrestler, perfectly sets the stage for the match. With the Embassy/Generation Next feud still in full swing, Shelley hasn’t had much use for pure wrestling lately, and with the champion endorsing him, it shows that he can still actually wrestle when he needs to. Claudio is gunning for the Pure Title, so he’d damn well better show he’s capable of holding it. So the first ten or so minutes of this are mostly spent on the mat with both of them working fun and creative submissions, with equally fun and creative counters, with some lighthearted comedy tossed in as well. No, the work doesn’t really *go* anywhere, but it’s useful in terms of characterization.

The only altogether odd parts come when Shelley reverts back to being his usual heel self, and the mat exhibition is traded in for the bigger moves. It’s not completely without merit, showing that they’re both accomplished on the mat, but the goal here is for Shelley to beat Claudio to cost him his title shot, and Shelley obviously wasn’t going to be able to do that on the mat. But at the same time, it doesn’t come off as well as the work on the mat did. Thankfully the action is clean and the playing field is totally level. Claudio does work in a few big moves of his own, and the twenty minute time limit runs out before he can hit the Ricola Bomb, but he doesn’t come off looking equal to Shelley, and at the same time was never really behind the 8-ball so to speak, which are the two main purposes of going broadway. Of course Nigel attacks Claudio afterwards, and bloodies him up with the iron, to heat up their future title match. ***

JASON BLADE/KID MIKAZE vs. AZRIEAL/DAVEY ANDREWS

Aside from a bunch of dives, and a couple of nice double teams by Blade and Mikaze, this really doesn’t show that it serves any great purpose. It’s not given too terribly long to begin with, and Andrews and Azrieal had never teamed up before (or since for that matter), and are both as far down the ROH pecking order as it gets, so putting them over an actual tag team (one with matching gear no less) doesn’t make much sense. Azrieal and Andrews both working a bit stiff is nice in a ‘welcome to ROH’ kind of way, and the nasty German suplex by Andrews to set up Azrieal’s double stomp is a brutal finish. But they don’t show anything in the way of teamwork. The whole thing mostly comes off looking like a mess, with the clear message of “New guys do the job.”

RICKY REYES vs. MITCH FRANKLIN

I like Mitch Franklin. At Dragon Gate Invasion, my buddy and I were banging the guardrail so hard during the main event, that we knocked the ROH banner down, and Mitch had to fix it. That story is more fascinating that this match, that’s for sure. Ricky was still squashing students here. Which only led up to him jobbing to Austin Aries a couple of times. The inverted suplex segued to the Dragon sleeper was cool though.

NIGEL McGUINESS vs. NOSAWA vs. KIKUTARO vs. BJ WHITMER (Four Corner Survival)

Like most of these matches, they don’t have a real purpose other than to fill the card. Why ROH even bothered bringing in NOSAWA and Kikutaro is beyond me. They only worked this show, and didn’t even do anything of real importance. Considering the underhanded way in which Nigel retained his Pure Title over Whitmer the month before, a non-title revenge match would have sufficed just fine, especially now that Whitmer has Lacey in his corner. The match itself only has two real themes to it. Kikutaro’s comedy, and the exchanges between Nigel/Whitmer. Kikutaro’s comedy is always welcome, and the ref impression and Flair impressions are hilarious. The Whitmer/Nigel exchanges are stiff, and Dave and Lenny imply some hostility from their previous singles match, but they don’t do anything else to go that route. Nigel pulling NOSAWA out of the ring is a dead giveaway that the finish is coming up, and indeed it’s almost right after that when Whitmer hits the Exploder for the win. We don’t even get a Claudio run-in to play off the earlier angle. Which only serves to make this about ten minutes of filler.

AJ STYLES vs. AUSTIN ARIES

As far as first time matches in ROH between two big names go, this isn’t as disappointing as James Gibson vs. Samoa Joe from June turned out to be. That said, its still got some rather glaring flaws considering it’s between two workers who are known for their rather high-end work. As far as athletic ability goes, they’re both extremely talented, but their athletic skills don’t translate well in terms of putting a match together. Shelley and Claudio did a much better job of establishing that they’re equal to each other, with a lot more simple offense and not being nearly as familiar with one another.

Aries aggravating his back from his initial injury as Survival of the Fittest isn’t a bad idea in theory. But it’s quickly negated when you consider that Aries worked a physical match with Bryan Danielson and an intense six man street fight just two weeks prior to this without any problems at all. The focus shifting to Aries back came more or less out of left field, without any hint of it. Aries does a fine job of selling his back, *when* he’s selling his back. Which is the major detriment to the match. Aries is simply way too inconsistent about it, struggling with the brainbuster makes sense, but then he can pull off a fisherman plex without any problem? Changing up his execution of the Finaly roll was a smart move, but then he’s rolling across the ring to hit a shoulder block in the corner without any trouble. Aries countering the Torture Rack to the Crucifix bomb was nicely executed, but also ignored the back. Styles work on Aries’ back could have been much more heelish, but he was good about things like exaggerating the backbreakers to make it look more effective. AJ forgoing the contrived pele kick in favor of simply blasting Aries in the back would have made for some nice moments. Aries blasting Styles between the eyes in order to finally hit the brainbuster worked well enough.

The backward Styles Clash off the ropes makes for a unique looking finish, but it doesn’t really gel that well with rest of the match. AJ not spending every moment on offense working Aries’ back is fine, but at the same time AJ wasn’t showing that he had his own real strategy either. It makes the finish look like the result of AJ simply being in the right place at the right time, rather than being the logical end of the story.

COLT CABANA vs. B-BOY

The booking here is almost blatantly obvious, but Colt and B-Boy are still able to make the road to the eventuality a fun one. B-Boy isn’t given the chance to show off a whole lot in terms of wrestling, it makes sense given his capacity as Homicide’s hired thug for the night, and it’s a pleasant surprise to see him bring a few nice spots to the match with him, including a near fall from a roll-up, against the master of the roll-up. For his part, Colt does a nice job of combating B-Boy’s brawling with actual wrestling, with several roll-ups and a couple of nice submissions. In essence, he’s using experience from his last big feud to help him during this one. It’s also not Colt Cabana without a little comedy thrown in there, as well as a bit of interference by Julius Smokes, although both of those things play relatively minor roles. Cabana getting the win with the lariat sends a message to Homicide, despite negating Colt’s strategy of wrestling to combat the brawling. Although to be fair, I don’t think wrestling is supposed to be at the forefront of Cabana’s mind.

JAY LETHAL vs. CURRY MAN

Who replaced the wrestling DVD with the deranged episode of Star Search? The match being more or less stopped in favor of everyone busting a move isn’t really bad. It’s entertaining for sure, and it shuts the crowd up, who’d been screaming for dancing ever since the bell rang. When they do finally get on with wrestling, the match is mostly a spotfest. Curry Man works over Lethal’s back for a bit in the early going, but it never really goes anywhere. Lethal pulls off some nice spots of his own, specifically a nice springboard rana, and a big tope, but it doesn’t seem like either of them had a specific game plan they were working toward. There is some slight build to the Dragon suplex in the form of Curry Man countering several attempts at it, before Lethal finally hits it. But that’s a fairly basic concept of pro wrestling. It’s nice to see Curry Man making his appearances both sporadic and memorable, but this is memorable more for the copious amounts of dancing, rather than the actual match.

Now this is how you end a show on a high note. Two workers who’s only prior interaction was a congratulatory handshake at the previous show, turn a dream match for ROH fans, into a rabid, intense fight. And make one of ROH’s most popular wrestlers ever into the biggest heel in the building as a result. Roderick essentially has three things going for him. His backbreakers, his chops, and the fact that he’s one of the most popular ROH workers. But when it comes down to it, that’s all he has to offer, not to worry though, because Danielson proves that he really is among the best in the world, and builds the entire match around those simple three concepts. The result is something akin to KENTA and SUWA’s GHC Title match, an amazing performance with the match being very little else than an exhibition of how to work as a heel. And Danielson is right up there with SUWA for best heel performance in a single match.

When you take the backbreaker from the equation, Strong isn’t left with much to use. That’s okay though because Danielson has plenty of offense to spare, and he’s awesome about making sure nothing is put to waste, whatever he does has a clear intention or meaning behind it, although in some cases (the missed diving headbutt for example) it’s not the meaning he was gunning for. A great example of this is Danielson’s constant yanking on Roderick’s nose. It seems like a simple throwback to old school heels, who did that almost mandatorily. Initially it doesn’t seem like Danielson is doing it for any other reason that to piss off the fans, and hurt Roderick. But then he starts viciously cross facing Roderick right across the nose, and due to all the yanking and tugging he did, it makes them that much more effective. Danielson working over Roderick’s arm before changing up his game plan to being simply hurting him just to get under his and the crowd’s skin, didn’t last long, but the two major spots he did both manage to leave a lasting impression. And the sudden armbar finish, makes it obvious that he didn’t use them for nothing.

No, Strong doesn’t get much offense in, and it doesn’t hurt the match in the least. In fact the only weak parts here are when Strong is getting offense, because with a few exceptions, it takes away from the great story that Danielson was laying out. One big exception is the first attempt at the Stronghold, with Danielson blocking with everything he had, and after being put through the ringer for so long, Strong is quite visibly upset and kicking Danielson in the back in order to break his block and apply the hold. Roderick’s main offense in the match is his chops, and Danielson really goes all out when putting them over. Danielson will light up Roderick with several hard chops, and when Strong fires back, Danielson bolts to the floor. Strong also does have his famous backbreakers, and he does manage to rattle a few of them off, to set up the Stronghold, and when Danielson starts sharking the knees after his Surfboard fake out (another famous spot of his that seems mandatory at first), those are quickly taken out of the equation. Danielson’s game plan is simple, he simply broke Roderick down at every turn, and managed to execute each part of almost perfectly.

Of course no matter what Danielson does to circumvent Roderick’s wrestling moves, nothing that he does changes the fact that the fans simply love the guy. So Danielson plays off it by going the other way and simply being as obscene as he can. He flaunts the fact that Fat Pants has to count to five before he can disqualify him for bending the rules (which has since caught on as a hugely popular catchphrase). He steals the Ole-Ole kick since Joe isn’t at the show. And he pisses off the fans at every turn. When they request he bring the action toward them, he flips them the bird. When they chant disparaging remarks at him, he hands it back to them. In effect the fans are ultimately what leads Roderick to his short run of offense that brings him seemingly seconds away from the title, they already love Strong and with Danielson going the other way, they just get behind the challenger even more. Danielson could probably work this style of a match with anyone, but Strong’s popularity is what makes it come off so good.

I’m not personally a fan of attempts to blur the line between work and shoot. But the finish here did an awesome job of it. The fact that Danielson and Strong had been leveling each other at hard as can be for the better part of thirty minutes, makes it unbelievable that a simple forearm would have really knocked out Danielson legit. Roderick’s inability to turn him over could easily have been explained by his arm being worked over before, instead of simply him not being able to do it. Especially when we’ve seen things like Spike Dudley roll over Big Sal in ECW, or Kurt Angle roll through to give Big Show an Ankle Lock. The look of anger on Danielson’s face when he “comes to” is brilliant and the sudden armbar for the tap out, both puts the previously forgotten arm work back into the forefront, and it shows how skilled a wrestler Danielson is. Pro Wrestling at its deepest level contains years of worth of backstory and psychology, like the All Japan 1990's classics. However for every one of those sort of great matches are five matches with guys like Stan Hansen and Shinya Hashimoto, who had great matches with the most basic concept of all, Simple yet effective. ****

Conclusion: Awesome main event and good opener aside. Almost everything in enjoyable in some form or another. Curry Man’s dancing, Kikutaro’s comedy, Cabana’s wrestling, and even the novelty of Styles vs. Aries. High recommendation for this show.