WEEKEND OF THUNDER: NIGHT TWO

November 6, 2004

Lyger is back for more action in ROH, and this time it’s in tag team action with Samoa Joe against Danielson and Low Ki, in one of the big staples of Japanese wrestling, the “dream match.” And that’s not the only case of something unexpected happening here.

Nigel McGuinness . . . uses some shady tactics long before it was a normal thing for him.

CM Punk . . . is part of a dull and boring no-DQ brawl that contains weapons.

Homicide . . . challenges for the ROH Pure Wrestling Title, and does some decent actual wrestling.

NIGEL McGUINNESS vs. CHAD COLLYER

The booking of the fifteen minute draw itself is fine, with these two already having had success as a team and about to become a regular team, it’s the best way to go. Going to a draw is supposed to represent equality, and that’s not what this match always does. There are a good number of cute switches and reversals spread out through the first half of the match. They’re nice to look at, but they don’t set the stage for what happens later, and as a result they only eat up time.

The highlight of the match is Nigel’s cheap shot at Collyer on the apron. At the time it was a very uncharacteristic thing for Nigel to do, and Collyer is able to play off that resulting in a mildly entertaining bit on the floor and allowing CM Punk to get some good lines in, and Collyer gets to return the favor when he punts Nigel in the ribs, but like the fun to watch reversal sequences, it doesn’t lead anywhere. It does cause the match to ‘break down’ a bit and resemble less of a technical exhibition than the first half was, but it hardly does anything to define roles or tell a story. The ending sequence is more reminiscent of the opening sequence than the action that it was following. Nigel had done few things to work over the arm before applying That Arm Submission, and Collyer’s counter to the Cloverleaf is very nice, but Nigel hadn’t been worked over much at all, especially his back area, so there didn’t seem to be much chance of him tapping out. It’s fun to watch them work their counters and reversals, but it loses its charm when you start looking for anything else.

DAVEY ANDREWS/ANTHONY FRANCO vs. DEVITO/LOC

It’s the ROH Wrestling School Students vs. The Fat, Drunk, and Pissed Off team that won a match the night before and are stuck here, while the guys they beat get a tag team title shot. Anyone care to guess as to how this goes?

A. Complete Squash

B. Complete Squash

C. Complete Squash

D. All of the above

Loc and Devito at least give the students a couple of nice hope spots before they finish them off. Franco’s bump on the spike piledriver was really nasty (or since Jimmy Bower is doing the commentary would ‘dangerous’ be a more fitting term?).

IZZY vs. JACK EVANS vs. FAST EDDIE vs. TRENT ACID

Thankfully, this is kept short. Tags are supposedly required to enter the match, but that lasts as long as you’d expect, and is enforced as strictly as it usually is. This is the usual spotfest without anything in the way of story or structure. Fortunately it does have Evans and Izzy, both of whom bump like fiends. The most disappointing aspect here is how Izzy getting the pin is handled. The top rope Shiranui that he uses is more than adequate to end the match, but the build and thought that is put into Special K breaking the losing streak is quite frankly nonexistent. Homicide and Angel Dust had done a decent job the previous night of creating some drama that Angel Dust could do it. And when it finally does happen, it means the same as every other win in a Four-Corner Survival. Hit your big move when the other two are on the floor.

JAY LETHAL vs. JIMMY RAVE

Just like Rave vs. Ace Steele from the night before, this more or less makes its point and then gets out of the way. Rave completely outclassed and can’t get anything going in his favor without taking a shortcut, such as the initial rake to the eyes that halted Lethal’s first advantage, and needing Nana to once again get on the microphone and start yapping, so he could kick Lethal below the belt and do the Rave Clash to steal the win. Rave doesn’t get to show off a whole lot because the story is that he can’t do squat, but he does get a chance to show off a few nice moves. What makes this better than Rave’s match with Ace though is Lethal’s performance. Lethal shows the same fire that he’d always shown, but now he shows more confidence in the way he deals with Rave. Whether he’s dodging Rave’s attacks and rolling him up, or he’s using his own offense to wear him down, Lethal looks totally in control of things. This doesn’t go long enough to be anything beyond a fun sprint, but it’s a nice look at what a couple of limited workers can accomplish when they tell a simple and effective story.

AUSTIN ARIES/RODERICK STRONG vs. CM PUNK/ACE STEELE

Jack Evans probably ought to be listed as a participant as well, considering he was involved for most of the match. It’s easy for fans to get excited about matches like this, because it pretty much guarantees that you’re going to see some crazy stuff. All five certainly deliver in that regard, but by forgoing regular tag team rules and tossing the proverbial handbook for structuring a tag team match into a proverbial shredder, they wind up doing more harm than good. First off it’s that much harder to create any drama with near falls. When Punk has been bouncing Aries off a ladder, and Aries has been pounding Steele with a chair, and neither is getting any closer to win, why will a simple suplex be any more effective? Why get upset (or excited depending on your point of view) when Jack Evans interjects himself, since it’s perfectly legal? There was a nice bit toward the end when both Evans and Aries came up short attempting to put Steele through a table. Leaving Strong two-on-one with Punk and Steele would have been a nice comeuppance of sorts for all the times Generation Next used the numbers game to their advantage.

The weapons present another problematic factor of the match, they get dragged out way too early and they quickly run out of ways to use them to get crowd pops. It’s easy to give props to all five of them for the abuse they take, and for allowing themselves to be thrown (and throw themselves) onto the ladder, but you can only see it so many times before it loses its impact. There are some instances when the use of the weapons does enhance the action, such as Strong and Aries using the ladder and chair to work over Punk’s knee in a nice-but-brief bit of continuity from the night before. But more often than not they serve the purpose of being used so they don’t have to do anything else. Punk’s Pepsi Plunge to Roderick on the ladder is beyond ugly, and after all they’d done with (and the abuse they’d given to) that ladder, it comes off a bit flat. It’s easy to knock the match for all that it lacks as far as good wrestling, and matches like this do serve a purpose. It’s just a shame that this is more of an exhibition when opportunities were presented that would have allowed them to tell a real story.

DUNN/MARCOS vs. ANGEL DUST/DIXIE

Having to follow the big Samoa Joe/CM Punk angle that announced their third title match, this is obviously more than a bit overshadowed. Fortunately both teams understand it, and they just do their stuff and get out of there. Special K show some intensity at times, which is nice, and it shows that Izzy breaking the losing streak didn’t cause them to revert back to being their old goof ball selves. Both teams show off a couple of nice moves, like the assisted rana by the RCE, and Angel Dust’s Electric Chair drop. But the match is all go-go-go, so there is no real story or theme that develops. The RCE finishes off Dixie with their senton, and Angel Dust gets chewed out for causing his team to lose, thus at least continuing the Special K storyline.

Aside from Homicide’s fall off the ropes and the improvised booking at the end, this is actually quite the surprising little match. The work they both do is fairly simple for the most part, and someone with the perception that Homicide is only a brawler who really can’t ‘wrestle’ will quickly find themselves surprised. The technical wrestling that Homicide and Walters both do isn’t anything particularly mind-blowing, aside from the novelty of seeing Homicide work that style, but it’s a nice change of pace from the usual shtick that Homicide has. Surprisingly enough the first rope break is actually obtained by Homicide when he traps Walters in his STF, by reversing Walters’ chinlock. And being Homicide, he also has a few shady tactics up his sleeve, such as having Smokes distract the ref, the thumb to the eye, and the closed fists behind the ref’s back.

The big problem Walters had the night before was that instead of concentrating on the match itself, he was trying to show up Joe, and he mostly got owned in the process. Walters doesn’t quite make the same mistake here. His goal this time is obviously to win, because his title is at stake. The strategy Walters employs is a nice one too, he frustrates Homicide, and takes advantage when Homicide loses his temper. This is best shown during their little scuffle on the floor, when Walters dons a Red Sox hat before he puts Homicide back into the ring. But Walters also does it in a lot of little ways, by reversing Homicide’s stuff and trapping him in roll-ups and locking him in submissions. Homicide’s fall off the ropes to the floor was more than a little nasty. It’d probably have been best to give Walters the count out win, and explain it away was Homicide being so frustrated with Walters that he lost concentration. Things obviously take a different approach when Smokes throws Homicide back into the ring, Walters going right after Homicide and dropping him on his head makes sense from the standpoint of trying to win and taking advantage of the situation, but probably wasn’t the safest thing for Homicide to be doing. The DQ ending for Smokes running in just further illustrates why Homicide should have been counted out, because all it does is leave a bad taste to what was a fun little match.

If either team had been able to step up their game here, then this may have had a shot at being enjoyable for reasons other than CM Punk’s one-liners on commentary. Maff and Whitmer aren’t very good at selling though, and the Pitbulls don’t do anything overly interesting in the way of cheating or working over the challengers. Romero and Reyes will pull a switcheroo when the ref’s back in turned and Romero will clap his hands to give the illusion of a tag, but it’s something he does way too much and it doesn’t have any impact on the match itself. There is one nice moment when Smokes pulls the ref out of the ring just as Whitmer is tagging in Maff, but like Romero’s phantom tags, it doesn’t have any great impact. None of the four of them bring much in the way of offense either. Reyes and Romero’s stiffness is usually welcome, but the match is basically sixteen minutes of pedestrian brawling, so it gets old fast. Reyes rolling Romero out to the floor and rolling up Maff for the win would have made a nice finish, but the match needs heat in order for the finish to work properly, but it does keep the Burning Hammer protected, since Romero was a non-factor after getting hit with it.

JYUSHIN “THUNDER” LYGER/SAMOA JOE vs. BRYAN DANIELSON/LOW KI

An ongoing trend during this show has been seeing things that seem a bit out of the ordinary, and this match isn’t any different. It’s not a great big Lyger love-fest, despite that he’s the most over person on the card, for obvious reasons. Instead we’re treated to a much more traditional tag team match, and even though the match was made under dream partner rules (Lyger and Danielson choosing their partner) the intertwining storylines among the four of them also play a factor. One of the brightest spots of the Lyger/Danielson match was Danielson heeling things up a bunch, which he continues here, only now he’s paired off with Low Ki, who’d done little else except heel things up since he returned to ROH in July.

The majority of the match is Danielson and Ki working over Lyger to build up toward Joe’s hot tag, so he could get his hands on Low Ki (first time they’d been in the same ring since Low Ki’s return). Danielson and Ki don’t really work over Lyger with a real focus. It’s more just doing it to stick it to the fans. There is a decent sequence involving Lyger getting his midsection worked over, with an assisted abdominal stretch, Danielson’s airplane spin to Finlay roll, and then Ki doing the diving foot stomp. Ki is probably the ‘worst’ of the four of them from strictly a technical standpoint, but he more than carries his weight with his heel tactics. There the really obvious things that Ki does, such as rub his forearm in Lyger’s face, bait Joe into the ring by spitting at him, and make his ‘stick it’ taunt at Lyger. One really nice moment came after Ki did the Great Muta’s power drive elbow and managed to actually get some applause, which he responded to by mocking the crowd. And knowing the fans want to see Lyger doing all of his stuff, Ki is always right there to cut off Lyger, including countering the running shotei with a Lyger original, the koppo kick, as well as countering another shotei with the hanging armbar.

The match obviously isn’t completely lacking in Lyger originals, the match just isn’t completely based on Lyger doing his stuff, while Ki and Danielson bump around for them. Early on Ki charges right into a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker, and Lyger sees Danielson trying to blind side him and hits him with one too, and then does his fake out dive, and soaks up the crowd heat. There is a nice bit of continuity from the previous night with Danielson trying Lyger’s surfboard and again getting knocked on his ass for it, but this time Lyger shows him how it’s done by stretching out Low Ki with it. When Joe gets the hot tag and starts throttling both Ki and Danielson, he levels Ki with the Ole-Ole kick, and then sets up another chair so that Lyger can do one of his own. The heel mis-communication finish is hardly original, and seems a bit out of place for such an important match, but it’s really not far off the mark, when you look at how well Ki and Danielson gelled together as a team, with their cheating and teamwork, especially the Hart Attack Tidal Wave. So it’s not totally out of the blue that Lyger and Joe would get the win off a lucky break. And Lyger gets to return the favor to Ki by hitting a koppo kick of his own to knock him off the apron before he finishes off Danielson with the running Lygerbomb. This isn’t as good as the Lyger/Danielson match from the first night, because this is more about face/heel roles, instead of working a smart match around face/heel roles. Nonetheless it’s still quite an enjoyable tag match with four guys who know how to deliver the goods. ***1/4

Conclusion: It doesn’t hit as high a mark as the first show does, but it does have a few decent outings from Nigel/Collyer, and Lethal/Rave, and of course Lyger always knows what he’s doing. I’d only mildly recommend picking this one up.