In a continued effort to show off the on the ground reporting that we will provide during this coming weekend in Orlando, I’m posting my notes from last year’s Ring of Honor shows and their meet and greet.
First Ring of Honor Review
A. Larry Sweeney was the show MVP
1. It was nice to have a good manager that didn’t wear a bikini.
2. Sweeney showed up in the opening match with Chris Hero, later interrupted Bruno Sammartino and finally came out with Brent Albright when he wrestled Nigel McGuinness.
3. Larry Sweeney was nearly impossible to pull your eyes off of him because of his awful 70’s type suit, golden colored hair and the 9 shades of color his face can turn.
B. Mark Briscoe’s Injury
1. Off the top rope, he tried to do a shooting star press on to Shingo. Mark didn’t rotate enough and Shingo didn’t help out by not even attempting to catch him. (DiFrango’s edit: Just a brutal looking botch. I’ve cracked my head open a fair amount of times but nothing that looked that bad.)
2. It was hard to get him back out of the wrestling area because the guard rail was whole so they had to lift it into the first or second row of the crowd.
3. After the injury, Jay eventually hit the Jaydriller to recapture the ROH tag belts.
4. They should have had a different finish with the match being a 2 on 1 for the majority of it.
5. Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin came into the ring from the crowd and challenged the Briscoes to a tag team championship match. They got a hand shake deal from Jay and then proceeded to beat him up. (DiFrango’s edit: I’d say Shelley and Sabin got the most boos outside of Roderick Strong.)
C. 4 Way Match
1. Adam Pierce won the match after hitting Colt Cabana with a foreign object.
2. Chris Hero and Matt Sydal were the other contestants in the match. It was a good match that had a sudden and unsatisfying ending. (DiFrango’s edit: I’d seen Sydal’s standing moonsault on TV or DVD a number of times but watching him pull it off when you’re about twelve foot away is extremely impressive.)
D. Erick Stevens vs. Alex Sugarfoot
1. Basic squash match.
E. Daizee Haze and B.J. Whitmer vs. Lacey and Jimmy Jacobs
1. They did the spot where Jacobs spears Daizee out of her shoes, literally. (DiFrango’s edit: It was nice actually watching two women who are trained in wrestling and not just thrown out there in a match because they look good. Lacey is pretty hot though. I was undecided until seeing her live. Outside of that, B.J. and Jimmy fighting into the crowd was bad because only the 6 people surrounding them could see them.)
F. Nigel McGuinness versus Brent Albright
1. Talked about it earlier with the Sweeney segment but Brent beat Nigel. (DiFrango’s edit: For the one woman that may read this write up, my wife’s lone approval of the night for manly hot stuff was Nigel.)
G. Homicide vs. Christopher Daniels
1. Homicide won with a roll up.
2. Cornette showed up at the end of the match and maced Homicide.
3. Daniels wouldn’t give the crowd the Best Moonsault Ever and played to the crowd in general a lot by turning semi-heel.
4. What is wrong with Christopher Daniels? He has tremendous upside but never seems to fulfill. Eric thinks he looks like a “How to” book on wrestling. (DiFrango’s edit: I’ve got to admit that I always thought Homicide was a bit too small but he’s bigger than I thought. Good match up.)
G. Jack Evans versus Roderick Strong
1. He can’t keep taking the bumps he is like being thrown from the ring apron to the floor flat. Jack makes the shots look worse because of how small he is.
2. Roderick Strong is a good heel. (DiFrango’s edit: I’d vote for this match as my favorite of the night. I really enjoy the gymnastics aspect that Evans brings to the table without getting too carried away with it. Roderick reminds me of a young Dean Malenko with a personality.)
H. Lepack as crowd MVP
1. He kept us dam well entertained by yelling at all the faces and cheering the heels.
I. The Main Event – CIMA, Susumu Yokosuka, Dragon Kid and Ryo Saito versus Austin Aries, Delirious, Claudio Castagnoli and Rocky Romero
1. The crowd interaction was great.
2. Claudio was always in against Dragon Kid which was too much of mismatch. (DiFrango’s edit: They started the night off with a high energy 4 way match and ended with a frenetically paced 8 man tag. Good stuff all around and sometimes too much to keep track of. Great way to have a long match and keep everyone fresh though.)
3. Jeremy ripping on Captain Lou Albino. (DiFrango’s edit: While we’re ripping on people at ringside, ROH’s cameraman looked like Sancho from Orgazmo. If you haven’t seen the movie, make it a priority.)
4. Shout out to finishline for coming with us. (DiFrango’s edit: That was a great show to go to for my first ROH event. My wife was so impressed that she wants to go anytime they come to Dayton though we’ll have to drive an hour just to get to the event. The crowd was great which was a nice change of pace the ones on most of the DVDs that sit on their hands all night.)
The Audio Experience Saturday
31 March 2007
(DiFrango’s edit: I go to Bally to work out and it just so happened that the Bally in Dearborn was within spitting distance of our hotel along with the wrestler’s hotel. So part of the reason we were late to the meet and greet was because I was at the gym. Tank Toland was there working out and I got a good look at the guy and he’s about as wide as he is tall. Teddy Long was cruising on the cross trainer for an older guy. Jimmy Wang Yang and Davey Richards were coming into the gym just as I was leaving. A small mob of fans were outside the gym the whole time hoping to catch someone coming in or working out.)
- We went down to the Detroit Beer Co. for a meet and greet with Ring of Honor in the late afternoon. At the meet and greet were B.J. Whitmer, Delirious, Nigel McGuinness and of course Colt Cabana.
- Eric and Jeremy got locked in a third story loft space with Colt Cabana because the keypad locked the elevator and room. Jeremy liked Colt because he was very pleasant. Nigel was in a hurry to leave. B.J. Whitmer, Nigel, Delirious and Colt were the order for least to most fans that surrounded them when we arrived at 3 PM. The luncheon started at 1 PM. (DiFrango’s edit: My wife is convinced that Nigel winked at her. Of course it could be that she was the only woman there and she was showing “the girls” off.)
- Fan Axxess was terrible but tolerable since it didn’t cost anything. Jeremy and Eric did audio for a Chris Benoit vs. K.C. James match and Dusty and Lepack did it for Matt Hardy vs. Gregory Helms. They got to do commentary for a 1:30 block after waiting in line for too long.
- The “locker rooms” were a decent idea but mainly used to sell merchandise. (DiFrango’s edit: They didn’t even have little factoids about when the gear was worn, what size it was or anything of the sort.)
- Jeremy and Dusty went to see Zack Galifinokis. He had a lot of one line jokes.
(DiFrango’s edit: We just went down to Cheli’s Chili Bar and barely missed out on the chance to meet the man himself, Chris Chelios as he was getting into his car to leave for the airport for the Red Wings game the next day in our backyard – Columbus.)
- [u]Eric and Lepack Review the Saturday Night ROH Show[/u]
A. Jay Briscoe teamed with Delirious against Christopher Daniels and Matt Sydal.
Briscoe and Delirious didn’t have the cohesiveness so Daniels and Sydal held the match together.
B. Erick Stevens won a squash match against Mitch Franklin.
C. Claudio Castagnoli beat Yamato from Dragon Gate. Clash of styles that just filled some time. The European upper cut was dubbed “The William Regal” by some international fans behind us Friday night.
D. VH1 was filming at the show for “Where are they now?” They were filming Johnny Fairplay who was with Larry Sweeney and Chris Hero. Hero wrestled Nigel McGuinness in a very good match. Sweeney is the man.
E. Jack Evans and Naruki Doi versus the No Remorse Corp comprised of Davey Richards and Rocky Romero. Jack ended up pinning Richards which was an odd booking maneuver since Rocky was the new member of NRC and normally one would want to build up their credibility.
F. A match between Homicide and Brent Albright was interrupted by Adam Pearce. Colt Cabana came in to make the save and set up a tag team match between the four above mentioned wrestlers. Colt got the pin fall after Cornette tried to use the hair spray on him and got Adam Pearce.
G. Jimmy Jacobs versus B.J. Whitmer was in a cage and was great. It was about half an hour and bloody as hell. The crowd chanted “You twisted fuck” at Jimmy Jacobs.
H. Roderick Strong fought Austin Aries. Strong won when Aries passed out in the Stronghold.
I. Dragon Gate six man tag match was the finale was a good match.
Overall the show was as good as the first night.
The Audio Experience will be going in full force to both ROH shows this year along with Wrestlemania. We may even check out the USX Wrestling show that is set to occur Saturday afternoon. Our now infamous Audio Experience Show from inside the car in the traffic leaving downtown Detroit is in the archives so if you get a chance, check it out. We will probably be stuck in traffic again this year so we'll have another Audio hot off the presses show after Wrestlemania wraps up.
Kevin DiFrango is very excited to start the drive down to Orlando on Thursday. Keep an eye out for Jeremy's blog tomorrow and our Ask the Experience? blog on Monday or Tuesday. If you'll be in Orlando for any of the shows, email me at difrango11@gmail.com or the whole gang at theaudioexperience@gmail.com.
