LEAHY'S INDEPENDENT WRESTLING DVD REVIEW SERIES
ROH's “Tag Team Turmoil 2011”
July 8, 2011
Richmond, Va.
By Brian Leahy, PWTorch specialist

ROH’s first true house show following the company’s purchase by Sinclair Broadcasting, “Tag Team Turmoil 2011,” was a dull and listless start to the new era of Ring of Honor. Hot off the heels of arguably their hottest show of last year (Best in the World), ROH put on a show nearer the other end of the quality spectrum.

The premise of the show was quite simple: the show was made up nearly entirely of doubles bouts, with a four-team mini-tournament on the undercard with a few other “top level” tag bouts thrown in for good measure.

Opening the show, Davey Richards was called to the ring for the traditional address of the live crowd from a new ROH Champion. Richards was soon interrupted and intimidated by the House of Truth of Strong and Elgin, drawing out his American Wolves partner, Eddie Edwards, to set up the evening’s main event.

-- The “Contenders Tag Team Lottery Tournament” (henceforth the “CTTLT”), kicked off with Adam Cole & Kyle O’Reilly facing the new duo of Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander. Why exactly Coleman & Alexander were being given an opportunity to earn a shot at the ROH Tag Titles having not teamed together before was unclear. But, then again, Cole & O’Reilly had never beaten anyone of note in almost a year of Ring of Honor action prior to this. As openers go, this was pretty solid, with Cole & Alexander meshing reasonably well, and all four men providing some high-energy offense. The finish was Cole & O’Reilly hitting a superkick/lariat combo on Alexander for the “W."

-- The other semi-final in the CTTLT featured The Briscoes facing off against The Bravado Brothers (again; why?), in a nothing match. On paper, it was obvious ROH was going to do one of two things; either have the Briscoes elevate a team in the finals of this tournament, or have the Briscoes take a fluky loss and really drill home how worthless this tourney was. ROH went with the latter as the Briscoes hammered the Bravados for five minutes before interference from Haas & Benjamin allowed Lance Bravado to score a meaningless pinfall over Jay Briscoe.

-- In a break from doubles-action, Kenny King and Mike Bennett squared off in the night’s only scheduled singles bout. Two young stars on an upwards curve should have provided more than ten minutes of decent, but empty, move exchanges. To make matters worse, any memorable action was marred by the finish; Bennett scored a three-count with a handful of tights, but following protests by Rhett Titus and the fans, Todd Sinclair reverse the decision, giving King the win contrary to traditional wresting logic. As punishment for his heelish ways, and in an effort to pad out the remarkably short card, Bennett found himself falling under the wrath of Jim Cornette, and scheduled in a second bout later in the evening against Rhett Titus. “The Prodigy” was not best pleased.

-- On a night designed (I presume) to showcase tag team wrestling, ROH tag team champions Hass & Benjamin showcased absolutely nothing in a poor match with El Generico & Colt Cabana. The in-ring timing of tag champs seemed off in this one, and they were visibly disgusted with their efforts at the end of the bout. To be frank, this card marked a low point in terms of the standard of tag team wrestling in ROH, and I think the majority of the blame is on the shoulders of WGTT, whose formulaic wrestling style has been exposed and blasé in an ROH ring, which has played host to many of the best U.S. tag team matches over the past decade.

-- The finals of the CTTLT was met with appropriate enthusiasm for the match between the teams who earlier in the night beat nobody worth talking about (Cole & O’Reilly) and got their asses handed to them (The Bravados). In fairness to all four, they tried their best to put together a match worth watching. The finish came when Cole & O’Reilly overwhelmed Harlem with strikes before O’Reilly applied a guillotine choke for the tournament victory. Despite the promoted $5,000 bonus and the promise of a tag team title shot, the CTTLT amounted to little more than a half-hour on a soon-to-be-forgotten DVD release, and ROH seemed intent on sabotaging their own tournament trying to elevate new stars in an uncredible fashion.

-- In his second bout of the night, Mike Bennett returned to take on the second-half of the All Night Express, Rhett Titus. In much the same format as the Bennett-King match, they strung together about ten minutes of capable exchanges, but the action had little heat or consequence. Bennett seemed to screw up the finish, taking an absolute age to fish out a chain from his boot before King snatched it from him, then Bennett walked into a DDT from Titus to end the bout.

-- Thankfully for the card, and for anyone unlucky enough to stumble across it, the main event of Davey Richards & Eddie Edwards vs. Roderick Strong & Michael Elgin at least delivered some noteworthy action. Though some of the early going seemed slow, and the match had its lulls, the action was really good, and most notably Elgin didn’t look out of place in the ring with ROH mainstays Richards, Edwards, and Strong. “Unbreakable,” in fact, seemed to be involved in most of the featured action, and did more than his fair share of heavy lifting in the 30+ minutes of wrestling. Richards hit a knockout kick to Elgin's head for the win.

Overall

All things considered, Tag Team Turmoil 2011 was a remarkably boring DVD. Besides the main event, the only other saving grace of the card was its short running time. At around two-and-a-quarter-hours in length, it had little time to outstay it’s welcome. Still, it should take more than one decent match and “not being long” for a DVD to warrant a viewing. With ROH running a reduced “DVD-show” schedule under SBG, they need to put more effort into those DVD shows if they’re to continue relying on the sales of those shows to supplement the income from their live shows and iPPVs. If ROH continues to release shows of this quality, it won’t be long until that source of revenue dries up entirely. Not recommended (4.5)

Notable Match Star Ratings:

Cole & O’Reilly vs. Coleman & Alexander **3/4
Cole & O’Reilly vs. The Bravado Broothers ***
The American Wolves vs. Strong & Elgin ***3/4

Contact Brian via twitter (@cobyhectic)

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