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Ring of Honor TV Report
October 19, 2009
Taped August 15 in Philadelphia, Pa.
Report by Mike DeRosenroll, Torch ROH specialist

Opening Thoughts:

- This week's show was solid from top-to-bottom, a significant improvement over the uneven shows of the past couple of weeks. The Aries-Danielson main event title match was a very good TV main event, and the undercard matches were solid and entertaining.

- The main angle on the show was an injury angle to Jerry Lynn after a post-match beat down at the hands of Kenny King and Rhett Titus. The angle was very effectively sold and followed-up on throughout the show, hopefully setting the stage for a major feud between Lynn and King. ROH desperately needs to elevate new stars, King has the potential to be a major star, and a well-executed feud with Lynn would be a great way to elevate King.

- Bryan Danielson did a clean job to Austin Aries in the main event. It was a good use of Danielson on his way out of the company since Aries has been used as a comedy figure lately and needed a big win to reestablish his credibility.

- My one gripe with this week's show is that, for the first time in many weeks, they did not hype anything for next week's show. They did, however, smartly use the Lynn angle to try to drive traffic to the ROH website by having Mike Hogwood say that updates on Lynn's condition would be available there.

Detailed Show Recap

- The show opened with a video package hyping the main event ROH World Title match between Austin Aries and Bryan Danielson.

- In the studio, Hogwood and Dave Prazak talked about the upcoming main event. Prazak said it does not get any better than this, with two of the best in the world facing each other on HDNet.

1 – KENNY KING vs. JERRY LYNN

Lynn seemed to get a good crowd reaction, which is a good sign for him after being rejected by the crowd at times recently. After an even-Steven start, Lynn used his veteran smarts to take the advantage at 1:00 by going to outside, anticipating a dive attempt by King and getting out of the way to send King crashing to the floor. Back in ring, King turned tide with a chin breaker at 1:30. King began working Lynn over heel style, using a mix of heel tactics like hair pulling and good athletic moves. King looked very impressive in this phase of the match. Lynn turned tide back in his favor at 4:30 by avoiding an eye rake on the top rope. King overconfidently assumed the move was successful and jawed with the crowd, allowing Lynn to mount a comeback.
At 6:00, King went back to Lynn's eyes to regain the advantage and landed a Death Valley driver for a near fall. King then tried to set up Lynn for King's Coronation finisher, but Lynn avoided it, kicked King in the gut and set up King for Lynn's cradle pile driver finisher. However, King's tag team partner Rhett Titus ran to ringside and gave Lynn enough of a push to prevent Lynn from hitting the pile driver and allow King get on top of Lynn for a pinning predicament. King grabbed the ropes and got the pin.

WINNER: King in 6:30. A good solid match right up until the end. Titus interfered right in front of the referee, so it made no sense for the referee to count the pin right after seeing Titus help King get Lynn into the pinning predicament. Nevertheless, the match was entertaining up to that point and credit to Lynn for giving King a lot of offense even knowing he was going to lose the match.

- After the match, Lynn attacked Titus but King intervened and they beat down Lynn. With Lynn beaten down, the heels dropped Lynn on his head with a double team pile driver. Lynn laid on the mat teasing a neck injury. They cut to the commercial break as medical help hit the ring.

[Commercial Break]

- Back from the commercials, Lynn was being attended to in ring by a crowd of referees, babyface wrestlers and others. Breaking from format to have the commercial break this early in the show was a good idea to help sell the injury angle.

- Backstage, Kyle Durden tried to ask Tyler Black about what happened, but Black was too concerned about Lynn to talk and said he was going to see what was going on. Durden did a nice job of selling his concern for Lynn here.

- In the arena, Lynn was carried to the back and Hogwood introduced another video package hyping the main event. The video package featured Danielson talking about the match interspersed with clips of Aries. Danielson built up Aries but said that he was better and that Aries would be in for the fight of his life.

2 – NIGEL MCGUINNESS vs. SAL RINAURO

Prior to the match, Hogwood continued to sell the Lynn injury. He said the injury to Lynn had taken the life out of the crowd. Nigel grabbed the mic and said he was not going to injure Rinauro like what happened in the previous match. He pledged to have a basic wrestling match with wrist locks and hammer locks because he was not going to appease "these wankers in the crowd tonight."

McGuinness dominated Rinauro early with some chain wrestling focusing on Rinauro's arm. Rinauro eventually managed to reverse a hold and get McGuinness in a wrist lock, but McGuinness immediately unleashed an elbow to Rinauro's head to regain the advantage. McGuinness then landed a suplex and a couple of stiff strikes before Rinauro bailed from the ring, grabbed the mic and complained that McGuinness was not wrestling the way they had agreed to. As McGuinness tried to respond, Rinauro ambushed him and got a small burst of offence. However, at 1:30, McGuinness caught Rinaruo going to the top rope prematurely and knocked Rinauro off balancing, crotching him on the turnbuckle. McGuinness then teased a Tower of London to ring apron, but then made a rude gesture to the fans, went back into the ring and quickly submitted Rinauro with the London Dungeon arm submission.

WINNER: McGuinness in 2:00. A good entertaining squash win for McGuinness.

- After the match, McGuinness cut a short promo blaming the fans for Lynn being in the back on a stretcher. He said Lynn was hurt because of trying to appease the fans.

- Another video package aired hyping the main event. This one featured Aries talking about Danielson interspersed with clips of Danielson in action. Aries talked himself up and said he just needed to follow his game plan in the match.

- Backstage, Kyle Durden began giving an update on Lynn's condition when King interrupted. He said Lynn was like Michael Jordan, Bret Favre and Roy Jones Jr in that all four were great champions in their day, but that the problem with some great champions is that they did not know when to retire. King said Lynn might need a little help with that. Good heel promo from King to set up a feud with Lynn.

3 – COLT "BOOM BOOM" CABANA vs. CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI

The two opened with a nice exchange of European-style chain wrestling. This was vintage Cabana. Cabana grounded Catsagnoli with headlock takedown at 1:30 and they transitioned to mat wrestling. Cabana dominated Castagnoli on the mat with more of his vintage moves, until a frustrated Castagnoli took control of the match at 4:00 with a hard European uppercut to Cabana's face. Castagnoli began working Cabana over heel style. During a headlock, a fan chanted "boring" but was shouted down by other fans. At 7:00, Cabana mounted a comeback when Castagnoli Irish whipped him into the ropes and Cabana came back off the ropes with a leaping cross body. They transitioned from this into a good exchange of leverage pin attempts. Cabana came out on top of this exchange and caught Castagnoli with a very nice leverage pin from a bridge for the win.

WINNER: Cabana in 8:00. This was a good solid wrestling match from two maestros of European-style wrestling. It was nice to see a match actually end on a leverage pin without being set up by a big move or combination. Finishing a match like this from time-to-time makes all the other leverage pin attempts in other ROH matches mean more, because it establishes that a match can actually end this way.

- A video package recapped the Austin Aries Lucky Lotteries four weeks ago and last week, when Aries defeated Grizzly Redwood and "Sugarfoot" Alex Payne after supposedly randomly drawing their names from a hat.

4 - ROH World champion AUSTIN ARIES vs. "AMERICAN DRAGON" BRYAN DANIELSON -- ROH World Title match

Before the match, the crowd threw rolls of toilet paper at Aries and chanted that he was going to get his "f-ing head kicked in." After an even opening exchange of chain wrestling, Aries took down Danielson with an arm drag and grounded him with a side headlock. Danielson wrestled his way out of it and almost locked in an ankle lock, forcing Aries to scurry from the ring at 3:00. After forcing Aries out of the ring a second time, Danielson came after him and flattened him with a flying knee to the floor at 4:00, earning a "best in the world" chant from the fans.

Back in the ring, Aries took control of the match by catching Danielson going to the top rope and knocking him down at 4:30. He then worked over Danielson's neck heel-style for a couple of minutes. At 6:30, Aries locked in a Dragon Sleeper, but Danielson escaped by using the ropes to flip over Aries' head and lock in a sleeper of his own. Aries tried the same escape using the ropes, but Danielson caught him and landed a back suplex at 7:00. From here they picked the pace and went into a great hard-hitting exchange. At 8:30, Danielson went to the top rope again and this time succeeded in hitting a missile drop kick. He followed this up with a running forearm-German suplex combination for a near fall at 9:00. Danielson then lifted Aries to the top rope to set him up for belly-to-back superplex, but Aries managed to knock Danielson to the floor and follow up with a heat-seeking missile (running dive through the ropes to the floor) at 9:30 that drove Danielson hard into the ringside barricade.

After the heat-seeking missile, Aries rolled Danielson back into the ring, went to the top, and hit a missile drop kick of his own at 10:30. Instead of going for a cover, he bragged to the crowd, allowing Danielson to catch him with a triangle choke when Aries finally came over to Danielson. Aries managed to escape the hold, but Danielson immediately cinched in an ankle lock in the middle of the ring. The fan really wanted Aries to tap out, but the champ managed to escape the hold at 11:30. At 12:00, Danielson went for a Tiger Suplex but Aries impressively landed on his feet, kicked Danielson in the head and locked in his Last Chanchery submission. The fans chanted "please don't tap" and Danielson made it to the ropes. Aries then removed a top turnbuckle pad and tried to ram Danielson's head into the exposed turnbuckle, but Danielson blocked the attempt. A dramatic exchange of big moves followed, with Danielson hitting a Tiger Suplex and Cattle Mutilation and Aries hitting a shin breaker suplex. Finally, Aries managed to throw Danielson head first into the exposed turnbuckle, drop kick Danielson's head into the exposed turnbuckle, and then score the pin.

WINNER: Aries in 15:00. This was a very good match, not up to the lofty standards of Aries and Danielson's best matches in ROH over the past five years, but very good in its own right. Having Danielson put over Aries on his way out of ROH was a good use of Danielson.

- After the match, Aries said that Danielson must only be the second best in the world. Hogwood referred fans to the ROH website for more information on Jerry Lynn's status.

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