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Justin Parker, Torch Specialist

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Wow. I guess the old adage of absence makes the heart grow fonder is true. I have had a hard time getting around to the ROH product lately due to a number of reasons, not limited to time constraints and product disinterest, but am I ever glad that I sat down and watched this show. Usually I will complain about too much going on in any given ROH show, but I look at this show as one of their top annual shows and can forgive it in this instance since everyone wanted to make a splash. This show is one of the top three shows of the year in any promotion, and ROH’s best hands down. If you are on the fence about giving ROH a try, I think this show works as a “sample” of everything ROH has to offer.

Moving chronologically, Go Shiozaki and Delirious had a nice opening match and Go continues to impress in the last few DVD releases, and shows that he can be someone who they can built main events and top feuds around. The six man tag that followed was really a way to showcase the YRR and provide some decent comedy spots with Bushwhacker Luke. Although it did set some kind of record by the number of times “random broads” were mentioned.

The Stevens-Strong “match” was great and one of the most hard hitting matches you will ever see. It fit the tone of their feud perfectly, and I was not even bothered by the non-finish because it was a great angle that progressed the feud as Strong “stole Stevens identity” by shaving his mohawk. This was the highlight of the feud for me by far and that’s pretty high praise because this has been a pretty good feud thus far.

ROH continues to put together good video packages, as the one before the Briscoes match was solid and really made you want to see the other DVD’s that showcased this feud. The match itself between the AOTF and the Briscoes was a crazy match. I didn’t care too much for the first ten minutes of the match as the jump cuts between the spots made it feel more like a highlight package than an actual match, not to mention it looked like it was done in a 8th grade video tech class. That complaint aside, the match really picked up and the finish was one of the most spectacular and surprising finishes I have ever seen. This was very innovative stuff that really surprised a crowd that had seen so much up to that point.

The Erick Stevens promo at intermission vowing revenge on Strong was very basic, yet effective. This is really progressing into quite the feud.

Steen/Generico vs. Shingo/Hulk was also a very strong match but went a little too long and had too many nearfalls off of huge spots at the end of the match. They lost the crowd at the end of the match as they had seen so many kick-outs from spectacular moves, and I got the feeling that they lost whatever suspension of disbelief they had and the excitement that was there about ¾ of the way through the match was not there at the end. That said, the match itself was a very good Dragon Gate-style match.

The World title match was once again an amazing match between Nigel and Austin Aries. I thought their match at the Rising Above PPV was one of the two top matches of the year in ROH and while this one wasn’t quite at that level, it was close. These two provided an epic match that had great storytelling mixed with world class, athletic action. The finishing sequence was a little long in the tooth and that took it down a notch but this was a ****1/2 match and one of the top matches in the promotion this year. This was the match of the night by far.

The Dragon Gate six-man was the usual match that we have gotten accustomed to during Wrestlemania weekend. An amazing spectacle if you can get past the no-selling and the fact that Dragon Gate rules aren’t very thought out (why would there ever be heat on anyone if there are no tags needed, why would you allow your teammate to get beat down?). Nonetheless,, there was some very innovative stuff in here and the crowd ate it up, so it achieved its purpose. If seen once a year, it’s OK, but any more than that and the rest of the card would suffer.

Overall, this is a highly recommended show and is ions better than the Friday night show from the same weekend and ROH’s best show of the year. Go get this now.

Justin can be reached at torchparker@gmail.com if you have any feedback on this article.

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