By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

RADICAN’S ROH DVD REVIEW SERIES
“BORDER WARS”
MAY 12, 2012
TORONTO, ONT.

RESULTS AND STAR RATINGS

(1) Eddie Edwards beat Rhino (w/Truth Martini) (**1/4)

(2) ANX (Rhett Titus & Kenny King) & T.J. Perkins beat The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) & Mike Mondo (***1/2)

(3) Jay Lethal beat Tomasso Ciampa (w/Embassy Ltd.) (***1/2)

(4) Lance Storm beat Mike Bennett (w/Brutal Bob) (***1/4)

(5) Michael Elgin (w/Truth Martini) beat Adam Cole (**3/4)

(6) ROH TV Champion Roderick Strong beat Fit Finlay (**1/2)

(7) WGTT (Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin) beat ROH World Tag Team Champions The Briscoes (Jay & Mark Briscoe) in a Fight Without Honor (**)

(8) Kevin Steen (w/Jimmy Jacobs) beat ROH World Champion Davey Richards (****)

Overall thoughts: (7.0) – The biggest disappointment on this card was not having Jim Cornette in attendance to see his reaction to Kevin Steen winning the ROH World Champion Davey Richards in the main event. The entire build of the program between Richards and Steen was about Cornette keeping Steen away from ROH and once he got back into ROH, he tried to keep him away from the ROH World title.

Despite some booking problems, this was an enjoyable show. The overall production on the DVD version of “Border Wars” is excellent by modern independent wrestling standards. The original airing of this show on iPPV didn’t go so well, but ROH got a lot of things right on this show from a production standpoint. There were multiple replays after matches, pre-match video packages for nearly every match, and a new crane camera gave the show a more professional feel. It was nice to watch a DVD with no sound problems or strange graphics asking me to insert a memory stick for a change.

The undercard on this show is fantastic. The crowd in Toronto was red hot for first half of this show. The Six Man Tag and Bennett vs. Storm delivered some really good action. Storm got a particularly strong reaction from the Canadian fans working against Bennett, who deserves credit for improving so much during the last nine months. The Bennett-Storm match was just a notch below their effort during WrestleMania weekend earlier this year, but it was still darn good.

The real head-scratcher on the undercard was having Ciampa lose his undefeated streak to Jay Lethal. Ciampa wasn’t red hot by any means, but it seems like he should have been given more time and lost to a different opponent so that him losing his undefeated streak meant more. Lethal is a good mid-card act, but Ciampa seems to have a much bigger upside and giving this win to Lethal isn’t going to do much for either man going forward.

The crowd didn’t really get behind Cole-Elgin or Strong-Finlay. The Cole-Elgin match had some good spots, but the crowd wasn’t into the action and things only heated up during the closing stretch of the match. The crowd got even quieter for Finlay-Strong. Strong just doesn’t have the charisma in the ring to carry a mat based match like this as a heel. At times, it seemed Strong was trying to work face, as he tried to pump up the crowd at certain points, but to no avail. For whatever reason, this just didn’t work.

The fans were into the WGTT-Briscoes Fight without Honor for the most part. There was a really odd edit in the middle of the match, but that edit aside, things were going fine until the finish when Haas sprayed a rag with a foreign substance and used it to make Mark pass out so he could pin him. This finish was so ridiculous and it got the wrong kind of heat from the fans, who were clearly upset that an ‘80s relic was pulled out for this show.

Steen-Richards had a really good main event. A large portion of the fans turned on Davey and gave him a hard time about his signature offense during the course of the match. Richards did a good job of working over Steen’s leg and the match told a good story leading into the finish where it seemed like Steen just wouldn’t tap out to Richards’s submissions.

The in-ring action during Steen-Richards was very, but as I indicated earlier, Cornette not being there really hurt the post-match segment of Steen’s title win. Cary Silkin tried to act upset and refused to give the title to Steen. It was a good try to go against tradition, but the angle would have gotten over much better if Cornette had been in the building.

This show gets a solid recommendation overall. The undercard is stellar and transitions to a slower second half of the show prior to the main event. There’s some frustrating creative issues in play on this show, but overall, it’s definitely worth a look.

You can purchase this release at ROHWrestling.com

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