Necro hits a chokeslam into Tiger Driver combo, and then brings in the staple gun. Brodie Lee breaks things up for the DQ, but Necro Butcher chases them both from the ring with the staple gun.

The crowd is heavily behind Eddie Kingston early. Looks sorta sloppy early. Kingston eventually wings with a spinning backfist, after Callihan gets bloodied up.

Quick interview with Jerry Lynn, where he pledges to be a fighting champion.

Dempsey wins a squash with the DVD in less than a minute. Did they actually introduce his opponent by his full name? If so, I missed it. I’m trying to look online to figure out his name, but it seems that nobody cares about this show anymore. Even the ROH site doesn’t list this match! I hearby dub him Ultimate Maximum Jobber.

Can’t bring myself to care about anything that Cheech and Cloudy are in. They lose, and one of them gets pushed off the top rope into the barricade hard. Looked ugly.

Claudio uses an American as a foot stool to get into the ring. Excellent. He sneak attacks Albright, but Albright quickly turns the tables on him outside the ring. Back and forth for awhile, with Claudio pulling out some cheap tricks. Albright goes for a plancha over the ropes, but Claudio catches him and runs him hard into the ringside barricade. Really bad lighting here. The ring looks really small with these two guys in it, too. After more even-steven back and forth, Albright hits a sudden belly-to-belly suplex outside the ring. Back in the ring … this match is just a bunch of moves. Claudio isn’t getting sustained heat, Albright is making too many comebacks that are just a little bit too long, and I’m not feeling any story, nor any real grudge.

There was some really annoying announcing in this match, too, which I’ll cover in a post coming soon, which will cover my overall thoughts on ROH at HDnet after the first six weeks of shows.

Claudio eventually wins with a victory roll as he holds the ropes. Good finish even if the match never really found a good pace.

Match Results

1. Jimmy Jacobs vs. Necro Butcher via disqualification when Brodie Lee interferes
2. Sami Callihan vs. Eddie Kingston via pinfall after spinning backfist
3. Bobby Dempsey vs. Ultimate Maximums Jobber via pinfall after DVD
4. Cheech & Cloudy vs. Rhett Titus and Kenny King via pinfall after powerbomb/blockbuster combination.
4. Main Event: Brent Albright vs. Claudio Castagnoli via victory roll while holding the rope.

Next week: Tyler Black vs. Bryan Danielson.

Crowd heckles Aries early on with “Austin Asshole!” and “You tapped out!” before his match. Omega gets way more offense than I expected, and this is a good little match. Aries hits a wicked looking dropkick in the corner near the end before the brainbuster to bring this to a satisfying conclusion. I think I want to see some more from Omega.

Continuity fun! Jerry Lynn is interviewed, the week after they announced him winning the title, without the title.

Ernie Osiris is a “panhandler and known thief.” Well, I think that’s a never-done-before gimmick! Comedy early, then Delirious wins with Shadows Over Hell. Not much here.

Del Ray and Haze look better in the tag team match than in the singles match they had on the show a few weeks ago. Don’t see a lot from Sassy Stephie, but Nevaeh looked kay in the time she was in the ring.

Jerry Lynn and Brodie Lee go David vs. Goliath, as expected. Jacobs throws in some interference, but berates Lee when Lynn manages to roll him up for the three count. After seeing this match, I want to see some more from Lee, too.

Match Results

1. Kenny Omega vs. Austin Aries
2. Ernie Osiris vs. Delirious
3. Sassy Stephie & Sara Del Ray vs. Daizee Haze and Nevaeh

4. Main Event: Brodie Lee vs. Jerry Lynn

Show opens with a few quick highlights from last week, and then Mike Hogewood and Dave Prazak discuss Jerry Lynn winning the world title from Nigel McGuinness in Houston.

Then we have two matches that nobody cares about. It’s like an undercard from a 2002 ROH show.

Is this Chris Hero’s new permanent goofy look? And if you’re going to have a loaded elbow pad, why would it be a different color than your normal elbow pad? That said, I often like how Hero wrestles. Some of it is a little too wacky, but other times he does logical things to set up spots that would otherwise be illogical—witness his setup for the top-rope blockbuster in this match.

Danielson and Aries is fun.

This week, the ref doesn’t seem to be miked at all. Boo.

Oh, continuity fun— they announce Jerry Lynn as the new World Champ, but next week he’ll appear without the belt, and on April 17th a taped PPV will have Nigel defending the title.

Match Results

1. Sterling James Keenan vs. Erick Stevens
2. Cheech & Cloudy vs. Dark City Fight Club
3. Necro Butcher vs. Chris Hero
4. Main Event: Bryan Danielson vs. Austin Aries

Next week: Brodie Lee vs. Jerry Lynn!

For the first match, the ref is miked much more loudly this week than last; you can hear him asking for every break, telling guys not to used closed fists, etc. This could give it a more sportslike feel, but nobody ever listens to the ref, anyway. There’s also one instance of blatant spot calling by the ref. I assume they record everything the ref says and then edit it later, and just didn’t catch that one. This is really variable, though: in the Payne vs. Castagnoli match, you can’t hear the ref at all. I wish they would pick one method and stick with it for awhile—and I’d like them to stick with the louder miked ref, personally. Give it a chance.

Nigel McGuinness cuts an interview backstage where he belittles interviewer Kyle Durden, and says that the only thing that matters is Nigel is the ROH World Champion. He says that he’s going to kill Jay Briscoe during the main event—not just once, but three times. I don’t think killing people is very sporting, is it, Nigel?

Oh, and speaking of sporting, by the end of this show, the handshake Code of Honor has been violated at least two times out of eight, so far on HDnet.

PRINCE NANA! He’s bringing in Bison Smith to take revenge on getting kicked out of ROH years ago.

All the matches were good; Haze vs. Del Rey was the worst, and it wasn’t horrible. There were a few missed spots early that knocked me out of the flow.

Overall, I think this show as more enjoyable than the first week. I’d still like to see the commentary improve: Dave Prazak is very subdued, both in terms of volume/excitement and in the amount he talks. And as mentioned, I’d like to be able to hear the refs in every match, consistently.

Match Results

1. Kevin Steen vs. Eddie Edwards
2. Daizee Haze vs. Sara Del Rey
3. Alex Payne. vs Claudio Castagnoli
4. Main Event: Jay Briscoe vs. Nigel McGuinness

Next week: Austin Aries vs. Bryan Danielson!

I haven’t been watching Ring of Honor much over the last few years. I wasn’t particularly interested in Takeshi Morishima as champion and the overall number of DVDs I’d need to buy to follow the storylines I was interested in [such as the Age of the Fall] basically drove me away from the promotion — not in an active “I hate ROH now!” way, but in a more passive “I don’t have the time/money/energy to keep up with all of it.”

I’m hopeful that ROH on HDNet will allow me to keep up with storylines and the new wrestlers more easily, and that I can go back to buying ROH DVDs without it being a total guessing game [and without having to wait for reviews of each DVD and then buy them a month after they come out...]

ROH on HDNet, March 22 2009

They’ve brought back the Code of Honor, at least in the form of “handshakes before the match,” but they break it for the main event of the first show. Way to establish it.

Each wrestler gets a short 10 second pre-taped promo before each match, and as they enter the ring a few short facts about them display on the screen. Before the main event there is a “tale of the tape” that compares the wrestlers, but they didn’t do this for any other match.

Dave Prazak handles color commentary and Mike “The Hog” Hogewood does play-by-play. Kyle Durden does a few backstage interviews throughout the show. For the most part I didn’t think Prazak and The Hog were too bad of a combo. The Hog is obviously new to wrestling and relies on a lot of “that must hurt!” instead of calling actual moves and getting a little more detailed.

Considering the show is taped and then the commentary dubbed overtop, they fall victim to a common peeve of mine: one of the announcers talking about something relatively unimportant when something important in the ring starts to happen — and instead of the other interrupting with “Look! He’s caught in the koji clutch!” he just sits there and waits for the first announcer to finish. This just feels cheesy, especially since the announcers can watch the match first, take some notes on when important things happen, and then work the commentary from there. When dealing with these shorter-than-usual ROH matches, they need to make everything count.

They also opened the show with a little “in the studio” talking head bit from Prazak and Hogewood, and I didn’t enjoy that. The show doesn’t have enough of a sporting feel for that to be appropriate. Durden’s backstage segments also felt very pre-taped, not like they were actually happening in between the matches.

The “History of ROH” video was mostly good, but for a show that billed itself early as being about wrestling and sport, it sure showed a lot of wacky crazy spots as compared to actual wrestling. But that’s a small quibble; the video also included Flair, Heenan, Foley, and other such stars, to help give ROH credibility.

I don’t know if it was the crowd itself or the sound blaance, but the crowd seemed really quiet for most of the matches, and you could plainly see people not giving a crap; very unlike a typical rabid Ring of Honor crowd.

HDNet shot the action differently than a normal ROH show. They used the hard camera very sparingly, the ground cameras were run by professional cameramen, and they had a crane camera that provided a rotating view of the ring. I liked the crane camera, but occasionally it moved too much and actually seemed to be swooping away from the action. There were a couple times when the cameras didn’t quite catch the actionas they should, as well [most notably missing a chair spot in the Jacobs/Black match.] Overall, though, I liked the look of the show.

All the matches were perfectly watchable. The first three were all in roughly the six-minute range, and the main event just under 14. Not long by typical ROH standards, but putting 4 short matches on the show lets them get 8 guys out there each week — good for quickly introducing everyone to any new fans.

Jimmy Jacobs and Kenny King looked to be the standouts from this show. I must admit some love for Rhett “Addicted to Love” Titus’ gimmick as well; I can see him being just as hateable as Rick Rude was in the 80s.

After the matches, a teaser for next week’s debut of Nige McGuinness on the show aired.

Match Results

1. Delirious vs. Jerry Lynn
2. Sami Callihan vs. Kenny King
3. Brent Albright vs. Rhett Titus
4. Main Event: Tyler Black vs. Jimmy Jacobs