Another school year has just begun and somewhere some student has already failed to complete his assignments. Here at segundacaida we start lots of writing projects. We probably finish 30% of them. We are left with lots of half thought out rough drafts and unfinished pieces that never make it onto the blog. Has the interernet made the concept of a “rough draft” or “not fully worked out idea” obsolete? I’m not sure. But felt I might as well share some unfinished writing. Maybe some of this will get worked up into something else, maybe it won’t. In the meantime, your new segunda caida feature: “Segunda Caida Gets an Incomplete”
ROH RISING ABOVE PPV
TKG: We’ve missed a couple PPVs and time to get back on the horse. Show opens with badly lit shot of Lenny Leonard and Dave Prazack introducing the show. Seems like a mistake to open with them as the face of ROH is the wrestling and not the announcers. One of the things I like about the team of Prazack and Leonard is that you don’t notice them. They aren’t over the top screaming hype men and can be easily tuned out. In the current world of US wrestling that’s really strong selling point. The crowds are mic-ed better and you don’t even notice the announcers. The face of ROH is the wrestling and not the announcers. We get some mediocre Kevin Steen mic work and a video of lots of highspots set to music and then the show begins with Delirious v Albright.
PAS: Yeah I have no real problem with either ROH announcer, but neither guy should ever be shown on camera. Watching a ton of wrestling from the 80's lately, wrestling was at one point primarily aimed at working class families. Look in the crowd of a Mid-South or Memphis wrestling audience, you see little kids, old ladies, mill workers, cute waitresses. Now with the death of work in America, wrestling has primarily become a pastime of creepy loner guys in their 20's. It is a limited demographic to grow around, and the fact that Prazack and Lenoard look like a pair of guy who moderate Jessica Alba fan sites doesn't help ROH break out of its demographic straight jacket. Doesn't Philly have a weatherman who could use a second job?
Delirious v. Brent Albright
TKG: This is a “grudge match” and Albright is wearing a stolen delirious mask. Felt like they should have used a quick video package to recap the feud leading to the grudge match. The purpose of these PPVs is to sell DVDs. A set of still photos of key moments with names and dates of shows would work too. Better use of time then the backstage bit. Match itself was surprisingly good. Delirious was really fired up and everything he did looked sharp. With his current long beard, Delirious kind of looked like "Charlie Brown From Out Of Town". Adam Pearce is a really shitty Paul Jones but Albright is kind of fine as Teijo Khan. Brent Khan does a lousy job at eating the Shadows over Hell and his 619 knee lift was laughable but nothing else was particularly objectionable. Match also didn’t have too many false finishes. First Delirious hot near fall felt like a legit finish, second one did too, and the third one was fine as well.
PAS: Delirious is wearing his red outfit, which is supposed to signify anger. This is a kind of angle you see alot in Japaneese wrestling, and I think you need to not understand the commentary to make it work. Listening to announcers explain how these colors make him crazier then his other colors really makes the angle come off stupid. Delerious also probably needed to crazier shit to get it over. This was a fine match though, although Albright really felt kind of immobile. It took them fifteen pushes to get rid of Whitmer so I imagine we will have to sit through a bunch more Albright matches before they give up on him too.
TKG: Post match Hangman 3 come out to attack Delirious. Steen and Generico then come out for the save. Then in come Age of the Fall who are then run off by the Vulture Squad which leads to an impromptu Scramble match. So I’ve never really cared for Ultimo Dragon‘s booking. I like well booked factions, liked Gaea booking. But even when liked the matches, didn’t care for Toryumon booking or Dragon Gate/Door/Highway booking. There is no hierarchy of which faction means more than any other. Briscoes should in essence be your top team and are doing mic work challenging Age of the Fall, yet Age of the Fall are shown running scared of Vulture Squad. No hierarchy means it doesn’t really matter in the end which faction gets the pin or which one eats the pin. Having a brawl turn into a match this way just is shitty. Hey what happened to Necro Butcher, Teijo Albright, Delirious, and all the other faction members who were brawling at the beginning of the match? They just stopped brawling and went to the back? Got chairs and started watching? Who is in this match? ROH could use lucha style graphic where they put up headshots of who is on each team? All that the Hangman Three team have going for them is that they are heels—why are they constantly paired up against Age of the Fall (the other heel team). No one was in here long enough for me to care or notice anything about them. Well Ruckus was in long enough to remind me that he stinks. Is he any good on the mic? Cause Uncle Ruckus v J Train might be an entertaining feud. Still nothing really blown.
PAS: This was pretty bad, these type of matches really need someone like Dixie to hold them together. Also this match has a million people in it, why is Tyler Black eating the pin when then next show is built around him as a title contender. You needed to protected Adam Pearce or Ruckus?
Sarah Del Ray v Lacey v Daizee Haze.
TKG:Not really sure why this was announced as being a “women of honor” match and not a “Shimmer” match. “Women of honor” really sounds like some sort of creepy Virginia Dare type, David Duke reference. girl in baltimore goes missing noone cares, but when a "woman of honor " goes missing in Aruba it gets round the clock coverage. Heat killer as third match on card is weird card placement.
PAS: I think these ROH womens matches are significantly worse then most TNA womens matches and not even as good as the best of the Michelle McCool v. Layla series, if they aren't doing it better, I see no reason to do it at all.
Erick Stevens vs. Davey Richards
TKG: They actually do a nice job of setting up that the No remorse Corps broke Eric Stevens arm and this is his revenge comeback match. It doesn’t take much to set these things up. And this starts well with two exchanging stiff blows. In terms of card placement (if they hadn't run the women’s match second), a match built around power spots and stiffness might be nice thing to do right after scramble spotfest. Stevens hits a really nice sidesuplex and there are a couple nice exchanges. Kind of makes no sense to have Stevens distracted by Puder in his revenge match. “YOU BROKE MY ARM! NOW YOU MUST PAY..but wait who is this other guy? What’s he doing here?” Is Stevens more upset by the guy disrespecting his match than he was by the guy who broke his arm? Or is Stevens just working an A.D.D. easily distracted gimmick. The Puder angle really only works if he’s distracting from a meaningless match. Makes no sense as part of a match with this type of back-story.
PAS: Yeah this was pretty bad, Stevens comes off like a total chump, would have been fine to run this angle as a way for Stevens to lose some four way fray, or even to have him get his revenge and then go after Puder, but working a victim of the Youtube generation gimmick seems like a dead end.
Chris Hero v Claudio Castanoli
TKG:The last match leads to Larry Sweeney trying to come out to recruit Puder, which leads to Claudio Castanoli which leads to Chris Hero attacking to start their match. Chris Hero’s shtick absolutely doesn’t work in this context. The whole ECW ish hurried every match leads directly to next impromptu match plays against Chris Hero’s strengths. Chris Hero is a guy who does lots of stalling and BS . He needs to come out with a ring entrance. Him running out to attack Castanoli with lots of stalling and BS nonsense just doesn’t work. Hero’s nonsense works as comedy shtick which he can move in and out of. Here it just comes across as no different than Ruckus’ nonsense as “wrestling”. These are both guys who I like and who I’ve liked as a team and liked against each other. But for ex feuding teammates in a match with a big stip attached this was really paced like a TNA Explosion five minute X-division match. Like a TNA Explosion five minute X-division match three way dance. I kept on waiting for Chasyn Rance to break up the pins and get in his stuff. This was bad.
PAS: Did these guys have a good match in Chikara or PWG? It seems weird that two guys who train together and worked as a tag team for so long have such shitty matches with each other. Hero is really good at worked a heated match, but they never seemed to figure out what they wanted to do here.
TKG: Tru and Mia X’s “I’m bout it Bout It” is a really great song that gets people fired up. So is Poor Righteous Teachers “Nobody Move”. I love both those tunes but a party where they just played nothing but those two songs back to back would be a shitty party. A DJ needs music that’ll get you fired up, and then he needs to do something with you once your fired up, needs to move the crowd up and down, transition to slower songs, romantic songs that you can grind on a girl to, contemplative stuff that makes you think, then stuff that picks you back up, stuff to get more girls on the dancefloor, stuff to get more guys on the dancefloor, stuff you’ve never heard before, stuff that makes you happy because its so familiar, etc. Pacing a show requires contrast and changes in pace. If everything’s paced the same it all floats together and becomes nothing. So we’ve made this point a couple of times writing about ROH PPVs. I wrote about Driven “ Part of the format of starting show with fast 6 man spotfest is that you slowly move away from that opening speed. Second match at same speed as first means they start to run together.”. Phil wrote “One of the problems with both PPV's so far has been that all the matches are too similar, they don't break up the high impact stuff with mat based matches or comedy matches”. Instead of fixing this problem they’ve made it much worse. The ECW “every match runs in to the next impromptu match” booking makes for even fewer breaks. Where before all the matches felt like they were running together due to being paced too similarly. Now they are running together because not only are they paced similar but they are literally running together.
Bryan Danielson v Morishima
TKG: This was a boatload of fun. I really liked the reckless Cactus v Dustin early table throwing spots, Danielson's Santo level blade job and the just reckless feel of the whole thing. I don't remember Danielson being this good at brawling during the Homicide v Danielson feud. He was out of his element and occasionally felt lost. He is lost no more. Normally not a big fan of the guy does opponent’s spot and this was filled with it. But somehow that really worked in the context of revancha match...as both a taunt and a revenge spot. I also really liked the "you can't touch the ref" finish. Even in relaxed rule environment the referee is still an authority figure is really old school. ROH has done ref bump before (Daniels v Punk) but ref can't be touched and wrestlers still fired up is nice finish.
Briscoes v No Remorse Corps
TKG: So in theory the idea behind booking the Briscoes to win 2/3 falls matches in two straight falls is that when they eventually lose a fall it will be a big deal that the audience will immediately recognize. It's not a bad theory per se. It doesn't work when the Briscoes lose their fall in a listless series of roll ups. For the fall to mean anything the wrestlers need to work like the fall matters. Second fall wasn't really worked like the heels had any advantage, or faces were fighting back from disadvantage either.
Austin Aries v. Nigel McGuiness
TKG: I’m not exactly sure when Nigel was supposed to have turned heel. I remember it being written as though he turned heel after this match (or crowd turned on him after this match). Whatever, he was clearly working heel here and was awesome at it. Nigel is a guy who eats huge huge bumps. At this point in U.S. wrestling, you’ve become really accustomed to seeing guys who don’t know how to work heel do really self aggrandizing “I’m a tough guy toughing through stuff”. It’s almost jarring to see Nigel eat these giant bumps in this non-self aggrandizing way. Nigel gets beat and you want to see him beat. Nigel works really old fashioned heel in the sense of guy moving backwards while face is always moving forward. Aries is guy advancing while Nigel is always just catching him in stuff. It’s not chickenshit heel, it’s not a dominant heel but it’s very clearly heel. And it’s heel work done on a level above everyone else working heel these days. There are moments where it approached Eddy in Eddy v Rey 05 period level heel work. This is a blow away great match.
PAS: No arguing with Nigel anymore, in 2007 he had four of my top ten matches, with four different opponents. This match is sitting at the top spot. Aries is a hell of an athlete, and put in a match with good pace, can be spectacular. Here he was amazing, taking enormous bumps, moving with tremendous speed, and hitting with real impact. This was Nigel's match though, as he has become really good at working a big main event style match. One of the things Nigel does during his big matches, is little restarts. Here Aries hits him with a tope to the back driving his head into the guardrail, and Nigel spend the next couple of minutes backpedaling avoiding Aries offense, it is a set of very cool counters and nice slowing down on a show which is all moving forward. Finish run is pretty great too, as there are just the right number of two counts, and it never gets into ROH overkill territory even with the huge moves. Just great wrestling.
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