ROH TV Workrate Report: 12/6/10

1. We start with Colt Cabana vs. Eddie Edwards and they take it to the mat and it's goofy but fun. Colt has some silly reversals that make me smile and Eddie does a real nice transition into a kneebar. Cabana reverses into a wristlock and really BENDS that hand back and it looks real painful. We're up and Edwards hits a dragon screw that Colt makes look GREAT by planting his knee directly into the mat and rolls to the floor. Eddie hits a big tope and this is pretty damn good. Cabana nails a clothesline to the back of Eddie's head lands some nice jabs and absolutely obliterates Edwards with his butt. Full on butt-butt right to the chest, just awesome. I can't decide whose jumping flying butt-butt I like more: Cabana's or Goldust's. It's like the difference between a lariat and a clothesline. Cabana runs at his opponent and leaps at them butt first, but Goldust throws his opponent in the ropes and lets their own momentum work against them by leaping up and making them run right into his butt. Ahhh I can't choose. We can just agree that butt offense is great.

Cabana goes for a butt-butt in the corner and Edwards hits a big flying knee and we go into a kinda sucky chop exchange but it doesn't matter because this is still good. Colt nails the corner butt and hits a really great moonsault. Match starts to go a little too long before Edwards' comeback and I think it's gonna go time limit but they SWERVE me and go to the finish. Plenty of stuff to like here, Colt looked really good throughout.

Christopher Daniels' eyeliner makes him look cross-eyed and he's still overshooting that moonsault. For a guy who was one of my favorites to see live in 1999, I sure don't want Daniels on my TV in 2010.

Corino and Steen are in the ring and Corino is in a SUIT and looks great. Steen is Henchman 21 pre-badass transformation and I'm still not loving his "I will destroy" promos about Generico.

Haze and Sara Del Ray have a backstage sit down interview and ROH does a good job of putting them in attractive lighting and they're fighting soon in a tag and Del Ray is cocky but realistic and Haze is likeable and affable and sick of Del Ray not giving her respect. Both gals did their thing and I want to see them fight. It's that easy.

2. Generico is out and DARK and BROODING and is a man on the edge. Bobby Shields looks like young Jerry Lynn and throws shitty elbows like present Jerry Lynn and then Generico throws two really lame yakuza kicks that graze Shields' shoulder and then gets the pin with the brainbuster. This wasn't much. Steen and Generico aren't convincing me with their spittle-beard promos and angry eyes.

3. KOW with Shane Hagadorn are in the ring and Shane is wearing basketball shorts and Claudio is wearing AWESOME dickish white slacks and suede slip-on loafers and a perfectly too-tight ref's shirt while drinking a latte. They do a public workout and bring in a short juiced up orange-tanned guy name Blaine Rage (wow) and Prazak is fucking terrible parroting every fucking thing Hero yells over the mic. Rage has the shittiest "intense guy about to snap" face you've ever seen and he SNAPS due to all the unfair cheating going on and that lasts about 1 second before he takes the KRS-1 and Hagadorn does a great shuffle with a little elbow drop for the pin.

4. And now the main event, Davey Richards vs. Erick Stevens. We start with some waistlock reversals and Davey does a cartwheel out of an exchange then waits in the middle of the ring goofily just so Stevens can run at him and get armdragged. Listless slap exchange follows and Davey at least brings some stiffness with kicks. Stevens misses a charge to the floor, Davey misses a baseball slide dropkick and Stevens slams him into the guardrail back first, looked really rough.

Back in and Stevens keeps working over the stomach and back with some convincing shoulderblocks in the corner and some decent knees. His knees in the clinch looked really good and Richards sold them nicely, really looking like the wind got knocked out of him. Stevens has gotten kinda skinny and it's done weird things to his face as he's all crazy eyes and jawbone. Stevens goes to the top and of course it wouldn't be a Davey match without a strike exchange. Davey does 8 or 10 really awkward headbutts as they battle up top, just kinda headbutting his own hand over and over. Maybe a better camera angle could have saved those.

We head into an extended run of Richards offense, with him hitting a nice running elbow to the corner, a silly handspring knee, and a diving headbutt. We go into a moves trade off for a bit with Stevens hitting a Dr. Bomb, Richards getting a big kick, Stevens hitting a release German suplex, then Davey turning a caught kick into an ankle lock (which Kurt Angle has flat out killed at this point. Once every single one of your opponents reverses your finisher numerous times per match, it's time to move on), Stevens fights for the ropes with his crazy eyes and what seems like a lot of teeth, and they kinda futz around for a bit until Richards locks on a totally bad ass Cloverleaf/Ankle Lock combo (starts out as a Texas Cloverleaf and then sits down with it, still grapevining the legs while grabbing and twisting the ankle. Really cool and painful looking) for the instant tap out.

Match wasn't bad but wasn't good either and seemed really really planned out. I have no ill will against guys planning out their matches to a tee (in fact I really loved a whole bunch of DDP matches) but I really think Davey could benefit from having a little more organic feel to his matches. Too many times during this match he had a blank expression (like Tom Hanks' Polar Express eyes) as if he was concentrating too much on the reversal sequences. Instead of missing a kick and then wisely countering with an enziguiri, it came off like he already knew he was missing that initial kick and following up with the enziguiri.

It has to be very tough to work a sequence when you know how you planned it out, and still make it feel like you don't know what's coming next. When a guy knows he's missing a splash off the top, it's hard to do the splash as if you're hitting it. You know it's a planned spot to miss the splash, so you naturally brace yourself and do the move slightly different.

A big key to why so many of Necro Butcher's matches work is because even though he has spots he regularly hits, all his matches have the feel that they can careen out of control at any minute. Nothing looks rehearsed, and Necro rarely awkwardly shuffles into position for something because he was out of place for a rehearsed sequence. He always seems like he's flying by the seat of his pants, and Davey could really benefit from a little of that spontaneity. He really comes off like a robot that's been programmed to approximate wrestling.

I'm not saying I want Davey to wrestle the same style as Necro, I just really wish he wasn't so rigid and set in his sequences.