ROH TV Workrate Report: 1/31/11

Apparently Eddie Edwards vs. Christopher Daniels is on tap for the TV title tonight, as ROH TV is starting a tough battle to get me to give up doing these reports before the show is canceled. I've given up on greater projects than this before completing them. Will they get me to quit? Will I back down? Maybe if they bring in Jerry Lynn to work 1999 spots with Christopher Daniels and have a battle of whose sequences have aged the worst, I might. At this time there are more workers that I don't like than workers that I like on this show. I like Cabana. I like Briscoes half the time. I like Hero & Claudio. Aries is gone. Necro is gone. Corino hasn't showed up in well over a month.

1. Mike Mondo vs. Colt Cabana starts us off as Mondo cuts a (purposely?) really cheesy growly promo and Cabana starts the match essentially working like Santino crossed with Jackie Fargo. Cabana does a great wristlock fakeout into a crossface and Mondo does some really bad stomps to the back. And then you forget about the stomps as he whiffs on two straight clubbing blows to the back...then falls about 6" short on a diving headbutt....and then locks on a chinlock. Wow. Chinlock is probably a good idea to maybe collect your thoughts and consider maybe connecting with any of your offense. Nope, as he then does a ridiculous roll through Russian leg sweep into a seated dropkick. Good lord. This is why WWE reins guys in. A lot of wrestlers cannot and should not be left to their own devices. Cabana gets sick of things and hits some nice punches, then Mondo blows snot on him and hits even worse clubbing blows. But Cabana hits the butt butt and I'm happy again. Cabana goes up top, Mondo goes for a superplex but Cabana counters with a GREAT GREAT gutbuster, dropping Mondo in spectacular fashion over the top rope and Mondo bounces really high off it and it looks so awesome. Billy Goat's Curse gets the tap and man did Mondo bring nothing to this match. That gusbuster was phenomenal and I always dig Cabana...but man Mondo loked bad.

Truth Martini is out and I hate his hair so fucking much. I assume he just had the biggest jew fro on the planet and then relaxed the fuck out of it and it just looks like the shittiest over-straightened neglected horse mane ever. I cannot stand this guy. BUT he introduces Roddy's new tag partner, MICHAEL ELGIN!! YEAH! I haven't seen this guy in a year or so but he was a guy I always looked forward to in IWA-MS a year ago and it looks like he's gotten into real decent shape. He was really fat and jammed into a singlet back then, and now the singlet fits him a lot better and he looks pretty solid.

2. Michael Elgin & Roderick Strong vs. Alex Silva & Crisjen (yeah. I know.) Hayme looks like an opportunity for Elgin to destroy these guys. Hayme's chest gets nice and red within 1 minute, which seems a fitting punishment for someone that spells his name that way. Feels like he should have been teaming with a J-Synn or a Shayne (my overspelled indie name would be Araq Rhittzz btw. Phil would actually go for brevity and be Fil Snyda). And as I type that Elgin gets a sit out powerbomb to win. Elgin did not really work as stiff as I remember him working in IWA-MS.

HDNet has a lot of ads that basically say "A lot of our late night shows show tits, guys!" which I have to commend them on. Would guys rather watch Manswers, or girls being bullied into showing their ass crack?

3. Tehylhorr Hayndrixx (I forget how she actually misspelled it so I made an educated guess) vs. Sara Del Ray doesn't seem very promising for Taillor. Del Ray boots her right in the tummy three times to start and then kicks her in the head. Tayylor has red hair and some good underdog babyface charisma, like Amy Adams in Sunshine Cleaning. I want her to succeed. Sara's bangs are growing in again which is good. She cut them way too short last time and it left her with more of an unfashionable Alabama failure mullet and now she's getting more of a 2003 Karen O indie mullet which works for her. And holy fuck does she stretch Tailher the fuck out with literally the nastiest Gori Special I have ever seen. She locked it on normally, then reached back and cranked Henndhrix's head back in a headlock and pretty much bent her in half. Good lord.

Buncha tag team interviews. Briscoe interviews are always spectacular, as they have that Diaz brothers charisma where they just tell it like it is but they aren't all high and mighty about it like Lenny Bruce. They just say how things actually are without trying to make any social commentary.

Jay: So, we like already beat all those other teams.
Mark: Yeah, we beat 'em.
Jay: So....

While all the other teams are saying lame shit like "We are determined. We are serious. This is professional wrestling and we have to remain focused!"

4. Main event is up. Christopher Daniels vs. Eddie Edwards. 30 minutes left to go in the broadcast. Make me believe, Eddie. This is your shot to get on my good side. He's wearing really literal tights. They have an American flag on them, with a wolf tearing through them. That reminds me of all those literal videos from the 80s where all the stuff happening was being sung. Like "Down Under" by Men at Work. Hey, that guy is literally 6'4" and full of muscles! He's offering me a Vegemite sandwich! Or "Abracadabra" by Steve Miller Band. Abra Abracadabra (cue magic)/I'm gonna reach out and grab ya (cue guy grabbing for somebody). But Edwards has some cool arm work to start, especially cool was him catching Daniels arm while Daniels was doing a pointless cartwheel. More arm work and eventually Daniels gets a nice Death Valley Driver which planted Edwards pretty good.

Daniels arm seems to be aces as he goes into a decent control section, working a deep crossface, a crossface chickenwing, and some other decent stuff. They both go up top and Eddie hits about 15 headbutts which seems like a crummy plan for someone who the announcers keep telling me has a bad neck, really just putting over what agony he must be in due to his neck. Maybe it was a pre-existing injury? Because he hasn't really done anything to lead me to believe he has a bad neck in the match.

Edwards goes for a poorly planned moonsault off the apron with about 3 feet betwwen the apron and guard rail, and predictably lands ankles first across the guardrail. Back in he pretends his ankles didn't just shatter 30 seconds before and hits a nice rana, and Prazak will not let this mystery neck problem go. Any move Daniels does to Edwards, Prazak says "Daniels goes back to work on the neck!!" Three minutes to go and now they aren't just wrestling each other, they're wrestling the CLOCK! Holy shit moment as they go to the apron and long story short Edwards hits a double stomp off the top rope onto Daniels' back, and Hog and Prazak really need to stop putting over injuries that Edwards is not selling. "He did that stomp with a sprained ankle!" They do a emotionless submission exchange as the time limit runs out.....but Eddie wants more time! He's a fighting champion!!

And Hogewood still puts over Edwards' non-injuries, yelling about his bad ankle as Edwards is jumping up and down repeatedly on his ankles. Eddie Edwards has asthma!! He shouldn't be asking for extra time in the match! Eddie's allergic to pet dander! He shouldn't be around wolves! Eddie has hypertension, he shouldn't be this intense! "Man his ankle is hurting him!" literally right as he is jumping up to deliver a kick to Daniels on the top rope, then climbs the ropes with ease to do a rana.

So yeah, real shitty finish as Edwards kicks Daniels hard to the face and gets a nice rana off the top, but Daniels just stands up and does the Angels Wings for the finish. Man that's stupid. Not even paying attention to the fact that Daniels will now be defending this belt on TV a lot, just as an isolated finish it was awful. He could have just reversed the rana or blocked the kick to the face. Where's the suspense in taking a few moves in a row, then simply standing up and doing a move like nothing happened?

This match had potential, but any of the things that could have made things interesting were instantly ignored almost immediately after being hinted at. Edwards starts working over Daniels' arm for the first 3 minutes, this could have lead to Daniels having difficulty hitting the Angels Wings...but the arm work gets ignored and never factors in to anything. Edwards smashes his ankles on the guardrail on a midguided moonsault, Daniels could have done some leg work, slow Eddie down to make him more susceptible to being finished...but Eddie never acted like his ankles were any worse for wear and Daniels did nothing to capitalize. Announcers constantly put over how injured Edwards was, talking up his bad neck, his bum shoulder, his bad ankle...but that must have been news to Eddie and Daniels, as Daniels didn't work over any of those things and Eddie sure wasn't letting on that any of those parts were even sore.

Instead we got a robotic exchange of moves. Sometimes Eddie did two moves. Then Daniels would do two moves. Then Eddie would do one, and then Daniels would do one. Sometimes they would lie on the mat afterwards. Sometimes a move would get kicked out of. Submissions were applied, they were broken, then more moves. There were no transitions. One would simply transition from taking offense, to doing offense. There was no capitalizing on mistakes, just one guy doing his thing while another took the thing, then getting up and returning the favor. It was a pointless 20 minutes. Nothing either guy did looked very bad. A lot of the things they did looked good. There were nice superplexes, nice powerbombs, a nice death valley driver, nice submissions, etc. Most things looked like they were performed well. Moves looked good, moves were taken well. But who cares?

They never built anywhere. Eddie hit a superplex! Daniels is in trouble! Oh, no he wasn't. He kicked out at 2 and then gave Eddie a move. Neither guy ever seemed to have an advantage over the other, the match just ended eventually. No using ones advantage against another's disadvantage, just doing some moves until one of them holds another guy's shoulders down for an extra second.

The crowd was into it. They chanted "This is Awesome", maybe even twice. But I'm pretty positive I could have cut this match into 30 second intervals, shuffled the intervals around, and replayed the match and it would have been about the same. It didn't matter that Eddie got dumped on his head with a DVD, because he just hit about 12 headbutts in a row less than 2 minutes later. So it really wouldn't make much difference if those headbutts came before or after the DVD. When the 15 minutes were up and it was ruled a draw, Eddie was slumped in the corner, breathing hard, barely making it to his feet...but then when the match is restarted he is fine, running around and exchanging moves.

Maybe a good match exists here. Maybe if I took each individual move and each moment, and re-edited the order, I could make it a good match that logically built and ended satisfactorily. Or maybe it just wasn't that good.