ROH TV Workrate Report: 2/14/11

So I really didn't get too much out of the 2/7 episode. Usually I come away with a ridiculously long page of notes, and here were my notes from 2/7:

~Highlight package of last week's main event and Hogewood is still putting over Eddie Edwards ankle injury that never happened last week, even pointing out the ankles-first moonsault on the guardrail
~Christopher Daniels
~Mike Bennett vs. Grizzly Redwood is up and my girlfriend loves Grizzly's jeggings and suspenders look. She wishes he would go the next logical step: joveralls. Bennett throws himself into a turnbuckle super fast, making Grizzly's rana look more devastating than it would have.
~KOW/All Night Express vs. Briscoes/WGTT
~Match goes 20 minutes and I don't remember anything about it. Guys broke up pins
~Rachel was confused by the All Night Express name, since "All Night" sounds really long, but "Express" implies quick in, quick out. It's like jumbo shrimp. Or Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr.

That was it. So I just threw my notes into the 2/14 Valentine's Day Edition, smack dab in the middle of the death march. What will await us at the end? Another camp? Trains? More marching? More Christopher Daniels title defenses? *Sigh* All prospects look grim.

We get a recap of the 8 man tag match last week, filled with people pulling others off others for the pin and miscommunications and Shelton Benjamin looking like a not-very-great pro wrestler.

Top Prospect Tournament actually gets me excited. It will be nice to get some fresh talent working match-ups that I haven't seen. Is Bobby Dempsey any good? He's fat, so that's a start. Future Legend Adam Cole is in it. A black guy who is just as tiny as Grizzly Redwood and is named John Grisham? Did I hear that right? An indie John Grisham. I can hear Prazak yelling "He hits the Runaway Jury" after John hits a facewash. His backcracker or roll the dice can be The Rainmaker. Every one of his matches can be basically the exact same thing and they will be enjoyed by millions of middle age women nationwide.

I tried looking up Grizzly Redwood on wikipedia just to see what they hilariously exaggerate his height/weight as, and is he really 38 years old? That can't be right...And would make the jeggings more inexcusable.

1. Mark Briscoe vs. Homicide is our first match, and Homicide has been pretty crummy this year (sans the Necro match that was alllll about Necro dying and sadly never coming back). It's like Homicide started off his 2010 getting stuck upside down in a giant mousetrap and the next 14 months just haven't been good for him. They start with a pretty decent punch exchange and it ends with Mark doing his karate uppercuts which don't look as good as Kane's, but Mark makes funnier faces while doing them. Homicide rolls to the floor and Mark his a nice somersault plancha. They meet in the middle of the ring in some sort of odd pancake or back drop or lock up or something that doesn't actually happen, time just kinda sorta stands still for a bit....so we rope run!! Homicide will always boot you right in the side of the head on a facewash and he really plants that boot in Mark's ear. Mark catches him up top with some meh forearms and Homicide AWESOMELY just grabs and tears at Mark's nose to get him down.

Homicide hits a really fast somersault tope through the ropes, and back in Mark Briscoe flies 3 feet past Homicide with a sunset flip off the top, but Homicide is a bro and scoots back 3 feet to help Mark out. A powerbomb and a couple suplexes don't faze Homicide as he just stands up and hits an Ace Crusher. Hogewood points out how the match has been 50/50 the whole time which is certainly true since this is the definition of "I just did a move, now it's your turn, ooooooo me again!!" Mark returns Homicide's earlier sunset flip generosity by hooking Homicide's arms as Homicide is trying to hook him for the Cop Killa. Briscoe does some stuff and Homicide kicks out! Homicide does stuff and Briscoe kicks out! But then Homicide does a really big version of an earlier move for the win! This wasn't bad, but both guys went back and forth between looking good and looking really not good, sometimes within the same minute.

TOP PROSPECT TOURNEY!!

2. Kyle O'Reilly vs. John Grisham. Grisham is making his ROH debut. Grisham looks a lot like a super tiny Jay Lethal and jumps REAL high to start. They do some perfectly fine indie rope running and arm drag sequence (spoiler alert, they both threw a dropkick at the same time and then faced off!!!), and Grisham goes for a Lady in the Lake spot (The Street Lawyer) but O'Reilly kicks his legs and we go into a chop exchange. Grisham throws a really decent right chop, but gets flashy and thinks he's a switch chopper and jeez did his lefty chops look bad. O'Reilly's chest at least gets all red from them, but Kyle comes back with kicks (learned from Davey Richards!!). Sometimes O'Reilly seems like he's moving in slow motion through all of his spots. Grisham hits a cool hip toss into a kick, knocking Kyle to his knees, and then delivers a nasty standing spin kick right to still-kneeling Kyle's jaw (A Time to Kill!!!). Ouch. O'Reilly does a awkward sell on an enziguiri that probably sounded better on paper and dumps Grisham with a suplex. Grisham really throws himself into O'Reillys dragon screw leg whips and O'Reilly transitions into really shitty MMA offense that looks like he was making fun of people who compare MMA and pro wrestling. He threw some really bad palm strikes from mount, then rolled into a triangle and delivered some really listless elbows from triangle for the tap. Boy. A lot of people shouldn't do MMA offense. All said and done, fun match and Grisham had some fun ways of transitioning into stuff. I look forward to seeing him more.

**Phille Shneyeder informed me after the match that his name is John Gresham. Not Grisham. I'm not going back and removing any of the shitty jokes.

Homicide storms the ring sounding more drunk than "loco". He wants to be "campion" again. ROH screwed him because he lost his belt to some fatty from Japon and never got a rematch! (wasn't that like just a couple of months before TNA pulled him or something?). Roddy comes out and oohhhhh brother. "When you were in that company down in Orlando..." Man that sounds dumb. Strong wants an apology and Homicide acts like he's going to apologize but then swerves us by punching Strong! With a punch that looked really awful in HD! When you do the "look we're just talking right now and everything is totally cool and *PUNCH*" spot, you gotta really make that punch count. You gotta Dick Murdoch-punching-Ted Dibiase that shit. Homicide whiffed so badly on this punch it was like he was aiming over a foot behind Roddy's head.

That's how the show ends. I think it was supposed to be really wild and violent, but Homicide just threw less-than-stellar punches and took Roderick Strong's pants off. Yup.