horrorfan_1986

Rising Above
November 22, 2008

Kevin Steen and El Generico (c) vs The Briscoes - ROH Tag Team Titles Match
Well how about that, Pearce actually remembered about his tag team champions for the PPV. Steen gets on the mic before the match trying to talk the Briscoes out of wrestling because they have nothing left to proof and Mark's only at 50%. Idk, personally, I heard he was at 61%, so Briscoes might have a chance. The Briscoes say 'Fuck it' and attacks the champs to start out the match. It should be mentioned that the Briscoes are undefeated on PPV. Which I believe makes them 8-0. No other team/wrestler comes close to that streak for ROH. Mark's injury from the night before is highlighted greatly as Steenerico works on the leg whenever Mark is in the ring. Jay's left to handle much of the workload in the match though. Generico hits a nice plancha on the outside to Jay. Steen looks to hit Mark, but Briscoe begs him not to with his injury, Steen thinks for a moment then kicks the injured knee of Mark. Package Piledriver puts Mark away and scores the Briscoe's first PPV loss. The bell isn't enough to stop the wrestlers as Jay gets in a shoving match with the champions. The war isn't over. With Mark's injury, you weren't going to get too much action. To Mark's credit, he did his best out there. I was fairly puzzled as to the role of the champions. Everything about them screamed heels. While it's good enough for an opening match, Steenerico really needs some better matches to make this title reign not be a huge disappointment, especially since it looks like the American Wolves are going to win the titles soon. 7 Minutes. 3 Stars.

MsChif (c) vs Sara Del Ray - SHIMMER Title Match
After reigning as the first SHIMMER champion for nearly a year, Del Ray lost the belt to MsChif earlier in the year (SHIMMER Vol. 18). Unlike most of Del Ray's recent ROH matches, this one goes a lot longer than 30 seconds. While I assume MsChif is a heel being in the Age of the Fall (Is she even still in the faction?), she played the face role battling the monster that is Del Ray. MsChif gets to show how flexible she is several times as Del Ray just tortures her. Nice escape from a high elevation Boston Crap by MsChif. MsChif tries for the green mist, but Del Ray ducks. MsChif reverses a butterfly suplex into her Desecrator DDT. That's enough for Mschif to retain her title. While the Desecrator sounds like a pretty cool move (A simple DDT, however; with the arm trapped as well), it came off looking pretty weak. I'm not sure if Mschif just didn't connect with it well enough or if the move really is that poorly done. Anyways, from the crap that we've seen on ROH ppv's from the SHIMMER ladies, this is a much better match. A lot more flat out wrestling than you'd see with the Diva's matches which I appreciated. My only wish is that ROH could bring in some other women for their SHIMMER matches. Now that Lacey is done with wrestling, all we see are Haze, Del Ray, Mschif and every once in awhile some random jobber. Although I guess the only problem with that is that most of SHIMMER's more talented wrestlers are working with TNA these days. Anyways, a fun woman's match that really showed how talented both were. 9 Minutes. 2 1/2 Stars.

Claudio Castagnoli vs Sami Calihan vs Silas Young vs Alex Payne
Ah, how the mighty have fallen. Just two PPV's ago, Claudio was wrestling for the ROH title, now he's stuck in a match with four nobodies. Although Lenard and Prazak mentions how Payne is very over in this area of the country. Payne looks like he's a 12 year old flat chested girl. The match consists of Claudio trying to bully his way to the win and everyone else just trying to survive. Near the end, everyone starts getting enough of Claudio and attacking him more. Sweet spot by Young where he does a headstand on the turnbuckle (Like Nigel) and falls forward catching his feet on the top rope to hit a moonsault like move. Claudio tags in during the spot and tosses Young out. They tease the upset with Payne, but Claudio puts him away with the Ricola Bomb for the victory. Claudio looks to continue his assault on Payne after the match, but Bryan Danielson comes out and runs Claudio off. For a match with such "Stars", this one turned out to be a lot of fun. From the few matches I've seen of Calihan's, he has so much potential to be good. Young at least has the look of the star. Payne has his girlish looks that would go over quite well in the state penn. With Claudio's losing streak as of late, I would of preferred to see a massive upset with one of these guys winning with a rollup. Meh, either way, it accomplished it's goal. 9 Minutes. 3 Stars.

Sweet n' Sour Inc. vs Roderick Strong, Brent Albright and 'Crazy' Ace Steel
Sn'S is represented today by Chris 'Remember when people used to think I could be ROH champion?' Hero, Davey 'Dyno Kid Jr' Richards and Go 'I can't think of a clever nickname' Shiozaki. This is Steel's return to ROH after being in the WWE. He's taking the place of the injured Erick Stevens. Now, if only Stevens can be injured more often. This one never really got started for storytelling. It was just wrestle-tag-wrestle-tag. Which is really what my main problem with multiple man matches is. They're trying to get enough time for everyone to show off what they can do which doesn't leave enough time to tell an actual story. Even in the star vs 3 jobbers match before this, they were able to tell a story. Either way, Sn'S picks up the win after Hero nails Strong with a chair with Richards covering his former NRC partner. Like I said, nothing really interested me in this match. I was left more with a feeling of wanting to see Strong vs Richards seeing how they made the final say 30 seconds exciting. It's a shame with such talent in this match. 15 Minutes. 1 3/4 Stars.

Austin Aries vs Jimmy Jacobs - I-Quit Match
After months of this poorly booked feud was started, it's finally coming to an end. Before the match, Aries lets Tyler Black know that he doesn't want him to interfere like he always does. It doesn't take long for Aries and Jacob to battle on the outside. Black pulls Jacobs off of a table before Aries can crash through it. Uh oh...that won't please Aries. Jacobs quickly finds the dog collar that was used at Bound by Hate (Last show). Aries is bleeding. Jacobs continues the assault. Jacobs wraps the chain around Aries who's in a chair, trapping him. Aries still refuses to quit. Black hands Jacobs the spike from his pimp cane (Do emo kids call their canes pimp canes?). Lacey (!) makes her surprise return revealing herself to be in Aries corner. She refuses to throw in the towel even after Jacobs threatens to spike Aries through his neck. Jimmy has enough of Lacey and goes after her to spike her. This gives Aries enough time to free himself from his chair. Brainbuster by Aries followed by some chain shots busts Jacobs wide open, we're talking about Muta scale like bleeding. Aries wraps the chain around the corner trapping Jacobs. Every time Sinclear tries to ask Jacobs if he gives up, Aries pushes the ref away. Big Drop kick finally sends Jacobs slowly falling and out of the chains. Jacobs is layed back on the table on the outside, but throws a chair at Aries face on the top turnbuckle. Jacobs meets Aries up there to fight it out. Both men fall hard through the table. Back inside, Jacobs locks in the End time, but Aries won't give up. Black gives Jacobs the spike again, but Aries avoids it. Knees to the head of Jacobs. Austin grabs the spike and proceeds to hit Jacobs in the head with it over and over until Jacobs finally gives up. Both men are a bloody mess. While I hated the feud, these two showed that they could put on some great matches together. Idk what it is about these blood feuds, but Jacobs really steps up his game for them. Just like at Joe vs Punk II, Jacobs reminds me that he's better than expected. The I-Quit match has had some disasters, but this is yet another great one that can be lumped in with such classics as Funk vs Flair and Magnum vs Blancard. Easily, Jacobs best singles match in a very long time. 22 Minutes. 4 1/2 Stars.

Nigel McGuinness (c) vs Bryan Danielson - ROH World Title Match
This is now their ninth singles match together. Thus far, Danielson has won 4, Nigel 2 and there was one draw. Danielson won the last match in Tokyo, but it was just a non-title match. Nigel defeated Danielson in their last title match at 6th Anniversary Show. Both men shakes hand before the match. Nigel lets Dragon know that he's aware of Danielson's bum knee from the night before. Danielson tries his usual tricks, but Nigel keeps going back to the knee whenever Danielson gets too far in the match. Both men works the 'I've got til five' routine. Huge helo by Danielson to the outside. Nigel grabs a chair, but the ref prevents him from using it. The distraction is all Claudio needs to come out and nail Danielson a few times with his own chair. Dragon doesn't look to reach the ring before the 20 count is up until Alex Payne (Of all people, the fucking 12 year old girl?) helps drag Danielson back to the ring where he makes it back at the last moment. Bleeding, Danielson kicks out of a Lariat that took his head off. Jawbreaker is reversed into a armbreaker. Triangle Choke by Dragon has Nigel in and out of consciousness. Dragon stars with the MMA elbows, but passes out from sheer exhaustion. He awakes more pissed than ever and continues with the elbows. Cattle Mutilation isn't forcing Nigel to give up, so Danielson tries a tiger suplex. Nigel reverses another Cattle Mutilation with a surprise Tower of London. Nigel with some weak MMA elbows of his own. Both men are on their feet and Danielson is screaming at Nigel to bring it. Elbow by Danielson sends Nigel into the ropes. Headbutt to the back of Dragon. Bounce back to the ropes and Nigel kills Dragon with the Jawbreaker Lariat. That's finally enough to get Nigel the win. I'm really starting to wonder if these two are capable of having a bad match together. They had the ROH 2007 MOTY at Driven and now looks to have an early MOTYC (I know it's Jan, but Aries and Nigel was my ROH MOTY last year and that match aired in Jan as well). I loved the work of Danielson's knee. The fans were just going crazy at the end expecting a new champion. I just really hope Pearce doesn't wait too long before taking the belt off of Nigel. There's been so many nights that the fans were dying for a new champion. My only gripe about the whole match was some of Nigel's selling at the end of the match. Selling for a few more moments would of helped this match be damn near flawless. Fantastic way to end the PPV. 28 Minutes. 4 3/4 Stars.

Overall
ROH is known for having their second hour of their PPV's be better than most other companies entire 3 hour PPV's. The second hour of this show is unbelievably great. Unlike some of the more recent ROH ppv's, the undercard featured some good matches. All around a great night for ROH action. This would also be the first show for the new production values. The video quality looks a lot better and more professional. One of the major problems with ROH has been lighting on their cameras. There's been many times that when they switch camera views, the light makes it look like a totally different show. For the most part, you didn't have that problem. ROH now has a crane camera like TNA does. While that's great for steel cage or ladder matches, they need to work on using the crane for getting better shots. Most of the crane shots made it hard to even see what was going on. With a little more practice, I have confidence that ROH will be able to perfect it better. Anyways, it's always great to see a company invest some of their money back into the product. Just these changes will help ROH look a lot less Indy which could help greatly in attracting fans that otherwise wouldn't give them a chance. All in all, this was the first ROH ppv that really interested me (Card wise) in a long time. Luckily, it delivered.

Best Match: Nigel McGuinness vs Bryan Danielson
Worst Match: Sn'S vs Strong, Steel and Albright

Overall grade: A-

Marketh.

Damn, I'm a lot more excited for Dragon/Nigel. How would you rank it with their other matches?

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horrorfan_1986

I was thinking about that as I was watching it. I think I came to the conclusion that I just need to rewatch their Unified and Driven matches over again to properly judge.
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Capone

I'm kinda with you on the tag match as well. Only thing that was even close to story telling was the Strong/Richards encounters and that's it. Steel really did look like he didn't even belong in there and was one of the weak links in the match. I really wish Stevens was in there instead
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horrorfan_1986

I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw what was lacking in the match. I said this on another board, but out of all 15 minutes, the only parts I enjoyed was the 30 seconds at the end between Richards and Strong.

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King Steventon

Bit late to the party but I just got done watching both the big matches and man alive were they fucking great.

Aries/Jacobs had everything you want in a bloody fued ender. Wasn't keen on the Lacey shit, and Jacobs's selling post-match was God-awful but they are minor points on an awesome, awesome match. Jimmy Jacobs really is the indy version of Edge in the sense that he kinda sucks in "straight" matches but looks like a God in hardcore matches. Aries was fucking awesome, loved him NOT LETTING JACOBS QUIT and beat him to death in the corner. You didn't mention it, but Aries calling Black "flavour of the month" was a real "OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WENT THERE" moment.
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As much as I hate everyone using the crossface now, the finish was sick.

Danielson/Nigel, I will admit, I was sort of iffy about. I watched both their matches last year and both felt a bit "same old, same old", and all the repots I have read said this match as the same, but oh shit this got epic. I wasn't keen on all the interference (lol @ Alex Payne) but the finishing stretch was uber-good. A bloody, semi-consious Danielson getting his "second wind" and elbow the fuck out of Nigel was amazing. I wouldn't say it's as good as their Driven or Unified matches, but better than both their matches from 2008.


One thing that I should say, as much as ROH gets criticised for infinite kickouts and ridiculous near falls, I didn't feel that with either of these matches, both felt like they ended just at the right time.

Neither were close to Aries/Nigel from last year imo, but easily two MOTYCs right here.

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horrorfan_1986

I seemed to have forgotten to mention it, but yeah, I hated how Jacobs just jumped up after the match to verbally assault Black. You just took a good 10 minute non-stop punishment which included being spiked several times, fucking stay on the mat.
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Capone

I have to agree with the resurrection Danielson elbows being fucking amazing. I usually hate it when he tries to play to the cowd and do it but this went with it in so many ways. The match is 100x better then that fucking stupid 6YA match.

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Marketh.

As I've said before, Dragon wasn't trying to purposely hurt Nigel's head. Any time he did get hurt was indirectly.

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King Steventon

Fucking terrible, yeah. And the whole shit with Lacey made litle to no sense to me, but they are minor points. I marked for the fans yelling for Tyler to knock Jacobs out.

I'll be honest, I wasn't too into the match up until that point. Alot of it felt fairly standard stuff, but that part fucking nuts.


Also, did anyone else find it odd that they had the whole heel-using-face's-move-against-him spot two matches in a row?

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