wrestling / Video Reviews
Dark Pegasus Video Review: Ring of Honor — All-Star Extravaganza 2
August 9, 2009 | Posted by
7
The 411 Rating
Community Grade
Your Grade
Loading...
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Ring of Honor — All-Star Extravaganza 2 by J.D. Dunn Twitter.com/jddunn411 Brightkite.com/jddunn411 Facebook.com/jddunn411 Colt’s special guest is Bobby Heenan! They make fun of Jimmy Jacobs. Heenan is so awesome. He even plays along with Colt’s joke that they’re in Chicago. Heenan seems like he’d be fun to have a beer with. He hypes his debate with Jim Cornette. Andrews and company are products of the ROH wrestling school (and CM Punk). Bower sews the seeds of dissent as half the Special K members shake hands and the other half don’t. It’s all Special K until Izzy misses a springboard 450-splash. Andrews gets the hot tag, and the students clean house. It’s like the last act of The Last Dragon. Deranged hits a Death Valley Driver but stumbles into Izzy. Izzy gets rolled up at 4:47. Even Punk seems surprised. Not much of a match as the students (outside of Andrews) were the fleshy equivalent of tackling dummies. 1/2* Lethal insulted Nana and the Embassy at the last show. The WMD is apparently Slash Venom, aka Flash Flanagan. Nana raised taxes on his town in Ghana just to be able to hire him. Thank you, Barack Alibama! WMD wrestles a very WWE-ish style, which makes him a great heel here. Lethal misses the diving headbutt but catches the WMD with the Full Nelson Suplex at 6:37. WMD looked like a pretty good hand, so this wasn’t bad at all. Lethal is good at fighting from underneath. ** The teams pair off according to feud. Allison Danger stalks down in her prom dress to observe. Eventually, the brawlers turn their sights on the insects. Whitmer and Loc even team up for a Carnage Plex on Diablo. The Crew and Maff/Whitmer brawl out into the crowd. Funny and slightly tasteless moment as Punk asks if Loc is Jewish because he’s attacking “Hillbilly Jesus.” He then says Whitmer will come back three days later. The Killaz block the partner-assisted Sliced Bread #2 and hit their Full Nelson Slam/Dropkick finisher at 9:21. I can’t actually recall the Killaz ever winning before. This would not exactly vault them to stardom or anything. Kind of entertaining brawl at points. I’m surprised Danger’s involvement didn’t amount to anything. **1/4 Todd Sinclair bans Nana and the Outkast Killaz from ringside, as per the rules. Nana, well, let’s just say he doesn’t take it well. For those keeping score, Walters is the great technical wrestler, Rave is the sniveling little shit who cheats like a bastard throughout. Walters dominates in a fair fight, but Rave suckers him into using a closed fist and then fakes getting hit with a closed fist moments later to cost Walters a ropebreak. Then, Rave asks Sinclair to check the time and pastes Walters with his own closed fist. Awesome! Walters eventually turns it back into a regular wrestling match. Rave winds up using his own ropebreaks just trying to survive. Rave catches Walters in the crossface, forcing Walters to use another ropebreak. Rave uses his last ropebreak, so Walters puts him in the Sharpshooter. Rave makes the ropes again, but there’s no ropebreak, so he pulls them to the floor. Walters holds on even though Rave is crawling around looking for a way out. Finally, when the ref hits 17 on the count, Walters ducks back in to avoid getting counted out and earns the COR win at 16:29. This delivered exactly what I thought it would. Some great wrestling (Rave is actually pretty good, but douchebaggery keeps steaks in the freezer) and good storytelling surrounding the ropebreaks. ***1/2 Winner gets a title shot at Final Battle. Trashtalk to start, which leads to a hockey fight on the mat. These guys are awfully chippy considering they never had much of a proper feud. Then again, according to a lot of (self-admitted) accounts, these two are pretty big a-holes in real life, so maybe it comes naturally. Ki was the bigger star at this point, and he wrestles like it. Aries goes sort-of babyface. Ki doesn’t give him much in the way of offense, and he even hits the doublestomp twice. Lots of working on Aries’ ribs through bodyscissors and strikes. The Warrior’s Way misses, though. Aries roars back by cutting off the handspring kick and hitting an Ace Crusher variation on the Macho Man clothesline. Sweet. Ki gets his knees up to block the quebrada. More damage to the ribs, and Aries rolls over clutching them. Aries goes for the 450-splash, but Ki gets the knees up again. Ki sets up for the Ki Krusher, but Aries elbows out of it and hits the Crucifix Bomb. Thirty seconds left, though! Aries goes up and hits the 450-splash! ONE, TWO, THREE AND TIME LIMIT DRAW! Seriously, it was like milleseconds difference. The ref rules the match a draw at 20:00. ROH officials, in a rare reversal, offer five more minutes, but Ki just walks out. The fans were really into Aries, which makes this more puzzling because he would win and keep the title as a heel. Then again, it’s even more puzzling why they didn’t set up Joe vs. Low Ki II for the biggest show of the year. In retrospect, it was the right decision, but the temptation had to be there. The match pretty much rocked and showed the awesomeness of Aries. You know, he may just be the greatest man who ever lived. ***3/4 Why don’t the Pitbulls just hand the titles over to Collyer? Collyer and Nigel are great technical wrestlers, so they dominate early when it’s a fair fight. Collyer, Redneck Malenko II, looks great in the ring, and I wonder why he isn’t still a part of one of the big three. Nigel and Rocky’s battle over the handstand is a thing of beauty. Reyes and Smokes team up to crotch Nigel on the ringpost to take over. Collyer gets the hot tag and nearly kills himself on a tope. Nigel dipsidoos Rocky but winds up in the jujigatame. Collyer saves and puts Reyes in the Texas Cloverleaf. He drops it to go after Smokes, though. Idiot. The Pitbulls hit the Guillotine Knee at 16:24. The challengers were great babyfaces, and the Pitbulls are great heels… well, Rocky is a great heel and Ricky stands next to him a lot. This was good stuff. *** Jerk dominates the struggling Acid but misses a 450-splash. Acid hits the Yakuza Kick and finishes with the Inverted Brainbuster at 3:24. Not only was this a useless squash, it was actually counterproductive to the angle where Acid was frustrated by a losing streak. Jerk deserved better. DUD Colt is making his big return after being injured by GenNext a few months earlier. Strong and Evans stall, but Cabana and Jimmy yank them in. Heenan gets in a cheap shot that sends Corny into a tizzy. It’s time for a heel group hug. Heenan slips Jimmy a chain, which Jimmy uses on Roderick. GREAT segment where Colt hides the chain from the ref several times. Corny’s over-reaction makes the whole thing so entertaining. Dancing contest follows, and even Heenan gets in on it with a moonwalk. Corny gets sick of Heenan’s antics and challenges him to a fight. Heenan lays down for him and then rolls out of the way to avoid an elbow. The sub-story with Colt slapping Jack around all the time is almost as good. GenNext considers walking out, but they’re in line for a title shot, so they can’t afford to lose. Finally, they settle into tag formula with Jimmy playing the face-in-peril. This is Corny’s territory. Lots of sick backbreakers and chops from Roderick. Jimmy hits Jack with the reverse Pedigree to get out of trouble. Colt cleans house and hits Roderick with the quebrada. Jack telegraphs his corkscrew attempt and hits his own partner. Colt takes him out with the Colt .45. Cornette sneaks in behind the ref’s back and waffles Colt with the racket, but Heenan jumps Cornette from behind and puts Colt on top for the win at 17:16. Amazingly entertaining match. Gotta love the antics between Heenan and Cornette, and the wrestling was excellent too. ***1/2 This was during the Darth Dragon phase for Danielson. Hard to believe there was a long stretch during which ROH existed without Danielson as a regular competitor. Harder still to believe that there was a time before “Final Countdown.” Danielson is pissed about a previous loss and about Homicide’s attitude, so he’s more than willing to brawl this one out. Bower says no one expected Chris Benoit to be a great brawler, but he showed he was against Kevin Sullivan. Yeah, Chris Benoit turned out to be a lot of things no one expected. Once he has the advantage, Danielson targets Homicide’s injured ankle. He even busts out the Airplane Spin, in a foreshadowing of their later series. He goes up but opts to take out Smokes instead of Homicide. Homicide is able to jump Danielson on the outside, thanks to that. Danielson goes after the ankle, but referee Gary Moyer backs him off to give Homicide time to recover. Instead, Homicide takes off the boot he’s been wearing and waffles Danielson with it. Danielson blocks the Cop Killa and goes for the Cattle Mutilation, but Homicide goes low. Danielson catches him and spins him over into a crucifix pin for the win, though (25:26). *** These two went to two epic 60-minute draws in 2004, so this was considered do or die for Punk. It occurs to me that, if Punk were to use his Money in the Bank title shot sometime soon, we could very well have these two as world champs in TNA and the WWE. Punk tries a lot of psychological tricks early, trying to ground Joe with a headlock and then trying to piss him off so he’ll make a mistake. He adopts his usual strategy with Joe, which is just to keep him in a headlock and force Joe to figure a way out of it. He hits Joe with a series of dropkicks, including a missile dropkick for two. Finally, Joe gets mad and hits a series of strikes. He knees Punk out to the floor, and Punk gets busted open. Joe zeroes in on that cut, ripping at the wound and clubbing him in the face. Punk charges but gets STJoe’d. Punk falls to the apron and tries to set up a sunset flip. Joe just punts him and hits a suicida. Olé Kick, but Punk blocks a second one and comes off the apron with a dropkick. Back in, Punk gets two off a crossbody. A Tornado DDT gets two more. Joe catches him with a snap powerslam and segues to the cross armlock. Punk rolls him onto his shoulders, though. Punk gets two off the Hammerlock DDT and turns him over into the Anaconda Vice. He drops that and hits a moonsault for two. Joe ranas him (!) and hits a huge lariat for two. Punk comes back with the Shining Wizard, but Joe grabs a sleeper (in a play on their earlier match). Punk fades, and the ref is about to call for the bell, but Ricky Steamboat keeps the time keeper from ringing the bell. Punk gets fired up hits a chinbreaker. Joe keeps the hold, though. Punk shoves off the ropes á la Bret Hart and gets two. A crucifix gets two more. Punk’s up and fires off a series of forearms. Joe scoops him up and puts his feet on the ropes for two. Joe misses a flying splash, but he recovers before Punk and hits a German Suplex into a Half-Nelson Suplex. Joe locks Punk in the sleeper, and this time it gets the submission at 31:32. A lot of people were surprised that they didn’t at least tease another hour-long match. This was a bit slow in points, but what it lacked in pacing, it made up for with storytelling and psychology. Punk tried his best to stay with the same game plan he had in the earlier matches – draw things out and look for a flash pin – but once he got cut open, that went out the window. Among the three, this is the one most dependent on seeing the other two (as it should be). I originally gave it ***1/2 on the “Stars of Honor” DVD, and I think, as a match unto itself, that’s deserved. I also could have done without the Steamboat thing. Punk’s overall strategy, and the storyline that springs from it, makes this much more entertaining in context. ****1/4 |
The 411: Well, it's the end of the trilogy and a good match to go out on for Joe and Punk. I'd recommend you see the trilogy for an example of good storytelling from match to match, something of a dying art. At four hours (!) the show is just too bloated. I'm not sure what Gabe was thinking putting all this weight onto one show. It's not that the individual matches weren't good, but it's the law of diminishing returns. By the end, you barely want to sit through the match that's the whole reason for buying the damn thing. Still, if you have the other two, and don't have Stars of Honor, I'd suggest you pick this up. Just clear out your weekend. Thumbs up. |
|
| Final Score: 7.0 [ Good ] legend |
