Ring of Honor NYC 11.02.07 Report

Credit: Bill Treadway & WrestlingObserver.com:

Glory by Honor VI Night 2 was a nice 8 match card within a bloated 11 match show. We were packed in the Manhattan Center like sardines and the crowd was red hot with the exception of the last match, which I’ll get to later.

1) Chris Hero def El Generico- Good, solid *** opening match. Hero is now recast as a goofy, comic heel with a mean streak and it works. Match started slow with a bit too much comedy, but it built into a fast paced, high spot match. Finish went back and forth with Hero getting the nice clean pin (a welcome sight after watching TNA’s half assed run-in after run-in finishes). Hangmen’s 3 (BJ Whitmer with a short haircut and a blond dye job- he looks like a clone of Mr Kennedy; Shane Hagadorn and Brent Albright) Albright gave Generico the Bombs Away through two tables. Kevin Steen came out for retaliation but was ganged up on until Delirious made the save leading to..

2) An impromptu tag match. Lots of high spots and even dare I say it- decent hardcore style spots. Whitmer and Albright won when Whitmer bombed Steen onto a chair thrown in by the meddling toad Hagadorn. ***1/2

3) Hagadorn stays behind and does a killer promo about Hangmens 3 (if Adam Pearce is the leader and these 3 guys are with him, wouldn’t that make it Hangmens 4?) and then makes an open challenge for anyone in the locker room to wrestle him..answered by Austin Aries, who beats him in a quick ** squash. Aries then cuts a promo in which he reveals he is the #1 Contender for the ROH World title. Out came ROH World champ Nigel McGuinness, who got legitmately angry when a fan heckled him for not wrestling despite his injury. After dismissing the jerk with a curt, biting rebuff, Nigel then announced that once he rehabs and rests his arm for the next month, it’ll be Nigel vs Aries for the title at Final Battle 2007 Night 1 December 29. The Aries squash could have been omitted with no great loss.

4) Claudio Castagnoli defeated Naomichi Marufuji in a MAJOR upset. I really liked this match- who would have thought that Claudio could work stiff Japanese style? Marufuji even did some light comedy at the beginning- doing his own version of Claudio’s showboating Hey! routine. The two had a great, physical back and forth match. Marufuji even accidentally introduced a new move- The Brown Mist (he farted- my friend and I easily heard it and were laughing in utter shock. Anyway, crowd popped huge for the clean Claudio pin. Seconds after, Hero and Larry Sweeney hit the ring and attacked Claudio. Sweeney even hit an elbow drop from the top rope (since Sweetney bears a striking resemblance to Paul Williams, let’s call it The Rainbow Connection) onto Claudio. ****

5) Special ceremony for legendary Japanese wrestling legend Joe Higuchi. Crowd was completely respectful towards Joe and chanted loudly for Harley Race, who was there as a co-presenter. Nice ceremony, something we’ll never see WWE or TNA do.

6) The Briscoes tag team title defense against Jimmy Jacobs and Necro Butcher barely went a minute before both teams were disqualified after dueling with chairs. Crowd was pissed over this. DUD

7) Tyler Black squashed Alex Payne in under 3 minutes. This match could also have been omitted with no serious effect. Basically it was an excuse for the Briscoes to come out and challenge Necro Butcher and Jimmy Jacobs to a No DQ tag team title match later in the show. DUD

8) It was now time for the grudge match. Bryan Danielson came out first and the crowd went through the roof. Morishima came out second and didn’t even get a chance to come into the ring- Danielson went into attack mode, diving onto the behemoth from between the ropes. This was the kind of classic ECW style brawl that we should be getting from WWECW Lite if they didn’t have their heads up their collective asses. They quickly took it outside with Danielson just beating the crap out of Moreshima- probably the most manhandled I’ve seen Moreshima ever since he started working here. Danielson depsited Moreshima over the guardrail and then did a dive off the top rope into the crowd. He also grabbed the timekeeper’s hammer and attempted to gouge Moreshima’s eye out. That’s not to say Moreshima didn’t get any offense- he gave as good and stiff as he took. Finish came when Danielson kept kicking in Moreshima’s legs and shoved the referee when he attempted to stop the Dragon from continuing. Moreshima wins by DQ and the crowd did not like this finish at all. But I thought it was brilliant from a storytelling aspect. It shows that Danielson is so consumed by revenge and vengeance that he’s willing to disregard the rules or authority- a nice touch. Moreshima went outside and grabbed a chair, planning to cream Danielson when a bunch of ROH students and officials restrained him. While this was happening, Nigel came in and shoved Danielson, who retaliated by kicking Nigel in his injured arm. Some may knock off points for the finish, but I thought it worked beautifully. This was one of 2007’s 5 best matches so far. *****

9) The No Remorse Corps defeated Da Vulture Squad. Crazy six man match loaded with more high spots than a mountain range. I have seen some crazy stuff over the years, but Ruckus taking a dive onto Davey Richards into the guardrail and narrowly missing my head took the cake. Finish came when Richards made Jack Evans tap. Julius Smokes compared his team losing to the New York Jets (ouch) and challenged NRC to a Brooklyn Street Fight at Final Battle 2007 (not sure which night- likely Night 1 since it’s being taped for PPV)- basically an old fashioned TLC match from what Evans was saying. ***3/4

10) Chris Hero came out and declared that since he made Nigel tap out the night before in Philly that he and he alone should be the #1 Contender. He then called Austin Aries “Mr. 2005” and the second worst ROH champ (only Xavier is worse- double ouch). This guaranteed Aries coming out. Larry “Paul Williams” Sweetney then challenged Aries to a match with Hero then and now- only that if Aries lost, he’d lose his title shot. Aries agreed on the condition that if Hero loses, then Claudio Castagnoli gets a match with Sweetney at Final Battle. Sweetney agreed. Not as good a match as I was hoping for considering these two men, but good enough, around ***1/4. It thought there was too much comedy from Hero, not enough wrestling and it was too slow following the crazy six man match. Plus the Hero beating on Bobby Dempsey all night was getting really old by this point. Not to mention the crowd wasn’t into this match at all. Finish came when Claudio chased away Sweetney and Aries hit the 360 splash on Hero for the pin.

11) Mitsuharu Misawa retained the GHC World title against KENTA in a 18+ minute match. Started slow but built into an excellent match. Not the great match Misawa would have delivered 12 years ago, but still well worth seeing. Each man managed to hit his respective finisher (KENTA giving Misawa the Go to Sleep was impressive) and kicked out. The crowd went nuts. Finish came when Misawa hit a sideway Diamond Cutter variation for the pin. ****

12) Briscoes retained the ROH tag titles over Necro Butcher and Jimmy Jacobs. Daizee Haze and Lacey came out with their respective teams and quickly left after getting into a cat fight. The crowd was burnt out by this time and not as into it as they normally would have. Me, I thought it was a stiff, brutal old school ECW match that was just a joy to watch. Butcher put two chairs together, backs aligned and slammed one Briscoe onto it. Lots of suicidal dives onto the floor, which had to hurt. Butcher took brutal chair shot after brutal chair shot, eventually juicing from his mouth. Finish came when The Briscoes powerbombed Butcher onto a folding chair off the top rope. Butcher has to be resting with ice and on painkillers after this one. Easily ****1/4.