The Ring of Honor ROHport 5.09.09

Ring of Honor by J.D. Dunn Twitter.com/jddunn411 Brightkite.com/jddunn411 Facebook Plugs! If you’re in the Colorado area over the summer, check out Megan LeFurge, a local singer with a great, breathy Market Irglova-ish sound. She’s also adorable. I now own nearly every issue of every version of Spider-Man comic ever written, plus a bunch of others on .pdf, so I’ll be working on some comic reviews/articles over in the Movies section (because we don’t have a comics section, in answer to your next question). Check it out Wednesday or go to my Twitter or Facebook pages for the advance link and tell me what you think. Oh yeah. Look up slightly. Not that far. Then to your right. No, *your* right. The Dunn List is back. May 9, 2009 From Philadelphia, Pa. Your hosts are Mike Hogewood and the Diet Coke of EVIL Dave Prazak. Nigel McGuinness opens the show with a promo. What is this, TNA? He talks about his body being broken down and Jerry Lynn capitalizing to become ROH Champion. He vows to come back better than ever to become the first two-time champion. Yadda, yadda, yadda. In it to win it. Kyle Durden catches up with Tyler Black and Bryan Danielson. Tyler says he really respects Danielson, and Danielson says he really respects Tyler. Durden respects Danielson, but not Black. Black respects Durden. Danielson doesn’t respect Durden. Now, draw that on a Venn diagram. Delirious and Daizee Haze, together again, cut a tag team promo. “BAH BAH BAH YO GABBA GABBA BAH BAH BAH!” Oddly, Delirious sounds the least high of the two. Mixed Tag: Delirious & Daizee Haze vs. Jimmy Jacobs & MsChif. Okay, so for those who don’t follow. Delirious had a crush on Daizee. Rhett Titus kept cock-blocking him (which will happen when he always try to ask a woman out in the middle of a wrestling show). Daizee was shocked and said she just wanted to be friends, which broke Delirious’ heart and led him to join the Age of the Fall. Daizee had a change of heart and vowed to redeem herself by saving Delirious’ soul. Sadly, the epic Return of the Jedi that I was hoping for never really occurred as Jimmy just abused Delirious until he snapped rather than Delirious seeking redemption in Daizee. Anyhoo, this is a decent match. Delirious freaks out and goes after Jimmy who seeks sanctuary in the ropes. MsChif wrestles like a guy anyway, so it allows Delirious to play lizard-face-in-peril. The Haze gets the hot tag and comes in with a missile dropkick. A senton on MsChif gets two. Jacobs grabs Daizee, but Delirious knocks him to the floor and hits the suicida. That allows Daizee to hit the Heart Punch and Mind Trip for the win at 5:10. SLAP THE PORPOISE! IT’S OVER! The match beats anything involving Dusty Rhodes and Sapphire all to hell. ** Recap of Claudio Castagnoli using the ropes to beat Brent Albright. Claudio says Americans make excuses (WE DID NOT LOSE VIETNAM! IT WAS A TIE!), and he will win because he’s very European. Albright vows revenge when they square off next week. The American Wolves (w/Shane Hagadorn) vs. Orange Cassidy & Leslie Butterscotch. Loo loo loo, I got a partner. Loo loo loo, you got one too. Loo loo loo, let’s get togeth—WHACK! Sadly, we don’t get much of Mr. Butterscotch. Orange Cassidy, the bastard love child of Al Snow and Hulk Hogan, does most of the jobber honors. By “honors,” I mean taking a series of kicks from the Wolves until his chest is like hamburger… with a nice orange and butterscotch glaze. Butterscotch gets the tag. Today’s secret ingredient is ::flourish:: BUTTERSCOTCH! WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN BUTTERSCOTCH RUNS WILD ON—OWWW! Edwards presses Leslie into the Alarm Clock from Davey, and the Orient Express finishes at 3:55. What I want to have done is to get that piece of crap out of the ring. Don’t just get him out of the ring, get him out of ROH. You sit there and you mix your various parts of brown sugar, corn syrup, butter, cream, vanilla and salt into a sticky confection, and it didn’t get you anywhere! Butterscotch meme trumps animal abuse meme. 1/2* The Wolves vow to chase down Kevin Steen & El Generico. So if this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador? Nevermind, Kyle Durden is with ROH Ambassador Ric Flair who is doing his damndest not to sound like Krusty the Clown doing an uninspired product promo for ROH. He doesn’t want to pick a winner in the Black/Danielson match. Well, he is an ambassador, so it behooves him to be diplomatic. Earlier, Colt Cabana returned to ROH to warm up the crowd. Prince Nana interrupted and fed him “Dirty” Ernie Osiris before running away. #1 Contender Match: Bryan Danielson vs. Tyler Black. This was another fine TV match from these two, but not quite on the level of their last match. Lots of “human chess match” stuff early on with Black getting rooked. Ha ha. Heh. Chess humor. ::wipes away tear of laughter:: Danielson goes slightly heelish and gets cocky. Black’s arm gets bent in ways that it wasn’t meant to. Dragon basically opens up his Big Book of Sick Submission Holds (Third Edition) and runs through it. Black weathers the storm. He’s tough. He’s a wrestler. Danielson tries a pescado, but Black darts back in, allowing Danielson to splat on the outside. Back in, Black hits an enzuigiri from the apron and the springboard clothesline. The Lionsault misses (I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Black hit that move), but he hits the SSSP. Danielson avoids the buckle bomb and does the Lance Storm float over into a half-crab thing. Black makes the ropes. Danielson hits a Stampede Dropkick that sets up a running knee. He backs Black into the corner and works the body with punches. C’mon, Rock! You’re going to eat lightning and crap butterscotch! Danielson goes back to the half-crab, but Tyler reverses to a rollup. They get all Funk vs. Briscoe on us and roll around the ring exchanging counters. Black goes for the buckle bomb again, but it’s countered to the Triangle Choke! Black tries to power up for the buckle bomb, but he settles for making the ropes. Black fights off the top rope and hits the BUCKLEBOMB! That hurt! That hurt Danielson! SUPERKICK! Danielson is in the ropes, though, so it only gets two. Black goes up for the Phoenix Splash, but Danielson staggers up and desperately shoves him out into the crowd! AWESOME! Danielson follows him out into the crowd with a SPRINGBOARD PLANCHA! That’s enough for both men to get counted out at 21:54. PUT SUGAR IN THE GAS TANK OF A YAK! IT’S OVER! So-soish in the beginning, but it got progressively better and had a great finish. Still, nothing is settled, so we’ll have to hook ’em up again. ***1/2 Jerry Lynn looks on from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

The 411: They’re making some progress on the storyline front with the American Wolves calling out the tag champs and building both Danielson and Black as contenders. They *really* need to do a better job of hyping the DVDs, though. Instead of throwing out the website, it would help if they said, “Hey, you know all the matches you’re seeing? They’re leading up to a bigger match that you can see if you buy “X” show on DVD.” ECW used to do it all the time. Can’t complain about the wrestling, though.