ROH TV 6/30/12

I’m back at the final buzzer to capture last weekend’s ROH TV for you all. Since we last recapped ROH TV, the internet is abuzz with ROH Death Watch, as Mark Madden wrote a bunch of drivel about the company going out of business and half of the tag champs, Kenny King, bailed to TNA. This show as well as the one that begins airing in some markets tonight are both Road Rage editions, however, rather than showing clipped matches from the most recent iPPVs, this show featured matches from a recent house show in Charleston, West Virginia. Tonight we take a look at Davey Richards vs. Mike Mondo, and an original rules Texas Death match with Jay Briscoe one on one against Charlie Haas.

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–I’m gonna try to do this quick and dirty, since I’m nursing a major hangover and this show is basically not in-canon, having come before Best In The World. Nigel McGuiness is out of the booth for this taping and in his place is Jim Cornette himself.

–Davey vs. Mondo is up first, because despite all my pleas they still seem to want to push this square peg into the ROH round hole. Cornette plays up some of their history from OVW during the match, in case anyone was wondering why Mondo has a job. Mondo did his best to try and play Davey’s game and have a mat-wrestling/submission match, but a lot of his grappling counters were less “catch as catch can” and more “Rube Goldberg rolling around a million ways that make no sense until you snag the move you wanted.” If I give Mondo credit for anything, it’s that he’s willing to at least try to be a stylistic chameleon and adopt different styles. The problem is, his body language, crowd-playing, and mannerisms are still over the top goofy comedy wrestling schtick, and no matter how much he tries to be a talented wrestler, he’s going to seem like a pretender trying to do what good wrestlers do. This match was fun, but a little on the slow paced side, for reasons that became perfectly clear when the announcer called for “2 minutes TV time remaning”. Davey had Mondo in the Ankle Lock (with leg grapevine, to at least make it nominally more interesting than a regular Ankle Lock) and Mondo was fighting off a tap when time limit expired. The crowd chanted for 5 more minutes but Mondo took the Pyrrhic victory of going to the limit with Richards and bailed.

–We got clips of a 4 way between Adam Cole, Kyle O’Reilly, ROH vet BJ Whitmer, and TV Champ Roderick Strong where if any of the non-champs scored the win, they become No. 1 Contender. The action looked crisp and decently paced from what we saw. The ending saw Adam Cole score the clean win over Roddy, gaining a title shot. Even though it hasn’t aired on TV yet, it doesn’t count as a spoiler since ROH put the video up on their website already: Cole wins the TV title.

–Finally, the Briscoes/WGTT feud limped onward with an “original rules” Texas Death match between Jay Briscoe and Charlie Haas. “Original Rules” in this case means after you score a pinfall, there’s a 30 second rest period and then your opponent has a count of 10 to respond. That 30 second rest period is INSANELY pointless, and had a very negative effect on the flow of the match. Also, I’d still like to wonder why Charlie Haas has been the sole focus of most of the storyline stuff involving Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team. He’s done a few solo matches on ROH TV, so I get the feeling maybe Shelton Benjamin has a more limited deal for working dates than Charlie? Because Shelton is the more exciting member of the team, both on the mic and in the ring. I wouldn’t mind seeing ROH book WGTT to break up, and Shelton to turn face. At one time WWE nearly made Shelton a main eventer, it should be no problem for ROH to do the same. A main event babyface Shelton could be a big boon for ROH, especially as a new challenger to Kevin Steen. Anyhow, this match was all big move, lay around. Add a Cell and Shawn Michaels and people would be confused into thinking it was Match of the Year. The ending came when Haas attempted to spray ether into Jay’s face again, and Jay took the can from him, teased spraying him, and then KO’d Charlie with the can for the pin & 10 count.

–Overall a middling show for ROH. None of the storylines were relevant and the action crawled a little, although nothing was pulled off badly or outright disappointing. Until next week, don’t take my word for it, go to ROHwrestling.com and check it out for yourself.