PS: Tom and I head off to Pentagon City to await getting picked up by The Pro. Tom shows up late and tells me about how he almost brought me a BBQ sammich, but then didn’t. Tom is really big on the empty gestures. The Pro is a couple of hours late so we give up hope, get some Mexican food, and plan to see the amazing Chuck Brown, Joan Jett double bill at the D.C. BBQ battle instead. Luckly for you road report fans, Pro shows and we head off.

TKG: I’m not just “really big on the empty gesture”, I’m The KING OF THE EMPTY GESTURE: “Happy birthday sweetie, I walked by a flower shop on the way to see you”, “Phil I made a sandwich for you but ate it on the way over”, “Yeah your roommate told me about the infection, if it makes you feel better I did have a condom in my wallet that night”. I’m the king, I tell you KING.

SHOW
American Dragon vs. Biohazard
PS: We missed this match although I did hear the chops while the shitburgers from Atlas Security were frisking us. It was apparently a squash, the chops sounded nasty. Biohazard looked goofy

TKG: While Phil calls them "shitburgers", I would like to point out that I think Atlas hires guys based on the preposterousness of their hairdos. Some of the hair on the Atlas guys is simply amazing. I think this match started while we were being frisked and ended while we were paying for our tickets. The ROH ring crew had put a lot more space between the ring and the ring barricade then the last time we had been there. This was a good idea on a night filled with guys who did dives. The ring on the other hand seemed super loose and bouncy, like they bought it from a trampoline fed or something. This seemed to fuck up everyone’s footing in the first round (with maybe the one exception of the Low-Ki v Nana match).

Spanky vs. Paul London
PS: This was really great, easily the best of the first round matches. London was a guy who I had only seen in a Metal match and in the two minutes of his Chris Marvel match, and he came out of this as I guy I wouldn’t mind seeing going to the four way. Spanky was alot of fun as usual. One problem with writing reviews of shows like this is that individual cool shit gets forgotten. I do remember London hitting a really nasty looking back elbow, and a nice tope con hilo. Spanky can really string a match together which is the thing that really impresses me about him, he doesn’t have the biggest offense but his matches flow really well

TKG: Yeah London looked king sized in this. How do I get a tape of the London vs. Nishimura 30 minute match from “Dory Funk’s BANG!” ? How do I get tapes of Extreme Texas Wrestling? London escaped a slice bread attempt by crotching Spanky on top rope. Spanky threw a great hook while standing on the apron to prevent a dive. At one point both looked to loose footing on the mat and London fell and looked to be a little loopy afterwards. Still easily, the best match in first round. Oh yeah someone needs to tell London not to land directly on his knees when doing a missed moonsault spot, he looked like he wanted to turn himself into Kobashi.

Doug Williams vs. Jay Briscoe
PS: I probably liked this match alot less then most of the people at the show. Williams and Briscoe have a nice mat section at the beginning, where Williams got to show off his snakepit counters. However the stuff off the mat wasn’t particularly good, Briscoe’s strikes looked really weird as he seemed to be having a seizure every time he threw anything. I don’t think he is working a Ritalin snorting gimmick so I don’t get the strike style. Also Williams doesn’t really sell, he eats a bunch of big offense from Briscoe, including a brutal near-Ganso style powerbomb, and just gets up a minute later and hits his finisher. Basically no-selling all of Briscoes big spots.

TKG:I really enjoyed the body of this match. But it was really clear when the body ended and the finish section began. The finish section was very CZWish, endless finishers and kick outs. I don’t remember Briscoe’s’ punches being seizure like, but his kicks were really odd and spastic. Doug Williams sells a lot like Stryker, pantomiming for the back of the Tokyo Dome. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I dig Stryker’s selling. But the combo of the spastic kicks and them being selled so demonstratively was really goofy. I didn’t notice Williams no selling in the end, because essentially the finish section of that match was all about the no selling.

Jody Fliesch vs. Johnny Storm
PS: I enjoyed some of Johnny Storm’s little heelish moves, but this kind of backflip exhibition is the kind of match I don’t like even if it is done perfectly, and they blew some stuff. Nice dives by both, but this doesn’t do it for me.

TKG: Boy is Storm tiny. I dug Storm repeatedly getting thrown to the floor. And boy is Fleish a pretty boy, he and Xavier need to tag as the “Source Model Army” or something. Both guys seemed to loose their footing a lot and this was a mess.

Low-Ki vs. Prince Nana
PS: Elax comes out with Nana, showing that in the interpromotional war with CZW, ROH got the Briscoes but lost Towel Boy Eric Tuttle, seems like a fair trade to me, Dougie may disagree. Ki gives the Prince a bunch of offense at the beginning, and then they do another worked concussion angle, as he knocks Nana out with a high kick. If Ki wants to lose his rep as a reckless worker he should stop working angles where he concusses people.

TKG: Of the under five minute opening round matches, this is the only one that actually felt competitive. Low Ki came in wearing his Nike shorts, like he was going to work shoot against Billy Reil or something. Nana did I think only one of his throws and did several of his incredibly stiff butt bumps to the corner. Nana, who otherwise has been treated like a joke in his other ROH appearances, got in a lot of offense. The worked concussion almost has a flash pin feel to it. Nana does a real good job selling being KO'd and Rudy Boy is king-sized as the veteran helping Nana up. I think the concussion angle is silly and would have been far happier with a ten-count knock out. That said this was better than Scoot/Daniels or Xavier/Red.

Red vs. Xavier
PS: These are two over guys, who have had good matches with each other, no excuse for giving this 4 minutes. Not long enough to do much, and this makes Xavier look bad. Terrible time management, especially considering how long the tag team mess went. The stuff they did was nice, but this was a waste, Xavier should have worked JAPW this night.

TKG: This was over really fast and felt almost like a Red squash. When it was over. Xavier through a gnarly powerbomb that Red sold bigtime. I liked Red’s punches when he was teamed with Hoshikawa. I had really disliked Red’s punches in is Puerto Rico work. Tonight Red was working, tiny guy with ineffectual punches gimmick, which I dug. I think the Red work with Big Slam Vader may have actually helped him, since he no longer works “wrestler with spectacular offense” but tonight instead works “underdog”. It works well for him. I barely even remember this match happening though. Given the way they have been building Xavier this was dumb. Even without that Xavier build this was dumb.

Chris Daniels vs. Scoot Andrews
TKG: Before this match Daniels did some mic work about the “Prophecy” or some such and how he was going to destroy the Ring of Honor. This didn’t excite me much. I far preferred when the Christopher Street Connection threatened to turn the Ring of Honor into the Ring Of Homosexuals. That would have been a far cooler heel team: they could have brought in Pimpinela, Lazz and I’m betting Brief Brothers vs. Hit Squad or Natural Born Sinners would be 4 star affairs.

PS: This was a poorly booked Russo style 2 minute non-match to set up a bad angle. Scoot and Daniels have worked each other alot, and could have had a nice 7 minute match or so, but instead the flew Scoot down to do Sumie Sikai’s mikework. This buried Andrews and there is really no use to keep booking him after this match

TKG:I liked Scoot vs. Xavier from the 2/23 ROH show, but unlike Phil I don’t know if Scoot/Daniels have a good “7 minute match” in them. I haven’t seen that super 8 match in a long time. Scoot at one point hit a neat looking reversal into a lariat. If it had any impact it would have been a good move. I wasn’t looking forward to this match at all, and was fine with it only going 2 minutes.

Simply Lucious vs. Sumie Sikai
PS: I was looking forward to this match, as I have liked Sikai in J’D, and I am a fan of Rudy Boy Gonzalez as a trainer. As a group wrestling valets fall pretty low on the “group of women I would like to fuck list” most look like afternoon shift strippers on handfuls of Oxy, but Luscious had a nice look in the backstage skits in the ROH videos. She had on some scenester glasses and a lip ring, and looked like the hottest girl at the Death Cab for Cutie concert. So when this match sucked so bad it was a real disapointment. There was a couple of times where it appeared that Luscious didn’t know how to go up for a bodyslam, this was plum awful.

TKG:hmmm “Death Cab for Cutie” concert…. I thought she looked more like the hottest girl in the record store special ordering “Pet Shop Boys” and “Tortoise” rareities… but the “Death Cab for Cutie” is a better fantasy since I can kind of talk power pop better than indy dance 7 inchers. Luscious wears “cutesy-girlish” ring outfits…I work for ddepartment of recreation with at risk kids, and I spend too much of my time keeping men away from elementary school girls…as a result the “girlish” look kind of creeps me out. But like Phil said, in the backstage skit with the trendy frames, SHOCKAMAGEE~!!! You look at her face and you just swoon. In the match I liked her punches and the way she took a drop kick but this match was ugly mess and it looked like she didn’t know how to go up for a bodyslam. The match seemed to be full of miscommunication and was painful to watch. Sakai was fun, she was really good at connecting with the crowd, and always was able to recover and cover for the miscommunication. I don’t know how smart it is to repeatedly go for bodyslam on someone who doesn’t seem to know how to take it. But other than I dug Sakai. This was just ugly mess, even at three minutes this felt four minutes too long.

Jerry Lynn vs. A.J. Styles
PS: I absoultely hated the match these two had at the WWA PPV, mirror sequences, multiple reversals, double kip ups posing for claps, two count roll ups, you hit me- I hit you, finisher overload, it was the personification of everything I hate about Indy wrestling, sufice it to say I was not looking forward to this match. They surprised me though, as the big opening section of the match had some nice matwork, and Styles doing a nice job ripping up Lynn’s arm. The last section of the match wasn’t great as Lynn forgot about the arm and they broke out their two count roll ups and finisher counters and shit, but I still thought this was way better then I was expecting

TKG: Phil seems to forget how poor the execution was on that WWA PPV match. The Daniels/Scoot and Lynn/Styles bracket was the bracket that I was least interested in. I had seen Lynn styles at WWA and thought it was ugly, I had seen Daniels/Styles at KOI and disliked it. And I was really hoping for a Lynn Daniels final in this bracket to save me from having to see Lynn/Daniels KOI rematch. I like Lynn more than Phil does, I watch more Minnesota indies and I once saw him live teaming with Tommy Rogers against Tracey Smothers and Little Guido (Fuck you Paul E for having the Dudleys run in and punk everyone, that was about to be the only good match on your shitty card---I’m still pissed). The body of this match was fine. If your going to work a bodypart in one of these guys it should be on Lynn. Styles threw better punches than he did in the Super8 and his arm work looked neat.. Like Briscoe/Williams when the body of the match ended, it was just ignored and forgotten. One!! Two!! One!!Two!! Fuck you Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero!!! The finish section was bad, I was just happy they didn’t do a rolling suplex section, so I didn’t need to curse at Benoit too.

Tag Team Cluster
PS: LOOONG multiple team brawl which was loaded with problems. They have a pair of Feinstein trainees come out and do some unintelligible mike work, DHS come out and suplex them on their heads. Most Sugar Daddy’s pay their Pony boy’s rent and buy them gifts, RF has his ponies take unprotected head bumps, in a big city like Philly, you boys can do better. Everyone comes out after that and they brawl for 6 3/4 hours. Christopher Street Connection come in to get killed by the Sinners and yet again get no offense. CSC are babyfaces in every other promotion they are in, and get cheers in ROH, but they are booked here like heels we are supposed to hate because they are fags. What kind of bizzaro self hating shit does Rob have going on here, your here, your queer, be proud.
 

TKG: I liked the Feinstein trainees on the mic. They were working a “Southern Rockers 2K2” gimmick All Dunn wore a Dokken T-shirt and I guess Medium Well wore a Scorpions one. Surprisingly the second generation Dunn was marginally better than the second generation King. Quiet Storm was also surprisingly fun on the mic. Unfortunately it looks like Feinstien has bought new outfits for Devine Storm that are as hideous as the ones he had made for the SATs. When it comes to fashion sense, Pena and Feinstein really are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Flashback: It was the 80s, Miami. Reagan was in the White House and the cocaine was easy to come by. Mitzrahi would yell at Versace “Come here honey! And look at Rob’s latest drawings”. Versace would walk over and the two would laugh and laugh. Versace, “Oooh look at all the lightning bolts. Shazam, Baby, Sha…zam!” Mr. Blackstone would try to comfort Rob, “Come here sweetie and let me rub oil your shoulders. Ooh you have such nice shoulders…don’t worry about them boy-chick, I’ll put you on a list that they don’t print in People magazine sweety” But Rob would just stew, “One day I’ll show them, I’ll show them all.”

TKG: Devito bumped semi-big which was a surprise. Christopher Street Connection who have really nice offense, still haven’t gotten the chance to show any of it off in ROH. For what was essentially a long brawl this had a ton of rope running. It went on forever and completely lost the crowd. This clusterfuck went longer than any of the first round matches. ROH continues its pattern of worlds crappiest tag booking. Given Feinstein’s looks it’s surprising and almost refreshing that he doesn’t know how to lay out tag work.

PS: This was so bad, the tag booking in ROH is worse then even WWE tag booking. DHS have great natural charisma as heels or faces, they have been booked so poorly that the crowd was giving them suck heat. Homicide was the only guy that came out of this looking good, as he has such intense charisma, he is wasted in this black hole of a tag division, gimmie Homicide v. Rudy Boy Gonzalzes.

Intermission:
TKG: Its intermission time, but they won’t let us out.

PS: I spend intermission kibbitzing with Wes and Rob Naylor two of the solidest guys I have met through the whole DVDVR shebang.

Spanky vs. Jody Fleisch
PS: This was alot better then Fleish v. Storm, and again shows how good Spanky is at putting matches together. This was a little short, but I think it was a smarter match then the Williams v. Fliesch match from England. Jody gets amazing height on all of his dives, and the crash and burn into the guardrail was completely nuts.

TKG: Fleish gets preposterous height making them look super dangerous. I thought he hurt himself on a dive and then he started doing the old school twitching sell, which was reassuring. Fleish kept on teasing dives well. Spanky was able to get over the idea that Fleish was teasing dives as part of his offense and not just teasing them to pop the crowd.

American Dragon v. Doug Williams
PS: This is the first KOI rematch on this show, and this was better then that match. The matwork was really fun, including a section where Williams kept countering a kneebar attempt, which was really swank looking. Both guys threw some nasty uppercuts as well. Plus they did the really cool lucha move of being put into a submission hold and both guys rolling from the ring to the floor while staying in the move. The ending was sort of abrupt like the ending of the first Williams match, with him eating a bunch of big moves and then just going back on offense, although it wasn’t nearly as abrupt as the first match. I am unsure how Williams will fit in the four way title match, as his real strength in matwork, and you don’t have alot of matwork in four ways.

TKG: Yep this was better than the KOI match (at least better than the KOI match was on tape). The roll to the floor was great. Somehow Phil forgot to mention Dragon taking a suplex to the floor. When Williams teased the spot, I thought “bah! Nobody outside of Jamie Knoble is crazy enough to take that”. Then Dragon took it. Unlike Knoble, Dragon did a good job of landing cleanly in a way that won’t shorten his career.

Red vs. Low-Ki
PS: Red and the Maximos have really been underwhelming the last six months or so, and I was worried that Red couldn’t pull off the quality of match that he had with Ki previously. I was wrong though this match was down right amazing. The opening was HK film style with both guys moving crazy fast and dodging each others moves and blinding speed. The previous matches had that opening too, but had a body which didn’t live up to the quality stuff they did to start. The body of this match was as great as the opening, they had this super knucklelock sequence, where Ki peppered Red with elbows from the knukclelock. Red’s offense looked really credible here, as they gave him some nice hope spots, intersperced with Ki beating his ass in truly nasty ways, and Red taking huge bumps. I really got into this match and actually thought Red might win, which is the true measure of success of a match like this.

TKG: This was laid out really nicely. It was favorite vs. underdog. Ki was almost working heel beating the living hell out of Red. Red was full on Ricky Morton underdog here. Ki was on extended offense for most of the match with Red getting hope spots. Red sold the beating tremendously and used his kicks and highspots as hope spots. Reds mid air sunset flip thing could be the hurricarana of the new millennia. It was a super over neat spot that the audience buys as a move that the underdog can use to change momentum in match. Watched Rock n Roll Express vs. Russians and Morton uses the sunset flip from second rope and normal sunset flip for that purpose, it became almost a cliché in nineties for guys like Whipwreck and Rey to use rana as hope spot that transition them onto offense. I don’t think a crowd would have bought either the susnset flip or the hurricarana anymore since they’ve been played out. It was nice to see that Red has developed a spot that can work in that role and that he had enough understanding to use it that way. Ki wasn’t full on heel but it almost fealt like a very traditional heel favorite vs. underdog face structure. It’s a structure/formula that works, and that even a cynical crowd can get caught up in. That formula worked a lot better than the mechanical two count roll up section in final match.

A.J. Styles vs. Chris Daniels
PS:I really couldn’t stand their KOI match, they just exchanged moves, with no rhyme or reason with no guy hitting two moves in a row, so I wasn’t looking forward to this match at all, however yet again it exceeds my expectations. This match was all about Daniels as bastard heel punishing Styles. They start with some nice matwork, and then it is a long Daniels beatdown, including making Styles bleed. They had a really cool counter of a Styles clash into a kneebar. Styles had to stick in his crappy 2 count sequences, otherwise this was a fine match. This was poor match placement, though as nothing could follow Red v. Ki, and a delibirate match like this would have been better as the second match of the second round.

TKG: This was the first time I got to see Styles throw his “born again discuss clothesline” and I popped for that. This was long sections of Daniels beating on Styles and much better than their KOI match. I tend to prefer Daniels when working against a guy like Tech-9 where his opponent doesn’t have a lot of offense than when Daniels works a guy like Kazarian, where Daniels seems intent on making sure we get to see all of both guys spots. Styles has a lot of flashy spots to show off, and I had seen the mess of their KOI match. But this was much better than I expected it to be. This started with some nice mat work had less rope running than I was expecting and was all about Daniels on offense for long sections. Styles gets thrown to floor and bleeds for your sins. This started as favorite vs. underdog but eventually turned into indy finisher two count roll up. Like Phil I also popped for reversal of clash into kneebar.

PS: Fun overall show, although not as great as the first ROH show we went to. The crowd was siginificantly worse as they seemed to have picked up a ton of shitty ex-ECW fans, who seem only to get excited if they can chant “you fucked up” or wag their flacid penises at a woman. Jesus what the fuck is wrong with Philadelphia men? During parts of the final I had the feeling I was in the crowd of guys cheering on Jodie Fosters pool table gang rape in The Accused.

TKG:I don’t know what the deal is with Philly men. It’s not the fault of the Philly women. I lived outside of Philly for several years and went out with Philly girls. I didn’t see anything in the Philly girls behavior that would suggest that they did anything to deserve this kind of treatment form their men. The only thing wrong with Philly girls was that they had been burned out by a lifetime of dealing with Philly guys. Frankly this kind of worked in my favor, since Philly is the only place in the entire Western world where I come off as tastefull and classy compared to everyone else. It was really odd experience for me, I don’t know what to do when people think I’m classy-it’s such a culture shock.

But anyway the crowd was full on disgusting during the final match, and really distracted from the match. You got the impression that these guys needed to feel like they had dehumanized a woman, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to masturbate when they got home at night. (Phil you might be able to say that better). Given their need to see a woman humiliated, in order to pleasure themselves, Rob might want to start selling a best of Momoe tape at Philly shows.
 

PS:The normally nominally sane Yakuza Rich has put over Hawiiain Hat guy some sort of admriable fan, but he spent most of the matches gay baiting Mike Kehner or Bill Apter, or thinking up clever puns on Simply Lucious’s name like “Simply slutty” or similar razor sharp barbs. I am a genial fellow, but I want to go over a beat his fat drunk old ass senseless. Also they need to bring in Bill Dundee or someone who can book tag teams, as their tag division appears to be booked by the proverbial million monkees on a million typewriters.

TKG: Yeah Hat guy wasn’t going to even wait to get home to masturbate. He gave off the impression that after the show he was gonna stroke himself off behind the nearest Wawa. I have no idea what Rich was talking about. The only other time I had sat close enough to hat guy to hear what he was saying was at an ECWA show where he kept on race/gay baiting Xavier (hat guy kept on yelling about how Xavier liked Boogie Woogie Brown’s black cock). Hat guy actively detracts from matches. A valet or a referees role is to help bring attention/focus to the work in the ring. Hat guy spens all his time isolating the ref, valet, camera people from the work (calling out about Apter taking pictures of mens crotches, and how the ref likes to touch boy ass, etc). There’s a fucking match going on, stop talking about Apter’s “gay” shorts.

Hat guy who was yelling about the homosexuality of Briscoe vs. Williams mat work, was sitting two people away from the Briscoes mom and sister. The look of disgust on the Briscoes sisters face when Hat guy kept on yelling “Simply gonna fellatio-Us” was amazing. I kept hoping, come on your brother used to work for CZW, turn around and beat that guy like hes some kind of Japanese monkey boy.

The guy I’m most disappointed with is Monseur Ooh La La. Ooh worked extremely loose with Hat Guy in the ring, instead of stretching and stiffing him. If Hat Guy cared at all about protecting the business he would have wanted to be stretched and stiffed. Ooh La La, you have disappointed me.

PS: Post show we drive down to the traditional Annendale VA, Korean BBQ feast, we trick Marcel into meeting us so we can get a ride back to D.C., and eat ourselves silly. 3am Korean BBQ atmosphere rules as we are surrounded by 19 year old Korean disco kids talking like Snoop Dogg. I enjoyed this show for the most part, and am cautiously optimistic about ROH as a promotion.