BACKSTORY:
PAS: I pick up a car and Tom and we head off for the beautiful city of Philadelphia, we stop off for lunch at “Vince’s” Diner, which had the look of a huge mistake but ending up having pretty good Steak Subs that didn’t carve up my stomach like I was expecting.

TKG: We get off at exit looking for a Burger King and instead find “Vince’s”, which is a little hole in the wall without the wall. It rules! A large woman who seems angry to see us takes out order, nailed down patio furniture, and the food is made by a guy who is wearing a glove on one hand which he uses to cook and handle the money; the kind of place you want to take a chick with OCD. And the steaks were great (I prefer my steaks with cheese whiz but for American melted this was nice).

PAS: We get slightly lost in Philadelphia and pass some huge Go-Go warehouse which is where I imagine one could get lapdances from all the ex-ECW valets. I don’t really have 10 bucks to spare for an Elektra hand job so we decide to just head off to the show

TKG: HOLLY HANNAH! Was that a gigantic titty bar. I mean full warehouse of bosoms. The ROH show is full of surprise replacements. We spend the ride up trying to scare each other by coming up with worse and worse surprises. I mean Gabe worked for ECW where surprise meant Jake the Snake and Mabel in the FBI, so we were expecting the worse. The one thing we could reassure ourselves of was that no matter what Homicide vs. Insane Dragon is always a great match-up.

PAS: I think my dream scenario is Donnie B calling up his big brother and asking for a favor. Nova is ex-Zero One. And everyone remembers the Haas Tribute mess.

THE SHOW
Homicide vs. Prince Nana
PAS: I am pretty bummed as Homicide v. Izzy was one of the matches I was really looking forward to. They had a pair of great matches in JAPW, and Homicide is really good as a catcher to crazy highflyers. I think Homicide and Nana could have a good match too, but this wasn’t it, short squash which really had no point on this show

TKG: Yeah this started the show on a bad note. This was a squash as Nana has yet to be booked to wrestle a real match in ROH. Nana did get some offense with a great senton but that’s like me liking the Gambler’s one backfist in a Gambler vs. Sting SN squash. I would have been really pissed if they had booked ID vs Homicide to go this short.

Dixie/Joey Matthews vs. Divine Storm vs. Maximos vs. Hit Sqaud
PAS: This is the best spotfest I have seen in ROH from this group of guys. Dixie looked like the best guy in this, bumping huge and breaking out his repertoire of quality sells. Hit Squad were fun here too as they were just killing everyone with big spots. People always talk about Jeff Hardy spiraling downward, but Jose Maximo has spiraled just as quick and just as bad, he looked utterly lost here and hasn’t looked good in a long while.

TKG: Phil liked this a lot more than I did. Dixie looked really good, better than he has in a while. Mafia was a lot of fun on the apron reacting to all the action in the ring and whenever Mafia and Dixie matched up the match stepped up a bunch as they work well against each other. The Maximos and Divine Storm looked pretty shity here. Joey Mathews on the other hand looked surprisingly great as he threw the first good lariat of the match, worked really well with Dixie and just looked really on his game. He looked like the second best guy in ring and like he was trying to turn this mess into something. You realize how much Mathews has been hurt by being stuck with such a craptacular partner for the last couple years. I’d like to see Dixie/Mathews tag regularly (which before this match is something I could never imagine proposing). I would like to see Dixie vs. Mathews in JAPW. C’MON FRANK MAKE IT HAPPEN. I didn’t dig this as much as Phil but it did have one big huge holy fuck spot. We were sitting near the Zero-One rep who dug that spot. Still for match in front of Zero-One rep, not as good as least of the New Age Horsemen matches.

PS: I think that spot was an 8 man stacked powerbomb. It was out of control. I would like to see Dixie get a Z1 contract, I think he could have a good match with Sakata.

Gauntlet
PAS: I am a big C.M. Punk fan but this was a rough debut, I am flabbergasted at the idea of a straight edge face in fucking Philadelphia. If any crowd deserves a C.M. Punk rant on their worthlessness it is this crowd of repulsive CZW fans and various East Coast detritus. I mean you can smell Hat Guy sweating Ripple from across the arena. Instead Punk works as a generic ROH “good worker” face. He also worked a mat based style in a promotion full of better mat workers against a guy who can’t sell. I don’t think he did a single one of his really cool trademark bumps. Add to that the fact that Micheal Shane sucks fucking ass, and this match was booked to go 312 minutes and we got some things to go through.

TKG: CM Punk is a guy who has a bunch of neat signature bumps which he can build his matches around. He did try to do his bump in the corner but I think Shane blew it by being to close or something. Punk just spent some time working with David Taylor and outside of the rope walking I remember liking a bunch of the Punk arm work. Michael Shane couldn’t really be bothered to sell for that arm work so that hurt it, Shane’s offense looked really mediocre and Shane kept on putting CM Punk in really loose reverse chin-locks.

THIS IS PHILLY! This was a crowd with a bunch of folks watching this as appetizer before CZW. This is a “Holy shit” or “you fucked up” crowd. Trying to get the fans behind the face by putting him in a chinlock is a tough sell. I tend to start claps for faces when opponent puts him in chinlock and it’s hard to get those claps going in Philly. Shane put his opponent in chinlock at least 4 times per match…even I’m burned out by third clap sequence. Michael Shane stinks!!! CM Punk versus Jimmy Angel in ski boots would have been loads better than this.

PAS: Shane and London was short and mediocre, London has some really nice spots and isn’t afraid to bump big, but he still hasn’t shown me he can work a match. Shane is useless.

TKG: Paul Atlas vs Paul London in a battle of the Pauls would have been SO SO SO much better than this. London is all about eating suplexes on the floor in all his gauntlet matches. Michael Shane’s reverse chinlocks aren’t even good reverse chinlocks. At least crank them or something. Bill Walton: ” Do something!”.

PAS: Tommy Dreamer comes out and does the same old nostalgia act he breaks out in the WWE every couple of months. It really had the feel of Liza Manelli singing Somewhere over the Rainbow to a crowd of middle aged homosexual. “Tommy is such a survivor..ECW..ECW..she sings just like her mother.

TKG: Oh man this show was off to a bad start. Tommy Dreamer giving his blessing to ROH was kind of amusing. Him talking about once being “part of a movement that meant something” amused me to. I love the idea of ROH co-promoting with CZW and then having Dreamer come on and tell the fans, “ Hey after this ROH show, I’ll be working a WWE house show you might want to come out to”. But this went on forever and then ended with a ROH pushed heel getting punked out by a wrestler from a different promotion. This also made the four minute London vs. Shane match feel as long as the Punk v Shane match.

PAS: Red and London work a TNA X-Games match which was fine and dandy, but kind of short. I think they might have a good singles match in them somewhere.

TKG: London took a neat DDT variation on the floor from Red. London also giant swung Red into the fence. First match on show that would go on a what worked side of a workrate report. I would have liked to see this go longer.

PAS: American Dragon and London have a heck of fucking match. Dragon looked head and shoulders above everyone else on the card including Ohtani and Tanaka. He really took London by the hand here and they had some awesome mat exchanges.

TKG: Yeah this kind of made up for everything we had to sit through to get to it. Neat knuckle lock exchanges with both guys kind of trying to monkey flip out of the knuckle lock. London continues to eat death on the floor. The little AD I’ve seen in NJ, I haven’t been hugely into as he’s all about the diving headbutts and grunting like Fuyuki. But I don’t know if it was time in APW, Inoki LA dojo or New Japan or what but holy shit did American Dragon look fucking great here.

Christopher Daniels/Donovan Morgan/Samoa Joe vs. Low-Ki/Homicide/Doug Willams
PAS: I was pretty jazzed at Homicide as the suprise partner, as he is a better wrestler then Modest, and fits with these guys really well. This match was mostly Doug Williams working face in peril, which isn’t really a good role for him, so the match suffered a little. Samoa Joe looked good here and the near falls section at the end was pretty nice. Low-Ki didn’t work much of this match, and didn’t work Samoa Joe at all. This hurt the heat of the match a bit, as he is the most over of the face team by far. Hat Guy and his crew of geriatric drunks were happy as they finally had a chance to spew verbal filth on another woman. I don’t want to know what Mrs. Baley did to her son to make him hate women that much, how long does cirrhosis take to kill someone anyway?

TKG: This was fun. Samoa Joe isn’t as big as I thought he’d be. Williams worked most of the match for the face team, while Daniels worked most of the match for the heel team, with everyone else making nice guest appearances. The Joe face turn was kind of nicely telegraphed as he shoved away the Prophecy’s Nun Simply Luscious. I would have liked to see more Cide vs. Joe. Ki wasn’t in a ton and Morgan looked to be just along for the ride. I vaguely remember Morgan doing something neat with a chair.

PAS: I pass some tapes on to Green Lantern Fan, as tape dealing at a Feinstein show has a satisfaction to it. Paul asks us if we are going to the CZW show and we laugh the cruel laugh of the wrestling snob. Maybe if PG-13 was the surprise tag team, but if CZW was running a show in my living room, I would be in the bathroom reading the New Yorker and taking a shit.

TKG: Phil is WAY overstating it. We would have gone for Slash/Kobain, JC Ice/Korey Williams, The Fat Boys, The Batten Twins, The Rock n Roll Express, Death and Destruction, Ricky Morton and almost any partner, Dennis Condrey and well anyone, or George South and Budro.

PAS: I think Americas Most Wanted or Mexicos Most Wanted would also get our money.

TKG: Well, thus far the card before intermission was two good matches and a five minute Red/London match preceded by a lot of stuff that felt like it was there just to kill time. Post-intermission this pattern repeated.

Allison Danger vs. Alexis Laree
PS: I am too broken up about the apparent retirement of Buff E to comment on this match. Godspeed Buff E, you will be missed

TKG: Not sure where the honor was in this match. I also am rather broken up by the retirement of Buff E. The Christopher Street Connection matches were the first thing that I watched when I would get JAPW tapes and I always thought they would one day end up in Japan where they would be hugely over or headlining at Arena Longoria in Nuevo Laredo. Buff E will be missed.

Carnage Crew vs. Ring Crew
PAS: I kind of enjoy the CC for some reason, and they do a fun beatdown on every indy worker who showed up in the back with gear. Still this show was running long and this served no purpose at all.

TKG: Where do Dunn and Marcos get their shirts? Was that Lobo’s even uglier cousin who ran in at one point? How many heat killer matches do we honestly need after intermission?

PAS: Mr. Christmas comes out and intros J.T. Smith for some reason never articulated. He then gets attacked by Special K and saved by black 911. I like J.T. Smith and think he could have a good match with Dixie, but add this angle to the Tommy Dreamer speech, it really felt like a lame suck up to all the ECW geeks who were just killing time until the CZW show, I almost expected a 3PW invasion angle or something, maybe Gary Wolfe and Blue Meanie jumping Tanaka and Ohtani. Three really weak segments right after intermission did a fine job killing the crowd before the title match. The way they are booking Xavier as champ almost has the feeling of a Kevin Nash on Goldberg, or HHH on Jericho style bury job. Does RF pony drool over Xavier’s abs or something?.

TKG: OK , I was psyched to see JT Smith. I imagine Jt Smith/ Mamaluke vs Abby/Homicide won’t be as good as Guido/Mamaluke vs. Cide/Loo but I’m pretty stoked to see it anyway. Jt Smith/ Mamaluke vs. Mathews/Dixie might work, who knows? Jt Smith wasn’t actually saved by the ROH 911. He was saved by two anonymous indy workers (one had “Boricua Bomb” written on his trunks). Fake 911, choke slammed them. I can’t imagine this selling anymore tickets and sure as hell won’t sell any tapes. Plus it was frustrating the CZW fans who wanted to have left by now.

Jay Briscoe vs. Xavier
PAS: I dug this match way more the most of the crowd. Xavier is the master of carrying mediocre Black workers (Scoot, Nana, Creed) but he does a fine job of carrying a mediocre white boy here. Jay continues his teen bladefreak gimmick as he is cut open again, which Xavier works on with some nice punches, Xaviers springboard asai was also the highspot of the night, in a show with some flashy spot guys. They did a nice job of keeping the J-Driller dangerous, not exposing it like in alot of Jay Briscoe matches, this also didn’t have the typical Briscoe kick out fest either. Best non-familial Jay match in ROH.

TKG: Most of the crowd was dead by this point and Hat Guy was basking in his own over-ness. Damn you Ooh La La. And the only way to get this crowd into the match at this point was the blood. But yeah I liked this a lot too. Best match I’ve seen out of both in a bit. The crowd was pissed at all the near falls because well it was already 8 PM and the longer ROH ran the longer till CZW started. This added heat to the near falls but I don’t think that heat helped the match as it was “damn why don’t you end this, pin him already I want to go to CZW” heat, which doesn’t really equal good match heat.

American Dragon vs. AJ Styles
PAS: This was easily the match of the night, and the best AJ Styles match I have ever seen. They start with some hard ass matwork, which AJ hung well at. Really great looking knucklelock section early on as well, with Dragon hitting some nasty headbutts, and AJ countering the last headbutt with a forearm to the face. Other great stuff included Styles getting whipped into the guardrail and leaping over it, and a section where both guys were working tight hangman chinlocks at the same time. This is a close second to Ki v. Dragon singles for the best match in the ROH promotion, and this was in many ways a beautiful carry job by Dragon. I can’t say too much about his performance in those two matches, he has gotten so fucking great.

TKG: Yeah this was best Styles match I’ve seen too, and this was Styles working face which is normally the Styles I like least. But he did a really good job hanging on the mat and looked really game here. The whole opening mat section was pretty choice. Aj did the spot were he springboards off the second rope into a neckbreaker and blew it. I watch a lot of Styles and he seems to blow that spot about two thirds of the times he does it (he normally is better when he does it off the corner but I’d bet the ROH turnbuckles might make that difficult). This as the worst blown version I’ve seen as he lands on Dragons face driving his knee and foot into AD’s eye busting his eye open. I thought it was going to swell shut which would have made rest of match a pain. From where I sat the spot looked horrendously ugly. From Schneider’s angle he didn’t realize it was badly blown, so I’m guessing Dougie’s camerawork can cover for it. Also both guys did a nice job covering for it as well. Like the Xavier/Brisco match the blood actually helped as it got the crowd into the match.

They did a nice segment where AD’s elbow collided with AJ’s discus lariat.

The whole match was really great and despite the sloppyness, I’d bet that it might get Styles a Zero-one deal. I wish it would get Ref Hanson a Zero-One deal.

Low-Ki/Steve Corino vs. Masato Tanaka/Shinjiro Ohtani
PAS: The list of shitty Z-1 gajin I was worried about replacing Spanky was huge, but Ki is about the best possible replacement. Really fun, hot match although not as blow away great as Dragon v. Styles. Everyone was working tight as hell, and Ohtani and Tanaka were even more over then Low-Ki which kind of shocked me. Typical spots from Ohtani and Tanaka, but it was beyond fun to see them live.

TKG: Ohtani live has almost Dusty in Florida face charisma. I wanted Ohtani to challenge Pak Song or something. Ohtani had some crazy overwhelming charisma. Match was really stiff but felt like a houseshow match. Kind of like when Juvi worked the CZW BOB. Yeah Juvi mailed it in, but mailed in Juvi is better than most folks at 110%. This wasn’t mailed in, but it wasn’t them going all out for a title at the dome either…but fuck it was good.

EPILOGUE
TKG: On the way home we tried to get off at exit for Cracker Barrel to little success and ended up at the amazing First State Dinner. The food there was really great and the FUNK~! ambient music was superb. As a caveat I should point out that end of night I shat a disturbing emerald green, but I refuse to place the blame for that on my enormous portion of First State Dinner scrapple.

PAS: The Cracker Barrel fiasco forced us to pay four extra dollars in tolls in hellacious Delaware. Our first attempt to get off for food, led us to a legit Delaware ghetto which compared to the worst I have seen and I am from Oakland originally and currently live in D.C. The The First State Diner had amazing music and huge portions. I think they had Cameo, Rufus and Chaka Kahn and guitar solo heavy Isleys among other tunes.

PAS: This was a heck of show but still had many of the flaws that ROH has had since the beginning. Running against the other Philly promotions may hurt their gate a bit, but the CZW fans in the audience really hurt the show. Siphon some of the scum off the top, and you would have a better atmosphere, less guys chanting racial slurs at Ohtani or spewing closet case slurs at Joey Matthews. Also the show was too long, and had way too much filler. Gabe doesn’t have to book every guy who shows up on the shows, and there is no need for crap like the woman’s match or the Homicide v. Nana squash.

TKG: Yep what he said. Bunch of really good matches but with a lot of stuff that killed time (and killed crowd heat) that you had to sit through to get to the good. But the good was really fucking good. And the attempts to be christened new ECW aren’t going to help, as it just is going to bring in the kind of disturbed post-teen who sat next to me most of the night: a guy who will have a successful future as either an Army deserter or child molester. You don’t want to build an audience around THAT demographic.