Morishima v. Homicide 2-17

ROH World Championship
Homicide v. Takeshi Morishima
February 17, 2007

So I guess this is one people have said is worth seeing, so I picked it up at the last ROH show in Hartford.

Completely awesome stuff early on with Morishima jumping 'Cide on the match and totally disrepsecting him. Homicide, whose actually a fan of brawls, eventually gains the advantage on the outside. What I liked about this opening piece was that Homicide had to use stuff and get assistance from Smokes to stay on top and control the early going.

As soon as the extra cirricular fun ends, it's all Morishima. Mori tosses in some great big man offense, with big lariats and lumbering wear down holds to completely overwhelm the plucky Champion. Homicide's comebacks are really hapless and nothing, not even his big stuff seems to have any lasting effect.

What makes this good though, at least for me, is Homicide's resilience. He plays the whole 'hard to kill' thing well enough to make it believable, but doesn't over do it like Austin Aries did, atrociously kicking out of that lariat at the end of HIS match with Mori a month or two later. 'Cide is way more sympathetic as the loser here.

The ending was similar to the Aries match, with Morishima just murdering and utterly overwhelming Homicide with two or three back drop drivers and a vicious lariat. The Homicide kick out really put heat on the last back drop driver and didn't come off as at all over the top like the Aries kick out did.

There are, however, some seriously goofy moments that do drag this match down. Homicide shouldn't EVER be able to hit a super plex on a guy like Morishima. Like at all. Some of Homicide's offense is pretty bad. Maybe they were trying to play up Homicide's haplessness, but the moves they chose were really akward.

The other thing I didn't like was the fact that none of the Morishima near falls had any heat. I never bought Homicide's offensive comebacks and having Morishima lay down for near falls seemed a little dumb.

All that said though, this IS a fun match. The first third is excellent, the second third very goofy while the home stretch is pretty great. ROH crowds aren't really used to having a genuine big man work well in ROH. Samoa Joe is a bigger guy, but he's not a legit big man worker like Mori is, so the reactions for Mori during and since this match has been mixed. While Morishima hasn't been stellar as champion, he's hardly been anything close to bad and he's a real breath of fresh air in a company that needs to branch out of the flippy-dippy cruiser stuff. ***