ROH-o Catch up-o

It's been nice to kind of get some of this stuff through various channels, as i've been Capt. Cheap-o this year and haven't invested too much money in ROH. While I think this year has been incredibly hit and miss for the promotion, I figured there's plenty of stuff worth going out of my way to watch and comment on for all of your viewing displeasure.

#1 Contender's Match Bryan Danielson v. Nigel McGuiness
ROH Driven Pay Per View

Wow, this is FAR AND AWAY the best ROH match i've seen in a while. What I liked-- The intensity is nine fold in this. It's a much tighter version of the matches they've had in the past with far more "I want to murder you" in it that I feel takes it to an entirely different level.

Everytime Dragon faces Nigel, he's able to figure out how to beat him, but every time he has to throw more crap at him and it all works. The mat work and everything basically builds to some great nearfall sequences in the end, between the back work, the arm work and what not. Dragon basically has to toss ALL of his super huge stuff at Nigel to keep him down: Cattle mutilation, the big back super plex, the cross face chicken wing and the KO elbows. Usually I HATE finisher whoring, but it's done in a very logical way here and each of the moves is used to punctuate work done previously in the match and makes Nigel look like he could tap or get pinned with any of them. No real wasted movement here which is something we rarely see in the indys nowadays. Again, this has the real hate their previous matches lacked and I actually enjoyed the brawling sections more than the mat sections, which is more unusual with these two. It really came off as more of a fight than a wrestling match.

What I didn't like-- the ONLY reason I can't get this to **** is because of the selling, which gets kinda goofy at points. The being COMPLETELY recovered quickly after getting raped on the part of both guys gets annoying at spots. While the limb selling and the facial expressions are good, there are parts where these two literally potato each other silly only for the other guy to counter, pop up and go into a control segment and it repeats itself a few times. Now that can be attributed to the fact that these two hate each other and it's an important match and whatnot, so on some levels it's semi-excusable but it still kinda annoys me a bit.

The other thing I didn't like is more of a general complaint about ROH in general and that is.. WHY do ROH guys have to literally massacre each other physically to get a point across? Sure, the ROHbots love the STIFF~ stuff and whatnot, but jesus the flush shots right on Nigel's face and the frequent death spots are a bit much. I don't hold it against the match or anything, but still, if these guys aren't eating out of a tube by 40 i'll be astonished.

Anyways, overall this is really a can't miss match. It's really, really good stuff and it feels good to say that, as I feel a lot of ROH stuff has been hit and miss this year. Seriously though, these two really put on a fun match here. Easily the best match i've seen worked by TWO guys in ROH all year. ***3/4

ROH World Championship
Takeshi Morishima v. Bryan Danielson
Glory by Honor V

So finally, here we go. The year seemingly has built to this one so let's hope for some goodies.

The early part of this match is absolutely fantastic. Morihimsa is especialy excellent here. For months they've tried to put Mori in the whole unstoppable big man thing and to me, this is the first match where that really plays out fantastically. Mori is very surly here, stomping on Dragon, looking all confident and big-ish. Dragon's offense is pretty good as well, as he employs a similar, time tested strategy that worked quite well in his first shot at Samoa Joe back in 04 which is relentless leg work. Mori sells it all really well, as it obviously is hurting him, but not nearly to the degree where it looks like it's going to effect his ability to win the match.

I like that fact particularly because it establishes a constant reference point for the match. Mori comes back, drops bombs, Dragon finds an opening and goes back for more leg thrashin'.

Down the finishing half, we have some excellent near falls from Dragon with Mori consistently putting him down with more bombs. The leg work though isn't really referenced like it could have been, or at least to the degree it was used, should have been. Dragon starts ripping through HIS big stuff. His attitude here is great, like the relentless stomping of Mori's head and whatnot, but it's all more or less flown through to get to the big finishing run where Mori's pulvarizes Danielson into dust.

This match seemingly gets to a point and then just gets into the paint by the numbers Morishima stuff we've seen a lot of, which isn't altogether bad, but doesn't really fit for the epic build this seemingly had going for it. This is a rare occurence in Dragon matches where he's clearly the second best guy in the ring.

Overall, this is definately good, but not worthy of the praise it's been getting all over the place. I prefer quite a few matches to it. The first half is super brilliant while the last half just doesn't quite fit for me. Good, but not great. ***