ROH Wrestling 21st Mar 09 reviewed

Delirious vs Jerry Lynn. I liked the little graphics that told you a bit about each wrestler and their moves & previous associations which helped get you into the action that much quicker by being aware of their ROH backgrounds, I'd assume most wrestling fans would know Lynn for his ECW & TNA background. Lynn is as good today as he ever was making a nicer headscissors into a backbreaker and the match was mainly Lynn on top with Delirious bumping & selling well with Lynn taking a good win off the cradle piledriver. Very good quality match to kick off the show, decent mix of aerial and matwork and not too long either.

Sami Callihan vs Kenny King. Well neither of these guys were known to me so it was nice to call a match like this, both these guys looked a bit rough around the edges. They started out working a fair bit of technical mat wrestling, King looked the better of the 2 but the match was a bit too slow in its pace for my liking. King made a nice Enzuigiri to the head into a spinebuster and tried 2 positions for pinning and settled on the 2nd for a 2 count only. Callihan had a little success midmatch making a nice inverted DDT style slam but King took the eventual win off The Coronation. Neither of these guys really looked fully ready for tv and both 2nd guessed themselves several times, perhaps a bit more training is required before working on tv again?

Video detailing a potted history of ROH (showing Samoa Joe, Abyss & Christopher Daniels amongst its various alumni who have gone on to bigger things).

Rhett Titus vs Brent Albright - I couldn't tell if Titus was styling himself after Rick Martel, Rick Rude or HBK or a little of all 3 which was my guess. Titus sold a nice Splash Mountain (basically a Razors Edge or Gringo Killer for the WWE & TNA fans) and Albright hit a nice slingshot cross bodyblock out of the ring onto Titus which was the 1st real high risk move of the show. Fans were vocally behind Albright as the match was starting to slow down & Albright kicked out of a pin after a dropkick but made a great half-nelson suplex and took the win off The Crowbar submission hold. A decent enough match although slow in places.

Jimmy Jacobs vs Tyler Black - I've seen these guys as tag partners but never in singles opposite each other so this should be an interesting match, Black & Jacobs were both part of a faction called Age Of The Fall and held the ROH Tag Titles having won them off the extremely talented Brisco Brothers. This match started off at a very slow pace indeed which shouldn't have really surprised me as it was the last match on the card and they'd started with over 30 minutes left on air.

Jacobs was on top from the start for a fair old while until Black got a nice 2nd wind and really turned things around. Both Black & Jacobs started to pull a few aerials as we got down to the last few minutes, I wondered how they were going to finish but Black pulled a wear down move (which is fine if you've got the time but a f**king silly idea when you only have 2 mins left on air) and missed a superkick that Jacobs reversed into a schoolboy roll-up that Black barely kicked out of it but Black took the eventual win off a bridging suplex out of nowhere. Not a great match, they didn't know how to pace it & had to rush the finish.

Thoughts on the show in general - Camera work & Lighting was good, referees were good, fair & very audible which I found quite interesting to be able to hear their calls during the matches. The colour guys could use some work, I'd bin the backstage guy completely but it was good that ROH actually started their TV run as a fully HD show which is no mean feat. They had 4 fairly ok matches in an hour which TNA struggle to do in 2 hours and WWE also struggles to do on Smackdown, RAW & ECW or were struggling to do last time I watched any of them (that was back in early February). If ROH can do matches like this with no gimmick finishes or run-ins then they stand a very good chance of poaching fans from both TNA and WWE.