ROH Wrestling 28th Mar 09 reviewed

Eddie Edwards (with Larry Sweeney) vs Kevin Steen. Steen is one half of the current ROH tag champions so he's no slouch, this started in a fairly scrappy way but picked up after Steen hit a nice drop toehold & an excellent front flip legdrop that looked great. Edwards came back with a vengance (best move he made was the front face slam), Steen came back after a low blow with a good belly to belly overhead suplex but sold a nice kick to the head & Steen took the eventual win off a Package Piledriver. Very good match, nicely paced apart from the poor start.

Daizee Haze vs Sara Del Rey (with Larry Sweeney) - This is my 3rd time seeing Haze who has previously worked on TNA once (Impact 1st May 08 jobbing to Cheerleader Melissa) & my 2nd time seeing Del Rey (who lost to Haze in a 3 way with Lacey at the 08 Rising Above ROH PPV) so these 2 do have a bit of history. Del Rey was on top initially but Haze made a nice headscissors (I had the feeling it was flubbed by Del Rey due to lack of trust), Haze did flub a dive onto Del Rey who was also out of position for the catch (too far away) & it was quite funny that one of the announcers wasn't able to identify a simple backbreaker.

Haze was selling nicely on the whole but didn't do a very good sell in the Torture Rack off Del Rey, she did however hit a great looking tilt-a-whirl slam, I'm not too sure what the front face slam was but it looked good (like a ddt almost but not quite), the Capo kick off Del Rey would have looked a LOT better if we hadn't been on the overhead camera which totally no-sold what would have otherwise been an awesome looking move and Del Rey took the eventual win off The Royal Butterfly. A fairly decent match with a few flubs but not bad at all.

Alex Payne vs Claudio Castagnoli - I've seen Castagnoli once before against Chris Hero on their 08 Rising Above PPV, he was an ok worker there. Payne had the better start making a couple of nice flip leverage moves which Castagnoli sold well and seemed more than willing to go with. Payne as both the smaller and lighter guy sold the wrong end of a beatdown pretty well and kicked out after a big boot to the head.

Payne got a second wind and hit Castagnoli with a bulldog, Castagnoli came back with a pop-up European Uppercut (which looked bloody awful as if Payne wanted no part of it) before taking the win off the Ricola Bomb. So-so match that Payne really supplied most of the entertainment for.

Jay Briscoe vs Nigel McGuinness - I've seen Briscoe tagging a few times (don't let his name fool you, his real surname is actually Pugh) with his brother & I last saw McGuinness defending his title against Austin Aries in an extremely scrappy match so my hopes weren't really up here. This match was due to be 22 minutes long or there abouts and started very slowly with holds, reversals and a fair bit of mat work so I feared this would be a repeat of last weeks main event where nothing happened until the last few minutes then the ref would have to tell one of the guys to win. Sadly that was exactly the case and most of the decent action came in the final 4 minutes,

Briscoe hit a nice across the ring top rope legdrop but McGuinness took the win out of nowhere off the Jawbreaker Lariat (although I'm not completely sure what he was doing in the ropes before hand). A fairly boring and overly long match with not enough action that wasn't worthy of main event status.

This is ROH's 2nd week on TV and yet again their main event was pretty much utter shit and overshadowed by better (and shorter) matches earlier in the card. If they are going to keep their TV deal they will have to shorten their main event (10 minutes tops) as they struggle to pace these 20 minute matches and they are all far too slow with almost no action at the start with everything happening in the final few minutes. We're yet to see any titles defended which would be a good idea but generally the show was ok.