ROH Wrestling 30th May 09 reviewed

Better late than never.

Rhett Titus vs Roderick Strong - Titus might wanna have his eyes checked or not wear sunglasses in a darkened arena as I am pretty sure the "woman" he gave the room key to was a guy in drag. Strong has worked in TNA before & he was entertaining as hell last time I saw him work in the X Division. Titus is all about showboating & hasn't even got cheap heat he's that s**t, schilling a gimmick that HBK, Rick Martell & Rick Rude all stopped doing over a decade ago and were all far better at it than he will ever be. The only decent move of this match was Strongs reverse flying cross bodyblock, Strong took the win off a Gutbuster, kick to the face then roll-up. Pretty weak match really.

Video package about Austin Aries that wasted far too much time.

Non-title SHIMMER 3 Way Match, Sara Del Rey vs Daizee Haze vs Mschif (with Jimmy Jacobs) - Normally these 3 ladies are fairly talented but Haze flubbed going over the top rope right at the start, Mschif's drop toehold on Del Ray was very poorly executed & sold even worse. Haze raised interest a little when she got back in with a nice facebuster on Mschif although Del Rey flubbed being dropkicked between the ropes a few moments later. Del Rey was badly out of position for Haze's crossbody block and it showed when Haze bailed out of the move before hitting the ground. Haze got a facefull of green mist from Mschif who took the win off The Desecrator (a rather nasty looking modified DDT) but this match was more about what went wrong.

Overly long video package about Tyler Black. Prince Nana & Ernie Osiris (The Embassy) recruit Claudio Castagnoli.

Sami Callahan vs Erick Stevens - Far too long, Stevens took the win off the Doctor Bomb.

ROH Tag Title Match, The American Wolves (Eddie Edwards & Davey Richards) vs Kevin Steen & El Generico - According to the stipulations tables are legal & Tornado Rules apply meaning no tags are needed. The Wolves jumped the champions before they were barely out of the entrance, again ROH were doing their far too tiny split screens which make watching the action utterly pointless as you can't really see whats happening on either screen.

As per usual this was one of ROH's "however much tv time we have left" so they were trying to fill 30 mins and did sod all for 20 of those, The American Wolves were under for 75% of the match until El Generico was german suplexed into a table that failed to break properly. The suplex was a major flub & Generico was holding his head from the bad bump, Generico bailed from the ring & Steen was dropped on his "bad" knee onto the table that finally broke it. I'm not sure if Steen was really hurt or selling it really well as he pulled the ref over to him & they exchanged a few words very quickly, judging from how lightly The Wolves then worked that knee leads me to believe he was injured as the ref checked on him every time he took a bump to it.

Steen did his best to try & put up an offense but Generico finally made it back into the match after having taken a HUGE breather to recover hitting a really nice modified Brainbuster on Richards following up with a nice Tornado DDT moments later as well as risking a Somersault Splash onto Edwards from the top turnbuckle to the floor. Steen power bombed Richards onto the fallen table breaking it and the cameraman was in the wrong place catching Richards repositioning himself on the canvas to receive double splashes from Steen & Generico with Edwards barely making the save during the pin attempt.

The Wolves had a brief comeback but Generico splashed Edwards through a table going from the top turnbuckle to the floor as Steen put Richards into the Sharpshooter Shane Hagadorn (crony for The American Wolves) ran in only to get The Package Piledriver off Steen. Richards got up only to be Superkicked back down and Steen lay Richards on a table but was pushed off the top turnbuckle landing through the 2 tables he and Generico had set up earlier. Generico tried for a finisher only to get a lowblow off Edwards and Generico was given the Doomsday Device through a table which allowed Edwards to take the win and The American Wolves become new ROH Tag Champions.

As predicted all the action was at the end of this match and it took Generico getting injured twice & Steen getting injured at least once to make a match of this quality. Next week Jerry Lynn defends his title in a 4 way match so that might be half decent hopefully.