Ring of Honor Wrestling on HDnet
Taped in Philadelphia, PA

Still photos from Tyler Black vs. Austin Aries at the 8th Anniversary show aired, followed by the opening video, and we were right down to our first match before hearing a word from Mike Hogewood and Dave Prazak.

1. The Dark City Fight Club (Jon Davis and Kory Chavis) defeated The American Wolves (Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards) in 10:35. The Wolves played the face role sort of. Richards didn't smile or act friendly though, so it's okay.

The Wolves went all out right away, with Richards kicking both DCFC members repeatedly, and Edwards hitting a flying Codebreaker. Richards locked in the Cloverleaf in the first minute, but Chavis got to the ropes.

The Wolves continued to dominate, even going for their superkick/German suplex combo that could use a name, but Chavis blocked and DCFC started to beat up on the Wolves. The Wolves had a brief stretch of offense, including a nice-looking missile dropkick from Edwards, but DCFC hit a modified Total Elimination and went right back on the attack.

Richards continued to be Richards (that is to say, awesome) throughout the match, but got speared out of the ring by Davis, who tossed Edwards up in the air for Project Mayhem.

Joe's Judgment: Fun match. The Wolves varied a bit from their formula, and it worked great. DCFC were made to look like badasses a year ago when they debuted on this show, and they still look like badasses now, especially after beating the Wolves clean. The result was a little surprising, especially considering there was no mention of the DCFC-Briscoes title match at the 8th Anniversary Show.

Kyle Durden was backstage with Rasche Brown. He asked if Brown had chosen between Prince Nana and Shane Hagadorn. Rasche ignored every word except for "chosen", and cut a promo about how somebody chose to wrestle the Skullcrusher tonight, and how that was a bad decision.

2. Steve Corino defeated Bobby Dempsey in 3:00. Corino still looks middle-aged. Corino manhandled Dempsey, who no-sold everything. Dempsey got a couple clotheslines, a suplex, and then knocked Corino over with a body block. Immediately after, though, Corino rolled him up for the pin.

Dempsey got up and shoved Corino. Kevin Steen ran in and beat on Dempsey. Sugarfoot Alex Payne ran in to make the save, but got beat up by Steen and Corino. Payne bled, and Steen wiped Payne's blood on his face like war paint.

Hogewood called Steen a bully in front of a new green screen. Prazak looked disgusted with him, and said that they had to move the show along...

A Rough Cuts type segment with Sara Del Rey (sans ridiculous eye makeup) aired. She talked about how she was happy backstage, but angry in the ring, how she didn't want to be pretty, she wanted to be a wrestler and an athlete.

3. Rasche Brown defeated The Set (J-Sinn and Lance Lude) in 2:00. The Set are the large black guy and the tiny white guy who wear furry boots. Shane Hagadorn and Prince Nana were out scouting Brown. The match was basically Rasche skinning the cat, beating on the Set, spearing J-Sinn, and hitting the Burning Hammer on Lude onto J-Sinn.

Joe's Judgment: Rasche looks like a beast, but he needs to stop using the Burning Hammer. Like, now.

4. Sara Del Rey defeated Portia Perez in 3:30. Perez is one half of the SHIMMER tag champs, the Canadian Ninjas.

Joe's Judgment: Since we've got a Canadian in the ring, now seems like the time to congratulate my home country's men's hockey team on winning the gold medal. The two weeks out of every four years when I root for Sidney Crosby, and he comes through in a big way.

Sara basically beat up Portia the entire match, hitting tons of stiff kicks, and a few nice suplexes. Portia got a couple rollups for nearfalls, but the match was pretty much all Del Rey. [C]

Joe's Judgment: I don't know how well it would go over, but I'd be interested in watching an all-SHIMMER episode of ROH on HDnet. This was a good match that made me wonder what they could do given five times as much time.

5. Austin Aries and Kenny King defeated Roderick Strong and Tyler Black in 12:20. This match was taped before Black won the belt, so the footage of Aries with the belt was clipped out. Strong acted a bit cocky, and King did all the heavy lifting for the heel side as Aries tried to call time out.

Aries finally tagged in about four minutes in, heeled it up, ran into one Strong chop, and tagged right back out. The heels worked over Strong for several minutes. When he finally could have made the hot tag, Black was on the floor jawing with Aries.

Black finally got the hot tag ten minutes in, and took out both King and Aries. He got a nearfall after a standing SSP on King. Strong made the blind tag, and Black dove over the top rope. Strong hit a Yakuza kick and gutbuster on King, and then immediately after, Black superkicked him in the face.

Prazak mentioned that he might have done it on purpose, even though King was in front of Strong. Hogewood of course disagreed. Strong and Black shoved each other and yelled at each other to close the show.

Joe's Judgment: Bland main event that did little more than let Aries be Aries and establish dissension between Strong and Black. Heel Strong > face Strong though, so this is a good thing. Strong's little mannerisms where he just tried to beat the crap out of everyone in the match were great, as was the ambiguity about whether Black kicked him on purpose. Aside from that, though, this was a pretty weak main event.

Overall the show felt longer than an hour. Maybe because last week's was so short, maybe because there were five matches, but I had nearly forgotten the quite good Wolves-DCFC opener by the end of the main event. That's not what this show should be doing.

I'm going to go watch Chuck now. If you want to contact me, you can do so at jtmathieson88@gmail.com.

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