ROH in Chicago Ridge, Ill.
Report by Jason Detrick

(1) Rhett Titus & Delirious (w/ Daizee Haze) defeated 'Sugarfoot' Alex Payne and Silas Young. This match was originally supposed to be a 4 corner survival but Rhett called Daizee haze out and said that he and Delirious should be working together as a team with Daizee rather than fighting over her. Haze agreed. Delirious was not pleased. Rhett worked the majority of the match as Delirious spent the majority of the match on the apron staring down at Daizee and waving and saying hi to her.

Sugarfoot & Young got a lot of offense in on Titus, including Silas throwing Titus across the ring by his bow tie. The finish saw Delirious attempting a sunset flip not knowing Titus blind tagged in. Titus got on top of Young and dry humped him for the 3 count. Delirious was very upset about Titus stealing the pin. Rhett's character is hilarious and this tag team has some great comedic potential. It's good to see that Delirious has something to do again.

(2) Erick Stevens defeated Jay Briscoe (w/ Mark Briscoe). This was the hard hitting, stiff match you would expect from these two.As for Erick's new normal guy haircut, I never thought I'd say this,but I miss the mohawk. Jay was the fan's pick in his match. At one point, during a chop exchange, Jay seemed to chop Stevens in the throat area. Both men hit a lot of power moves, and in the end a Doctor Bomb put Jay away.

(3) Chris Hero (w/Tank Toland, Larry Sweeney, Sara Del Ray, &Bobby Dempsey) defeated Pelle Primeau in a Lights Out (Last Man Standing) match. Hero attacked Pelle before the bell and nailed him with some devastating forearms. Within the first 20 seconds it looked like Pelle was done. He took an absolute beating in this match from Hero, who towers over Pelle.

Pelle started mounting some offense by hitting some really nice armdrags. The problem was that armdrags aren't going to knock anyone out. Brent Albright sneaked in the ring and hit Chris Hero with a half nelson suplex and both men were down. Just as it looked like Pelle was going to make it up and beat the 10 count, Sara Del Ray hit a big boot to his head to keep him down.

(4) Age of the Fall (Tyler Black & Necro Butcher w/ Allison Wonderland) defeated Kevin Steen & El Generico. Before the bell, Steen hit a flip dive on Necro & Black. Steen and Necro brawled on the outside while Generico & Black fought in the ring. Necro's feet actually looked quite clean tonight. Necro hit his chop/punch to the face combo many times on Generico.

As Steen was setting up Necro for the Package Piledriver, he was shoved into the ropes where a waiting Tyler Black hit Steen with a chair, leading to Steen getting pinned. The finish was disappointing as the matched felt like it was just getting going.

After the match, Austin Aries addressed Necro from the ramp. He asked Necro if the Age of the Fall were really his friends or just using him. He asked Necro to leave the Age of the Fall. Necro seemingly declined and said the Age of the Fall were his friends.

(5) Claudio Castagnoli defeated 'American Dragon' Bryan Danielson. The two had some good natured fun to start things off, with Danielson having a blast stealing Claudio's 'Hey!' stuff. Some really good technical wrestling started the match off. At one point, Danielson tried to do the airplane spin to Claudio, but Claudio escaped and wagged his finger at Danielson. Soon after Claudio tried to get Danielson in the Giant Swing, but Danielson escaped immediately and wagged his finger at Claudio.

Then Danielson went over and lifted up referee Todd Sinclair on his shoulders (no easy feat) and acted like he was going to do the airplane spin but put him down and he and Claudio laughed. The crowd really wanted to see that and chanted 'Do it! Do it!'. Dragon just shook his head and laughed. Then suddenly he ran over and put Sinclair up in the airplane spin and did the move! The crowd erupted as Danielson did about 10 to 15 rotations.

As Sinclair laid there near death, Claudio grabbed his legs and did the giant swing! The crowd was going insane for this. Sinclair's face was bright red and he looked pissed about the situation. Referee Paul Turner came out and checked on Sinclair while Danielson and Claudio said their were sorry to Sinclair and bowed to him. Sinclair said he was okay to continue.Eventually Danielson and Claudio hit moves on each other (I believe they traded airplane spins but I cannot remember) and both collapsed to the mat in exhaustion.

They both made intentionally pathetic attempts to kip up and flopped on the mat like a fish out of water a few times each. They finally both kipped up and faced off and the crowd chanted ROH. Suddenly, Dragon flipped the switch and attacked Claudio and got serious. He nailed Claudio with some great kicks and locked on the triangle choke with the elbow strikes until CC grabbed the ropes.Claudio went for the Ricola Bomb several times but could not hit it. Finally, Claudio tossed Danielson straight up into the air and caught him with a huge European uppercut coming down for the win. Just a great, great match.

*Intermission*

(6) Sara Del Ray defeated Daizee Haze and SHIMMER champion MsChif in a non-title three-way match. Daizee & MsChif didn't go after each other too often in this match and instead turned their attention to a pissed off Del Ray. Del Ray dominated both women and finished Haze off decisively with a Royal Butterfly slam.

After the match, Dave Prazak came out and said the following segment would be taped for the next video wire. Sara said she wanted her title shot at MsChif. Just as MsChif was about to reply, Larry Sweeney came out and said that match will not happen until the money is right.Sweeney said it was time for the mystery partner tag match.

First he called out 'reality icon' Johnny Fairplay, who came out with Bobby Dempsey & Tank Toland. Next up, Sweeney called out the Honky Tonk Man (no, really), who was there at the show with Bushwacker Luke signing autographs. Honky asked if we were ready to hear him sing his song. The crowd was excited to hear it but Sweeney said once again that he won't sing his song until the money is right.

He dismissed Honky and finally introduced the mystery partner and newest member of Sweet &Sour Inc., Go Shiozaki. This was a nice surprise as Shiozaki was not even advertised. Shiozaki came out wearing a vest that said 'USA' on it and acted like a smug heel.

(7) Brent Albright & Roderick Strong defeated Adam Pearce & Go Shiozaki. Bobby Dempsey was getting chants, so Sweeney made him go under the ring and stay there until the match ended. Shiozaki & Strong exchanged many chops. Strong took an extended beating from the heels. Shiozaki was using cheating heel tactics and was admonished by the referee.Pearce accused the ref of only yelling at Shiozaki because he was Japanese. Strong finally got the hot tag and Albright cleaned house. He finished Pearce with repeated knees to the face.

After the match, Pearce threw a fireball in Albright's face. Sweet & Sour laughed their way to the back while officials attended to a screaming Albright.

(8) ROH World Champion Nigel McGuinness defeated Jerry Lynn in a non-title match. Nigel told Jerry that he respected him and due to that he was going to do him a courtesy and allow him to just leave and avoid Nigel embarrassing him and showing that he is way past his prime. Jerry said he knows he's well past his 20s and 30s but he will give it everything he has against Nigel. He said he's going to do Nigel the courtesy of letting Nigel leave so that he doesn't get embarrassed by losing to an old timer. Neither left, and the two had a very good match.

It started slow but once it got going it was very entertaining. Nigel missed the jawbreaker lariat several times and the short arm lariats he connected with weren't enough to put Lynn away. Lynn eventually hit a tornado DDT on the outside and then back body dropped Nigel into the crowd and hit a running leap over the barricade onto Nigel.

Back inside the ring, he hit a lung blower and then a TKO for an amazingly close near fall. The crowd thought it was three and were celebrating until referee Todd Sinclair spoiled their fun. Nigel pinned Jerry with a funky European pinning combination. They shook hands after the match as the crowd chanted 'Please come back!' loudly. I hope he does get brought back for Chicago in August. He looked really motivated and had a great showing. He even busted out some funky fresh dance moves.

(9) Austin Aries defeated Jimmy Jacobs (w/Allison Wonderland) in a relaxed rules match. Before the match, Jacobs said he's already physically mutilated and mentally destroyed Aries, but tonight he wants to out-wrestle him. He said the winner of this match should get to choose any match and any stipulation they want for the next show in Chicago on August 16th.

Aries agreed and said that Lacey has told him all of Jimmy's secrets so he'll come up with a good match. The match soon spilled into the crowd.They fought on the top bleacher and Aries attempted a brainbuster.Jacobs locked on his End Times guillotine choke, but Aries rammed him into the concrete wall repeatedly until he let go. Aries then threw Jacobs off the top bleacher to the floor.

Back ringside, Jacobs got the upper hand and sat Aries on a chair and hit a plancha onto him. This opened up a nasty gash on Aries back which bled for the remainder of the match. Jacobs went to work on the cut, digging his fingernails into the cut and raking Austin's back. He even started biting and rubbing his face on the cut. Jacobs face was soon stained red by the blood of Aries. He took a chain off of his new, much improved ring gear and dug it into the wound.

Aries locked in his Last Chancry submission but Jacobs was able to escape. Aries was able to escape the End Times as well. After Aries hit a big move and seemed to have Jacobs beat with the Last Chancry in the middle of the ring, Tyler Black and Necro ran out to interfere but the Briscoes cut them off and fought them to the back. MsChif then ran out and double stomped Aries to presumably join Age of the Fall. As she was leaving and Aries recovered he grabbed her from behind but she turned around and blew green mist in his face.

Jacobs then hit a big move right afterwards but Aries kicked out. The last 5 minutes were full of so many awesome near falls and beautifully fluid reversals of submission moves. Finally, Aries, who's face was fully green from the mist, hit 5 consecutive running dropkicks to Jimmy's face in the corner and hit the 450 for the win. Awesome match. Jacobs really brought it and Aries was his usual great self.

After the match, Aries said he had chosen the match for the next time in Chicago. He said it will be a No Disqualification match. But it's not going to be Jimmy vs Austin, but Jimmy vs the Necro Butcher! Jimmy shook his head in disbelief and said there was no way Necro would leave Age of the Fall.

This was a great show and definitely the best Chicago Ridge show of the year so far.

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