ROH: Death Before Dishonor IV
I've had this one for a while and never got around to watching all of the matches on the card and I really wanted to give this a watch.
Seth Delay vs. Delirious
A very fun 5 minute or so match. They fit a lot of stuff into a short period of time as they wrestled at a really fast pace.
Pretty much what you would expect from an indy match though, big spots, a few stiff chops, and everything done really fast. I still enjoyed it though for what it was.
**
Colt Cabana and Jay Lethal vs. Jimmy Rave and Sal Rinauro
Damn did Rave and Sal have some heat for being with Price Nana. It's always a good sign when your heel and you have the crowd throwing toliet paper at you and have "Die Jimmy Die!" chants directed at you.
I really enjoyed this one as Rave and Sal had some really good chemistry together even if it was at the expense of Sal Rinauro looking like Jimmy Rave's bitch. Great psychology with Rave even gathering more heat by taking repeated cheap shots and never getting in the ring unless he could be in control. There was one occasion where Sal went for a tag and Rave just shook his head and pointed back at the other team.
Lethal and Cabana worked pretty well together as well. We saw some pretty funny stuff where Lethal would hit an impressive looking move and Colt would try to top it and come nowhere close. We saw his variation of a dropkick where he went 6 inches in the air tops and his attempt to cartwheel into a drop kick.
Good back and forth action that saw Rave get the pin when sal hit a super kick and Rave followed with a spear on Cabana. Really good match.
***
ROH Pure Title Match:
Roderick Strong vs. Nigel McGuinness (c)
Pretty much what I was expecting from these two, which was an awesome match. A great mix of technical wrestling and stiffness. I liked the way that the worked the Pure Titles rules, one of the first I have seen and I liked it a lot. When a rope break can get a big pop you know that you have a match type that will work.
Nigel quickly lost his 3 breaks while trying to escape from the Strong Hold so it created a real sense of desperation from the champion. What followed was a bunch of near falls and some brutal stuff from both guys.
Really liked the ending where we saw Nigel attempt to get a double count out only to hit a DDT on Strong as he was making his last effort to make it into the ring. Both were down until around the 16 count and than they both started moving. Strong made his break into the ring but Nigel grabbed his leg and pulled him back. He than quickly slid into the ring as the ref reached 20 to win and retain his title.
Great stuff
***1/2
Irish Airborne vs. Jay and Mark Briscoe
Spotfest. Easily the best way to describe this one but it was still pretty entertaining and there was some nice wrestling in the beginning of the match. Still there was virtually no psychology to the match.
There were some really nice spots though such as one of the Brisoces hitting a shooting star press off the top rope to the floor on a member of Irish Airborne and on the other side of the ring the other member of Irish Airborne hit a Shooting Star press onto the other Briscoe. That would have been a lot wasier to explain if I could tell the Briscoes apart and or knew the names of the guys in Irish Airborne....
Typical overkill finish as well. The variation of the Death Valley Driver wasn't that the Briscoes won with was far from one of the better spots of the match.
Still fun for what it was as the stuff they were doing was incredible and they wrestled at an incredibly fast pace. I'll probably be lower on this one than most people but it just didn't do all that much for me.
**1/2
Davey Richards vs. AJ Styles
Well I bought this disc used about a year ago and now I see why it was being sold for such a low price. The disc froze about 5 minutes into the match. A little disappointing as I liked the first few minutes.
No Rating
ROH World Title Match
Bryan Danielson (c) vs. Sonjay Dutt
Sonjay being a home grown CZW talent had a lot of heat with the ROH fans and was really over with the CZW fans. Danielson who was a heel going into the show and won the fans over again by agreeing to be the 5th man on Team ROH.
Besides the ROH/CZW feud to add a ton of heat to this match Sonjay decided to start the match by slapping the American Dragon in the. One of the best chants I've heard from a crowd was, "Your gonna get your fucking head kicked *clapclap*"
The match itself was very good too. Some good back and forth action throughout and Sonjay looked pretty good in the ring with Danielson. Nothing all that spectacular to note in the match just a lot of good solid wrestling. The crowd was into and they created a pretty good atmosphere as they were split between Dutt and Dragon.
Danielson ended up winning the match with a furry of elbows as the ref had to call the match.
Nothing all that incredible from Danielson but still highly enjoyable.
***1/4
Cage of Death:
Team ROH (Samoa Joe,BJ Whitmer, Adam Pearce, Ace Steel, and Homicide) vs. Team CZW (Chris Hero, Necro Butcher, Claudio Castagnoli, Nate Webb, and Edie Kingston) w/ a special appearance by The "American Dragon" Bryan Danielson.
Simply put a booking/story telling masterpiece. Let's put it this way I could replace the 11 wrestlers that were involved in this match with ancient Greek mythological heroes and it would still be an amazing story. You had Danielson stabbing Joe and the rest of ROh in the back when he took out Joe's leg to injure him for a title match they had coming up. This left Team ROH down 2 men for most of the match as Danielson left after he turned on Joe.
You had Chris Hero announcing his worst enemy as his mystery partner in Eddie Kingston, Homicide coming in to save the day, a great heel turn from Danielson after he turned face just hours earlier, a crowd that seemed to be just inched away from breaking into a full on riot, oh and the match was amazing as well.
Brutal and bloody with a ton of hardcore spots. Everything that you could have ever asked for in this match was there. One of the best matches that I've ever seen in any company and without a doubt my favorite War Games Match variant. I honestly can not say anything bad about this match. A truly epci match that had me completely engrossed in the match for the entire time. The after match was pretty good too with Jim Cornett turning heel right after the match was great too.
*****
Overall a truly great show. There were some really good matches on the under 3 matches besides the main event being above *** is always a good sign. It's probably even better than I thought it was because I was unable to see AJ/Davey which from the other ratings that I've seen from this show is probably around the *** mark as well.