ROH 9th Anniversary Show

Davey Richards vs Colt Cabana

Even in an opener against a comedy wrestler Davey has to get in his stupid signature OTT dive that barely grazes his opponent. This was a pretty solid opener though, and better than the usual Richards affair as he wasn't trying to put on a five billion star MOTY for socially depraved ROHbot workrate marks to splooge over. Colt looked good, selling the arm-work effectively and hitting the insane Tyler Reks firemans carry drop thing on the turnbuckle. They built to some nice nearfalls and I'll give Richards some credit, the final combo of the tornado DDT>falcon arrow>arm-breaker was cool and the arm-work actually played into the finish.

Steve Corino vs Mike Bennett vs Kyle O'Riley vs Grizzly Redwood

Holy shit does Kyle O'Riley fucking suck. The dude is maybe the biggest "generic indy kicker" cliche I've ever seen and for a generic indy kicker his kicks and strikes are Chikara-level feeble and he cranks the blandness up to 11. I enjoyed Corino and the way he played his character of a guy turning face and trying to fight his heel-ish tendencies, but there was nothing to see here.

El Generico vs Michael Elgin

This was really awesome. Both guys do their thing and what they do compliments each other well. Generico makes the the high-flying and getting wailed on, and Elgin mauls him. Elgin is a fucking beast, and his selling was terrific - all of Generico's low-end offence like chops and elbows merely phased him and never took him off his feet, but he made the big spots look big. The guy is also crazy powerful, not just with the force he puts behind his strikes, but he had some great power spots like countering a Tornado DDT on the oustide into a powerslam into the fucking gaurdrail and powerbombing Generico with Martini on his shoulders. The finish was also really effective at making both guys look legit. I'll be surprised if this isn't a top 5 ROH Match for the year.

Roderick Strong vs Homicide (Street Fight)

This wasn't good. They did two big spots, Strong getting rammed into four chairs in sucession and a DDT through a table, neither of which were really anything too exciting. Everything else was pretty weak. The street fight gimmick felt tacked on solely so they could have a bunch of bullshit with Martini interfering, which detracted bigtime. No blood or anything you actually want to see from a Homicide street fight, and Roddy's suplex-backbreaker is the sort of bush league MOVEZ shit you'd expect out of a 2003 CZW undercard.

The Kings Of Wrestling vs The All Night Express

Why ROH ran this with ANX as the faces is beyond me, when anyone can see the KoW are way more popular and both are better at working as faces. This didn't blow me away, but was still probably the career match of the ANX so far. Kings working over Titus was boring filler, but King had probably the best performance of is career. He was pretty good off the hot tag and his flashy athletic shit actually added to the match, and the SSP was a great big match spot. The finishing run was pretty decent, but still you never get the sense that ANX were going to win.

Christopher Daniels vs Eddie Edwards (2/3 Falls)

Whoever booked this to go to a 30 minute draw really needs to be fired. This was decent at points, there were some stiff shots and couple of good spots, but man, this was two guys who have no business working a lengthy match doing just that. Edwards is a good wrestler - great strikes, some cool spots, great dive and sold the neck work in a way that hindered him, but really no one is having a great 30 minute match with Daniels the same way no one is having a great 30 minute match with Kotaro Suzuki.

The Briscoe Brothers vs Wrestling's Greatest Tag Team

This was really underwhelming. It was solid, and not really bad, but most of these big ROH/Briscoes tags feel like the guys are just killing time until the nearfalls section at the end. But even with that, the finishing run of this wasnt nearly as crazy or exciting as you would hope for between these teams and the finish came off really flat. This should have been a brawl instead of another generic indy dream match. Briscoes can brawl, Haas can brawl, Benjamin can't really brawl but can atleast hit some big highspots. Oh, and Benjamin still having to get his leaping superplex spot into every match in 2011 is just absurd.

Best Of 2011