Ring of Honor Debut Show, 2/23/2002
by Chris Lening

I don't like Indy Wrestling very much. It's not mind-shatteringly awful, but it's just overpimped by people I generally don't care for, with people I don't terribly like seeing doing the wrestling. As a result, I tend to be all with the generalizations and the bandwagon hopping and what have you; I took the results of a few matches and a bunch of other's people thoughts and signed up for the Low-Ki haters Bandwagon. It's a silly thing, but hey, half the stuff I spout out here I stole from somewhere else (see also: Rasmussen, Dean; Arena, Other). So why am I reviewing this show? Because I have it on tape. Duh. But seriously, I'm forcing myself to watch the East Coast do their thing, just like James is watching the Midwest Indies, to try and broaden our horizons and, if nothing else, sound a little bit more credible when we say that Super Dragon is better than any East Coast regular (as Am Drag is in APW, which is out in California, so he doesn't really count, Nyah Nyah Nyah). We give this stuff a bad rap perhaps unjustly, so maybe we'll see if we're just full of pretentious snobbery. Anyhow, there's wrestling afoot.

Or there is a montage of all the wrestlers coming out set to house music afoot. One of the two. Heavy emphasis on the main event, which beats hyping the owner of the fed or something.

Da Hit Squad try to talk to a bus full of fanboys, but alas, Spanky is too busy being Spanky. This one guy tries to start an "RF" chant, but it doesn't stick, and I laugh. Da Hit Squad are yet another group of graduates from the Fat Joe School of Promos. Intensity can be done in ways other than yelling. Especially rambling yelling about how there's a new game in town, and the WWF sucks, and so on. Every "New Wave Indy" promo there ever has been. Except with a lot of yelling. And on a bus.

Well, Eric Gargiulo and Steve Corino are your commentators, and the first thing we hear them say is that the Christopher Street Connection coming out isn't on their format sheet, so all the Nitro floods back in. Steve and Eric go all Schiavone and Hudson about it, too. The CSC are gay. Allison Danger is indeed an excellent Indy Valet name, though. And there's the "Faggot" chant. And there's your ultimate Indy Heatgetter, two guys kissing each other. This brings out two very large people we saw earlier yelling on a bus.

Christopher Street Connection (Buff E/Mace, with Allison Danger) vs. Da Hit Squad (Monsta Mack/Mafia) in what seems to not really be a match but more of a beatdown with moves: Hey, a couple of large guys whose gimmick seems to revolve around being all tough and hard fight a couple of small gay guys, complete with feather boas. Guess what happens. One of the commentators does say that one of the CSC gets German Suplex "on the top of his Gay Head", so already this is scoring unintentional comedy points. There's a Burning Hammer. Yep. (1:22) They seem to have saved the very honor of Wrestling with that squash.

Oh boy! Woman-beating! On the scale of powerbombs of valets through tables, that was pretty much down in the sucky pile. More Promos from the Fat Joe school.

The Amazing Red vs. Jay Briscoe Jay Briscoe looks 20 on a good day, brother Mark looks 15, and Red, as always, looks 12.

Pose of mutual respect within the first 25 seconds. BOO. Stupid Dean and Stupid Eddie. Another 20 seconds later. BOOOOO. The rest of the match plays out OK, with Red playing the role of Stereotypical Flying Guy, all fast and spunky, against Briscoe's Stereotypical Grappling Guy, smarter and stronger. Most of the match plays out like this, although Briscoe keeps trying to hit a Senton that serves little purpose, and there's a kicking segment that's pretty much "Hey! The fans like stiff kicking! Let's do that!" Briscoe hits a Muscle Buster, one of them head-droppy Backdrop Suplexes the kids like, and something called a J-Driller or something, which kinda resembles the Tiger Driver 98, which is to say, Red lands on his head. Despite this, Briscoe is unable to get the pin, as Red seems generally unfazed enough from the apparent neck trauma to hit various flippy things. (8:20) More or less the structure of a basic match, except with moves cribbed from "Neck Death for Dummies", and no discernable selling outside of the 5 or 10 seconds directly following one of the moves that tend to win matches elsewhere.

The postmatch affair features the handshake hug and Eric mentioning that this fed isn't about matches where two guys hate each other. Weird. Two things: 1) The match before this was Gay Bashing in a literal sense, and 2) Hate is fun. You don't kick a guy real hard because you like kicking people real hard; that's just masturbation with kicks. You kick a guy real hard because you're so far gone you want to see if you can crush his skull. Or something. Hey, Low Ki's talking! In front of a South Korean flag, no less. I first saw this with a bunch of people from the general Los Angeles area, and let's just say Low Ki's voice led us to make all manner of comparisons to Karl Malone. Needless to say, I am hereby stealing James' line: "This here Low Karl. Low Karl gon' kick yew, and when Low Karl kicks you, you stay kicked."

Homicide talks about his old neighborhood, and how it's all a big pile of rubble now. It would be more of a lament were it not for the rubber chicken.

Scoot Andrews sounds like a cross between Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish and DJ FrostyFreeze. Please Believe it.

Xavier vs. Scoot Andrews Ah, we get our first Indy Trademark House remix entrance theme, as Andrews comes out to Zarathrustra for the club circuit. Add another song to the list to prove that every song ever has a house remix.

I guess the work here is pretty OK; it seems pretty clean, and their exchanges of offense are done nicely, even if all the transitions seem to be out of the "Ah HA! Now I counter you and take control" variety. Xavier even sells a head drop, so good for him. The only problem with this match is that it's just so damned sterile. It's like 10 minutes of every midrange match on WWF B-shows, complete with irritating commentary and nearfall shenanigans that lead to arguing with the ref that leads to the schoolboy from behind, and it doesn't serve to interest me any more than Jakked did. There's just not a ton from this that stands out from the giant pile of Fair Video Quality Indy Wrestling in the world. (10:05)

The Boogie Knights (Danny Drake and Mike Tobin) vs. Natural Born Sinners (Homicide and Boogalou) Well, Boogalou is the silliest name for a wrestler in quite some time, especially considering he comes to the ring either wearing some sort of weird psycho mask or wielding a chainsaw.

The Boogie Knights play Ring of Honor Enhancement Talent, as I can name roughly four offensive moves they had the entire match; this is all a showcase for the Natural Born Sinners. This seems the right way to go about it; the NBS get right up after being hit square with a plancha, hit after one of them has just fired off a badly missed Tope Con Hilo, so I'm wagering their selling is less developed than their offense. Their offense is all about a bunch of pain-causing double-teams, and they seem to lay them out fairly well, using them only after a bunch of solo setup work. Though most of their offense serves well enough to give off the whole "We're real dangerous" vibe (a vibe quite frequently alluded to by the shouting commentators), the Boogie Knights do a fine job of looking really dead. It's yet another Jakked match, except one where WWF guy beats Indy guy with no chyron. But hey, there never were enough Jakked matches that ended via DQ due to use of a rubber chicken. (About 7:40) Probably the best match so far, or at least the one which worked best at what it was trying to do.

Postmatch the disgruntled NBS beat up Hardcore Ref H.C. Loc and go all New Jack on him. Ick. At least have the decency to talk about Layin' the Ding-Dong or to pose with some white kids or something if you're gonna do that.

The CSC act like gay people who were badly injured, but their gaiety is restored by the Dancing Presence of King of Men, Spanky.

Hey! It's Towel Boy! Hey! I don't like ECW. The Great American Promotion is early 90s WCW.

Quiet Storm/Chris Devine/Brian XL vs. The SAT (Joel and Jose Maximo) and eventually the Amazing Red (Special Guest Referee: Mikey Whipwreck) They did some stuff, they did other stuff, and then they did some other stuff. This is the match for you if you're a big fan of finishing sequences, as this is roughly (14:49) of a finishing sequence to a match they do not wrestle. It made me a little sleepy.

The NBS use the word "fuck" a lot because they're from the streets.

Prince Nana vs. Towel Boy Before this match begins, Eric implores us that Ring of Honor is not about gimmicks at all. In theory. They're not about hate, either. In theory.

This isn't much of anything. Nana does some offense, Towel Boy gets hit with it. OK. (0:53)

Spanky is now wearing the Heinz Tomato Ketchup T-shirt and Damn do I want that. People next to him are talking about stuff, but screw them because they aren't Spanky.

Michael Shane/Oz vs. Spanky/Ikaika Loa Much like the 6-man was all about the Students of Mikey Whipwreck, this match is full of the TWA kids. Fortunately, the Buffet Brothers are nowhere to be found, although tragically there is no Buster Time. If there's one way to get a good note from Buster Time Magazine, it is to include Buster Time.

Anyhow, this match sort of sticks out from the rest of the card; it feels more like the little bit of TWA that I've seen than the somewhat larger bit of East Coast Indy stuff that I've seen. The supposed story of this match is that the guy who scores the pin will win a much-coveted contract in Ring of Honor, a point the announcers yammer on and on about incessantly, even though it pretty much gives away that Spanky's gonna take the pin. But this is just a normal tag match, albeit one serving to highlight Spanky and Shane. Oz and Loa do pretty good work as the complementary larger partners, though, coming in to go all Robert Gibson on the other guy, or to break up a pin, or when the action goes all Pier 4.

I'm not really quite sure about this match, though. I found myself a little bored, but part of that was getting distracted by the commentators, and part of that was that the story seemed a little perfunctory, and watching too much lucha makes formula matches really dull after a while. But this match runs almost the same amount of time as the 6 man Whipwreck match, and yet it feels much quicker, perhaps a testament to the TWA guys' ability to pace a match well (or the Whipwreck guys' inability to do so). It's a fine match, if not particularly outstanding, with some good work, and maybe it works even better just by being surrounded with such different styles of wrestling in the previous and following matches. (12:58)

It is at this point I realize Spanky did not come out wearing his giant novelty hat. And so I take back all the nice things I said. I kid. Shane was actually better than I've seen him or have read about him, and Oz and Loa were fine for people I can't remember seeing before.

Some sort of something between Whipwreck and his kids that I don't understand; HC Loc talks on a cell phone and I don't care even though it goes on and on and on.

Super Crazy vs. Eddie Guerrero for the IWA Intercontinental Championship Eddie Guerrero has had a fantastic 2002. This match isn't nearly as good as the New Japan 6, 8, and 10 mans where he looked better than everyone (and looking better than Gedo, Tanaka, Liger, etc. is quite something), and it isn't as good as the Van Dam ladder match that he basically saved from being a disaster of accidents. This might be the best example of just how good he is, though. He's pretty much half-assing it, but I'll be damned if he doesn't give a better performance than everyone else up to this point in the show. Granted, his role in the match (overestimating veteran guy, with the general attitude of "Fuck this, I just made Gedo look inferior…I damn well better get into the WWF soon) sort of demands that he not reach his full potential. Full potential Guerrero would pretty much make the entire show look bad. As it is, this match gives the vibe that Eddie Guerrero just drips with quality, that he's almost incapable of a bad match. Super Crazy is just kinda there, riding with the Eddie Guerrero experience. This isn't really his match; there's not a ton of anything you'd expect to see from someone called the Insane Luchador, as it plays out like a normal American match more than anything.

It's almost kind of hard to praise this match for being good; the thought of a bad Eddie Guerrero match in 2002 is one of those things that's hard to comprehend. It's simply Eddie being Eddie. (10:42)

Another Low-Ki promo! Is it wrong for me to say I'd rather see him talk than wrestle?

American Dragon vs. Low-Ki vs. Christopher Daniels, Triple Threat rules (first pinfall wins) Am Drag has moved into his "White Minoru Tanaka" phase, and Daniels no longer has hair. I haven't watched enough Low Ki to see any difference in his appearance.

The first time I watched this match, I was expecting it to be at the level it was being pimped at, as Match of the Year to that point, and as the best Triple Threat match ever. In retrospect, that was mean. I have no list of good 3-Way matches or anything, and no one here is Satanico, so 12/15/01 still stands. (Go. See it. Now.) But that was just me watching this in order not to like it. The second time I watched it, I enjoyed it a lot. It's a fun little piece of wrestling.

But it's really not all that different from your average three-way match, with the noticeable and much appreciated exception of a substantial reduction in "A and B fight while C is dead, rising only when A has killed B dead" moments. Most of the sequences are involving all three guys, which leads to a bunch of creative sequences. In particular, the sequence where Dragon has Daniels in an Indian Deathlock while Low-Ki kicks him and stuff is ridiculously fun. But ultimately, it all breaks down into a series of segments, which all three-ways do; instead of C being dead, C will usually just do some double-team stuff or something.

Still, the major problem I have with this match remains. It's a match that's meant to be seen live; on tape it just sorta confuses you in certain places. Low-Ki breaks up a Cattle Mutilation on Daniels with the Phoenix Splash, which he spends like five seconds setting up for; of all the times where Low-Ki should be kicking someone in the face, he chooses not to. Or the "That's not how you do it" sequence of kicking Daniels in the back. It seems silly on tape, but I would probably enjoy it live. Perhaps it's a minor thing, but the goal of this match seems to be Impressing the Fans rather than being a Great Match in whatever mysterious context makes a Great Match. Not to pin it all on Daniels, but this seems to be one of the weird things about the Fallen Angel: he's unbelievably fun to watch live, and one of the few guys I've seen with a real presence in the ring. But on tape, something's missing. I can't really explain it, but I guess it just that Daniels plays to the fans above everything. Ki and Dragon do it too, and they do it here.

So this match is pretty hard to discuss. To properly appreciate it, I guess you'd need to see how it impacts the live crowd; but then, many of them cheered for the 6-Man Clusterfuck earlier, so I don't know if I want to use them. It's fun, it's innovative, but I'm not sure if I can call it great. (20:05) Could just be me.

The fans do love it, though. They give a standing Ovation and chant "Ring of Honor", which comes across more like "Ring of Arrrr". It's like the Sea Captain's Wrestling Promotion or something. Am Drag lays out a challenge that eventually becomes the Round Robin Challenge at the next show, which I haven't seen yet. Daniels accepts, and Low Ki still talks funny. Chris Daniels refuses to shake everyone's hand, which means he's a HEEL. Except they cheer him and stuff.

Eddie Guerrero talks about something or other.

House music plays us a recap of the night we've had. The first shot is of the CSC kissing each other. Just saying, is all.

Hype for the next show, shot of Daniels walking out, aaaaaaaannnndddd scene.

Chris Lening
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