Great Booking - ROH Final Battle 2010 By Shaun Nichols

Watching wrestling and especially TNA can be a highly frustrating experience. You wouldn't say that watching a wrestling event that makes sense would be the highest of demands. But more often than not you get matches and angles that make absolutely no sense or stipulations that are never adhered to.
Final Battle 2010 PPV was a definite exception, this blog is not a review of the show as it's quite likely that a lot of you reading this will have watched the show. This blog will explain the simple steps that ROH took to ensure that their fans got value for money and no fans felt cheated. Look most PPV's the show was centred on only a few matches and Final Battle followed this with the show being sold on 3 specific matches.
Firstly El Generico vs Kevin Steen, this match was 12 months in the making since Steen attacked Generico after their loss at Final Battle 2010. Since then they had waged a vicious war that included Colt Cabana & Steve Corino but without a clear winner. The winner fittingly would come at the biggest ROH show of the year, this match was mainly sold on a key stipulation. If Steen lost then he would leave ROH but if Generico lost then he would lose his mask. This was a great stipulation because honestly it was difficult to imagine either happening but the strength of the build up ensured that one would have to happen. Looking at post Final Battle cards also gave little indication as to who would win. As we know now it was Steen who lost and so far he as yet to return to the group although Steve Corino recently teased a Steen return as his sponsor, but we had a stipulation that was upheld and that's a win.
Secondly we have Roderick Strong vs Davey Richards for the ROH World Title, this is based on what many ROH fans consider to be the best wrestler in the company (Richards) chasing the title. As a story that's one of the most simplist and most effective draws a wrestling company has. The match was also in the run up considered to be a sure fire great match and again this proved to be the case. The fact that Richards failed at the show does not stop his chase for the gold drawing again on iPPV as evidenced with Davey challenging again at 'The Best In The World 2011' iPPV later this month. The only point to query is if ROH are waiting too long for Davey to win the title.
The third match was the Briscoes vs Kings of Wrestling & Shane Hagadorn. The hook again is very straight forward, if you buy this show you will see Shane Hagadorn get his ass kicked by Papa Briscoe and that's it. You won't necessarily see a great match but Shane will get beaten up. The WWE for the last two Wrestlemania PPV's have had similar matches with finishes that you think they couldn't get wrong (Bret vs Vince and Lawler vs Cole) and yet they completely made a mess of it. ROH set up a very basic premise and delivered, job done.
The undercard's job is to provide a pretty entertaining 90 minutes with some good wrestling. The opener All Night Express vs Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly was a great start which went a long way to help the ANX as potential tag title challengers while showcasing Cole & O'Reilly. Cabana vs TJ Perkins was just a fun 10 minute match that had no other motives. The womens tag made clear that Haze (who needs a few good meals) and Del Rey are a worthy part of ROH. The Eddie Edwards vs Sonjay Dutt match although pretty good is purely designed so Kevin Kelly & Dave Prazak on commentary can push how great Edwards is and that he will be a major star in 2011 for the company and of course he's now the World Champion. Only the Christopher Daniels vs Homicide could be classed as a bit of disappointment but that match in truth was only a small part of the show and for those who bought the show they were sold by the three main matches and they all delivered exactly what you would have wanted and expected. In short a case of a show that had smart booking.

WLH PPV Prediction League - Prizes To Be Won

Every WWE & TNA PPV anyone who enters the prediction league has to predict the result for each match on the PPV, if you get the result right, it's 2 points for you in the league the first counting of points will be after the WWE Summer Slam show in August and then after the final PPV of the year. The winner of the league will have a choice of a DVD of their choice from a list to be determined. I must say, don't want to annoy any American readers but this is for UK readers only for a DVD, any American readers that take part will get a PAYPAL payment instead.

Obviously, you don't have to predict for every PPV but the more PPV's you do, the better chance you have of getting more points.

Email ALL predictions to wlhstu@aol.co.uk


TNA World Heavyweight Title Match
Mr. Anderson vs. Sting

TNA Tag Team Title Match
The British Invasion vs. James Storm & Alex Shelley

TNA X Division Title Match
Kendrick vs. Kazarian vs. Abyss

TNA Knockouts Title Match
Angelina Love vs. Mickie James

Last Man Standing Match
Brother Ray vs. AJ Styles

The Final Battle
Kurt Angle vs. Jeff Jarrett

Crimson vs. Samoa Joe

wXw Kreuzzug ZXI (10/04/2011) DVD Review By Shaun Nichols

This was the second of two shows that the German promotion ran in New Jersey. Featuring stars from Europe, North America and Japan the show promised to be a damn fine entertaining show, but did it deliver?
Opening match was Kyle O'Reilly vs Marty Scurll, this is basically a continuation of the highly rated feud between O'Reilly & Adam Cole vs The LDRS (UK's Scurll & Zack Sabre Jr) which have wrestled two great matches. Scurll and O'Reilly are both fine wrestlers but seemed to be unable to connect with the fans on this particular night. Scurll also seems to have an issue working out if he's wrestling as a face or as a heel which is something that I noticed in other matches. Scurll was victorious on this night in a perfectly adequate opener **1/2
Up next was one half of the wXw tag champions Karsten Beck vs Chris Dickinson, Beck did a promo at the start of the match but unfortunately this was not picked up for sound. Dickinson is a local wrestler that the local fans were aware of. Majority of the match was Dickinson using his superior strength to dominate Beck, the match came to a premature ending when Dickinson seemed to blow out his knee when he missed a double stomp from the top. Unaware of what to do, Beck applied a armlock which Dickinson immediately tapped out to. Dickinson also apologised to the fans as the backstage crew helped him out of the ring. You had to feel for the poor guy *1/4
Tag team action followed with Necro Butcher & Bad Bones facing Drake Younger & Big Van Walter, Necro has aged about 10 years since 2009, he also unfortunately suffered a neck injury in an earlier match against Jun Kasai and frankly should not have been out there. What this meant was that Bad Bones would be playing babyface in peril, as the heels Younger & Walter are perfectly fine using standard heel tactics to keep Bones at a disadvantage while big German made the occasional comebacks. Necro get the hot tag but due to his injuries this didn't really work and it was only short time later that he fell to a big splash from Walter for the loss *3/4
I was looking forward to seeing Sam Callihan vs Jun Kasai, I heard great things regarding Callihan especially during the 16 Carat weekend where he one the tournament. Here I have to say he was a disappointment. Kasai with horribly scarred back is full of charisma who does a nice turn in comedy. Everything good about the match basically came from Kasai but it was Callihan who came away with the win by submission **1/4
The show so far is not making a positive impression, thankfully the second half was better the first. Adam Cole faced Emil Sitoci, this was similar in a lot of ways to the opener but just better in every way. The story was simple in that Sitoci kept outwrestling and embarrasing Cole to the point we had standard spanking spot where Cole complained to the ref that he's being violated. Sitoci laughingly say's he'll tone it down. When Cole does get control it's all very basic stuff that makes sense, with Sitoci doing his best Steamboat babyface comebacks every few moves. A corkscrew tombstone piledriver seemed to have given Sitoci the win but Cole impressively kicked out. A scorpion deathdrop later and it was Adam Cole who celebrated the win. This could easily have gone on another five minutes ***1/4
Semi main event is Chris Hero vs Zack Sabre Jr, this was a really good match. Chris Hero as been consistantly great over the last couple of years and Zack more than held his own here. The early part of the match was classic mat wrestling with numerous great reversals. The story here was that Sabre Jr kept catching Hero in a cross armbreaker but that Hero was always able to escape. Hero dominated most of the match but ran into trouble when he missed a roaring elbow and hit the ringpost. This allowed Zach to take over and now the fans were able to buy into his attempts to get to Hero to submit to the armbreaker. Hero though was able to win though when he switched from a roaring elbow to a roaring kick for the pinfall ****
Main event time wXw World Champion Daisuke Sekimoto & UK's Johnny Moss vs The Briscoe Brothers this was another really good match. For a lot of the match both Moss & Sekimoto were able to dominate both Briscoes but were dragged back by the Briscoes superior tag team wrestling which allowed them to get the heat on Moss for several minutes. The match though really came alive in the last five minutes as the power moves of Moss & Sekimoto began to really hit the mark. Among the highlights were Sekimoto hitting a German suplex on his own partner who was trying to hit the same move on a Briscoe. The fact he suplexed Moss seemed bizarre to me but the fans loved it, Moss hit a delightful rolling Northern Lights suplex on Mark in the highlight of the show which was followed by a delayed German suplex by Sekimoto for the win ***3/4
The final three matches ensure that the show ends up on a positive note and the final two matches are certainly well worth going out of your way to see.

Looking Forward To Tanahashi vs. GOTO in NJPW on June 18th With Alan Counihan

When Hirooki Goto headbutted Hiroshi Tanahashi on May 3rd in Fukuoka,
it marked the end of a simmering tension between the two and the
beginning of all out war for the right to hold the most prized belt in
Professional Wrestling – The IWGP World Heavyweight Championship.

Goto will get his shot at the title on June 18th in Osaka. He’s had
chances before, twice against Tanahashi (in 2007 and 2009), but never
before has he been positioned so strongly going into his title
challenge. The feeling is that this is HIS time, this match will mark
the beginning of the Hirooki Goto title reign. He’s more than ready
for it.

Tanahashi won the belt on the January Tokyo Dome show from Satoshi
Kojima. He’s gone on to make four successful defenses against Kojima,
Shinsuke Nakamura, Charlie Haas and in a Match Of The Year contender,
Yuji Nagata. Some have predicted that with the big “All Together”
co-promotion show in August, New Japan will still want the marketable
and charismatic Tanahashi as their champion and thus he will retain
here. Goto just cannot suffer another failed attempt though. He has to
break through here.

The match has all the makings of a classic. These two always tear the
house down and have great chemistry. Tanahashi brings cleverness,
skill, technique and even some high flying. Goto relies more on a hard
hitting, power style. Since his brief trip to Mexico in March, he’s
exhibited a much more intense attitude and even a mean streak. However
the crowd have taken to this side of him and loud calls of GOTO-O are
very likely in Osaka. Tanahashi always gets a huge reaction himself,
so the atmosphere for this could be electric.

To me, this is THE match of the summer. No match anywhere in the world
has been built to this well. You could make a case that this has been
building since their first title match in November 2007. That night
Goto was inexperienced and perhaps didn’t have the killer instinct
needed. Come Osaka that won’t be the case.

About the author: Host of the DKP show at http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/ Happy young lad full of ProWresLove!!!

Follow Alan on twitter @Alan4L

What is ROH's Future?? By Shaun Nichols

As most wrestling fans now know, Ring of Honor was recently sold by Cary Silkin to Sinclair Broadcasting in which he sold his full 100% ownership of the group. It also is not a secret that ROH was losing some money, obviously not necessarily a lot of money or Cary would have sold earlier or pulled the plug on ROH. There was a feeling within the group that could have been a possibility but happily the sale to Sinclair will allow ROH to continue, the main question though is in what form.
The purchase by Sinclair will once again allow ROH to have TV coverage something that they have not had since the end of the HDNet deal which saw the final show air in April. The major complaint of the TV show on HDNet was that the production did not look good and often did a poor job in relaying the ROH product to the fans watching at home especially those that may have been more general wrestling fans. On the plus side HDNet ran ROH on Monday nights and they also put the show on in ROH's main markets such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Jim Cornette has noted that he feels the main difference between the TV shows will be the improved TV productions that will be able to better get across the messages that ROH want to use their TV shows to convey. The feeling was that under HDNet the TV show came across as fairly low rent but also the fans attending the tapings did not particularly like the shorter matches that television demands compared to the the usual ROH product.
Sinclair themselves are said to be worth $800 million and they made approx $75 million in profit in 2010 however they made substantial losses in both 2008 & 2009, they are also well known for running their businesses as cheaply as possible which also as the knock on effect of not paying well. That being said if they didn't think that they could not make money through the purchase of ROH then they would not bought the company. ROH works on pretty low overheads, this includes in-ring talent, minimal front office, the cost of running buildings and so forth. ROH as never had a lot of money to spend so are used to working with a minimal budget. On the other side of the coin this means that things do not have to improve greatly for the company to become profitable. Even with the loss of the HDNet television house shows have not seen big drop offs in attendances and the company seems to be hopeful that iPPV's will stay around 1600-1800 buys per show.
Sinclair will be providing funding for the product but will not be paying a licence fee to ROH, like Spike does for TNA as an example. What that means is that they will probably not be overly concerned if there are small losses on the wrestling end of the deal. The first TV tapings will be in Chicago Ridge on August 13th and as far as introducing ROH to a new television audience this is likely to be seen as a re-launch for the company. For the markets that ROH will be airing in are not markets that are familiar to ROH and its product. It will take time to slowly get the wrestlers who many viewers may not have seen before and to make them stars. Cornette as also said that he thinks that the current roster is perfect as a group of wrestlers to introduce a new wrestling TV show although in his position he can hardly say anything else.
Among the markets that ROH will be airing are Tampa, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Buffalo, Nashville, San Antonio, Raleigh, Birmingham, Las Vegas and Oklahoma City. What you ROH fans may have noticed is that a number of those cities have not witnessed a live ROH event before. Never one to miss an opportunity to have his say, Eric Bischoff poured cold water on the sale that saying having 22% market penetration then you do not exist from an advertising point of view and that by not running in the major markets of New York, Chicago or Los Angeles your not going to make any major advertising income. He may be right but you'd think he would have other things to worry about. To say that ROH will not be successful with the new TV deal would be jumping to conclusions but it would be a fair assessment to say it will take time and as a result the first few months of TV will not neccessarily be very enjoyable to the hardcore ROH fans who do not need to be introduced to the stars of the group.
As far as how ROH will continue to operate, they will continue to build up to around 5 iPPV's a year including the now traditional double shot at Wrestlemania weekend. They will also continue to have every house show as a unique event which they will then hope to sell on DVD. That's okay if your running about 30-40 shows a year at the most but if the plan is to take the wrestlers on the road more than that would be something that would no longer be viable. It's not known at the moment if ROH are targeted to hit a particular number of viewers, when they had the HDNet deal rating numbers were never an issue however with Sinclair it very easily could be. If they are targeted and don't meet them what happens at the point? They are also scheduled to have the TV show air on a Saturday night which is going to be far harder proposition to attract viewers compared to a Monday night.
When the Wrestling Observer website put up a poll asking their subscribers thought the ROH sale was good, bad or not sure. The general feeling was that people just didn't know how this will play out and I find myself in that camp. I've read blogs and heard podcasts from both those who think it is the greatest thing ever and also those that think ROH as ended as a wrestling company that we've enjoyed since 2002. I personally don't see enough evidence to be convinced by either view and will merely hope that ROH continues to progress and present good wrestling shows and I think most fans can agree with that sentiment.

Remembering - Bret Hart in 1997 By Shaun Nichols

It's very easy to forget when you've watched the WWE provide pretty tedious and dull programming over the last couple of years that there was a time when the WWF TV was exciting and if you missed an episode of Raw the chances were you missed something that was pretty great. Arguably the most entertaining year of all was 1997, this was probably in part due to WCW winning the TV ratings war throughout the year and Vince spent the year playing catch up.
One of the main reasons why the WWF was so entertaining was Bret Hart, although always considered to be a great wrestler and deservedly so many were not convinced by his talking ability and also he was not seen as a guaranteed draw especially on PPV as the WWF champion. Pushed to the top of the card after the steroid scandal hit in the early 1990's and then helped tremendously in a career defining feud in 1993 against Jerry Lawler which made him a legitimate top babyface in the company. Still as the WWF were still trailing WCW in the ratings in 1997, Vince decided that he had to go back to his default plan which were to push the bigger wrestlers into the WWF title match at Wrestlemania. This gave us the not very thrilling Undertaker vs Sid main event.
Also in the earlier part of the year, Shawn Michaels' left the company temporarily when 'he lost his smile'. The result of this is that the booking of Wrestlemania had to have a number of major changes one of which was Bret Hart would face Steve Austin in the semi main event. Austin ever since winning the previous years King of the Ring tournament was becoming a bigger star by the month. He had a lost an excellent match to Hart at the 1996 Survivor Series PPV which did a lot to convince the company that Austin would be a firm fixture in the WWF main event ranks sooner rather than later.
As I mentioned in an earlier piece for the site, I consider Bret Hart's match against Austin at Wrestlemania 13 is the best Wrestlemania match so far. It deservedly took Match of the Year honours but more importantly it allowed the WWF to pull off a fantastic double turn, where Austin went babyface and Bret went heel. A few weeks later ECW tried to do a similar deal with Taz and Sabu at the Barely Legal PPV and even in front of the biggest ECW fan you couldn't say it came close to matching the Hart-Austin result.
By turning heel, this was Bret's first opportunity to be hated since the late 1980's when the Hart Foundation were under the guidance of Jimmy Hart. At that time Bret obviously wasn't the mouthpiece of the group, so this was his first real attempt to cut promos as the lead heel of the company. In a lot of ways he was the first heel to justify his position and his actions, this technique as since being used by Chris Jericho and CM Punk among others. Now joined by his brother Owen, Davey Boy, Jim Neidhart and Brian Pillman to form the new Hart Foundation. Although they were a fantastic group they lacked great talkers and this I'm sure would have put a lot of pressure on Bret. However Bret responded brilliantly and cut a number of memorable interviews, the key to this was that he argued that they hadn't changed at all and that it was the fans that had turned on them. With a special twist that made this period even better.
That twist was that in the United States the Hart Foundation were dastardly heels but everywhere elses they were booked like heroes defending themselves against the cocky Americans. The WWF ensured that a fair amount of their TV was filmed in Canada so perfectly illustrated the blurring of the traditional face/heel barrier. The highlight of 1997 and indeed Bret's highlight was the Canadian Stampede PPV where the Hart Foundation defeated Steve Austin, Legion of Doom, Ken Shamrock and Goldust in front of a rabid Canadian crowd.
In the run up to Summerslam, Shawn Michaels returned to the company and was assigned as special referee in Bret's world title match against the Undertaker in the main event. One superkick in error later and Shawn was forced to count to three and crown Bret the new WWF champion. Moving the Undertaker out of the title picture and with Steve Austin breaking his neck after an Owen Hart piledriver went awry this left DX versus the Hart Foundation as the main programme for the final part of the year. Sticking to the tried and tested anti-USA promos which were still working great, the first live WWF event I went to was One Night Only in Birmingham in September 1997 where Bret and Owen were beloved stars and hilariously the Patriot was booed unmercifully and he wasn't even wrestling a Hart.
We all know what happened at the Survivor Series in Montreal and considering that wrestling is fake I really could not understand why Bret would not drop the title to Shawn on his way out of the company. I guess that the mutual animosity and a failure to keep things into perspective forced an end result that did little to make anybody look good, although a by-product was that it launched the heel 'Mr McMahon' character which was a major reason why the WWF overtook WCW the following year. That being said if you ignore TV ratings or PPV buyrates and simply ask yourself the question of am I being entertained? Then if you saw a lot of the WWF TV in 1997 then I cannot imagine that you were not and arguably the main reason that fans really enjoyed that period was Bret Hart who gave us in my opinion his best ever year.

Remembering the Golden Days of Michinoku Pro Wrestling By Shaun Nichols

Michinoku Pro Wrestling was formed in 1993 by the Great Sasuke the style of the promotion was a hybrid style which meshed traditional Junior heavyweight style with the lucha libre style from Mexico. The style was known as 'Jap Lucha' and as been taken forward by firstly Ultimo Dragon's Toryumon group and later by Dragon Gate.
Based in North East of Japan it is still running today and still reatins the services of Great Sasuke, Jensei Shinzaki (now running the promotion) as well as the new wave of MPW stars such as Fujita 'Jr' Hayoto who made a tramendous impression at NJPW Super Junior Cup 2009 among others. Michonoku Pro came to the attention of most western wrestling fans at the inaugeral Super J Cup back in 1994. There Great Sasuke, Super Delfin and Taka Michinoku certainly made a startling impression, although Taka lost to Black Tiger in the first round and Delfin fell at the quarter finals to Gedo they certainly did not disgrace themselves. The star of the night was Sasuke, although he may have benefitted from his friendship with Liger (who booked the event) he produced three excellent performances culminating in two ****1/2 plus matches against Liger and in a losing effort in the final to Chris Benoit.
Super Delfin also benefitted from his time in NJPW by going to the finals of the annual Best of the Super Juniors tournament also in 1994, this along with their performances at SJC gave them some much needed exposure to the masses. The MPW style was a breath of fresh air from the more serious NJPW style, comedy was often a major feature of their cards and complemented perfectly the high flying style of their main eventers. Unusually for Japanese matches, their best matches were not singles or even tag matches but were 6 man, 8 man or ideally 10 man tags that went over 30 minutes but felt like it was only 15 minutes.
During the mid 1990's Sasuke and Delfin remained as the two main stars of the group but they were supported by an awesome array of wrestlers. They included Taka Michinoku, Men's Teoih (who wrestled as Terry Boy in the earlier days of the promotion), Sho Funaki, Gran Naniwa, Shiryu (Kaz Hayashi), Dick Togo and Gran Hamada. During 1995 the heel group of Kaientai was formed led by Togo but also included Taka, Funaki, Shiryu & Teoih they had several ***** matches against Sasuke, Delfin and friends.
What looking back at the group was simply how young they were during the promotions heyday of 1994 to 1997, Togo was in his mid twenties and was one of the most experienced. While Sasuke and Delfin were also of a similar age. Taka Michinoku & Shiru were both in their early twenties while the baby of the group was Naniwa who wasn't even eighteen when he made his debut for the group. Famous his crab walk on the middle rope while he delayed dropping an elbow drop which usually missed, Naniwa was a fine wrestler with great comic timing. He died last October at the age of 33 and I was shocked not only had he died at such a young age but also realising how great a wrestler he was before his twentieth birthday.
Probably the highlight of MPW occured in December 1996 in absolutely fantastic 10 man elimination tag match that pitted Kaientai against Sasuke, Delfin, Naniwa, Tiger Mask IV & Gran Hamada and is would easily get into my all time top ten matches. I f you haven't seen it then you should really do yourself a favour and track it down. The following year MPW made a breakthrough into the States by appearing on PPV for two different promotions. Firstly they did a six man tag at ECW's Barely Legal PPV where Sasuke, Hamade and Masato Yakushiji defeted bWo Japanese branch of Taka, Terry Boy and Dick Togo in what was a clear match of the night, a couple of nights earlier they had another 6 man where Naniwa had wrestled instead of Yakushiji which was even better but unfortunately Naniwa injured himself so missed out on a PPV appearance.
Three months later and Sasuke and Taka found themselves wrestling at the WWF's Canadian Stampede PPV, this is really strange as the show only featured 4 matches and neither of the MPW wrestlers had appeared on WWF televsion before the event. They also wrestled on the following night's Raw with Sasuke winning on both occasions. Sasuke returned to Japan and Taka stayed around becoming the first WWF Light Heavyweight champion in what turned out to be a short lived attempt to compete with WCW's Cruiserweight division.
1997 proved to be the end of the glory days of MPW, the following year Super Delfin broke away from MPW and took with him Gran Naniwa, Dick Togo and Masato Yakushiji among others. It's easy to forget just how entertaining MPW in the mid 1990's was as the years rolled by their commercial tapes were often packed with weird storytelling and usually clipped matches which didn't make a great deal of sense and were not the easiest tapes to watch or follow. But between 1994 and 1997 their match quality stands on a par with any wrestling promotion and I certainly have fond memories of them.