ROH The Battle of Richmond Review

Haasamania is Runnin' Wild!!!

*This show is available On-Demand for Ringside Members at rohwrestling.com*

ROH The Battle of Richmond

Richmond, Virginia 5/19/12

The shows kicks off with ROH World Champion Kevin Steen and Jimmy Jacobs. Steen explains that he got a concussion during a match he & Jacobs had against Davey Richards & Kyle O'Reilly at the previous night's TV Tapings in Baltimore, and is not cleared to compete. The brings out Team Ambition, and Davey challenges Jimmy Jacobs to a match instead, which he agrees.

1.) Jay Lethal vs. Mike Mondo: ***

This wasn't anything overly good, but for what it was, it proved to be a fine opener.

The Bravados are out next. They talk about their time spent in Pro Wrestling NOAH and how they want to become the World Tag Team Champions. This brings out Wrestling's Greatest Tag Team, who offer The Bravados a title match right now!

2.) ROH World Tag Team Titles – Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team vs. The Bravados: **1/4

This was.....just ok. Haas & Benjamin dominated most of it but The Bravados got some offense which made the match seem not as bad. It was short too. Haas shoves referee Paul Turner, causing a DQ.

Suddenly The All Night Express runs down and we have our second title match in a row!

3.) ROH World Tag Team Titles – Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team vs. The All Night Express: **1/2

This match was marginally better than the one before it. An ok affair, but Haas hits Titus with one of the World Tag Team Title belts, causing another DQ Finish.

4.) Tommaso Ciampa vs. Adam Cole: ***1/2

These two had a match at Defy or Deny that surprised a lot of people by how good it was. They seemed to top that performance with this match here. Oddly enough, I think Ciampa & Cole mesh pretty well together. 

Prince Nana tells Ciampa to beat down Cole after the match, but Ciampa refuses & leaves. Nana then shoves poor Ernie Osiris into the line of fire, as he gets taken out by Cole.

5.) The House of Truth vs. The Briscoes: ***

The HOT & The Briscoes have been having a bit of a rivalry going since the new year began. An enjoyable match, but a surprisingly short one. The highlight was Jay pulling down Martini's pants to reveal that he was wearing Roderick Strong's trunks.

6.) Team A-1 vs. Totally Awesome: ***

This was one of the weird elements of this show. Here we had a match with OVW and local guys that should have made for nice filler. Instead, it went about 16 or 17 minutes, the longest match on the card. Didn't need to go that long at all. Why a match with filler guys got the most time I have no idea. To these guys credit. They were pretty over with the crowd and the match itself wasn't that bad.

7.) Mike Bennett vs. Eddie Edwards: ***1/2

Here we have another rivalry that's been simmering on ROH TV. A pretty good match here. Maria gets accidentally taken out by her boyfriend, leading to an Eddie Edwards.

8.) Davey Richards (with Kyle O’Reilly) vs. Jimmy Jacobs (with Kevin Steen): **1/2

You know, given the ability of these two, I was expecting a much better match than we ended up getting. If anything, I would have switched the short amount of time this match got (7 minutes or so) with the tag match from earlier. Would have made much more sense. The match itself was just ok.

9.) Lights Out Match – Jay Briscoe vs. Charlie Haas: ***1/4

This came about after the controversial (and stupid) ending to the Fight Without Honor at Border Wars.  I'm a sucker for Hardcore Brawls and I actually enjoyed this (maybe a little more than others might have). They actually took down the top rope, as clearly shown by the cover. Both Mark Briscoe & Shelton Benjamin interfere, and Haas eventually gets the win.

Jay Briscoe gets on the mic and challenges Charlie Haas to a Texas Death Match on the next show in West Virginia!

Overall: 6.0/10

This is a card that will live forever in ROH lore, but unfortunately for the wrong reasons. Three Charlie Haas matches are more than enough for me. The DQ endings to both of the WGTT matches were just dumb, and the other tag match had no reason to go as long as it did. Richards/Jacobs under-delivered, and while the rest of the card featured matches in the *** to ***1/2 star range, those aren't matches you need to go out of your way to see. I feel like this show and Death Before Dishonor X were the epitome of all the issues with Jim Cornette's booking of ROH in 2012.