ROH Enter The Dragon Review

Bryan Danielson makes his first defense of the ROH World Title!

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

ROH Enter The Dragon

Cleveland, Ohio 10/14/05

The show starts off with Dave Prazak interviewing the NEW Ring of Honor World Champion Bryan Danielson. He goes over former ROH World Champions, and when he gets to Austin Aries, the leader of Generation Next makes his way out. Aries basically says he's going to win the title tonight, but Danielson disagrees.

1.) Non-Title Match - Nigel McGuinness vs. Claudio Castagnoli: **3/4

A fairly decent opening match. Claudio gets the upset win over the Pure Champion, and essentially guarantee's himself a future title shot.

2.) Ricky Reyes vs. Matt Stryker: *1/2

So this is the other Matt Stryker. A competitive squash for Reyes, but a squash nonetheless.

3.) ROH Tag Team Titles - Tony Mamaluke & Sal Rinauro vs. BJ Whitmer & Jimmy Jacobs (with Lacey): ***1/2

Mamaluke & Rinauro won the belts from Whitmer & Jacobs in a huge shocker at Joe vs. Kobashi. This is the rematch. It was a pretty good match. The upstart teams backs up their upset win by winning the rematch.

4.) Jimmy Yang vs. Roderick Strong: ***1/2

Yang made an impressions during the Kenta Kobashi shows against James Gibson & Christopher Daniels. This was a very good match. Strong looked very good in this one, picking up the win.

5.) The Rottweilers (Homicide & Low Ki) vs. Steve Corino & Colt Cabana: ***

So the story here is that Corino came to the show thinking his Title Shot with Danielson was tonight. Colt Cabana tells him that his title shot is tomorrow night in Buffalo, and tonight he'll be teaming with Cabana against The Rottweilers. Corino is not happy, but agrees to go along with it if Cabana does it Corino's way.

Corino comes out dressed as CM Punk, complete with marker tattoos. He then has his ring announcer list wrestlers whose careers were ruined by the "Evil Empire" known as WWE. They then do a 5-Bell Salute (since Vince McMahon "owns the rights" to the 10-Bell Salute). 

The match itself was decently good, but rather lengthy. The big story here is that Cabana takes out Homicide and lets him get pinned 1-2-3 by his arch-rival Corino.

6.) Davey Andrews & Shane Hagadorn vs. Pelle Primeau & Derek Dempsey: DUD

This match gets going for about a minute before Prince Nana comes out, cuts a promo and unleashes his hired monster Abyss on the ROH Students. Nana then says nobody can beat his monster, leading to Jack Evans (along with Jade Chung) coming out for our next match.

7.) Abyss (with Prince Nana) vs. Jack Evans (with Jade Chung): **

For a match that lasted just under 3 Minutes it did have a good deal of action. But it still only went three minutes, so...

Afterwords, Prince Nana & Abyss go after Jade Chung, but Roderick Strong comes out with a chair for the save.

8.) Samoa Joe & Jay Lethal vs. Jimmy Rave & Alex Shelley: ***3/4

Rave & Shelley get toilet papered (per usual). They do this funny bit at the beginning where neither of them wanted Joe. The match itself was very good. Joe & Lethal pick up a huge win.

9.) ROH World Title - Bryan Danielson vs. Austin Aries: ****

This is Danielson's first defense, but not the first time these two have wrestled each other in a high profile match. While I wouldn't call it as good as some of there previous encounters, it was still a very good match and a solid main event.

Overall: 7.75/10

This was a pretty solid show. Danielson had a very good first defense and their are several good matches on here that are worth seeing, with a few sub-par matches that are at least a little bit entertaining. A great way to debut in Cleveland.