ROH 7th Anniversary Show Review

A physically broken down Nigel McGuinness defends against KENTA and two ROH originals return!

ROH 7^th Anniversary Show

New York City, New York 3/21/09

1.) Roderick Strong & Erick Stevens vs. Rhett Titus & Kenny King: **3/4

This was during the early stages of the King & Titus tag team. A pretty fine opening match. Good but nothing really flashy. Strong & Stevens pick up the win.

2.) Brent Albright vs. Claudio Castagnoli: ***1/4

A pretty solid match here. The action wasn't anything spectacular, but it was still fairly good. The match ends up going to the 15 Minute Time Limit. Their is a pull-apart brawl, and after they're separated Claudio (surprisingly, since he's heel) calls for five more minutes! Albright agrees and it's on, but it doesn't last very long as Claudio kicks Albright low and draws a DQ. Again, good match with the finish doing a pretty solid job at furthering the feud between these two.

After the match, Claudio continues to assault Albright.

3.) Adam Pearce (with Shane Hagadorn & Sara del Rey) vs. Bobby Dempsey: DUD

So Sweet 'n' Sour Inc. put out Open Challenge Contracts for people to come in and take out Dempsey. Adam Pearce steps up to the plate here. Before the match, they bring out George Oliphant, who's apparently from some local NBC station. Pearce berates him before the match starts. Speaking of which, it was very short. Pearce got some shots in, then talked some trash, the received an Avalanche and a Death Valley Driver for the 1-2-3. Basically a squash but a good way for Dempsey to get revenge on Pearce.

4.) Jerry Lynn vs. Mike Quackenbush: ***

Not much to say about this one. A pretty entertaining exhibition....what you would expect from a Mike Quackenbush match.

5.) Revolution Rules Match – Tyler Black, Delirious (with Daizee Haze) & Necro Butcher vs. The Age of the Fall (Jimmy Jacobs & Brodie Lee) & Austin Aries: ***1/4

Essentially, it's an Elimination Match, where each fall has to be different from the previous fall. On paper, I liked the match stipulation, and I think this had the potential to be really good. Unfortunately, I wasn't booked very well and it ended up just being ok. They had so many stories going on in this match (Brodie/Necro, Delirious/Jacobs, Black/Jacobs, Black/Aries, the Aries/Jacobs "frienemies" thing) but the booking of the actual match hurt it to a degree. In my view they did the eliminations wrong. If it was me, I would have had Necro & Brodie eliminate each other first via Double DQ, then leading to a Black/Delirious vs. Jacobs/Aries No DQ bit of the match & you could have gone from there. Overall, a good match that could have been better.

6.) Bison Smith & Jimmy Rave (with Prince Nana) vs. Bryan Danielson & Colt Cabana: ***1/2

So the story here was that Danielson & Smith were both bringing in mystery partners. Prince Nana comes out with Bison Smith and cuts a promo, thanking "Barack Alabama" for the "Stimulus Money" and introduced Smith's partner is the returning "Crown Jewel" Jimmy Rave! Danielson rushes the ring after this but gets beat down. Grizzly Redwood tries to help but to no avail. Colt Cabana then hits the ring to a large reaction and saves Danielson! The match itself was pretty good. Nothing over the top or outstanding, but a fun match that reintroduces two ROH originals back into the company.

7.) D-Lo Brown vs. Jay Briscoe (with Mark Briscoe): **1/2

Before the match, D-Lo Brown cuts a promo basically saying he's going to make the most of his situation after being let go be WWE. Over the course of the match, D-Lo slowly starts using heelish tactics and eventually gets the win via one of these heelish tactics - a rollup with a handful of tights. It was an ok match, though I'm not sure how D-Lo's slower style fits with ROH.

8.) ROH World Tag Team Titles – No DQ – Kevin Steen & El Generico vs. The American Wolves (with Shane Hagadorn & Sara del Rey): ****

Steen has one of his knees taped up after several attacks by the Wolves leading up to this match. It was a pretty good No-DQ Match. I'd say it was somewhere in the middle of the "No DQ" spectrum...not too little, not too much. The match ends with Steen getting a submission win over Richards. Again, very good match. These teams have great chemistry.

After the match, the Wolves, not satisfied, attack Steen & Generico post-match. They put El Generico through a table and attack Steen's knees with chairs after tying Steen in the ropes. This serves as a great set-up to the Tables Match they would have on HDNet.

9.) ROH World Title – Nigel McGuinness vs. KENTA: ****

The match itself was pretty good, with a lot of excitement that one would expect from these two, but simply put, Nigel was nowhere near 100% with his injuries, and that definitely hurt the match. Still, these two did what they could and put on a solid main event effort.

Overall: 8.25/10

This was a pretty good show. Nothing really stood out, but at the same time nothing was bad either. I'd say the two titles matches are the best matches on the show, and the returns of Jimmy Rave & Colt Cabana make for a very solid Anniversary Show.