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This was the case with the recently released Rise & Prove set, which includes both the Underground and Rise & Prove events from early this year. While both events had strong headline matches, much of the rest of both cards included a lot of wrestlers that ROH fans probably weren't very familiar with, and I think that's the kind of thing that would make a difference to a fan who picks and chooses which DVDs they're going to buy. Let's look at both shows, and see how they look when considered together as a single unit.
Before we get to the matches, Jim Cornette and Eddie Edwards come out to announce that Edwards has come down with a staph infection and will not be able to compete tonight due to the contagious nature of the infection. Cornette puts Eddie over as a guy he saw work a ladder match after a broken elbow, but it's out of his hands and he can't compete tonight, so he asks the fans to give Eddie a hand even though he won't be wrestling tonight.
With that out of the way, we move on the opening match as Kenny King takes on Andy "Right Leg" Ridge, who cut a promo before the match saying that he was in the Trial Series a year ago, but has yet to follow up on it with any big wins and knows he needs to start winning soon. Ridge was a lot more intense than usual, taking the match to the outside early on and then, later in the match, popping up and attacked King while he stops to play to the crowd. This was the best match I think I've ever seen Ridge have, but King still put him away with the Royal Flush. Ridge really has to diversify his repertoire beyond punches and kicks with his right leg. Next was Grizzly Redwood taking Eddie Edwards' place against "The Prodigy" Mike Bennett, who cuts a promo before the match offering to let Redwood walk away, and I couldn't quite hear what Redwood said back to him because this place doesn't have the best acoustics, but it seemed to be along the lines of him taking offense at being talked to like a jabroni. Redwood hides under the ring when Bennett turns his back and sneaks up to get a cheap rollup, but Bennett quickly turns the tables and this becomes a squash. Bennett catches Redwood in a crossbody attempt and counters to a TKO for the win.
Next up was Adam Cole, fresh off his No Holds Barred match with Roderick Strong at Homecoming II, taking on Kevin Steen in what might as well have been No Holds Barred since Steen jumped him before the bell and quickly took the fight out to the floor. Steen gave Cole an F5 into the ringpost, and continued brutalizing him until Cole hit a leaping DDT off the second rope and began fighting back with a series of flying kicks and high knees. Steen hung Cole off the second rope and delivered a DDT and a running cannonball in the corner, then popped Cole into the air and drove him into the mat with a powerbomb. Steen followed that up with a hard clothesline and the F5, and that's all she wrote for Adam Cole. Steen continues steamrolling toward his showdown with Davey Richards for the ROH World Title, but Cole again showed a lot of heart even though he went down in defeat.
The ROH World Tag Team Title is on the line in the next match, as the Briscoes defend against Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander, who were unable to sustain any kind of offense against the champions. The Briscoes pretty much destroyed the challengers and pinned Alexander after hitting the Doomsday Device, then went to shake Coleman & Alexander's hands, but pulled back and walked off to show that, even though they're technically babyfaces again, they're not going to be sappy, high fiving baby kissing role models. For that matter, neither are Wrestling's Greatest Tag Team, who took on A1 (another local team) in the next match. WGTT cut a promo before the match and griped about how they've wrestled in all the best buildings in the world, including the real Scope next door, and are disgusted that they have to wrestle in a garage in front of a crowd like this. This match was like watching two seasoned shooters take a couple of kids trying to get into the business and roughing them up to see if they had the cajones to come back. Haas & Benjamin pulled out a bunch of sweet looking amateur takedowns and throws, pretty much manhandling them at will. A1 got in flashes of offense here and there, but Haas & Benjamin wanted to make an example out of someone and abused them until they got disqualified for shoving the referee down when he tried to stop them from continuing their use of excessive force. This still doesn't stop WGTT from beating up A1, as they continue destroying them until the Briscoes rush the ring and send WGTT packing.
More Proving Ground action is up next, as Tommaso Ciampa takes on TV Champion Jay Lethal with a shot at Lethal's title on the line. Ciampa had been undefeated in ROH for over a year at this point, and this is the first time he's been in the picture for a title shot in ROH. Ciampa started breaking out some new stuff we haven't seen out of him before, such as countering the Lethal Injection by nailing Lethal as he comes off the ropes, and also Bryan Danielson-eqsue knockout elbows. Ciampa kicked out of the Lethal Combination and then countered an attempt at Hail To The King with a top rope Air Raid Crash, and then hit Project Ciampa for the win with less than a minute left to earn his shot at the ROH TV Title.
This brings us to the main event of the evening, as Davey Richards and Kyle O'Reilly take on Roderick Strong and Michael Elgin (or, as the DVD case proclaims, Roderick Strong & Truth Martini) for a shot at the ROH World Tag Team Title. Elgin looked like a monster here, doing power moves like countering arm submissions by literally lifting Davey or O'Reilly off the mat and slamming them back down with seemingly no effort. Elgin also got to show off his deceptive agility when, after taking half a dozen fast kicks from O'Reilly, Elgin snapped off an enziguiri of his own quicker than you could blink. The House of Truth caught O'Reilly in the ring and worked him over while slapping him around and talking trash. O'Reilly finally tagged out and we went into the requisite portion of the match where Roderick and Davey beat the hell out of each other in the middle of the ring, and there was a great moment when Strong had Davey in the Stronghold, and O'Reilly was pounding on Strong to get him to break, but Strong kept the hold and yelled at O'Reilly to bring it on. Truth Martini's interference backfired and cost his team the win when ran into the ring to attack O'Reilly and break his front guillotine choke on Strong, but O'Reilly turned it around and pinned Strong with a jackknife rollup, earning Team Ambition a shot at the ROH World Tag Team Title at Rise & Prove.
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Well, you had a really good main event and some solid stuff underneath, but also a lot of matches that were either squashes or featured preliminary wrestlers. From a production standpoint, the audio was very fuzzy and in-ring promos were hard to understand, and the location looked awful on video, especially since they apparently weren't able to curtain off the background like usual. Let's see how the second disc measures up.
We kick the show off with a short but exciting match between Michael Elgin and Adam Cole, who has been losing a lot of matches in the weeks leading into this event, but has come closer and closer to beating top name opponents, and seems very close to the moment when he'll knock off someone big. Unfortunately for Cole, this was not that day, and while Cole did get bursts of offense in, this was largely a showcase for Elgin as he used his overwhelming power to negate Cole's speed advantage. Cole caught him with a slingshot DDT onto the ring apron and later countered a superplex by giving Elgin a sunset flip off the top and into a powerbomb, but it barely slowed Elgin down, and Elgin came back to hit Cole with the twisting sitout powerbomb for the win.
Next up were the opening round matches in the Rise & Prove Tag Team Tournament, a one night competition for a chance to face the ROH World Tag Team Champions in a Proving Ground match at Showdown In The Sun Night One. Before the tournament even begins, we see an on-screen graphic of a Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls vs Shiloh Jonez & Rudy Switchblade match, and since those teams are not facing each other in the first round, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I just saw another production error that spoiled the finals of the tournament. The first match was Jonez & Switchblade taking on Sean Casey & Chris Silvio, whom I found very entertaining since he kind of looks like a modern day Rip Rogers, if Rip wore Indian boots and had blue streaks in his hair. Shiloh...well, he did a bunch of hiptosses and shook his ass like Brodus Clay. I liked Switchblade as well, he's a big, tough and rugged looking guy who threw some bruising shots and had the look of a guy who could probably win most 4-on-1 barfights. Switchblade cleaned house and hit Silvio with a top rope frogsplash to advance. The second match featured Alabama Attitude taking on Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls, though the graphic again tells me this is a Haste/Nicholls vs Jonez/Switchblade match. You might remember Mike Posey of Alabama Attitude as a referee for TNA, while Haste & Nicholls are an Australian team who easily stood out to me the most of the four teams in the tournament since they're the most physically imposing team and have very fluid teamwork. I had a hard time taking Alabama Attitude seriously as a threat to Haste & Nicholls given how much smaller they are, so it looked kind of contrived when they made a sustained comeback after taking a major beating for most of the match. Still, as the Nostradamus Graphic predicted, Haste & Nicholls advanced to the finals after taking Posey out with a double team DDT.
Next up is the No Holds Barred match between Roderick Strong and Eddie Edwards that was supposed to happen at Homecoming II, but didn't due to Eddie coming down with the staph infection I mentioned earlier on in the Underground review. Jim Cornette came out before the match and ordered Truth Martini to be handcuffed to the ringpost to prevent him from interfering, and Truth tried to escape to the back, but was dragged back to ringside and handcuffed by a mob of referees. Though most of their previous matches had been competitive wrestling contests centered around wins and losses, the feud had become personal by this point and the match turned into a very heated brawl. Strong jumped Eddie before the bell and took him outside the ring to ram the back of his skull against the barricade, then threw him back inside and began gouging at his mouth. Edwards tried to give Strong the Die Hard through a chair he had set up in the ring, but Strong escaped and gave Eddie what was mostly an atomic drop, except that he dropped Eddie groin first onto the back of the chair. Strong wedged chairs between the ropes in all four corners, but that strategy backfired when Eddie rammed him into one, then hung Strong upside down in the corner and baseball slid another chair into his face. After the referee got knocked out from an errant leaping enziguiri to the face, Eddie put Roderick on a table at ringside and double stomped him through it from the top rope. Michael Elgin ran out and went after Edwards, but Adam Cole ran out to make the save and wiped Elgin out with a dive to the floor. Truth Martini got the key out of the referee's pocket and freed himself from the handcuffs, and he distracted Eddie long enough for Strong to collect himself and bash Eddie in the face with the Book of Truth and get the win. This was an amazing brawl and a completely new direction to take two guys who have had excellent matches for a full year by this point.
The next match sees Mike Mondo take on the massive Samson Walker, who made his first appearance in ROH back during their tour in the Carolinas in December, and has a really interesting backstory about his upbringing in the ghettos of Compton, California. Mondo made the mistake of slapping Samson in the face and wound up being manhandled by Samson for several minutes. Mondo was so overmatched that he resorted to choking Samson with his wrist tape, then had to roll Samson up with his feet on the ropes to get the three count. Another referee came out and alerted the original referee to Mondo's chicanery, leading to the match being restarted so Samson coule quickly swoop in and hit a spinebuster for the win. Fine for what it was, but it did make Samson look a little weak to get pinned and need a referee to restart the match to get his heat back. We then go to the finals of the Rise & Prove Tag Team Tournament, as Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls take on Shiloh Jonez & Rudy Switchblade. As I said before, Haste & Nicholls came off like the most polished team of the four, while Jonze and Switchblade came off more like two singles guys who were stuck together for the night and didn't have the same chemistry. Nicholls kicked Switchblade low and he and Haste hit their finish and pinned Switchblade to win the tournament. I think Haste & Nicholls looked good on this show, and I hope they get considered for a full time gig if the right spot opens up.
ROH original BJ Whitmer returns to ROH for the first time in four years in the next match, as he takes on TV Champion Jay Lethal in the Proving Ground. Whitmer looked great here and seemed totally focused on making an impression in his return match, which also happened to be in his hometown of Cincinnati. Lethal's a much bigger and thicker guy than he looks on TV, but he still looks small next to Whitmer, who easily won an exchange of strikes in the middle of the ring. Lethal regained the advantage and tore into Whitmer with stiff chops, but Whitmer finally caught Lethal with a big boot that sent him out to the floor and followed him out with a somersault dive before paying Lethal back with some stiff chops of his own. We got to the final five minutes of the time limit as Lethal hit the Lethal Combination, but Whitmer kicked out, so Lethal connected with a pair of superkicks and Hail To The King, but Whitmer again kicked out. Whitmer hit a pair of rolling Perfectplexes and went for the exploder suplex, but Lethal blocked and hit the Lethal Injection for the win with less than a minute remaining. Whitmer doesn't get a TV Title shot, but he looked awesome and it at least earned him more bookings.
This brings us to the main event of the evening, as Kyle O'Reilly and ROH World Champion Davey Richards challenges the Briscoes for the ROH World Tag Team Title. Even though they've only teamed for a short time in ROH, Richards & O'Reilly live and work out together and have better chemistry than a lot of teams that have been together for years. An interesting bit of trivia: even though Davey has been one of the top wrestlers in ROH for years now, he has had his ass consistently handed to him by the Briscoes going all the way back to his rookie year in ROH in 2006. Nearly every single one of the many, many times Davey has faced the Briscoes has ended with Davey counting the lights no matter who his partner has been, a fact that adds an interesting extra dimension to the match. Case in point: Davey went for his running punt on the apron, but Jay caught his leg and held him so Mark could hit a running dropkick. They took the fight to the floor where the Briscoes totally regulated Team Ambition, sending them crashing into guardrails and beating them down barfight style. Davey finally hit the handspring enziguiri and tagged out to O'Reilly, who quickly found himself on the receiving end of a beating from the Briscoes as well. Mark and O'Reilly wiped each other out with simultaneous crossbody blocks, then O'Reilly took both Briscoes out with a series of kicks and mounted a comeback on Jay after Davey nearly went right through Mark with a dive to the floor. An all out war broke out with both teams throwing their best shots at each other as the Briscoes went for the Doomsday Device, but Richards rolled through and caught Jay in an ankle lock as O'Reilly got Mark in a guillotine choke. The Briscoes broke free and the two teams traded hard shots until they were all laying flat on their backs. Davey got a series of submissions, a running punt to the chest, and a top rope double stomp on Jay, followed by the knockout kick to the head, but couldn't put Jay away. Davey taged out to O'Reilly and told him to finish Jay as he worked Mark over, but Mark flattened Davey with a gargoyle suplex and they go out to the floor as O'Reilly catches Jay in another guillotine choke, but Jay powers O'Reilly up into a Falcon Arrow suplex, followed by a top rope elbow from Mark. The Briscoes quickly hit the Doomsday Device and that's all she wrote, as the Briscoe Curse continues for Davey Richards. Davey graciously gets the microphone and says that he and Kyle hate losing, but if they're going to lose, they can take pride in losing to the best team in the business.
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Even though there were some good matches and the main events of both shows were strong, this isn't a must-see DVD set. While I appreciate giving new wrestlers a chance to work hard and make an impression, people don't want to pay money to watch a DVD full of tryout matches, or squash matches featuring preliminary wrestlers, and that's the bulk of what's on these shows. Even the matches featuring higher level stars really didn't advance storylines much, and there was nothing on these shows that mattered in the long run. I think the best way I can sum this release up is by saying that it's a good buy if watching good wrestling matches is what matters to you most, but if you're somebody who will only buy shows that matter from a storyline perspective or include one or more Match of the Year candidates, then there's nothing in this set you need to go out of your way to see.
For information on ordering ROH DVDs, head on over to ROH's website here.
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