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ROH YEAR THREE ARCHIVE: LOOKING BACK AT RING OF HONOR'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL YEAR

ROH REBORN STAGE ONE

RING OF HONOR DEBUT IN ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA LIVE REPORT
by Capital City Kyle

ROH made their St Paul debut on 4/23/04 at the St Paul Armory. I was sitting in the fourth row or standing through all of the show, so I make no claims as to having the correct finishes. The crowd was more knowledgeable about the ROH product than I expected them to be. They were hot all not and into the show. A lot of these guys had wrestled in Minnesota before, like CM Punk, Colt Cabana, BJ Whitmer, Jimmy Jacobs, Justin Credible, and I believe John Walters, but the crowd was into people like Dunn and Marcos, who you’d probably only be into if you bought the tapes. They used MIW promoter Terry Fox's ring for the evening.

1. Matt Stryker over Nigel Mcguiness with what looked like a flip press from the second rope. Not a bad match, but I am not into Nigel Mcguiness at all. I think this match would have been better as the second match. It was pretty slow and while not bad by any means, it was nothing I would ever need to see again.

2. Carnage Crew beat Dunn & Marcos when I believe Loc pinned Marcos with a spiked piledriver from the top rope. This would have been a great opener. Lots of D&M crazy spots, and some of the Carnage Crew dumping them on their heads. Crowd was into Dunn and Marcos. I found it to be very entertaining.

3. John Walters beat Justin Credible. Billed as a special attraction match, but it wasn’t. Credible was uber-over and got a huge pop from the crowd. Average match, seemed like filler. Crowd was into Justin. It was fine. Walters showed sparks of his talent but couldn't do much with Credible dragging his feet.

4. The 6 Way Mayhem with Jimmy Rave vs. Jack Evans vs. Alex Shelley vs. Jimmy Jacobs vs. Masada vs. Danny Daniels. Alex Shelly beat Jimmy Jacobs with the crossface. Just was you would expect from these guys. Very entertaining. Huss was megaover was wore these phat purple Bruiser Brody boots. Evans was over too and I thought his break dance stuff was cool. I found it to be thoroughly entertaining.

5. BJ Whitmer over Colt Cabana with a top rope exploder. I was surprised as to how few of the crowd new that Cabana had wrestled in the Twin Cities regularly when he broke in. CM Punk came out with Cabana. As the match was starting, he pulled special guest ref Ricky Steamboat out of the ring and attacked him. Three other refs came out to save Ricky and help him to the back. They got a new ref and the match was restarted. Crowd was into it. They brawled into the crowd. The ROH security guy actually knew enough about TV production that he made sure that no one stood in the spot light while they were outside. Bravo~! Two whips into the chairs with the crowd loved. Good match.

6. Matt Sydal over Delirious with a belly-to-belly superplex. I liked Delirious’ gimmick and thought he was entertaining. Crowd was into Sydal. I was told by the guy next to me that they had wrestled “at least 100 times against each other” and another said “they wrestle every third day.” So I guess they’ve wrestled each other a lot or something. The match was obviously well rehearsed, but I liked it.

7. The Briscoe Brothers over The Havana Pitbulls with the spiked piledriver. Some people were really into this match, but most of the people around me weren’t for some reason. The kind of stuff you expect from a Briscoe Brothers match, including one of them taking a backflip to the outside.

8. Brian Danielson over CM Punk by submission. Ricky Steamboat came back out and said he was paid to ref a match, and if it was ok with everyone, he was going to ref this match, since Punk stopped him from refereeing earlier. They did a bunch of spots with Steamboat harassing Punk throughout the match. It was obvious from the start they were going to go long. Good match, but I expected a bit more from both of them. I think CM Punk is great, but this wasn’t nearly as good as his match last month against Styles when Steamboat was also the ref. After the match, Cabana came out and he and Punk double teamed Steamboat until the Bricoes made the save.

9. Samoa Joe beat Homicide by DQ. They had streamers. It was stiff. Some people are really into that. Joe got most of the offense. The finish saw the bell ring accidentally on a two count. Homicide got mad since he thought he had won and hit the ref. Then he somehow made the lights go out, and hit Samoa Joe with a fireball. The crowd farted on the finish. The locker room cleared, and everybody got a chance to get their dive in. I couldn’t keep up with all of it, but I saw Dunn and Marcos get a dive in for sure. The crowd came quickly back to life and this saved the show from sending people home on a sour note. Punk and Cabana came out, which brought back Steamboat to get in a few arm drags that were really over. The Briscoes came back out too and backed up Ricky until the Second City Saints left.

Overall a pretty good show. No return date was announced, and the program said that on their next trip to the Midwest they were going to run Chicago and outside of Milwaukee in on July 23rd and 24th. Someone from ROH was handing out flyers at the WWE show in town letting people know that they could leave the WWE show at anytime and see the finish of the ROH show for free if they presented their ticket at the door. That was actually a great idea.

Capital City Kyle pens a regular MMA article for the great newsletter Dragon King Wrestling. More information on on DKW can be found here.

ROH Reborn Stage One can be ordered at ROHWrestling.com.