Ring Around The RHINO

(Obnoxious Author's Note: If you haven't read my "Rant of Honor" post from a week ago, GET ON THAT SHIT, SON!!!)

As promised, I am giving Ring of Honor every possible chance to impress me. So I watched their tv show going into the big pay-per-view, "Border Wars" that was this weekend (that I didn't watch because I'm broker than Job's turkey thank you very much).

Along those lines, why do all these indy feds have iPPVs running the weekend of Mother's Day, the second highest gift-giving day in the United States? I'm sure there are plenty of people who have the money to take care of Mom AND get their wrestling fix, but for people like me who've got a wife that doubles as the mother of my children, my own mother, my mother-in-law, and three sisters-in-law to shop for, a little better planning on behalf of these wrestling promotions with regard to the scheduling of their big events would be appreciated.

But I digress....

In case you haven't seen the latest Ring of Honor tv show and are wondering what I'm talking about, I have conveniently linked the show from their YouTube page for you here.

Now that you're all caught up, let's get into it, shall we?

-THE BRISCOE BROTHERS (ROH Tag Team Champions) vs CEDRIC ALEXANDER & CAPRICE COLEMAN
What I liked about this non-title match was that it furthered the existing storyline between the Briscoes and The World's Greatest Tag Team while also advancing Alexander & Coleman. If the WWE (or TNA for that matter) could learn anything from ROH, it's how to run a tag division. This was one of those beautiful situations where everybody wins in terms of the outcome of the match.

Where the match "lost" was with regard to the action itself. Once again, I got the sense that these four guys were just executing moves on each other with no real build or flow to the action. There were a lot of moves that could've easily been finishers that the guys kept kicking out of.

The move that actually did end the match was impressive and cleanly executed despite being a very difficult move to pull off but what these team need to learn is that sometimes it's better to live off the milk than to sell the cow. (I don't know, I'm making this up as I go.)

The last word on this match is, as effective as it was from a booking perspective, if this is the kind of action I'm going to get as a payoff, I'm not sold.

-RHINO MAKES HIS ROH DEBUT
In case you haven't noticed, I try not to spoil the match results because I'm trying to generate interest in wrestling of every kind. If you're not a regular ROH watcher but decide to check it out after reading my blog, I want you to enjoy their show the way wrestling was meant to be enjoyed, unspoiled.

In this case, unfortunately, there's no way around that so...*SPOILER ALERT!* RHINO crushes a jobber. And he looks damn awesome doing it! That's his appeal though so, props to him for going with what works. He's the reason for the title of this blog. He was smartly sandwiched in the middle of the show and was the one thing that truly had me wanting to tune in next week to see what they do with him.

What didn't work was the backstage segment he had with Prince Nana, R.D. Evans, and Truth Martini. It was one of those things in wrestling, like "Mean" Gene Okerlund dancing with the Gobbledy Gooker, that make even a die hard fan like myself want to deny that I watch it. Although, Truth did redeem himself with the in-ring promo he cut prior to the match.

The last word on this match is, keep RHINO in the ring and off the mic, and over-the-top caricatures are fine as long as they don't make me want to change the channel and pretend like I was watching something else when someone walks into the room.

-IN-RING SEGMENT FEATURING KEVIN STEEN, JIMMY JACOBS, DAVEY RICHARDS AND JIM CORNETTE
This was to promote the upcoming ROH World Title match at "Border Wars" between the champion Richards and the challenger Steen.

As a talker, you don't have to hit a home run every time, and Kevin Steen definitely did not in this segment, but he came off a WHOLE lot better than Davey Richards did. Being new to Ring of Honor and not knowing much about any of these guys, I'm definitely more drawn to Steen even though he's the heel in this angle. Richards just came across as painfully bland to me.

On the plus side (insert fat joke here) I enjoyed seeing Jim Cornette as an authority figure. It was my first time seeing him in that role.

The last word on this segment is, this match definitely requires commitment on behalf of the viewer. You need to have some time invested in these wrestlers to really care about this match because nothing they've done on the last two tv shows I've seen has sparked my interest enough to consider buying the pay-per-view. I understand that they pretty much HAD to do this segment in order to advance the storyline, but for the sake of the bottom line, perhaps a video package spliced together that ran down the journey of each wrestler leading up to this match would have been more effective, especially considering that the argument Steen is making is that he has been overlooked by management while Richards has been favored by management. But that's just me spitballin'. On to the next!

-RODERICK STRONG (ROH TV Champion) vs ADAM COLE
I like that the Television championship is being defended every week. It's an old-school thing but if you're going to bother with a TV Championship, you might as well do it right.

The guys smartly stayed away from Strong's weakness (see what I did there?) by not throwing any strikes other than chops. And the moves they were executing, while impressive, weren't the kind of moves that you shouldn't kick out of. The match had a nice rhythm, and the finish helped build another one of the pay-per-view matches, which was good.

The last word on this match is, a solid cap to the show. Good action that was paced well, and the finish helped advance everyone involved. If Ring of Honor stresses the quality of its wrestling as its strength, then this match certainly showcased that.

Overall, this episode of Ring of Honor Wrestling still didn't sell me on their product completely, but I'm warming up to it. Not enough to consider buying their pay-per-view, which at this point has already passed anyway, but enough to keep giving them a chance.

It's going to be an uphill battle though. I won't say there are a lot of things working against them, but there are enough that as of right now, I don't see myself ever becoming a huge Ring of Honor fan. The promos are all sub-par, some are even terrible. The in-ring action is decent but the subtleties of storytelling are still lacking for the most part. So Jim Cornette, if you're reading this, work on that shit for next week!

That's the last word. Until next time, discuss!