Michrome

Yeah, what a moron! He gets to do what he loves to do, go all out in matches, work in front of people that love his work, and he makes significantly more money than he made in WWE.

AJ being more charismatic than London is beyond the pale. Go watch their ROH teaming up and interactions together, as well as the way London is able to rally the crowd behind him. He does it through facials and great charisma, whereas AJ's big pops come from things like Pele Kicks and Quebrada DDT's. When it comes to stiffness, WWE has none of it. If AJ came in, he would be forced to tone it down dramatically. London has far better arm strikes than AJ, his forearms are really stiff. AJ has the better kicks. The spiffy spots are really just being used to try to get a pop from the crowd for the short time he's out there, since he has no opportunity to do anything more, not that he SHOULD...just that he doesn't. Put AJ in the same role, and he'd be doing his dumbass moves like the Kip-up rana, the Quebrada DDT, etc every time he got on TV.

All of them lose money at the gate, the only difference is how close each comes to breaking even. ROH only breaks even on Rexplex shows, but they are selling more tapes right now than ever because of the faster releases.

The matches are in bold! My thoughts aren't! Main Event Non-Title Match: Homicide vs. Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk: This is what you call the last resort. Originally it was Dragon-Joe, but Dragon had to pull off for Japan. Then it was Punk/Joe vs. Ki/Cide, but Ki had to pull off for Japan. Now it's a 3-way, and it should be a strong match. Punk and Joe had the best singles 1 fall broadway I have seen in over 10 years, and I'm sure they will be playing up on this. Punk is still in line for a rematch somewhere down the road. This is also being billed as Cide's last match with Joe in 2004, so it would be real ironic if he pinned Joe and then was unable to get a title shot, fueling his rage even more. The safest outcome is Punk pinning Cide to get a win back from RRC II and 1/29, the most unlikely is Joe pinning Cide again. I'll bet on Punk pinning Joe after a Pepsi Plunge, proving he can do it. Tag Team Titles Match: Havana Pitbulls vs. Briscoe Brothers: Ah this should be fucking great. Their match in MN was a great "first match," they didn't do too much and everything worked. This will be one of the matches to carry the workrate load, I expect it to go 20-25. These are the 2 best tag teams in the United States, what else can you ask for? I love the recent call of putting the straps on the Pitbulls, and I don't see them losing them anytime soon. Pure Title Match: Doug Williams vs. John Walters: The storyline behind this match was John vowing to challenge for a title in Boston, reaching that goal, and now vowing to win it. It's highly doubtful, but Walters always steps it up for big matches (Cide, Daniels, Punk, 8-man, etc) and I think this will be tremendous. Doug Williams is great and this should be great. Rematch: Alex Shelley vs. Jay Lethal: I was priveleged to see their 5/22 first match. It only went about 7 minutes, and mainly served the purpose of getting Shelley over. This time, Lethal has a major push going, and a lot more fan support than he once did. Most of his support is in Philly/NJ though, don't know if it will carry over. Either way, he's the most underrated worker out there today, and Shelley is great. Everyone has been begging for a 15-20 minute rematch since the first match happened, and I think we will get it here. This could be the one that steals the show. Scramble Cage Melee: Whitmer vs. Maff vs. Alterboy Luke vs. Fast Eddie vs. Loc vs. Devito vs. Jack Evans vs. TBA?: This was done to lure the highflying fans away from H2 after Court posted Gabe's emails publicly and pissed him off. Now there is no H2 but they're stuck with the match. The rules are simple: to eliminate someone, you have to jump off the top of the cage onto them. Color me a skeptic, but I know Gabe will do everything he can to lay this out and add a story to it. It's not as if Whitmer or Maff will dive, but I imagine they are good bases for dives. The story behind them being in is Allison Danger owns their contracts from The Prophecy and put them in this hoping they would be hurt. PLUS! Austin Aries, Roderick Strong, Colt Cabana, Ace Steele, Jimmy Rave, etc I expect an Aries/Strong vs. Cabana/Steele match to materialize, and I've heard Nigel will be on this show too, so I'm expecting Nigel vs. Rave for a shot at the Pure title, but that's just a guess. Overall, it looks like a really strong show for good matches, but not really that important of a show. I'm just hoping nobody gets injured in the cage.

I liked the review of the 6-man. I think I'm going to pick up the show for it. I think the PCN guys just like IWA and Wildside more than ROH, the same way I like ROH more than those 2. Whatever your natural beliefs are will always bleed out in your work, no matter how much ya try to hide it. I remember reviewing Joe/Punk and saying it smoked Hero/Punk (which it did ), and then realizing people would see it as anti-IWA bias. Just a natural thing I guess. Speaking of the Boston show, the undercard looks to be shaping up great. I'll go start a thread on it.

Nobody can verify it, I believe TNA gave the number out? Either way I don't have a hard time believing it, as TNA was still fresh at the time and the match was built up really well. I believe it was the only time they've also legitimately sold over 1000 tickets. Honestly, judging by current trends, I'd guesstimate the first PPV at 20,000 buys if they have Hardy on top. After that, I can't see it going anywhere but down unless the promotion totally changes.

I don't see how 50,000 buys is reasonable. They are well below 10,000 buys now according to Meltzer. Just email him asking for a current estimate, he has sources in the cable industry, as do others. It's not as if 7k unique people are buying every week. It's the same people. Unless things improve BIGTIME, they are going to have a hell of a time breaking 20k buys for their first PPV, and it will go down from there. Will I buy it? That all depends on the undercard. God knows I don't want to see JJ-Hardy. However, Styles-Daniels could entice me to buy it, even with the ring which badly hinders singles match quality.

This is laughable. Yeah, they have some fun guys like Shelley and Quance now, but the creative direction is terrible, attendances are nowhere near what they once were, etc. It's not like CZW is riding some huge wave of momentum into PPV. This sounds like the first nail to me.

1) American Dragon vs. Homicide (4/25/04): Simply the best mic of story and wrestling I've ever seen on the indies. It gets better every time you watch it, the work is just so smart. 2) American Dragon vs. Austin Aries (6/24/04): This is really the last 2 of a 6 way final, but they totally reset and do a seperate 23 minute singles match that just blows me away. Easily the match of Austin's career, and in Dragon's top 2 or 3. 3) CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe (6/12/04): This is how you work a broadway. No long double body part submission heat segments, just a war between these men for the title. This SMOKED the Hero-Punk match from the night before. From here I think there's a real big drop....and then you get to matches like a lot of the Cannon-Hero stuff, Briscoe tags, Jay-Joe, AJ-Sydal, Aries-Sydal, etc. We have 2 legit challengers coming up this month with Aries-Dragon 2/3 falls this saturday, and Hero-Dragon 8/21 in IWA.

Well, cross Ki off the list of possible winners. He is on JAPW 9/18. It likely won't be Sabin, so I'm going with AJ. I think the match will go real long.

Final 2 matches added, and they're not what you'd expect! Roderick Strong vs. Izzy (Should be great) Alex Shelley vs. Jay Lethal vs. Ace Steele vs. SCORPIO~! (Can't wait to see this)

How does it feel to be so stupid? Honestly, he reels off some cute indy spots because he's trying to get over with the crowd in the short amount of time he has, but if you think that's all there is to him, you haven't seen shit. One notable accomplishment was having Jamie Knoble's career match on Velocity, even though it's probably not a top 5 for Paul. Check out ROH 12/7/02, 12/27/02, 4/12/03, and 6/14/03 for tremendous matches that have nothing to do with indy spots. Hell, the fact that his matches in WWE revolve around dropsaults shows how hard he's trying to just do something unique out there. He had 2 matches in 2003 that smoke any technical WWE matches in the last 5+ years.

From my experience at being at 3 east coast shows, and a hell of a lot of west coast, I definitely disagree. There are never hundreds of morons, it is usually about the exact same amount you would get at a PWG crowd. The difference being that the crowds are larger on the east, so the idiots can get drowned out, whereas the idiots on the West know they will be heard. For examples: --In March at PWG, the morons doing high pitched screams throughout the show, constantly distracting from the matches. --At the PWG anny, front row morons doing catcalls all night.

Not at all, really. I can see why some people might percieve that from the outside, since he has been champ for almost 17 months now. However, his title defenses have slowly evolved from "solid" to "great", and he is more over now than he ever has been. The crowd loves him being the champ for so long, which is the key difference. Oh, well there's also the critical difference: Joe doesn't own the promotion or book anything.

Meltzer posted a bit that they have no intention of Ki fighting Joe for now....but they are quite obviously building that match longterm in storylines. Ki and Joe had a falling out as friends in May after USA Pro, and I think they are working on getting those 2 back on the same page before doing a singles match. Still, Gabe knows that that is the match that will get huge buzz, and they will undoubtedly do it within the next 6 months. Maybe they'll stretch it out, who knows.

0 chance of Acid winning. They are still building to big CM Punk and Ki title defenses. Regarding fans, it's real sad if you can't go with friends and have a good time despite some morons. There are idiots everywhere, the fans out here at socal indies are way worse, but I have fun anyway.

Not sure how to answer this. They wrestle. They challenge established guys on the ROH card with the intention of taking their spot. The idea behind the group is that they are not friends, but that they are aligned together just to make it to the top. The members are: Austin Aries, Roderick Strong, Jack Evans, Alex Shelley. They are a major part of the ROH shows now, and a real enjoyable part at that. Currently they started a feud with the Second City Saints on 7/17, where the Saints turned babyface.

I'm actually predicting a surprise title switch here. Something tells me they wanna set up for Briscoes-Pitbulls for the titles in the near future.

Sabin in it is better for work, so thats a good thing. The problem with 3pw to me is the uncreative uppercard. You had a bunch of Styles vs. Daniels, and now you've got another version of it. All they did here originally was mix two singles matches from last month. Styles-Daniels is the new Lynn-Styles, it has just been done to death and it's not going to draw that many fans. I think this show should draw pretty well though, but I agree with the guy above...they are not going to get the ROH fans to all come out for one match per show, so I think they should refocus on the ECW type stuff.

Austin Aries vs. American Dragon (2/3 Falls) Briscoes vs. Homicide/Low Ki Havana Pitbulls vs. CM Punk/Colt Cabana (Tag Titles) Samoa Joe vs. Trent Acid (Obligatory Title Defense) John Walters vs. Nigel Mcginniss (Winner gets pure shot 8/28) Carnage Crew vs. Whitmer/Maff Remaining 4 guys on card with matches TBA: Roderick Strong, Alex Shelley, Ace Steele, Jay Lethal. Judging by current storylines we're likely going to get Alex Shelley vs. Ace Steele and Roderick Strong vs. Jay Lethal. To me this looks like one of their best shows ever, especially if those last 2 singles matches are added as expected. The two tag matches look like ****+ material, and Dragon-Aries from 6/24 is my ROH MOTY and maybe my overall MOTY. Acid-Joe will surprise some people, and even though I hate Trent Acid I know he brings his A-game for big matches and that should be good too.

Typical Court. Book on a day ROH scheduled in February 04, and then ask ROH to run in the afternoon at 2pm, which is not feasible for them. They have to do pre show promos, out of towners come, etc. Only Court Bauer would leak the emails to a wrestling website when he's trying to make a deal with the guy. Amazing. I'm opening up a promotion 7/31, I demand court run in the afternoon!

Alex Shelley vs. Bobby Quance will be good. Thank god they still aren't booking for the internet!

Gabe and Foley were also friends when Foley was in ECW, maybe he's doing his friend a favor?

He's costing less than another star they were trying to bring in. They tripled their previous highest first day presale for a show with the announcement, so it's panning out pretty well so far.

You are quite the psychoanalyst! It's amazing how you know what they're all thinking when you haven't experienced a show and the great live atmosphere! Tell us more wise one.