Hot off the heels of Final Battle 2013, the first episode off their recent TV tapings started off with the brackets for the 2014 Top Prospect Tournament and that we would be seeing two quarterfinal matches tonight. It’s not the most star studded TPT but there are some people in this to watch, particularly Raymond Rowe of IWC fame, Corey Hollis, and Andrew Everett. I would put in Hanson and Cheeseburger as honorable (no pun intended) mentions though that may be more my personal taste than anything else.
TPT 2014 Quarterfinal: Kongo vs Raymond Rowe
Rowe has been a pretty decent worker in IWC though KONGO has been seen in ROH before and destroyed men half, or even one third his size. This was basically a power match with Rowe getting an impressive German suplex on KONGO at one point. The lack of notoriety may be obvious to most viewers, but it’s still impressive to see Rowe throw KONGO around so that side fact didn’t take much away from the match for me. If the Embassy was still around, I’d fully expect Prince Nana to have had KONGO be an enforcer. KONGO would go for a Vader bomb, miss and end up being hit by the Death Rowe (a full nelson into a knee to the back of the head) by Raymond for the win. Simple. Hoping Rowe can show more in the future as I do think the ROH fanbase would like his style.
Elgin would come out after the match and basically beat up KONGO which sort of killed any momentum KONGO could have in the future as Elgin delivered a backfisted and modified powerbomb. It may not given that Elgin is on the short list of World Title contenders. A segment involving Elgin, Hero, and Steen ensues with all three of them making their argument for being in the World Title picture. Elgin mentions Briscoe, Hero, and AJ Styles, all three men who are in his way and I see three matches that could be the main or semi-main of any house show.
TPT 2014 Quarterfinal: Corey Hollis vs. Mike Posey
This was supposed to be Hollis versus Bill Daly who came out and said due to a high ankle strain and then goes to demand a ROH TV title shot. Made no sense to me when we reported on the spoilers and makes even less sense now that I see it. Daly hasn’t done anything to deserve a shot but I guess we’ll find out somewhere down the line what they plan on doing with him. Will Ferrera was more entertaining. I could make the assumption that they want to push Daly in the future and want us to take him seriously. #BelieveTheHype
Hollis versus Posey was fine. They are generally a tag team as Alabama Attitude and seemed to try to tell the story about knowing each other very well in the ring. The crowd didn’t care and I thought it was just a match. There wasn’t a lot to care about other than you could praise Hollis for not wanting to take an easy win. Whether this made either wrestler mean more to the ROH crowd is debatable. Hollis won with a back elbow which is only impressive if you watch Jon Jones and if it hadn’t come out of nowhere and actually used before in their tag matches.
We see the end of the C & C Wrestle factory but I do see this as a start to get Cedric Alexander a more serious role within the singles division. Caprice will always be a great talent to have also and he can fill in any role ROH gives him with his promo and in-ring ability.
Jay Lethal versus Caprice Coleman
Jay Lethal took a good step here for 2014 in cementing that he is after the TV Title that is currently around the waist of Tommaso Ciampa. He’s one of the best wrestlers on the roster and I hope that we see a more serious push for him than we did when he was going against Steen for the World Title. Both men went at it full steam, no need for a feeling out process as they’ve been opponents before. It was a short and sweet match that gave the crowds the spots they wanted to see and nothing more. First Lethal Injection in ROH for 2014 and Lethal gets the W. Caprice didn’t look bad in the loss as he got more than enough athletic offense in the match. I could see him being involved in the TV Title division and having some exciting matches. Jay putting Caprice over after the match did enough for me to take Caprice a tad more seriously as a singles competitor. Also we got no answer as to why Lethal didn’t come out and help Edwards from the attack by The Decade at Final Battle. I do honestly think we’re going to see some sort of collusion going on there as Lethal has been in ROH just as long as any member of the Decade.
We got a segment where Jay Briscoe said he was making a challenge to Adam Cole to put his “real” World title against the ROH World Title. Didn’t we see that already at Final Battle or did I miss something? Is this really going to lead to ANOTHER title unification match in wrestling? All rhetorical questions that don’t need actual answers. Why can’t Briscoe just keep making promos like this on twitter instead of tweeting things that make me dislike myself for being a fan for so many years.
Main Event: Chris Hero vs. Kevin Steen
A good match and a fine way to end this episode. Hero and Steen battled around the trading strikes and showing us their fighting spirit. Hero showed a lot of the move set he showed in NXT, focusing more on the variations of elbow/boot strikes than suplexes or traditional technical wrestling. Steen went for a package piledriver but instead went for his F-Cinq after Hero got out which I felt could (or should) foreshadow to something in the future. If this was the old ROH, I’d fully expect that kind of story telling. But we’ll see. The Decade faction comes out of nowhere to cause a distraction which lead to Steen winning with the sleeper suplex. It’s obvious they are going to be the focal point of ROH feuds in the foreseeable future and oddly enough Jimmy Jacobs is in another faction that is helping Steen. Go figure. Steen, by the way would be attacked by a returning Cliff Compton at the very end of the show from the crowd. Why isn’t Rhino back again?
With the American Wolves signing with TNA for a year some questions of mine were answered with this first fresh episode of ROH in 2014. They are putting more focus on the World Title division and possibly giving us some fresh faces to check out. Some of those faces are not as buzz worthy as others but in this day and age of indie wrestling contracts and trying to be financially responsible, we’re getting something new and that’s never bad. A good hour of wrestling which I think was better paced than what we saw in 2013. I’ve become accustomed to comparing ROH tv to NXT and this episode left me wanting to see where Elgin, Steen, Hero, and Briscoe land with Adam Cole and what will be happening next. Just a reminder, our own Kevin Ford will be live tweeting results from Wrestling’s Finest in Pittsburgh, PA this weekend on the PWP twitter. Please follow him at Twitter.com/Kford13 & follow the PWP at Twitter.com/PWPonderings
Send your feedback on this episode or anything I wrote to cgstong@PWPonderings.com or on twitter at Twitter.com/cgstong