We open with a direct and purposefull promo by our TV champ Eddie Edwards. I like.
1. ROH World TV Title Match: Eddie Edwards vs. Erick Stevens
***1/4
Neat opening match with the crowd fully behind their (almost) hometown boy. They work a good pace and there's the odd cool reversal/move here and there to give the crowd something without giving them too much. I for one wish Stevens would get the chance to work this kind of match more. His earlier ROH stuff was fantastic yet since the Embassy angle and heel turn it's pretty much been all downhill which is a shame. Edwards however looks every bit the star a television champion should look.
2. Grizzly Redwood vs. “Brutal” Bob Evans
*
First of all who the flog decided an out of shape with t shirt tan lines Bob Evans would be a good addition to an ROH card? He looks bad, he moves worse and i'm willing to bet those who bought a ticket were wondering why this guy was even on the show. Maybe it's a continuation of a HDNET angle? That I can't answer. Also there's a really daft and fairly obviously worked spot where a crowd member helps Griz up to his feet by his head to Griz gets in a ruck with him and security throws him out. Why bother insulting out intelligence and wasting our time with this stinkypoop? Honestly WHY!?! If this was real there's no way it would be included in a DVD release. Match itself is just meh and even Griz's talents can't make this one any good. At least it's pretty short.
3. Austin Aries vs. Kyle O'Reilly
***1/2
Aries cuts a fun promo with Taler Hendrix before the match starts. This match is, as Aries states in his promo, kind of an exhibition except more for Kyle O'Reilly. There's some good action in this match and as usual with Aries at points he's impossible to dislike even as a heel. It is noticable though more and more that from around the start of summer 2010 that Aries has lost a bit of his drive and motivation. That's not to say his work suffered because of this, it's just that it appears that a certain something is missing. As for O'Reilly he impresses here with some nice moves and a couple of great facial expressions that get the crowd behind him easily. Expect great things from him in the future!
4. First Blood Tag Match: The Necro Butcher and Shawn Daivari vs. Kevin Steen and Steve Corino
**
Pretty short brawl that serves its purpose to gear up a certain team for a match they would have the night after. This probably came across way better on DVD than it did live thanks for the marvels of editing. It seemed chaotic throughout and had a SICK ending involving a beer bottle being smashed and a shard of it being rammed into an opponents forehead. NICE! Normally it would seem odd having two heel teams go at it without a backstory but as one of the teams in part of the Embassy everybody can't help but cheer against them and that's not because they have good heat, it's because people legit don't want to see them.
5. The All Night Express (Kenny King & Rhett Titus) vs. Matt Taven and Sid Reeves
*1/2
Basically this is an extended squash. ANX look pretty good for it but the local guys look like stinkypoop. Reeves is just absent performance wise and poor Taven botches a spot which turns the crowd into the ECW mutants of yesteryear. Not to much to say about this one, like a lot of recent ROH undercards everything kept short so if you don't like it you don't suffer for too long.
6. Roderick Strong vs. Mike Bennett
***
Simple match with both guys looking strong. Bennetts an interesting one in the sense that the guys has the potential to have money written all over him, especially with the fact that his style if pretty old school and of course the majority of ROH fans prefer the style of say a Davey Richards so instantly dislike him. Not much to say about the match other than it's some ok - good action and there's no lull.
7. ROH World Tag Title Match: The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero & Claudio Castagnoli) vs. Colt Cabana & El Generico
****
Ok so we got the semi main event at about 1 hour 10 mins into this show. Did they cut a load of bad stuff or are we just having a short show? At this point who knows?!?! A really good tag team title match that had the crowd with several of the false finishes. It's just bell to bell non stop action and it's great to see Cabana and Generico work so well together as a team. The KOW at this point can have good matches with a couple of broomsticks and really doing just a quarter of what we know they can do is still enough to make this a good watch. It's a damn shame they couldn't get 5 or 10 more minutes, this could have gone to MOTYC levels.
8. Non-Title Match: Tyler Black vs. Christopher Daniels
****1/2
I think it's fair to describe this match as just an all out wrestling extravaganze. Black is just awesome in his role as a chicken stinkypoop heel and Daniels is fully backed by the ROH faithfull in attendence. It's hard to talk about the match without giving away the ending but needless to say it did well to put the heat on Black vs strong for the next night while cementing Daniels as a title contender down the line. There's some really great moments in this match such as Daniels catching Black mid-air and forcing him straight into the koji-clutch and when Blacks arm gets near the ropes Daniels uses his spare leg to trap Blacks arm. I'd never seen that before! Black, as I said, is great at heeling it up and he pulls out some nice stalling tricks together with busting out the STF to stick it to the ROH fans. Blacks post match promo is fun too, he even finishes with a "YOU CAN'T SEE ME"! Classic.
Overall, this show is a difficult one to rate. On one hand it's a fairly solid show with 3 matches out of the 8 being meh - ok. The two main event matches will no doubt be the selling point (as well as the bonus disk but we'll get to that later) and they do indeed deliver. The thing going against this show is that it's basically all a build up to the next show but i'm glad to say for once that ROH doesn't just put out a throw away show. It's paced extremely well on DVD, probably to include all the bonus features. And at 2 hours long, even the skippable stuff is bareable. Let's face it, how many shows can you say that about? Not a classic show and was heading to mediocreville before the two main events. On a side note the audio seems mixed a little differently that previous releases with the crowd being louder. It's a nice touch as it adds some extra atmosphere to the lower card matches where you know the crowd possibly was not all that into it.
8/10 for the show
*SUPER DUPER BONUS CONTENT!*
- World Tag Team Title Match: Jay and Mark Briscoe vs. Jimmy Jacobs and Tyler Black- Final Battle 2007 12/30/07 ****
- Tyler Black vs. Bryan Danielson- ROH on HDNet Episode 18 ****1/2
- Tyler Black vs. Bryan Danielson vs. Kenny Omega- Bound By Hate 11/8/08 ***3/4
Just under an hours worth of bonus material and it's REALLY good stuff. Not like a lot of the bonus material found on ROH 2010 dvds where it's matches that just arn't appealing or are appealing but are just middle of the road. The tag title match from Final Battle 2007 is one of the AOTF's best matches, the HDNET match is probably the right up there for being considered the best match between Danielson and Black and then the three way is just a fun sprint and at the time was a nice introduction to Kenny Omega. So right here is some damn fine matches and I would have bumped Fade To Black as a whole dvd package with just these bonus matches to a 9/10.
Coming soon a review of the bonus disk from Fade To Black - The Best of Tyler Black!
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