ROH Pursuit: Night 1

ROH Pursuit: Night 1 (11/15/2013)- Dearborn, MI

JAY BRISCOE IN-RING PROMO- he reminds everyone that, as the result of the main event of the last show, The Golden Dream, he has been added to the main event at Final Battle 2013. Jay says that he is putting his (custom-made, unrecognized) ROH World Title on the line in that match because the (officially recognized) ROH World Title that Adam Cole has �"doesn’t mean sh*t.”
Jay then issues an open challenge to anyone brave enough to face �"the real world champ.” The challenge is answered by Silas Young, who is currently feuding with Jay’s brother Mark. Silas says that if he beats Jay, he is taking Jay’s fake belt home with him. Jay then says that he will put his �"ROH World Title” on the line.

MATCH FOR THE �"REAL” ROH WORLD TITLE: Jay Briscoe(c) vs. Silas Young- DUD!
A very short match with a bad finish. The aforementioned finish went as follows:
Silas threw a chair into the ring and the ref went to remove the chair from the ring. Silas, being a sneaky heel, used this opportunity to sneak into the ring with a hammer, but as he was getting into the ring, Mark Briscoe came out and took the hammer away from him. Jay then kicked the middle rope up into Silas’s nuts, then hit him with the Jay Driller. I would have been fie with this finish if Jay hadn’t kicked the rope into Silas’s nuts. Why have your babyface cheat if you don’t need to?

BOBBY FISH vs. CEDRIC ALEXANDER vs. TADARIUS THOMAS- 6.25/10
Good three-way stuff and the finish built to C&C’s tag title shot tomorrow night. Steve Corino made light of Jerry Lawler’s heart attack on commentary. All he said was �"I almost became the second King to have a heart attack on commentary.” Not terribly offensive, but it was a good warning of things possibly to come, considering that the next match was…

ROH TV TITLE MATCH: Matt Taven(c) (w/Truth Martini & Scarlett Bordeaux) vs. Zach Gowen- 5.5/10
Apparently Corino made a special promise not to say anything offensive. Of course that didn’t last long. When Kevin Kelly was talking about the possibility of Zack Gowen becoming the ROH TV Champion, Corino responded that he didn’t think it would happen because �"I just think he’s missing something.”
Truth cut a promo saying that there was no chance that Gowen would win tonight, and the fans were dumb for thinking he would. Taven then cut a promo to hype up his ROH TV Title defense against Tommaso Ciampa at Final Battle.
Truth then concluded by saying that the only thing Zack Gowen has better than Matt Taven is a parking spot.
Unfortunately there was no mention of Zack Gowen’s tryout match to become a member of the House of Truth back at Fate of an Angel II (almost three years ago to the day). That match ended with Gowen taking the loss and then getting beaten down by Michael Elgin afterwards. Of course, at that point the House of Truth consisted of Michael Elgin and Roderick Strong, neither of whom are in the stable now, but it still would have given some reason for why Zack Gowen was showing up in ROH out of nowhere and getting a shot at the TV Title.
The handicap jokes continued when Corino said that Gowen �"didn’t have a leg to stand on.”
The best line of the night, though, was Corino declaring �"Matt Taven will not win this match with a figure-four leg lock.” Terrible? Of course. But you can’t help but laugh at it.
While Corino was making handicap jokes, he was actually the more tolerable of the two commentators. If I had a nickel for every time Kevin Kelly said the words �"overcoming adversity as a child,” �"inspirational story,” �"cancer,” �"living out his dream,” or talked about Zack Gowen being inspired by Ric Flair, I would have more money than the average X-Division guy makes in a week.
They had a decent match and the crowd was very into Gowen, but I wasn’t crazy with the idea that Taven needed tons of help from the outside to beat a one-legged wrestler who isn’t even on the roster.
After the match the House of Truth go to beat Gowen down with a crutch but Tommaso Ciampa makes the save.
Ciampa cuts a promo putting Gowen over as being �"one of a kind” (really?) and having a lot of heart. He says that the House of Truth don’t have any heart and he challenges Taven to put the TV Title on the line right now. Taven says no. I’m not quite sure why this was heelish of him, considering that Ciampa was fresh and he wasn’t. Ciampa soundly remarkably like Shawn Michaels during this promo.

JAY LETHAL vs. EDDIE EDWARDS (w/Davey Richards)- 7.5/10
So Lethal does a bunch of those suicide dives he loves so much and Corino encourages Kevin Kelly to shout his �"soaring and scoringggggggg” catchphrase, but Kevin emphatically says that he only says that for Eddie Edwards. Then, when Eddie does a suicide dive, Kelly misses it. Eddie decided to come to Kevin Kelly’s rescue and do another one right after that, though, so Kevin could not look like such a big idiot for missing his catchphrase.
Eddie and Lethal put on a great match, as you would expect.

HAKEEM ZAIN vs. R.D. EVANS (w/Veda Scott)- 4/10
R.D. got a HUGE pop. Veda Scott cut a pre-match promo saying that now that she is doing the legal paperwork which R.D. doesn’t need to concern himself with (does this seem like exactly the same way that R.D. got control of the Embassy from Prince Nana to anyone else?), he can train and be a monster in the ring. Veda says that his opponent tonight will be the first in a long list of victims.
They had a fun little match. Zain looked good. I’d like to see him get another chance in ROH.

After the match, Veda Scott cut a promo calling Tommaso Ciampa out for a match. R.D. seemed surprised at this. So Ciampa came out, but Matt Taven came out behind him and hit him in the back of his injured the knee with a crutch. This was a good angle for Final Battle and R.D. and Veda claimed this as a count-out victory for them.
Steve Corino then implied that he murdered both Billy Mays and Mitsuharu Misawa. He soon made up for this, though, as when Kevin Kelly was taking about R.D. getting an �"unofficial win” against Ciampa, Corino said �"with more unofficial wins, he’s gonna be a top contender for Jay Briscoe’s unofficial title.”
AWESOME!


KYLE O’REILLY vs. CAPRICE COLEMAN vs. ACH- 6.25/10
They decided to do a comedy spot in which someone got pinned by the referee. You probably shouldn’t be doing this in a match meant to build contenders to the tag team titles, but if, for some reason, you absolutely had to do… DON’T HAVE THE CHAMPION BE THE ONE TO GET PINNED!
Other than that, they had a good three-way match that built well tomorrow night’s tag team title match.
Kevin Kelly made some comment about ACH not being liked in the locker room, and I cannot tell if this is legit, a inside joke, or an angle (or maybe all three).

MICHAEL ELGIN vs. MARK BRISCOE- 6/10
Props to Mark Briscoe for making it look like he was actually trying to escape when Elgin did the stalling suplex. The match was going well with Elgin showing off his strength and Mark trying everything he could to take Elgin off of his feet. When Mark finally succeeded he went to the top for the Froggy-bow, but Silas Young came out and grabbed his leg. Jay Briscoe then came out and started brawling with Silas. Seeing Jay at ringside, Elgin decided to give him a baseball slide and then all three of them started to brawl… and the ref didn’t call for a DQ. Mark Briscoe then climbed to the top turnbuckle and hit the pile of all three men with a moonsault. Only after this did the ref decide to call for the bell. So if someone outside the match attacks someone in the match, that is okay, but if someone in the match attacks someone who isn’t in the match, then the match must be stopped? To make matters worse, the match was thrown out and ruled a no-contest, despite the fact that the ref only saw Elgin getting attacked, not Mark, so it should have been a DQ victory for Elgin.
This was a terrible finish. They already build to the Silas vs. Mark match tonight with Mark stopping Silas from interfering in Jay’s match. Just have Silas lay Mark out and whip him with a belt tomorrow night and your build going into Final Battle is perfect.
As for the world title match, you don’t need to do a damn pull-apart to build it up. It is already the hottest angle in the company. Having Elgin go over clean in the middle of the ring would have been much better build to Final Battle. If you absolutely have to do a pull-apart, let Elgin win clean then have Silas attack Mark after the match, have Jay make the save, then have Jay and Elgin bump into each other and you have the same pull-apart but you also make Elgin look stronger with the clean win and you don’t piss off the crowd with the non-finish.

RODERICK STRONG vs. DAVEY RICHARDS (w/Eddie Edwards)- 7/10
Apparently this will be the opener on whatever episode of TV it airs on because Kevin Kelly informed us that in this �"hour” we �"would be seeing” (future tense) both the world title match and Elgin vs. Mark. There were a lot of moments like this on this DVD where it was clear that some things were being taped for TV and others weren’t. Sometimes Kevin Kelly would refer to a match later on the show as happening �"next week” and other times he would talk about matches happening �"tomorrow night.” This sort of switching back and forth really annoys me. Why not just record new commentary for the TV show? And especially in this case, why not just put Mark and Elgin on after Davey and Roddy?
They did some good stuff, but I was very disappointed that they only got about fourteen minutes… which is almost certainly because of the TV time limit. Why not do what they did with Champions vs. All-Stars from Glory by Honor XII and just show part of the match on TV and say �"if you want to see the full match, go buy the DVD, which is now available for pre-order at www.ROHWrestling.com.” For both of this weekend’s shows they are just giving away all of the big matches on TV, and if they are doing that, why would anyone who isn’t a completionist want to buy the DVD (especially if the matches are going to be confined to TV time limits)?
Kevin Kelly claimed there was some sort of controversy on the pinfall when their clearly wasn’t. If there was, I’m sure that Davey and Roddy would have reacted to it. Why stir up controversy over a babyface’s clean win?

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Adam Cole(c) vs. Jimmy Jacobs (w/BJ Whitmer)- 8.5/10
An awesome match that did a very good job of closing out the �"does Jimmy Jacobs belong in ROH” storyline with an emphatic �"YES!” Jimmy got lots of support from his hometown crowd, and their were moments where you just forgot the build to Final Battle and thought that Jimmy might actually take the belt right there.

A very good show from ROH, but if they hadn’t been taping it for TV (and thus been under those time constraints, I feel like it could have been a lot more.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly says that Mark Briscoe and Silas Young are �"two very like-minded individuals, physically.”
So… their brains look similar?

2. Kevin Kelly �"it’s the first time Jimmy Jacobs has fought for the world title since a match-up against you, my friend [Nigel] in 2006 in Tokyo.”
Jimmy actually had at least one ROH World Title match after The Tokyo Summit (in 2009 at Eliminating the Competition), and even if he hadn’t Nigel would still be wrong because the Tokyo match was in 2008. Nigel also didn’t bother correcting Kelly. Even if Nigel didn’t remember the Eliminating the Competition match, he definitely would have remembered that he wasn’t the champion in 2006. I know that not everyone’s memory is perfect, but this sort of misstatement really bothers me sometimes.

3. Kevin Kelly- �"I don’t know if Jimmy Jacobs has seven more years”
HE IS ONLY 29!