BRM Reviews ROH/JAPW Collision Course

All ROH Related Reviews and Discussions
Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Reviews ROH/JAPW Collision Course

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 31st, '21, 00:43

ROH/JAPW Collision Course (1/9/2004)- Woodbridge, NJ


VIDEO OF DUNN & MARCOS GOING OVER TO PEOPLE AND ANNOYING THEM- bad
Dan Maff attacks the and we have a pull-apart. Someone else is indifferent. Sumie Sakai is amused by them and claps happily.

CHAOS HAPPENS- The show then began with a brawl spilling out in front of the crowd. Both the ROH and JAPW locker rooms come out to break it up, but then Samoa Joe and Balls Mahoney start to brawl just because they’re wrestling later tonight. Joe is getting all of the crowds. The guys on commentary don’t seem to know that there is no “heavyweight” in the name of the ROH World Championship.
God, I had forgotten how painful watching stuff from this era could be, just in terms of production values. And I’m not usually someone who comments on that, either. The lights went out for the beginning of the show, and we couldn’t see anything. You might as well save space on the tape and start the when the lights go back on.

They announced that all of tonight’s matches- even the JAPW ones- would be contested under ROH’s Code of Honor.

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELZ PROMO- decent
He was not wrong about Dunn & Marcos deserving a beating.

THE DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELZ (EC Negro & KC Blade) vs. RING CREW EXPRESS (Dunn & Marcos)- 6.5/10
A opener that packed a lot of action into nine minutes.

DEREK WYLDE vs. RUCKUS- 6.75/10
I chuckled at how the announcers were putting over Ruckus as being so large it was amazing that he could do a 450 at 220lbs. Flippy fun, although it certainly would have benefitted from better transitions.

JOHNNY KASHMERE & HC LOC vs. TONY DEVITO & TRENT ACID- 1/10
These two teams are having a “minor feud” in the announcers’ words… so, as DeVito so elegantly put it when he grabbed a mic during the introductions “WHO THE F*CK BOOKED THIS STUPID-ASS MATCH?!” The announcers suggested it was a new concept ROH was trying out.
The commentary on this match was terrible in just about every way, from meandering and talking about nothing to breaking kayfabe to very not-okay impressions of Japanese commentators.
We got a “YOU F*CKED UP!” chant in this match for Trent slipping. I had forgotten that those were a thing. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The Backseat Boyz didn’t want to fight each other so they did comedy. Loc and DeVito were happy to fight each other. Eventually the Backseat Boyz just dove onto the Carnage Crew and the two actual team fought each other. We got weapon use right in front of the referee with no DQ. Despite the fact that the Backsteat Boyz had made it clear that they were going to force the issue of this being Backseat Boyz vs. Carnage Crew, DeVito broke up Loc’s pin on Kashmere and kept fighting him.
Soon after this, Kashmere rolled Trent up for a nearfall that was broken up by DeVito grabbing Kashmere into a cradle for pin… which made no sense because if DeVito was the legal man, why was the referee just counting a pin on Trent? The Carnage Crew’s short brawl with each other was the only thing that saved this from being a DUD.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
The Backseat Boyz followed the Code of Honor, but then pulled DeVito into a T-Gimmick, which was an awesome move that some team needs to bring back.

SOMETHING HAPPENS BACKSTAGE- I definitely heard Jay Lethal’s voice and there were a lot of skinny people, and one of them had a funny had, so I assume this was Special K. Using my knowledge of ROH history and the card currently booked, I think this was Dixie, Lit, and Deranged wanting to party but Lethal and the others wanting to work out and get ready for their match, but that’s just going off of the one phrase I could understand, which was Lethal saying “not tonight.”

SCRAMBLE MATCH: Azriel, Jay Lethal, & Insane Dragon (w/Grim Reefer) vs. Special K (Dixie, Lit, & Deranged) (w/Cloudy & “Special K Girls”)- 6/10
More good flippy action. Based on the story they told, I seem to have correctly determined the content of the previous segment. The guys who were trying to be series beat the guys who wanted to party. Then they all partied together after the match.

PRE-MATCH PROMO SEGMENT- meh
Shane was very obscene. He also thinks ROH’s insistence on hold-for-hold wrestling and sportsmanship is silly. Justin stood up for ROH

SHANE DOUGLAS vs. JUSTIN CREDIBLE- 6/10
This was a much better match than I was expecting (other than the chairshots right in front of the referee), given that it was Shane Douglas in 2004. The crowd did not like it, though, and chanted “DON’T COME BACK!” at Shane, and he didn’t.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Special K ran out to attack Justin, who is part of the Carnage Crew. Loc and DeVito came out to make the save. Loc grabbed a mic and declared that this feud would end at the ROH show on March 13th at the RexPlex in the second Scramble Cage match.

SUMIE SAKAI vs. APRIL HUNTER- 6/10
Predictably, the not-okay Asian impression returned to commentary, and it got worse. The guy who wasn’t being racist didn’t know how to pronounce Sumie’s name, constantly pronouncing the E at the end. The match itself was decent, although the crowd deciding to cheer for heel Sumie made their psychology feel all backwards.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Samoa Joe(c) vs. Balls Mahoney- 8/10
Finally something that justifies my watching this show! This was easily the best Balls Mahoney match I’ve ever seen, and I’m not saying Joe carried him, either. Balls could go when he was given the time.
They had some good mat wrestling early, some great strike exchanges, and a few extremely well-placed highspots, and just had what felt like a real “world title” match. Yeah, Balls was only a midcarder in ECW, but given the timing of this show, this really felt like new generation eclipsing the old. Almost like a moment of transition of the popular style from the ECW weapons stuff to the ROH work-rate-oriented style with strikes and suplexes and submissions, and guys like Balls would now have to survive in Joe’s world, not the other way around. I’m sure I’m ascribing mor meaning to this than it deserves, but that was the feeling I got watching the match and the post-match handshake. Maybe Shane and Justin’s promo’s earlier set me in that direction?

It would have been nice to not have that damn chairshot right in front of the referee, though.

JAPW HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Dan Maff(c) (w/Dirty Rotten Scoundrelz) vs. Slyk Wagner Brown (w/April Hunter)- 8.25/10
I had no knowledge of anything about this going into this show, and all the announcers told me was that last month Maff had hit April Hunter with a Burning Hammer. They started off hot with Brown charging to get at Maff. Maff took over when he was able to get Brown on the outside again and the Dirty Rotten Scoundrelz jumped him, although April was able to tell the referee about this and at least the heels were ejected from ringside.
From there, Maff and Brown build up an excellent match, constantly raising the stakes and building towards the Burning Hammer, getting several excellent nearfalls out of that. The Scoundrelz came back and harassed the referee and cheated and we got a big ref bump and they cheated some more until April could take no more and hit Maff in the nuts and cleared the Scoundrelz out of the ring. Maff got his hands on April and got her up for the Burning Hammer but Brown nailed him in the head with a chair and went for the ring and April revived the referee for the pin and the ref counted “ONE! TWO!” and I- who knew nothing about this feud before tonight- was jumping up and down in excitement for the title change…
And they f*cked it all up with an absolutely idiotic finish! One of the Scoundrelz tossed the title into the ring and told the referee that Brown had used the belt, and the referee took his word for it and called for the DQ. ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?! We’ve seen chairshots right in front of the referee all night and there has never been any talk of a DQ. And in this match we saw heels who were ejected from ringside come back out and manhandle the referee and that wasn’t a DQ… but now the referee is going to call a DQ for something he didn’t even see happen? Sh*t like this is why ROH would continue to grow, while companies like JAPW would shrink to the point of irrelevance.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Slyk Wagner Brown grabbed the referee by the throat and eventually threw him down and gave him a moonsault. He deserved it. This happened while the someone was interviewing Maff, so the camera almost missed it. Oops.
Maff said there would be no rematch and left. The interviewer then interviewed Brown, who insisted that this was not over, and said that the next time he saw Maff, Maff would be the former champion.
After Brown left, they interviewed the referee. Thankfully, the interviewer was asking the exact questions any fan should be, and in the exact same tone. He wanted to know how the referee could possibly justify his decision, especially after everything the Scoundrelz did. The referee just insisted that he is the referee and his decision is final. He then vowed that Brown would pay for putting his hands on him.

FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH: CM Punk vs. AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels vs. John Walters- 8.75/10
I popped HUGE for Miseria Cantare. It’s been a LONG time since I heard a CM Punk indy entrance. F*cking MAGICAL.
The announcers were painting Punk as if he were a heel even though Punk had turned babyface by this point. Said babyface turn came when someone had attacked Lucy, and at Final Battle 2003, Christopher Daniels revealed that the attacker was BJ Whitmer… acting on his orders. So in this match, Punk got Walters in a hammerlock and just shoved him into the corner in front of Daniels, daring Daniels to tag in. Daniels did so… and then Punk tagged out like a cowardly heel. What the f*ck?! And Punk would similarly act like a cowardly heel in the big main event the next night at ROH The Battle Lines Are Drawn, so I have to imagine that there was some reason that they thought Punk should act this way, especially with two guys like Punk and Daniels involved, but I can’t even fathom what that reason for having them act so backwards would have been.
Anyway, this was one of those matches that you watch and think “how the hell does no one talk about this match?” This was tremendous. It was twenty-five minutes of excellent wrestling the built perfectly and had some really awesome spots mixed in (the highlight of which was Daniels setting AJ up for an Angel’s Wings, only for Punk to run up AJ’s back and nail Daniels with a Shining Wizard).

SOME GUYS JUMP DUNN & MARCOS BACKSTAGE- meh


This was a pretty good show from ROH and JAPW. Yeah, there was a stinker on here, but everything else was at least decent, and the top three matches were excellent. I should actually be a little higher on this show, but two things bring it down. The first was the finish of Brown vs. Maff match, and the other is the announcing. The announcing on this show was utterly terrible, and it wasn’t just the racist bits. For the second half of the show, the play-by-play guy (not the guy doing the racist stuff) would only refer to his partner as “Bald Guy,” which was just stupid, and he seemed to think that the past tense of “tag” is “tug” rather than “tagged” (which was also stupid, albeit a different kind of stupid).
Anyway, this show is generally worth watching if you can get your hands on it, but don’t feel like you’re missing anything if you don’t see it.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 22 guests