BRM Reviews ROH Unity (better than I expected)

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Unity (4/28/2012)- Chicago Ridge, IL


Welcome back to BRM’s Monthly “This Day in Wrestling History” Review Series. Today’s objective is to watch a DVD that has been siting on my shelf gathering dust for a long time. Why? Well… it’s from the Jim Cornette-booked era of ROH, which was something that I did not enjoy large chunks of. But the time has come to finally put this dark period in the promotion behind me by watching the only show from that era that I have yet to see: Unity.

ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. THE HOUSE OF TRUTH (Michael Elgin & Roderick Strong) (w/Truth Martini)- 6.75/10
This was a solid opener with Rhett as the babyface in peril. Elgin had him pinned at one point but the referee was checking on an injured Roderick Strong on the outside. ANX were able to overwhelm the now-alone Elgin and pin him after their finisher. Roddy seemed to be okay after the match, which made Elgin very upset. They yelled at each other and pushed each other. Truth tried to make peace. These two would continue arguing for the rest of the year and finally wrestle at Final Battle, well after most fans had stopped caring.

MIKE BENNETT, MARIA, & MIKE SYDAL SEGMENT- terrible
Bennett said that management told him to find a partner for tonight. He called Brutal Bob, but he wasn’t interested. Bennett didn’t find a partner… so why is on this show? He says stuff to get cheap heat, then starts to make out with Maria. Mike Sydal comes out with Todd Sinclair and cut a TERRIBLE promo where he came off as both desperate and childish (he said Maria smelled like diarrhea. A supposedly grown adult said that. Really). Bennett tried to attack him, which set up a match. This whole segment was a waste of time. It was Bennett being sent out there to get cheap heat, and his way of doing that involved digging his own plot hole (why did management tell him to find his own partner? And if this was supposed to be a tag match, who was the other guy they were intending him to face? And why did they make him show up if they didn’t have a match booked for him?)… and that was all BEFORE Mike Sydal’s horrendous promo.

MIKE SYDAL vs. MIKE BENNETT (w/Maria Kanellis)- 4.5/10
Bennett won clean.

MARIA KANELLIS PROMO- fine
She got some heat and cut a promo saying that Bennett would beat Lance Storm at Border Wars.

VEDA SCOTT INTERVIEWS THE BRAVADO BROTHERS- a boring promo

BRAVADO BROTHERS vs. YOUNG BUCKS- 6.5/10
The Bravados got chants of “JUSTIN BIEBER!” (Harlem) and “VOTE FOR PEDRO!” (Lancelot) due to their hair. This was fun at first, but the crowd took it too far to the point where it made me question if they had any idea who the Bravados were.
This was solid babyface vs. heel stuff with the Bravados as the babyfaces and the Bucks as the heels. The Bravados winning clean with a roll-up felt like a big moment for them.

JOE KOFF ANNOUNCES ROH’S RETURN TO CHICAGO FOR AN iPPV AND IS INTERRUPTED BY KEVIN STEEN & JIMMY JACOBS- fine
Security immediately came out to protect Koff from the heels. Jimmy Jacobs threw a streamer at Koff and managed to hit him through the wall of security. Koff had announced that the world title would be defended that night, so Steen came out to tell us all that the champion that night would be Kevin Steen, as he had a title shot coming up next month. He said he would make Koff sorry that he bad bought the company, then demanded that someone bring out their opponents for tonight. He called BJ Whitmer “Fellatio Whitmer.” It’s not really that funny, but the offhand way in which Steen said it had me rolling.

NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: Kevin Steen & Jimmy Jacobs vs. El Generico & BJ Whitmer- 8/10
This was oringally signed as a regular match. They brawled before the bell and security had to separate ethem. Todd Sinclair insisted that it would be a regular match unless he was directed otherwise by management. Both Steen and Whitmer insisted that it had to be a no DQs match, and eventually someone ran out and handed Sinclair a phone. The fans, having figured out what was going to happen, started to chant “YES! YES! YES!” (which was a new thing at the time)… at which point Steen grabbed the mic and scolded them “Keep it down, assholes! He’s on the phone!” We were then informed that Jim Cornette had called Sinclair and approved the change to a no DQs match… at which point the babyface charged across the ring at the heels to kick things off.
The match was exactly the violent brawl you’d expect when combine Steen vs. Generico with Jacobs vs. Whitmer (arguably ROH’s two most violent feuds), and seeing BJ back and feeling like a big deal was nice (this was his return to being a regular member of the roster after returning for one show in February after leaving in March 2008.

LUCHA RULES MATCH: The Colony vs. Team ROH (Jay Lethal, Adam Cole, & TJ Perkins)- 7.5/10
Gavin Loudspeaker did the intros for the CHIKARA representatives. We got a coin toss to determine who would referee the match. CHIKARA won, so their referee, P.J. Drummond, got to be the referee.
This was a GREAT babyface vs. babyface match. The key moments were two moments where the referee was out of position that were both completely plausible accidents… but both just happened to benefit CHIKARA. This was a perfect set-up to make you wonder if the CHIKARA guys would pull something in the main event.

TEAM AMBITION PROMO- good
The highlight here for me was Davey’s subtle discomfort when Kyle started to trash-talk Adam Cole, calling him dead weight he had cut (while we all know that Davey still respects Cole and is looking forward to defending the ROH World Title against him tomorrow night in a nice, clean wrestling match).

WRESTLING’S GREATEST TAG TEAM vs. TEAM AMBITION (Davey Richards & Kyle O’Reilly)- 8/10
Shelton cut a great pre-match promo being angry at the fans for disrespecting them by not cheering enough. He pitched to Charlie, who he said had two words for the crowd, but the referee got the mic away from Charlie before he could say “f*ck you.” Davey got the mic instead and said he two words of his own for WGTT: “Just wrestle.”
“Just wrestle” is pretty much what they did here, too. I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of cheating from Charlie and Shelton, limited to just one big spot (an undetected low blow). This was four great wrestlers and two great teams being sent out here to have an awesome match, and that’s what they did.
There was a key moment when Davey pulled Kyle away from Charlie Haas in the corner to make sure that Kyle wouldn’t get DQed and then Haas shoved Kyle into Davey’s back, making Davey think that Kyle ran into him on purpose and they got annoyed at each other, resulting in Kyle just watching the match from the floor for a while as Davey got worked over. Knowing that this was fully into the “Smoky Mountain of Honor” period, I was terrified that this would wind up being the finish, but instead Kyle and Davey got back on the same page and they kept going for another ten minutes or so, resulting in an awesome match. I’m all for storyline finishes, but if said storyline finish is going to be two guys not getting along and one of them walking out on the other, I’d much prefer it to not happen in a match that people have high expectations for. People had high expectations for this one, and it did not disappoint.
Kyle tried to walk off without Davey after the match. Davey tried to get Kyle to turn around and talk to him but Kyle ignored him.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Briscoes(c) vs. Jigsaw & Hallowicked- 7/10
Gavin once again did the intros for the CHIKARA guys.
This was kind of a hard match to valuate in hindsight, as the hindsight both helps me appreciate the overall goal of some of what happened, but it also gets in the way a bit. Obviously, the ROH vs. CHIKARA thing was important here. As such, the match was structured so that both teams got the chance to feel like babyfaces when they were the ones in peril. I was surprised at how well this worked in the building, as my memory of the general mood of the time was that the ROH/CHIKARA didn’t really feel like it was that big of a deal on the ROH side, and the majority of the buzz that there was was centered around Kevin Steen and Eddie Kingston.
Even for someone who was trying to get into it, the framing wasn’t really pushing you in that direction, as the original story was that the CHIKARA guys thought that the Briscoes (still technically heels) had disrespected Lucha Libre, and the Briscoes being upset that the ROH locker room didn’t show them the support that the CHIKARA locker room showed Jigsaw & Hallowicked, which they claimed caused them to become distracted and led to them losing. The other story (added later) was that Eddie Kingston came to ROH on CHIKARA’s behalf to put ROH over, but that darn Kevin Steen came out and called CHIKARA “a bullsh*t Mickey Mouse promotion” because he wanted to ruin ROH’s partnership with CHIKARA because he’s angry at ROH. Neither of those situations really gives an ROH fan that much incentive to root against CHIKARA with any real passion. But hey! It worked in the building on this night, so that was good.
Even as that helped the match, though, I think the ref bumps worked against it. Just to summarize first: There was a weak ref bump leading to P.J. Drummond from CHIKARA sliding in to referee the match, though he was quickly eliminated when Jigsaw ducked a Jay Briscoe punch that wound up nailing him the face. This set up the Briscoes hitting a Doomsday Device for a visual pinfall and Todd Sinclair sliding in to count the pin but Jigsaw had enough time to recover. The Colony came out to support their team and the ROH team from earlier came out to support the Briscoes. That launched us into the finishing sequence, which was unfortunately marred by Jigsaw’s shoulder being up for the pin.
On the one hand, they didn’t milk these ref bumps in the expected way. On the other hand, despite my complements about the execution of the finish of the six-man, it never really felt like CHIKARA would screw ROH out of their titles. Firstly, CHIKARA never felt villainous or devious in this little feud, even from the ROH perspective. Secondly… it’s CHIKARA, and that’s not the sort of thing Quack would allow his promotion to kayfabe do, and doubly so when the CHIKARA wrestlers involved are babyfaces in CHIKARA at the time. As a result, the ref bumps felt pointless. Having the other wrestles come out for CHIKARA and then having the ROH team come out to support the Briscoes was some nice book-ending for the feud and a nice way to signify that the Briscoes had been accepted by the locker room as babyfaces (it was WGTT who turned heel on them rather than them doing something to actively become babyfaces), but it didn’t need ref-bumps to set it up, which is what the timing of everything made it feel like.

Before I go… the commentary. I REALLY hated Corino talking about people’s “characters” and “gimmicks” on commentary. It doesn’t matter that he was doing so to emphasize that the Briscoes’ personalities are exactly what you see on TV. The mere fact that he is emphasizing that about the Briscoes implies that it is not true for others. I also REALLY hated Corino and Kelly joking about Papa Briscoe beating his children. It’s a shame, because up until this match, I thought they had been very good, as Kevin was calling the action and Corino was being a good color commentator instead of doing the stupid shtick he would later become known for with the “CRASHANDBURNNNNNNN!” and “KICK HIM IN THE DING-DING!” stuff. In this match, though, they just started f*cking around, telling their little jokes and saying dumb, unproductive sh*t. The fans love Bobby Cruise. Maybe he really does have a huge ego and won’t watch a match if someone else does the ring announcements, but even if that’s true, does it really benefit the promotion to tell the whole world that?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
We got a nice post-match show of respect between the two promotions, initiated by the Briscoes, and promo by Jay Briscoe putting both over as pro wrestling.
Steve Corino hoped that this wouldn’t be the end of the working relationship between ROH and CHIKARA, but- at least on the ROH side- it would be.


This was a very good or even great show from ROH (I’d be able to call it great more wholeheartedly if the main event had delivered more). Perhaps surprisingly so. I will admit that a large chunk of the reason that this has been sitting on my shelf unwatched for so long (I bought it in November 2012) was that it was a Cornette-Era show, and while I like some of the early part of Cornette’s reign (basically everything up until Final Battle 2011) more than most, and didn’t start to get really frustrated with it until Border Wars (and specifically the f*cking ether finish), this era has a reputation for shorter, worse matches on the undercard, pointlessly long main events, and way too many dirty finishes done just so the heels wouldn’t win clean (whereas ROH had previously been much more willing than other promotions to let heels win cleanly because the idea was that they could get over as heels on their personality alone, allowing ROH to still have heels while being the place that was known for giving you 99.999999% clean finishes), and that wasn’t something I was eager to revisit. Happily, though, I found this show much easier to watch and not really suffering from those issues. Does this mean I will give this whole era a reevaluation? No. I’m not going to subject myself to the likes of Battle of Richmond, The Nightmare Begins. LivE Strong, and Boiling Point 2012 again. But it certainly will make me less hesitant to pop some other DVDs from less well-regarded eras into my DVD player. Hopefully this doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass next month when… well… Jim Herd. And it’s not going to be one of those 1989 shows, either.