A good opener, but my inner-old school curmudgeon didn’t like Dijak, who is supposed to be this giant (especially compared to ROH guys) bumping around and getting out-powered so early in his run and especially by a guy who isn’t close to his size. I was honestly afraid that they wouldn’t give him the clean win here, either, although they (mostly) did.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- again… I didn’t like someone getting the best of Dijak. I think would have been better to just have Dijak win clean, then have Truth and Dijak lay out Castle and his boys. You can easily bring Castle back by basically taking the truth making it kayabe: he had a very impressive showing against ROH TV Champion Jay Lethal and here against Dijak and he has gotten over with the fans, so ROH will give him some more bookings. This will also allow him to wrestle other people for a while letting his issues with the House of Truth hang in the background for a bit (maybe until the PPV, but I don’t know that I’d really want to spend a PPV spot on such a low-level feud, so maybe until Death Before Dishonor or some other big show over the summer) before you go back to it and either give Castle his big win or you decide that he’s done all he can do and have Dijak/Truth/Lethal/whoever put him out and then you stop booking him.
WAR MACHINE vs. ANDY DALTON & KEN PHOENIX- extremely short squash
THE FISH TANK WITH SPECIAL GUEST: JAY LETHAL- GREAT!
There was A LOT of stuff going on here. First and foremost, they build up not just the “who is the better champion” angle between Jay Briscoe and Jay Lethal, but they also build up Kyle O’Reilly’s upcoming shot at Lethal’s ROH TV Title in Hopkins, MN on April 25th (and in time for people in MN to see this segment and order tickets). I also liked that the played up not only the ROH TV Title match but also the “Champions’ Challenge” match last month in Milwaukee which set it up. It’s very important to make the house shows feel like they actually have consequences because house shows from the big companies don’t, so this allows ROH to distinguish themselves (and obviously sell more tickets and DVDs).
I also the way they did the Knights of the Rising Dawn attack on Fish and O’Reilly: it happened right after all of the security had gone to break up Brisoce and Lethal, so there was a plausible reason why security didn’t come out to break this up. Because security wasn’t there to break this up, some babyfaces came out to do it instead, but not before the KRD injured Bobby Fish’s knee.
Hidden text.
PAGE & WHITMER PROMO- decent build for the Page vs. ACH match in Hopkins.MICHAEL ELGIN vs. CEDRIC ALEXANDER- 8.5/10
They went pretty darn balls-to-the-wall here, and it was awesome!
MICHAEL ELGIN PROMO- kind of good, but also kind of lame. This angle really isn’t working so well. They need to just drop the stuff where they are trying to be cool and poetic and just let Elgin be a Taz-style, pissed off, miserable son of a b*tch who kicks people’s asses in the ring.
Another awesome show from ROH.