BACKGROUND
Tyler Black spent a ridiculously long time chasing the ROH title and finally got it. As with many other wrestlers, the ROH fans started turning against him. Davey Richards was getting more and more respect from them with each match and would become the new golden boy of the company, fans, and the internet. This match is billed as two of the best in the company (and world) wrestling for the belt, nothing overly fancy. Both guys are given interviews about their personal lives and setbacks to build the match. Strategy is vaguely discussed a bit, which I like.
Now for my personal feelings: I view Tyler Black as little more than a wrestler who has high workrate matches with not nearly enough presence. Davey Richards is a Dynamite Kid and Chris Benoit type wrestler who does annoying things at times (like wrestling an entire match as a heel and breaking kayfabe by sucking up to them after it's over). Unlike Black though, he does have something more, it's just used wrong in my opinion. I'm convinced that in a perfect world he would be in an entirely different role. His facial expressions and mannerisms remind me of someone who is mentally ill/deranged, not someone who is trying to overcome a difficult family life and tragedy. Or maybe he just needs to tone it down a bit, but hey, the ROH fans do enjoy it. As it is now, he sometimes comes off as a strange mix of creepy and unintentionally funny when he gets into his INTENSITY MODE.
MATCH
Handshake is denied by Davey in the beginning and there's some hate to start off. They mat wrestle for awhile, all fair and good. There's a good sequence of transitions into surfboards. At one point, Davey gets kicked in the mouth and Cornette brings up something about him possibly losing a tooth. I couldn't quite hear what Dave said when he was angry about this, but it involved the F bomb. If you like the word FUCK, ROH is for you. They go back and forth for several minutes keeping up quite a pace. Davey Richards is definitely the crowd favorite and Tyler gets some harrassment throughout the match. Sometimes it's beyond annoying.
Jim Cornette at one point says that fans in ROH are allowed to express their opinions unlike in other companies. Your fans are annoying, Jim, they deserve to be muzzled. An angry drunk guy yelling FUCK YOU, TYLER and YOU STILL SUCK over and over again is nothing to brag about. The other commentator then bashes HHH for no reason in a lame, outdated attempt to be edgy. I will have to say that I think Cornette helps the commentary here because he's an amusing guy, despite this minor annoyance.
At a certain point, the match becomes focused on big moves and heats up. They get in a Davey dive, tons of moves that would end a normal match, a forearm exchange, frantic pinning sequence, etc. It looked like it was going in the direction of leg targeting with Tyler selling his leg for awhile to set up Davey's submissions. Davey gets a texas cloverleaf and reversed a pele kick into an ankle lock, which was cool. With Black down on the outside, Davey prevents Shane Hagadorn from helping him win because he wants to beat Black fairly. Richards takes a ton of punishment and keeps going. The crowd at one point chants YOU CAN'T BEAT HIM at Black. I understand what they were going for, but it ended up going too overboard for my taste. It really doesn't help that I'm not too much of a fan of either guy. Black finally wins with a wrist clutch God's last gift.
REVIEW
I've seen matches where this is much more of a problem, but the ending stretch of this should have been more concise. This is of course not unique to this particular match, it's an ROH problem. The ROH guys have taken what hurt some of AJPW's major matches and incorporated it to an even higher degree at times. More doesn't equal better and I'm more accepting of it if I have an emotional connection to the wrestlers. I don't here. I got the feeling that the match should have ended earlier. By the time Tyler does his double stomp from the top rope to the apron, I'm more than ready for the match to end. There's nearfall after nearfall and big move after big move, it's tiring even though overall the match never got to the point of being boring. A big deal was made of how much endurance these guys have. While it is impressive how they are able to keep up such a pace, it honestly doesn't mean all that much to me in the grand scheme of things. There were several things I definitely did not like in this match, but overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. I am going more into detail on these criticisms than usual because I feel it's necessary for a match that has been rated by many as a 5 star match. There were some neat transitions, overall basic story played out even if I didn't totally buy it, and an enjoyable pace. I'm obviously not the target audience here, but it worked well enough for me to give it a good score. I don't see this as being anywhere near a 10, however.
RATING: 7 out of 10
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