Ring of Honor returned for it’s sophmore appearance at the Rexplex in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Complete results:
*The Outcast Killas defeated Special K’s Lit and Cloudy.
*Luis Ortiz defeated Jose Perez went 6:53. Both are regulars in the MA wrestling scene.
*Slyk Wagner Brown and the Grimm Reefer (with April Hunter) defeated Dunn and Marcos in 7:02.
*Danny Maff pinned Colt Cabana in 7:26, setting up a Three-Way tie between Maff, Cabana and BJ Whitmer for the promotion’s Field of Honor tournament. Samoa Joe and manager Jim Cornette attacked Maff and Allison Danger. Christopher Daniels hit the ring for the save and The Prophecy backed off. Cornette gave a speech and began introducing his charge when The Briscoe Brothers came out. Cornette told them that if they wanted a piece of Joe, they could have one, and then hit Joe with the Tennis Racquet. The Briscoes put the boots to Joe and were announced as Cornette’s new charges. Cornette explained it as he didn’t want to manage someone who was already champion when he could mold younger talent to become stars.
*Nigel McGinnis and Xavier defeated John Walters and Tony Mamaluke in 11:26 when Xavier pinned Mamaluke.
*Matt Stryker forced Justin Credible to tap out in 10:38.
*Jay and Mark Briscoe (with Jim Cornette) defeated Special K’s Izzy and Dixie to win the ROH Tag Team championships in 9:55.
*Homicide pinned a bloodied BJ Whitmer in 20 minutes after a clothesline. Whitmer took a hell of a beating but had kicked up out of several moves including Homicide’s CopKiller finisher.
*The Backseat Boyz defeated The Carnage Crew, the SATs, Special K’s Hydro and Angeldust, and The Hart Foundation 2003 of Teddy Hart and Jack Evans in a Scramble Cage Match in 14:17. Amazing bout with tons of incredible aerial moves off platforms places atop the cage to set up insane aerial moves. The SATs gave the Spanish Fly to Hydro from the top of the cage. Hart and Evans (who bumped his butt off and looked good) did tons of dives. Crew were both bloody. Hart puked in the ring after the bout. More on Hart in the Notes section.
*CM Punk and Steve Corino were both named the winners of a Four-Way bout when they both scored a simultaneous pinfall on Christopher Daniels in 28:29 with a back suplex, also defeating ROH champion Samoa Joe in a non-title match. Punk worked on a hurt knee, which actually delayed the start of the bout as it popped out backstage and he had to get it back in place in order to work. Given his knee being so badly banged up, his work was excellent. Corino’s ring announcer Bobby Cruise again gave a long introduction to his charge, this time reciting 81 names of wrestlers who had held the Southern championship. Brilliant stuff.
*AJ Styles defeated American Dragon Bryan Danielson in 24:17 of an excellent bout.
Notes: The crowd appeared to be in the 700-800 range. The building was set up for a smaller capacity this time around….
Teddy Hart is done with the promotion. After the Scramble Cage match, as the Backseat Boyz were celebrating their win, Hart stopped selling and began climbing to the top of the cage and doing moonsaults and dives again and again and popping the crowd. The Carnage Crew, seeing this as disrespectful whipped Hart down so he had a reason to sell, but he jumped up and did the same again, angering the locker room. When Hart returned, the Carnage Crew and several others were angry and wanted to go after him for being “a glory hound” as one worker put it, but were stopped by ROH management. Hart was eventually tossed out of the locker room, bags and all. Unfortunately, as talented as Hart is, his breach of etiquette was the worst thing he could have done and it killed his credibility with the locker room.
After the show, Hart’s conduct was the biggest topic among the workers….A fan took a shot at CM Punk after the Four-Way Match and was thrown out….The promotion filmed a live shoot interview with Jim Cornette before the event where about 100 fans got to ask questions for a future video release….
Cornette sat down with everyone in the Tag Team championship bout afterwards, going over things about the match that could have been improved on and things that could have been done differently to build the bout. One of the strengths of having Cornette on the shows is that he can provide advice and critical comments to the younger members of the locker room….
Once again the heat of the building and the length of the show had a draining effect on the crowd. In my opinion, even the best wrestling show is unbearable to sit through if the crowd isn’t comfortable and this was the case tonight….T
he promotion returns to the building the day before Wrestlemania XX on 3/13/04 with a show and convention in the afternoon. Roddy Piper was the first name announced as appearing. There will be other names added in the next few weeks.