Huge ROH weekend; UK reaction; WM wwekend & more ROH news

LARGEST CROWD TO EVER WITNESS ROH TITLE MATCH OVER WEEKEND, UK REACTION, DRAGON GATE, WRESTLEMANIA WEEKEND & MORE ROH NEWS
by Mike Johnson @ 10:04:00 AM on 3/5/2007


Ring of Honor champion Takeshi Morishima defeated KENTA at the Pro Wrestling NOAH event in Tokyo, Japan's Budokan Hall on 3/4, marking the first time the ROH belt was defended in Japan. With 13,500 fans in attendance, was also the largest crowd to ever witness a live ROH title defense. Morishima won in 9:44 with a backdrop driver, the same move he won the ROH title with from Homicide. The storyline going forward will be how dominant Morishima has been against top stars like KENTA and Homicide, leaving a question of who can stop him. ROH regulars Chris Hero and Rocky Romero worked the undercard, as did Doug Williams, who will be returning to ROH next month. For much more on the show, visit http://noah.puroresufan.com, a subsidiary of the awesome PuroresuFan.com website, which does an amazing job covering all the Japanese promotions.

Ring of Honor officials were ecstatic about the double shot in Liverpool, Great Britain. We've got a number of live reports from both nights, which featured the end of the company's run with Samoa Joe as a regular. When asked for comment, Sapolsky said, "This weekend will always be very special to me and the entire company. The fans were so tremendous and really pushed the wrestlers to go beyond their limits. There were so many great and special matches and moments. It would take me all night to talk to them all."

There were no major injuries coming out of the UK shows. Delirious returned from his concussion, showing no ill effects.

Former ROH champion Bryan Danielson returned to the ring over the weekend working for Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling. Danielson isn't slated to return to ROH until this summer the earliest.

With ROH working with several Japanese groups and running live events in Great Britain, one reader recently asked about ROH starting a relationship with a Lucha promotion. When asked, Sapolsky said, ""Right now we are concentrating on the Japanese market, but we are open to working with any company anywhere in the world that we can have a mutually beneficial relationship with and that will the ROH product better for our fans."

Ring of Honor announced their Friday 3/30 event in Detroit, Michigan will be titled "All-Star Extravaganza 3" while 3/31 will be "Supercard of Honor II." New ROH Tag Team champs Shingo & Naruke Doi will defend against the Briscoes on 3/30. If you are going to be in town for Wrestlemania and don't intend to go to the WWE Hall of Fame, you really have no excuse not to see ROH.

3/31 will feature a six man tag match imported from Dragon Gate with CIMA & Shingo & Susumu Yokosuka vs. Dragon Kid & Ryo Saito & Masaaki Mochizuki. It will be exactly a year after DG put on one of the single greatest matches I've ever seen as a wrestling fan. At the time, I wrote the following:

There is a lot of good spread out among the events (refering to the Milestone Series), but If there was on DVD that I would suggest you have to see right now, it's the company's two disc set "Supercard of Honor" which was promoted Wrestlemania 22 weekend in Chicago. As great as the PPV was that weekend, ROH topped it with the best match seen on American soil in 2006 - a six man tag team bout featuring Dragon Kid & Genki Horiguchi & Ryo Saito vs CIMA & Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino in a match that is so beyond anything promoted in the United States, you would think they time traveled from the future to show us what the evolution of the business will look like 50 years from now.

Having seen the match live as it happened, I am relieved after watching the DVD to see that they captured a good part of the emotion and magic that was there for the match. If you think of the best Lucha match you've ever seen, add it to the legendary Michinoku Pro six man tag at ECW Barely Legal and multiply by 1000, then you might have an idea of what you are in for. The sum of those aforementioned parts is something so magical that ROH decided to stop laying commentary on it to allow the final, extended sequences to speak for themselves.

It's a match so good, the live crowd chanted for the match to not end, to keep going, because they were so amazed. The match builds with psychology, false finishes and even designs itself to make Dragon Kid the focus and the star you remember at the end. It's brilliantly designed and only better in execution than it was in planning. It's an amazing match.

On second thought, I wouldn't even call it a match. That's disrespectful to those six talented performers. Call it a wrestling orgasm.

Yes, It's that amazing. Don't believe me? See for yourself.

Additional talents scheduled for that weekend are Homicide, Nigel McGuinness, Austin Aries, FIP champion Roderick Strong, Davey Richards, Christopher Daniels, Colt Cabana, BJ Whitmer, Chris Hero, Larry Sweeney, Jimmy Rave, Claudio Castagnoli, Jimmy Jacobs, Lacey, Adam Pearce, Shane Hagadorn, Delirious, Matt Sydal, Jack Evans, and Brent Albright. For ticket information, visit www.ROHWrestling.com.

Ring of Honor will return to Sportsplus in Long Island, NY on Friday 4/13 and Edison, NJ on 4/14 with British star Doug Williams appearing.