Cubed Circle Newsletter This week we cover a great Destination X go-home show (with Kenny King), RAW, NXT, the future of ROH and more. You can subscribe to the newsletter and get it sent straight to your inbox every week by either emailing [email protected] or visiting cubedcirclewrestling.com. The Future of Ring of Honor There are times in not only professional wrestling, but in life where you view something pretty special at any given time as simply mundane. When in actual fact if you were to look back it was anything but. This can be said for a lot of things, whether it be the presence of competition in some form even during WCW’s darkest days, or the WWE product in 2009. There is are many things I feel that way about this year, but the one that we are going to focus on today is Ring of Honor. Looking back at a time when the product wasn’t necessarily white hot, but had a deep roster despite what other people may have said. During years like 2009, 2010 and even parts of 2011, guys such as Austin Aries, Tyler Black, the Kings of Wrestling and even the freshness of some current guys like Richards were taken for granted. One by one people left and big fresh young stars weren’t built, while people never even realized it was happening. When the talent left people thought that things would be okay, because of an abundance of young mainevent talent like Richards, Edwards and Strong. Things were looking up to a very large degree due to the rise of Davey Richards, who many people thought should have won the championship at Final Battle 2010 against the defending Roderick Strong. However it turned out that an interim champion was crowned in Eddie Edwards. This ultimately led to a far better pay off with Richards defeating Edwards for the title on June 26 th of 2011 at the Best in the World iPPV. I had their match as second on my match of the year list last year, underneath John Cena and CM Punk from Money in the Bank. However not only was it a great match and show, but Best in the World 2011 was the last iPPV before the first set of TV tapings in Chicago. These were the TV tapings that got many people interested in the future prospects of ROH, particularly in regard to TV; however these hopes for one reason or anther died down. 1 Best in the World was a show that featured some of the last appearances on iPPV of the talent that had been taken for granted for a long time as roster staples. Even guys that are still heavily active on the independent circuit like Colt Cabana and El Generico are no longer active with the company. Not even counting wrestlers like Hero and Castagnoli. But, even with missing talent the ROH machine jugged along throughout the year with some interesting developments like the Steen angle. In spite of developments like those of Steen, the fire that was sparked with Richards/Edwards hasn’t been rekindled since. When ROH were in a weakened state they delivered what will most likely be the best match of the year with Davey Richards defending his ROH world championship against Michael Elgin in the mainevent of the second Showdown in the Sun show on WrestleMania weekend this year. This for me at least was a sign of a breakout star and it could be looked back on that way in the future. Despite the fact that Elgin and Richards put on an absolute classic, creatively things remained relatively unchanged. We have seen the Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team vs. either the All Night Express or the Briscoe Brothers for a copious amount of times and a tried, tested and true mix of midcarders for almost all of the shows this year. That isn’t to even say that many of those problems were the complete fault of ROH, because many of the problems that they faced were completely unavoidable. But, prolonging some stale angles certainly didn’t help things this year. Many of those problems stemmed from talent leaving, which isn’t ROH’s for the most part. They also suffered many technical difficulties that led to some angry customers and that coupled with a not so hot product ultimately led to a temporary loss of business. Even with the issues that ROH has had in the past few months there are things that they could have helped. They could have for one not let guys like Cabana and Generico go, moves like those led to a decline in the roster and the second problem would stem from creative choices. Still even with these problems it feels like many people within the company care deeply about the product and it is the circumstances rather than some of the people in the company that are to blame. Of course you could say that ROH is still in a transition of sorts. They are no longer a DVD sales based company with a very small TV deal on HDNet. They are a semi- national mainly TV and iPPV based company that is owned by the telecommunications company Sinclair. This means that the SBG is ultimately in charge of the company’s direction and they are steering the ship. And the fact that Sinclair has complete control has caused some problems in its own right. Many of the old fans of the ROH product from the past few years have become disgruntled and this was to be expected in a certain way. The company has moved far away from the days of Gabe Sapolsky’s booking and it has been that way for a long time now. But, because the focus of the product has changed to such a degree I am sure that many fans want the old product back –because they viewed the old ROH, which was still a number three promotion as one that could one day reach big things. 2 Stars like Samoa Joe, CM Punk, Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuiness don’t come around all that often and ROH was lucky to have them all present at one time. Now that all of these guys have gone there are no more guys in the company that fans can get behind thinking that they are superior to TNA or WWE talent. Richards is a very good wrestler and can at times be great, but he isn’t the best promo in the world and the inverse can be said for Steen to a greater extent extent. The New York fans that were offbeat at this year’s Best in the World when it came to participating with the product on its own; obviously feel that they are watching a different product than whenever they started watching and you know what? They are. But, the exact same can be said for the Sinclair viewer. The few that purchase an iPPV because of the TV would probably be pretty shocked at the discrepancy in the products, because there certainly is one. ROH could get the ball rolling once again, but I think that they will need to light something on fire booking wise and I don’t think they have that as of right now. Of course that could all change and they got to where they are now not from great wrestling alone, but from great booking too and promos too. My major concern at this point is the stagnation of their talent pool and if it continues to thin then they may have a problem. There are guys that they could bring in that are good both in ring and on the mic, but the problem lies in ROH’s perceived vision of themselves, along with the two groups of fans’ very different views and ultimately Sinclair who provides the finance. WWE Monday Night RAW July 2 nd 2012 Laredo, Texas Overall Show Thoughts This show was better than it has been the past few weeks, however it was way too AJ centric for my liking. There was a good mainevent, but the finish was ruined by interference from AJ – granted it was a TV match so I was fine with it, but that is exactly what is going to happen at the pay-per-view. The opening segment was also rather dull and dreary and the fact that it all came down to who stole whose catchphrase just comes across as stupid to me. All in all it was an average show, nothing more and nothing less. John Cena came out for what was set up to be your typical one million men come out segment. He said that the crowd was fired up after seeing what Jericho and Show did to him last week. He said that he should have been vengeful, but he thanked Show and Jericho. This was the sought of statement that really makes things seem meaningless within the promotion and makes the Cena character come across as unlikeable. He said that it was true that he had never been in a Money in the Bank before, but at the pay-per-view it would be his crash course. He said that the fans had to be like him – prepared for anything. He followed this by saying that Big Show would go home as an empty-handed “sewage baby” and he would grab the contract becoming the next WWE champion. Bryan interrupted coming out screaming “yes!” 3 Cena said that Bryan even agreed with him.