Mike's thoughts

ROH 1/15/05
This was one of the weakest shows from RoH in a long time. There were certainly parts I enjoyed, but a combination of bad luck and odd matchtimes hurt this.

Alex Shelley vs. Spanky was very good. Shelley is a better face worker than I thought and they each got good offensive runs. Lots of kickouts but none of them seemed ridiculous or anything.

Joe vs. Nigel was very good, but got hurt by Nigel injuring his leg partway through. If not for that impediment it would have been yet another great Joe match. I still enjoyed it, but it could have been better.

Dragon vs. Cide: Here is where bad luck cost us a MoTYC. The early brawl stuff was *awesome*. The intensity was off the charts, but as we all know the building manager stopped them. They cut to a blank screen, and then edit to when they come in the ring. From here, the match is strong, but this totally threw them off and made the match feel like it was missing a portion. Instead of a really great 25 minute brawl/submission match, we got a ***+ match that feels underwhelming compared to what it couldd have been.

Aries vs. Cabana sucked, even though they showed promise early. Aries bumped like a champ for Cabana, but Cabana was awful in the face in peril portion. Totally lethargic and he almost seemed bored. Not well layed out and there was a lot of sloppiness. I think they *could* have a decent cage match at 2/19, but it certainly will not be like a Joe/Jay performance.

The Foley/Joe interaction was the best part of the show. Foley's promo was really good, and the brawl was believable. I like the direction of the angle. Right now, it looks like they are going to have Foley feeding ex-WWE guys to Joe, and as Joe destroys all of them, Foley will get more and more frustrated, maybe leading to a match if he's agreed to it. If that's what they're doing, it should rule.

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