ROH house show....
MCU Park at its max (standing room only) holds about 9,000 people. Best of my knowledge, their best crowd for a wrestling show was the first time TNA ran there about 4 years back (legit 3,000+ people), but it's been down each year since. I heard they sold about 700-800 going into this past week so first glance I don't believe walkup was huge for them. Behind home plate was pretty much full but the third base side, the people ended right before the visitors dugout. On the first base side, it went a bit further but there were patches of empty sections, too. I'll assume that ROH made their money regardless of the attendance, but hopefully this doesn't become the norm for NYC summers.
-Maria, Benett, Daniels & Kazarian, AJ, Jerry Lynn were signing before the show
-BULLET CLUB SHIRTS, but for $35 I passed.
-Cage was set up when I got there. Great opener, 2nd best match on the show. Normally, Matt Taven is too vanilla but I liked him here (he's been feuding with Lethal so that may explain it). For a cage match, TONS of interference (the big girl who's with Truth is hot) but Lethal won.
-Mark Briscoe beat Watanabe
-Moose (the former NFL player) & RD Evans beat Cheeseburger & Brutal Bob
-Bennett beat Rocky Romero courtesy of the distraction from Maria dancing on the apron. *At this point, there was some black chick who went down by the netting and was shouting something throughout the match. Maybe she was drunk? During the fireworks intermission, Romero went into the stands and up to her and a couple other girls. I assume they knew one each other, he returned to the dugout eventually.
-Decade beat a team of ROH students (one of them had half his face painted like a baseball, which was sorta cool)
-Silas Young beat Ciampa - post match, Ciampa beat up a couple refs
-Cedric Alexander beat ACH - crowd was drunk and crapped on the match unfortunately. ACH took a nasty fall on his head, was pinned and took a little bit to get up. He walked off so hopefully it's nothing major.
-After the 2nd intermission, reDRagon beat Daniels/Kazarian (Decade interfered)
-Main event was awesome. Elgin, Cole, AJ & Brisoe all had their moments - lots of stiff stuff btw Elgin & Briscoe, a few top rope spots, AJ hit his stuff. Elgin eventually retained after hitting the Elgin bomb on Cole.
*No real reason to go out of your way to check the show out however it may air. It was a 2 match show, but if possible, do watch the main event b/c it was real good. I can't even imagine the shape AJ Styles is in coming off the G1 tournament that concluded only a week or two ago. That motherfucker is busting his ass all over the world with dates practically every weekend somewhere. Good for him.
*ROH is moving to Terminal 5 beginning with Final Battle (a PPV, Sunday night 12/7). It's a night club so figure space will be a bit tighter than the perfect Manhattan Center, there's space for about 3,000 but I'm not sure if that's all one room or split between different levels. Meltzer said they're selling rows 1-3 for $100 so that's a big bump up (previously row 2 was $80 & row 3 was $60).
*I only caught glimpses but it looked like there was a young Japanese guy in a suit watching the show from the visitors dugout (where the locker room was), the Observer said there would be a NJPW rep there to discuss future plans...so perhaps he was part of the New Japan group.
*Any douchebag asshole who throws streamers into the ring during a match deserves to be shot in the face.
