The Night Canada Fell in Love with ACH: ROH Border Wars '13 Review

In the TH style. Order a replay here.

Highlights:

• In the opening match, the C&C Wrestling Factory (Caprice Coleman and Cedric Alexander) defeated ACH and Tadarius Thomas. Alexander got the pin on ACH after landing a frogsplash, the last in a sequence of moves that put ACH down.
• Roderick Strong used the distraction of a fan named "Cheeseburger" sexually assaulting Maria Kanellis to defeat Mike Bennett with a Sick Kick.
• In an "I Quit" match, BJ Whitmer had Rhett Titus zip-tied to the top rope, ready to bash him with a chair when Steve Corino came out. Corino knelt down facing away from Whitmer, beckoning Whitmer to hit him. Rather than see Corino get murdered, Titus quit.
• Jay Lethal, teaming with Michael Elgin, suffered a knee injury mid-tag match. He was replaced by Kevin Steen, who took the fall via roll up by Jimmy Jacobs while trying to give Cliff Compton the Package Piledriver.
• Tomasso Ciampa returned to Ring of Honor by interrupting a plea by Barrister RD Evans and QT Marshall to have the Tag Team Champions stripped of their belts for no-showing.
• Eddie Edwards defeated Taiji Ishimori with a Die Hard Driver.
• Seleziya Sparx and Scarlett Bordeaux made out on the apron to distract Mark Briscoe long enough to get O'Connor rolled by Matt Taven to retain his Television Championship.
• Davey Richards countered the shooting star press of Paul London by getting his knees up, immediately following it up with a jackknife pin for the win.
• Confused from an apparent offer to join SCUM from Corino, Adam Cole walked into a Jay Driller from Jay Briscoe, allowing Briscoe to retain his World Championship. Corino was shooed away by Nigel McGuinness, who delivered the Tower of London to him.

General Observations:

• ACH got in the ring for the first time and received loud chants from the Toronto crowd. His reputation preceded him.
• I could watch a highlight reel of ACH doing ring-in moves. There is no one better at creating offense off entering the ring.
• I admired the quick tag work from both teams. Just goes to show that no matter how far wrestling evolves, the fundamentals are still important, especially in tags.
• Hart Attack set-up axe kick? Oh man, Coleman and Alexander. Oh man.
• Tadarius Thomas busted out an honest-to-God space flying tiger drop for the first time in forever. I used to spam that move all the time in WCW vs. nWo World Tour with Great Sasuke... err, I mean "Black Ninja."
• Not to be outdone, ACH busted out a slingshot Osaka street cutter. My word.
• The Tale of the Tape for Roderick Strong and Mike Bennett didn't come up for some reason, so Kevin Kelly covered for it by saying Bennett "refused" to have it shown. It was the only savvy thing Kelly did all night. I swear.
• I know it sounds funny to call him an "innovator," but Mike Bennett's swarthy douchebag character having a hot, scantily-clad girlfriend on the outside has served as a template for guys like Ethan Page and Shane Hollister. However, the latter two both added domestic violence angles to their characters, which makes Bennett the superior article.
• Strong busted out the superplex, and to the surprise of no one but maybe Barry Windham, it didn't finish the match. Just once, can we have a superplex finish, please?
• Some skinny kid that the announcers called "Cheeseburger" ran out from the back and started making out with Kanellis against her will. To quote modern day theologian Billy Madison, "That's sexual assault, brotha." And yet Bennett's the heel here? Of course, Strong followed it up with the Sick Kick for the win. Glad to see wrestling babyface mores aren't just terrible in WWE. FAAAART.
• Of course, Steve Corino got involved in the Rhett Titus/BJ Whitmer match early on. Nigel McGuinness went out and got refs to remove him though, which I guess is the benefit for having your matchmaker also openly serve as the color commentator.
• Kelly mentioned something about Whitmer showing the belligerent fighting spirit he showed in the ring against Titus also at the bar at 3 AM if someone told him to leave and he didn't want to. So, did Kelly just out Whitmer as a problem drinker, or is he just really shitty at his job? I'm gonna bank on the latter.
• Random "We want tables" chant in a non-tables match. This actually wasn't the first time the crowd chanted it, as I think they beckoned for tables in the opener too. Why? I guess why the fuck not?
• Titus busted out the zip ties, but it was Whitmer who actually got to use them. I thought they were going for a Sandman/Tommy Dreamer vibe with Whitmer beating the fuck out of a bound-up Titus, but that was until...
• ...hey! Welcome back, Steve! That finish, Corino actually getting his ally to LOSE by quitting as a sacrifice for his own well-being, will be discussed to death, but I think it put SCUM over as a psycho cult, and I think wrestling in general needs more psycho cults. It's a lot better if they're not overtly religious, either.
• Cliff Compton and Jimmy Jacobs came bounding from the back to attack Whitmer, which brought out Jay Lethal and Michael Elgin. Hey, time for the matches to bleed into each other!
• Of course, the match got started with Titus STILL bound to the ropes, which led to Lethal superkicking him in the face.
• "Poor decision by Ring of Honor to not leave Rhett Titus tied to the ropes for the rest of the show." -- Steve Hummer with line of the night.
• Lethal hit a plancha to the outside and started clutching his knee. I understand why they did it like that to set up the end of the match, but it felt like Lethal selling the injury as legit went on just a little too long and just about killed the match for me.
• KEVIN STEEN! KEVIN STEEN! BAH GAWD, KEVIN STEEN!
• Steen went from not losing in ROH for like two years to taking the fall in two straight iPPVs. Not complaining or anything, it was just funny. Of course, Elgin was pissed because he thought Steen laid down on purpose, but I guess you can't have Steen trying to win back the trust of the roster without them not trusting him from start.
• Intermissions on iPPVs? LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME.
• RD Evans' moustache was curled at either end, because of course it was.
• "You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but slightly less well-known is this, 'Never trade chops with Eddie Edwards.'" Vizzini, probably. I think.
• I don't know how long the Taiji Ishimori/Edwards match was, but it could have stood to have been at least three minutes shorter.
• Matt Taven had the Television Title belt tucked into his junk upon his ring entrance. This made complete sense since he looks like a roadie for Steel Panther.
• When you have a big entourage on the outside of the ring, you best be using them to your advantage. Example, Taven was knocked down outside the ring. Mark Briscoe was about to dive onto him from the top (because as Dylan Hales wrote about him, he's watched too much Tokyo Shock and is a danger to himself and society at large) until Seleziya Sparx used herself as a human shield. Then, as Scarlett Bordeaux distracted the ref, Truth Martini shoved Briscoe from his perch. That's good heel hustle.
• There are very few things in this world I love more than redneck kung fu.
• The moment Sparx and Bordeaux stepped on the apron to distract the ref and Briscoe, I knew they were going to make out. That didn't make it any less awful that they did. Look, I'm a red-blooded male too, and normally, hot girls making out is cool as shit. But wrestling is already a cesspit of misogyny, and having HLA (or "Hot, Lesbian Action," THANKS BISCHOFF) as a match trope in 2013 is way fucking counter to the direction wrestling, or really, anything, should be going in. Women are people, not meat. Ugh.
• However, Briscoe's scare taunt to get them off the apron was fucking gold. So glad he didn't react by doing something gross and sexual.
• Briscoe gave Martini a receipt after the match, causing Sparx to have to carry him from the arena. This caused Kelly to remark "That's a lot of woman to love there." Really, Kev? A weight joke on a woman who is totally not overweight at all? Especially coming from your paunchy ass? Please sit on a railroad spike and don't remove it from your ass until you contract tetanus.
• Davey Richards offered his hand in the Code of Honor, and Paul London obliged, saying "I remember!" to the crowd. I love that stoner.
• London escaped a headscissors from Richards and proceeded to pat him on the head in with a serene childlike innocence. Can we get him in Chikara, because he'd rule there. Of course, when Richards returned the favor, he wasn't as gentle. But that was par for the course, as Richards heeled his ass off during this match.
• London went into the corner for one of those simple, leapfrog exchanges, but Richards caught him and just tossed him OUT of the ring and onto one of the photographers. If I were her, I'd have demanded hazard pay for the night. Wait, do the photographers get paid? Well, they should.
• There was a sequence where Richards flubbed a minor exchange in the ropes. Predictably, the crowd chanted "You fucked up!" because wrestling crowds are fucking awful. Richards soon thereafter countered a London springboard with a gamengiri from the apron, to which he asked the crowd "WHO'S FUCKIN' UP NOW?" I have to give him credit, that was a nice comeback.
• Richards had London on the apron, went to the top, and proceeded to hit him with the stiffest looking double stomp that landed dangerously close to London's head. The crowd chanted "YOU KILLED PAUL!" and for a moment there, I thought they were accurate. Ouch.
• After the match, Richards AGAIN got on the mic and broke character to put London over. London reciprocated too. That's the one thing I fucking hate about Richards more than anything. It's like his character is to break character and let everyone know that what you just watched was fake. Can you fucking at least wait until you get interviewed after the show by a newspaper or dirt sheet or whatever? Christ, I know kayfabe's dead but that doesn't mean you shit on its grave.
• Jay Briscoe hitting the Falcon Arrow on Adam Cole only made me think of Excalibur's "No one kicks out of the Falcon Arrow!" call right before the dude taking it kicks out.
• Is it just me, or did the ref bump and SCUM overtures from Steve Corino seem a bit out of place? I will say though, it was good seeing Nigel McGuinness break out the Tower of London one more time.
• After the match, it looked like Cole was going to nail Briscoe with a superkick until Briscoe turned around to face him. Cole as a will he/won't he case should be interesting, even if he does do the obvious and join SCUM.

Match of the Night:ACH and Tadarius Thomas vs. Cedric Alexander and Caprice Coleman - Obviously, any match ACH in it is one I look forward to. However, this match excelled despite ACH probably having the least amount of ring time in it. It had the perfect pace to get the crowd going, although really, they were pumped from even before the match when The Last Dragon made his debut across the border.

Both duos' teamwork was fluid and in sync, which is a huge plus for a tag match. The double-team moves were there, definitely. My favorite was when the C&C Wrestling Factory broke out a combo Hart Attack/axe kick. However, moves aren't the be-all, end-all for any match. I was impressed by ring placement, timing, and all the little things that make a match with so many moving parts look easy. I was also pretty impressed with Thomas' capoeira offense. I was remarking earlier in the week that I was disappointed that Fandango in WWE didn't work dancing into his offense as much as his character dictated, but I guess it takes some amount of skill to work in the art of Brazilian dance fighting. It's clear that this is a sliver of Thomas' offense that he has down pat, even when it was used to set himself up for a fall, example being Thomas going for a handstand kick on Alexander, only to be taken out by a Coleman baseball slide.

It's not like ACH wasn't a part of the match. He busted out some of his offensive fireworks as well, the sheer highlight of which being a slingshot Osaka street cutter. The crowd wanted to root for him from jump, and he gave them plenty of reasons such as that. Conversely, I thought where he made the most impact on the match was at the finish, where he just got snapped up by Coleman and Alexander's sequence in fine order. All in all, this was the perfect match to start the show, and it set the tone for the night. I'm not sure any other match answered the bell, but I also don't think it's understating how much of an impact a hot opening match has in putting me, the viewer, in a good mood.

Overall Thoughts: First thing's first, the feed quality was slightly choppy, but I was able to view most of the show in the best definition available. Thankfully, the only real hiccups came during the intros for the Paul London/Davey Richards match, and really, intros are superfluous to me at least. After hearing horror stories about how bad their feeds have screwed up in the past, I was willing to call this a rousing success.

As for the quality of the show, I thought it was an eminently enjoyable experience. There were some spots that I thought were bad. For example, as much as I enjoyed the Television Championship match, why is HLA being used as a distraction trope in ROH no less in 2013? I give credit to Mark Briscoe for how he played it off, like, how are you going to have a show where your #2 title is decided because there was distraction by two women kissing each other? I know the "it's just wrestling" crowd is gonna hop on me for being "too PC" but fuck it, man. I don't need to see women thrown out as pieces of meat to be a match finish aid.

I also certainly don't need to be hearing Kevin Kelly, a guy whose abdominal section would be most accurately described as a "party ball," describe Seleziya Sparx as "a lot of woman to love." Fuck off. Seriously, the dude was implying that BJ Whitmer is a problem drinker among other things, and when he wasn't making horrible statements about the talent, he was busy making the most vapid and general statements to describe the answer, replete with the Josh Mathews ECW PBP Guy Memorial Dead Air. Why does he have a job?

But the wrestling action was good, which is of utmost importance for a company like ROH. There wasn't a bad match on the card, even if I thought Ishimori/Edwards was a bit too over-indulgent. Even Davey Richards had a really good match, and when that happens, then you know the stars are lining up for you. There are going to be two finishes discussed to death about this show. One was to the Titus/Whitmer "I Quit" match, and the other was to the main event. The former, I thought, was brilliant and full of subtext. The latter, though ham-handed in execution, at least did its job to set up Adam Cole as a man with a choice. I can forgive wonky execution if you hammer home a point effectively.

Overall, I'd say Border Wars was worth my money, and it should be worth a replay too, if just for the opener and to see London escape certain death against Richards. For the first time in a few years, I'm really excited about the company's direction, and watching the show tonight validated that exuberance.