Recently Gabe Sapolsky announced that Osirian Portal is due for a tryout against Kevin Steen & El Generico on the 25th. For those who aren’t familiar with Osirian Portal, they are a tag team out of the Chikara Wrestle Factory, students of Mike Quackenbush. Amasis is the spokesman and the professional dancer of the group, a skinny black guy in an Egyptian-style loincloth. His partner is Ophidian, who skulks around the ring hissing and wearing a mask that resembles an open cobra’s mouth. They are goofy as heck and since the announcement many ROH fans have been down on them.

I checked them out to give Osirian Portal a fair shake. Music videos on youtube made them look fun, but from editing you couldn’t tell what the whole package was. All I could glean was that they had funny costumes, danced and knew some eye-popping moves.

So I opened up the couple of Chikara DVD’s I’ve been sitting on to get a taste of them, and if those matches are any indication, they are absolutely worthy of main show tryout. In particular their match against Delirious & Hallowicked on Grit & Glory is a great show of what they offer, easily outclassing anything ROH regulars did with Hallowicked in ROH.

For starters, both are masked and know how to move their bodies to express pain and fatigue to a much better degree than most Chikara graduates. It’s a quality that has helped El Generico and Delirious a lot over the years. They also bump and sell happily for anyone bigger than them; on one show I saw them make Bobby Dempsey look like a tank. In every match that went any length of time they seemed willing to hand offense back over to their opponents, suggesting they aren’t as selfish about shine-time as some other indy teams.

On offense they can do more than the hundred arm drag variations taught to every Chikara student. Both are considerable athletes able to fly across the ring and spring around the ropes in original ways that are sure to get pops from ROH crowds. Ophidian can transition between unique pins with stunning ease.

But most striking is that they’ve embraced the absurdity of their gimmicks and incorporated humor into the backbone of their work. For instance, Amasis will to a Human Tornado-inspired split to avoid a charging opponent, and often dances to throw his opponents off their game. The highpoint for me is the maneuver where Amasis picks up Ophidian, who dances like a charmed snake and hypnotizes his opponents, instantly giving their team the advantage. They’re ridiculous, they know it, we know it, and I can’t wait for them to do the exact same thing on ROH shows. They’re a tag team that can make us laugh, which is the biggest I can see to bring them in. It’s also been the biggest argument against bringing them in.

This year we’ve seen the funny guys fade away. Chris Hero turned to a less-shenanigans approach with his That Young Knock-Out Kid gimmick. Delirious now wears all black and is an assassin for the Age of the Fall.

The more serious everyone gets, the more generic everyone gets. It’s the same force that made Jigsaw de-mask in disappointing fashion and to no effect. It’s the same force that makes people criticize El Generico, perhaps the most beloved guy in the building when his matches get going. There’s some intangible model wrestler in ROH that everyone has to be, and funny isn’t part of him.

He needs to be dispelled.

It’s grating to see Hero this way, because he’s still a natural goofball. No matter how many elbow shots he throws he still comes off as a long-haired dork in ridiculous tights. Part of that is his appearance – if he wants to be a threat so badly, then how come he dresses like that? How come he mugs for the crowd in the same way and still cries like a girl in holds? He’s bigger than most of the roster but comes across like no more of a force than he ever was. He’s just not funny anymore.

I’ve been yelled at by plenty of Hero fans that “serious Hero” will deliver the great matches, but having seen him be totally unimpressive against Jerry Lynn live at Driven 2008, and having watched him be serious for years in other companies, I can’t pretend they’re right. The humorous Hero character with all the stupid flips and comeuppance was the first role I’d regularly enjoyed him in ever in any promotion. And one of the big reasons for that was his creation of a niche in the overly serious ROH atmosphere. He was actually creative. There’s way more merit to talking the ref into thinking Nigel McGuinness used up his rope breaks during a blackout than there is being the next indy guy who hits really hard.

It’s a similar pain I have for Delirious. At Driven 2008 he simply was not believeable for once second against Aries. He wasn’t established enough, didn’t have the offense, and halfway in my friend turned to me and said with the pain of an obvious supporter, “I think he’s more fun as a face.”

These two pains crossed paths on a recent show when serious Hero wrestled brokenhearted Delirious to what all reports called a dud. That should have been comedy gold. Now they’re both stricter people, and the closest thing we have to a joker is Rhett Titus getting squashed in five-minute matches.

This has become a more bitter topic in the last couple of years. For one thing, post-CZW Ring of Honor has relied more heavily on gimmick matches, and more feuds tend to end severely. Feuds as minor as The Hangmen 3 Vs. Delirious, which never made it into the uppercard, got Tables Matches, Falls Count Anywhere and even a Dog Collar Match in the middle of shows. Similarly it seems like more than half of anything Necro Butcher does needs chairs. The product in general is more violent and too many rivalries wind up bloodfeuds to the point where the appeal of rivalry itself is diluted. Even Rhett Titus Vs. Delirious turned into Delirious going all black and beating him into unconsciousness, just when we thought we’d found something light-hearted.

And as this turn came about, Colt Cabana said goodbye. Cabana was beloved to audiences and worked incredibly hard. Many overlooked just how difficult it would be for a comedy wrestler to come up with new material for almost every weekend, yet one night he’d dance with Dan Maff, on another he’d come out to “Super Freak,” on another he’d stand on his opponent’s back and hang ten when ordered to do a Surfboard, and in Europe he busted out a Big Daddy impersonation. Comedy is difficult, and it’s way easier to come up with three or four killer moves and remix them for dramatic finishes through a year. On pure innovation in comedy versus drama, even Alex Shelley couldn’t come up with fresh moves that often.

Cabana had damn great matches with Samoa Joe at the height of his goofyness. One of his greatest jokes was becoming Master of the Roll-Up in the heyday of head drops, and he used that for a believable (if crazy) pinfall over Joe at the original Survival of the Fittest. In their resulting matches Cabana had no problem transitioning to more dramatic wrestling, nor in taking a great beating. From there he could return right back to comedy, and transition back effortlessly to have lamentably overlooked gems like the Dragon Gate Invasion title match against James Gibson. He was great and believable in main events with that centrally humorous character, and yet ROH still had to do the “get more serious” angle between him and Homicide.

Cabana demonstrated that comedy wrestling belonged in Ring of Honor. He demonstrated it first by making the snarkiest crowds laugh when the stereotype was that they craved only workrate. Then, long before the Homicide feud, he showed a guy who built himself up on comedy could fit into dramatic main event-class matches. And not just in tags with the precious C.M. Punk, but on his own.

Most importantly, he got the point of comedy in wrestling. It wasn’t to steal the show, but to give us something else. Variety is the essence of a great show, with a little technical wrestling here, flying there, striking next, and in the business with legends like Bobby Heenan and Rowdy Roddy Piper, comedy fit. It fit (and still fits) in Ring of Honor.

Ring of Honor often presents itself as the alternative to WWE, and so there’s an instinct to run away from the Santino Marellas of the world. I cannot tell you how happy I would be to see Santino Marella feud with Larry Sweeney’s faction. Let Brent Albright and Roderick Strong represent him, but let Santino bring humor to this over-serious world.

We don’t have Colt Cabana to make us laugh anymore. We don’t have Spanky dancing his way through an entrance. Jimmy Jacobs had to stop hussing. Kikutaro doesn’t visit, and in his last visits ROH showed they had no idea what to do with him. We don’t even have Jack Evans to “serve” people. Comedy has largely gone unappreciated in ROH, despite its value.

Arguments against comedy in wrestling in general are poor. A comedy guy may rarely become a main eventer, but not everyone needs to be that guy. The argument that it exposes the business is even more irrelevant in a company like ROH where the fans not only know it’s a predetermined and cooperative performance art, but may even know too much about how it works for their own good. The ultimate and underlying argument is always that some people don’t like it. But some people don’t like crazy high-flying, some people think all mat wrestling is rest holds, and I’m sure tired of watching Necro Butcher rely on hardcore nonsense – but they’re all in the company and not going anywhere.

So now we see Osirian Portal trying out. They’ve been wrestling for less than two years but show amazing talent and comfortability in front of audiences. They are expressive under masks, and as the second half of their match with Incoherence at Chikara’s Grit & Glory shows, they can go. They can bust out crazy moves to earn the oo’s and ah’s. They don’t have to be champs by Final Battle 2008. They can be underdogs, or lovable losers. It worked for Delirious. If they’re not ready, tell them we’re sorry and check in again in a year or two. But if we send them away, let’s find somebody else with a sense of humor.

Also around the internet:
-Have a laugh at the Bathroom Monologues at www.johnwiswell.blogspot.com

-Big Andy Mac invades Ring of Honor Weekly with a sensible candidate for ROH’s MVP. I may be backing someone else and may have to write about it next week.

-Aaron Glazer has been watching a lot of Japanese wrestling.

-David Ditch scored an interview with Mike Quackenbush.

Last 5 posts by John Wiswell

• Cult of ROH: The Best of Jimmy Jacobs - July 3rd, 2009
• Cult of ROH: Weekend Preview - June 26th, 2009
• Cult of ROH: Aries the Champion - June 19th, 2009
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• Cult of ROH: What They're Getting Right - June 5th, 2009