Man shades of why Gabe Sapolsky got fired from Ring of Honor were on clear display tonight. I think it’s an understatement to say that Sapolsky is second to none in inspiring talent to give their best in the ring. However Sapolsky misstepped spectacularly on several occasions last night in a bunch of moments that left wrestling fans all over the arena scratching their heads.
After the BxB Hulk vs. Brian Kendrick match, Kendrick went on a spiel about being an artist. Now this should have worked if Sapolsky had gotten Kendrick to really sell himself to believe he was an artist. He didn’t. Kendrick sent too many mixed messages, which ending killing the effectiveness of the passion he displayed the ring, (and itself was quite fantastic), but it went on from being hurt and thus deserving to spend as much time in the ring as needed post-match, to being an artist, to getting fired from the WWE for being a pothead, to daring people to remove him from the ring. Really the message became so cluttered by the end that we didn’t know what he was talking about anymore by the end. Each of those subject matters deserved their own promo time and to clutter them together resulted in what I can only describe as a verbal clusterfuck.
Afterwards three young wrestlers come to coerce Kendrick to leave the ring when one (Jon Moxley) attacked the other two and joined with Kendrick to beatdown everyone else… and again it made no sense. If Moxley had been in on it with Kendrick from the start, he should have been among the first to hit the ring since he would have been in on the plan to attack anyone trying to remove Kendrick from ringside. He was the last. And if he hadn’t been on it from the start and just decided to join Kendrick out of nowhere, what reason did Kendrick have to accept this guy’s help who has done nothing in the business. If anything, Kendrick should been insulted that this guy thought Kendrick would need his help. Either way, it was a mess.
During the CIMA, Mike Quackenbush, Super Crazy, and Jorge Rivera, Rivera spent a majority of his time selling his leg as if it were genuinely hurt. CIMA came over him and started asking the old man if he were okay, only for Super Crazy to throw CIMA to the outside and begin working Rivera over as Rivera begged him off. Now this would have worked if Rivera then sold his leg properly but instead Rivera started doing crazy lucha flips to take Crazy out, and then he tumbled back down to the ground death-selling the leg again. It just came across as ridiculous because it delegitimized the selling Rivera was doing.
And THEN, they did the entire sequence a second time. CIMA came and stood over Rivera AGAIN asking if he was all right. Super Crazy threw CIMA to the outside AGAIN. Rivera did a second series of lucha moves once again no-selling the leg AGAIN. And it just became doubly ridiculous because a face should only beg himself off when he’s so incapacitated that really can’t do anything but hope spots. All in all, it was just really weird storytelling.
Finally the main event was just flat out a letdown from a booking standpoint. After CIMA got eliminated, YAMATO and Akuma were left in the ring to team against BxB Hulk. Well this completely killed the heat from the crowd and they just sat quietly on their hands until Akuma was eliminated. Now Akuma looked really weak as his strikes were very soft and unimpressive, but it was the 2 on 1 booking decision that really screwed this match up. When the match went back to one on one between Hulk/YAMATO, things picked up greatly once more.
After the match Davey Richards teamed with YAMATO to beat down BxB Hulk until Dragon Kid made the save. Well the problem with this was that YAMATO had beaten Richards earlier in the night to advance to the finals of the champion crowning tournament. To add to this, video promos of Richards attacking Bryan Danielson aired throughout the arena, along with Richards declaring that Danielson endorsing him as the next best wrestler in the world simply pissed him off. Well if someone endorsing you simply pisses you off, how in the world would you find it inside yourself to team with someone who defeated you. Again it makes no sense and the move is just overall contrived.
That said, Gran Akuma/Nick Jackson/Matt Jackson/Jigsaw/Lince Dorado/Johnny Gargano, YAMATO/Richards, and Yoshino and Doi vs. Shingo and Dragon Kid were all worth the price of admission and definitely deserve to be seen when the show goes on PPV. From a wrestling standpoint, you would be stupid not to order this. From a storyline standpoint, this show was almost as bad as a TNA one.
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Which is why I never got the blind fanboy love Gabe seems to get. I’ll admit a lot of people lost interest in ROH because the product has been iffy over the last year, but a good portion never really gave it a chance because they saw it as “Gabe’s show” and didn’t actually care about the workers.
I think a lot of people like the guy because he’s one of us; he never wrestled, he wasn’t a manager, and he never really worked in front of the camera. He was Heyman’s right hand man in ECW, which is something else that I think has unfairly earned him a free pass.
I mean, for every good idea like the Summer of Punk, there was also something like the Carnage Crew getting their gym bags shit in. For every good stable like Age of the Fall, there was a Special K. He’s pretty even on the hit-and-miss ratio. It just goes unnoticed because he has a shit ton of talent that works for him and he’s shrewd enough to let them kill themselves in the ring.
There’s almost no booker who’s even close to perfect on his own. Gabe is at his best by FAR when he has worthwhile input from other people in the company (ie. management, wrestlers). DGUSA is going to have the vast bulk of its creative ideas coming from Gabe, which means lots of ups and downs on that end of things.
What Gabe has going for him is that he knows enough to have his ideas take the back seat while action has the wheel. If that makes sense. People who buy DGUSA shows want DG-style MOTYCs, and they’ll get that, and will ignore bad angles. It’s kind of a sweet gig when you think about it.