One of the things that Ring of Honor always did very well under its previous booking regime was to deliver the goods on their biggest shows. With that in mind, Final Battle 2008 was the first big test of Adam Pearce’s booking, as while some of the lower shows had received negative reviews, this was one of their trademark shows, it’s in the New York market, taking place at the Hammerstein Ballroom, and had several major matches both in terms of long-time feuds and dream matches.

The DVD begins with a backstage promo by The Age of the Fall. Jimmy Jacobs talks about how life is cyclical. OK I’ve heard the bullshit lie used in wrestling down periods that the wrestling business is cyclical, but now LIFE is too? He says he and Delirious are winning the tag team titles, and Tyler Black is going to win his #1 contenders match against Austin Aries.

The opening match saw Claudio Castagnoli lose on a fluke rollup to Kenny Omega. I didn’t like Omega here, but it’s a basic story of the underdog being overmatched but coming away with a win, and Claudio becoming further enraged by the losing streak. It was a fine match, but really went too long and had too much back and forth for the story they were trying to tell. By working things fairly evenly, they don’t get across the idea that this was a real embarrassment for Claudio.

Up next was a Four Corner Survival as Jerry Lynn pinned Chris Hero in a match also involving Necro Butcher and Rhett Titus. I can’t believe how less interesting Hero is to watch now as compared with a year ago. ROH is a company that desperately needs some light relief characters in amongst the serious guys (something that Colt Cabana’s return will help with immensely) and Hero was PERFECT for that. Now he’s just another guy who hits hard. I hate Four Corner Survivals as a rule, they just seem like an excuse to get people on the card, and when Necro and Titus have a mini-feud going it really makes you feel like the other two guys don’t need to be there.

After the match, Jimmy Jacobs confronted Necro Butcher, and Delirious attacked Necro from behind. ROH World Tag Team Champions Kevin Steen and El Generico made the save and that kick started the tag title match. I don’t like the idea of all babyfaces are friends and would make saves for other babyfaces even if they have absolutely no history with them, that’s never made sense to me. I also think that although Steen and Generico are a cool “odd couple” tag team I don’t think they do what The Briscoes or even Age of the Fall did in terms of elevating the stature of the tag titles; I just don’t buy them as a main event level act.

The match itself was good, but with the new ROH philosophy of not taking away from the big matches to come later, you definitely felt like they weren’t going all out, choosing instead to work a match based around a Kevin Steen knee injury and the interaction between Delirious and Daizee Haze, who distracted him long enough for Generico to take him out with the running boot, which led to Steen hitting the package piledriver and Generico the brainbuster for the win.

The Briscoes cut a promo on Kensuke Sasake and Katsuhiko Nakajima, saying they’re in America now and need to MAN UP~!

The next match was a New York City Street Fight, featuring Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards and Go Shiozaki of Sweet N Sour Inc. taking on Brent Albright, Roderick Strong and Erik Stevens. Action-packed is the saying I would use to describe this match, as they brawled all around ringside, only coming into the ring after about 10 minutes, and because you basically got three brawls going on at the same time there was always action.

The only down period of the match was when Strong and Stevens had been taken out and were on the floor selling, leaving Albright in the ring by himself facing a 1-on-3 situation. Normally for a babyface, that is a great situation to be in because you can get sympathy easily and have people into you as you fight against the odds, but with Albright I just didn’t care. Strong would’ve been far better to work that spot. Eventually the faces come back and Shiozaki is left facing the 1-on-3 and he taps to Albright’s armbar.

Then The Briscoes wrestled Kensuke Sasake and Katsuhiko Nakajima in a typical Briscoes match, with Nakajima doing most of the work for the Japanese team as Sasake is a legend and therefore for him just being there is enough. I think The Briscoes are the one act in ROH who will benefit greatly from the HD Net move, everything about them is perfect for five minute TV matches where they can go out there do loads of cool shit and not have to try to stretch things out to 25 minutes which they clearly still don’t really know how to do, at least not for me anyway.

It’s really something when you see a Nakajima standing axe kick and I’m thinking that’s a death move that would make a cool finisher and Jay totally no-sells it and carries on the match as if it never happened. That seems to happen a lot with The Briscoes, as towards the end Mark suddenly has a knee injury and I’ve no idea why, except that it plays into a post-match angle. Briscoes win with the Doomsday Device, in what, for such a dream match, you’d have to consider as a disappointment.

After the match, Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards attack The Briscoes, handcuffing Jay to the ropes and giving Mark a chairshot to the knee. It was fine, but it happened so quickly, the angle was done a million times better and more dramatically by Randy Orton, HHH and Stephanie McMahon on RAW a few weeks before WrestleMania. Kevin Steen and El Generico run out for the save, but when their backs are turned Richards and Edwards attack them as well, taking out Steen with a chairshot to his knee, which I remember HAD been worked on in his match, before Roderick Strong, Brent Albright and Erik Stevens are out for the save.

Albright cuts a shouty 1980s babyface promo begging Cary Silkin to give them a cage match, and Cary does. I believe this is the first time Cary had been acknowledged on camera, much less revealed as the owner of the company. I didn’t like it, because the “on air authority figure” is a tired easy booking shortcut format which peaked with Eric Bischoff in the nWo and Vince McMahon in the Attitude Era and will never be done as well as that ever again.

Then Naomichi Marufuji and Takeshi Morishima cut promos in Japanese, which a translator translates into English. I don’t understand why that’s done but whatever.

After clips are shown of Tyler Black and Austin Aries’ match at Wrestling At The Gateway where Black won, they had a rematch here, in a #1 contenders match for the World Title. If you could point to a match on this card and say it’s what you’d expect a typical Ring Of Honor match to be, it would be this bout. A good hard-working back and forth affair with the crowd split, and several big moves that get recognition pops, and “my turn/your turn” offence for 20 minutes of hot action.

It was clear throughout the match that they were building to something with Aries though, as he showed himself to be clearly bothered when the crowd cheered Black, although to be fair that’s something that the ROH crowds had been begging for going back for nine months before this. The match ended when Black missed a Phoenix Splash, and Aries hit the kick to the head, brainbuster and 450 splash to win. Afterwards is when the big angle happened, as Jimmy Jacobs berated Black for losing and turned on him with a low blow, and the End Time. He then set up Black’s head for some Pillmanizing, only for Aries to come back out, we thought for the save but actually to lay out Black with a chairshot himself. Both Jacobs and Aries were very clear afterwards, and the commentators hammered the point home further, that they weren’t aligning themselves, they just had a common enemy in Black. Jacobs drops the towel on a bloody Black afterwards, symbolising Black’s refusal to do the same for Jacobs and save him the humiliation of actually saying “I Quit” at the last PPV.

Clips are then shown of Nigel McGuiness’ match with Naomichi Marufuji from Glory By Honor V Night 2 in September 2006, before their rematch on this show. Nigel got his win back here with the jawbreaker lariat, becoming the first wrestler to hold the ROH World Championship throughout an entire calendar year. The match was fantastic because they worked it around Marufuji doing cool shit rather than just plugging another guy into Nigel’s formula, as successful as that proved for the likes of Tyler Black and El Generico in terms of hooking the crowd into their World Title challenges.

Marufuji and McGuiness worked a smart and creative match with memorable moments galore, particularly based around Marufuji and his huge array of kicks, as well as the fact that Nigel is facing somebody he hasn’t beaten, an extremely rare occurrence during his title run where, due to ROH running such a large number of shows on such a small roster, isn’t something you’d see a lot with several guys getting multiple title shots. Towards the end, Nigel suffered another bicep injury and essentially wrestled the remainder of the match with one arm, which added an extra dimension to Nigel’s big win. After the match, Jerry Lynn came out, and after Nigel called him old and washed up Lynn went into screamy shouty 1980s wrestler mode, to which the crowd responded at first by laughing at him, which wasn’t great.

Before the main event gets underway, Prince Nana rushes the ring to beg for ROH to give him his managerial job back, before security get hold of him and bundle him out of the building. Then we get a video package on the rivalry between Bryan Danielson and Takeshi Morishima.

Then the main event saw Morishima face Danielson in a Fight Without Honor. This was a brilliant match, one of those great matches where it goes 25 minutes but flies by in what feels like 10 because there are never any dead spots in the action and you’re totally engrossed, from the moment where Danielson attacks Morishima, bundles him over the guardrail, dives into the crowd and recovers to get up and sing his entrance theme The Final Countdown along with the crowd to the point where Danielson wraps a steel chain around his arm, delivers 20 elbows to Morishima’s head before switching to the cattle mutilation for the win.

Along the way it’s pro wrestling at its most basic and great, as the monster heel Morishima beats the underdog babyface Danielson bloody, uses his size and power to supreme advantage, before Danielson starts to make the comeback using his fire and guts and determination. They have call backs to earlier in their feud as at one point Morishima starts aiming elbows at Danielson’s head, and Danielson starts his comeback with some stomping low blows, and it’s just a great match for ROH to end the year on.

The “David v. Goliath” story is a basic one told very often in pro wrestling, but when it’s done right I believe there’s no story better, and this was definitely one of the better ones.

Afterwards, some ROH babyfaces come into the ring (and they really need to dress like stars not like unemployed layabouts), and Danielson cuts a promo putting over this show as ROH’s record attendance, and asks that they keep supporting the company in 2009.

Overall, you cannot really complain about this show, you got great matches, the payoff to an 18 month long angle in the main event, the stage set for a couple of big future storylines, and nothing here where you’d roll your eyes and think it’s not the ROH of old. However, I do think that in the future you will see ROH deliver on the big shows such as these, but the so-called b-shows, which used to be loaded cards with good matches, may be sacrificed. Artistically that may make ROH look worse off, but for the guys it would prolong their careers and make the biggest shows even more special, so it’s a trade off with some good aspects if you look past the obvious bad sides.

Mark Bright
mark@ifight365.com