Saturday 30 October 2021

Revisiting 00s US Indies #38

Homicide v Necro Butcher (ROH Ring of Homicide, 5/13/06)

How good was the ROH v CZW feud? You've got this workrate super-indie known for guys like AJ Styles and CM Punk and Samoa Joe - the real upper echelon favourites of folk talking about wrestling on the internet - putting on matches that yer man Meltzer is raving about and throwing all sorts of star ratings at, and yet at this point, even in the midst of an acclaimed year-long title reign by THE internet wrestling community sacred cow, the best stuff happening on every show was whatever involved a bunch of scumbags from a garbage fed running into town and wreaking havoc. I checked out on ROH in early 2008, but for a two-year stretch before that it became a promotion that consistently ran awesome brawls, and part of me wishes they just leaned all the fucking way into that and rebranded as a 2000s indie Mid-South. To hell with your Davey Richards and Tyler Blacks of the world, give Necro Butcher the keys to the kingdom. What was so great about ROH v CZW was how chaotic it was. It felt like all manner of shit could kick off at any moment, and this was one of those moments. Memphis was the king (man I am hilarious) of the match-angle segment, where both aspects would mesh together to make a seamless whole. This was that, but stiffer and with lots of cussing and an increased likelihood of someone actually being killed. Homicide v Necro wasn't even the scheduled match -- it was supposed to be Joe v Necro, but that got abandoned early when Hero and Castagnoli interjected. Then Adam Pearce and BJ Whitmer evened the score and for a minute there we got a redux of the 100th Show riot. Many chairs were battered over heads, people were thrown bodily into things in uncomfortable ways, Adam Pearce crushed Claudio with an absolute bastard of a piledriver, Necro took a powerbomb across two chairs that would make you vomit, it was ROH v CZW at its scuzzy best. Then the CZW guys are going to kill Whitmer and the lights go out, the siren blares and everyone goes crazy. Homicide had stayed on the peripheries of this turf war before now, still a heel feuding with Colt Cabana and trying to poison him with bleach, but on this night he stepped up, if not necessarily for ROH then at least for himself, or maybe just out of belligerence. The actual Homicide v Necro part ruled. You probably know what you're getting and they largely deliver. This is also the match that's been GIF'd and used on twitter in meme format to communicate when someone spouting a terrible opinion needs to shut up, as Homicide incites a near-murder by getting about a hundred fans to throw chairs into the ring as Necro curls up underneath them. They then wrestle part of the match on top of this sea of chairs and obviously Necro Butcher is going to be taking lunatic bumps on a million folded chairs, because why would you expect anything else. "Welcome to Ring of Homicide, bitch!" A corker of a feud. 

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