Carnage Classic: Night of The Butcher

[Carnage]

I bought this on Ebay over a month ago and honestly didnt expect to ever get, but it randomly came today...

So heres the review

Lots of clips to start the show with Special K taking over the locker room and Micheal Shane giving an average promo, but its the first hint of "The Group" being born.

Micheal Shane vs Jeremy Lopez

Ive always considered Micheal Shane pretty average, but could have sparks of greatness. Lopez didnt have the sparks of greatness (although he was put over a lot by the announcers, talking about his great match with Xavier at Scramble Madness). It was a pretty average match, with a clip taken out of it. Shane is allright but not great. This match looks like two kids in wrestling school who are great, so they do some good basics and stuff but nothing exciting. Really not a bad match, just very bland

Rating: *1/2

#1 Contenders Tournament Match
Paul London vs EZ Money

EZ Money makes his RoH debut in a good, fast paced innovative match with London. Good Wrestling, reversals and an EXTREMELY fast pace make this match seem lightyears ahead of the opener. Finish comes out of no where and seems sudden...took a lot away from the match IMO.

Rating: **1/2

#1 Contenders Tournament Match
Chad Collyer vs Brian Danielson

I was thinking this match would be like the first one from the start of it, EXTREMELY basic stuff (hamerlocks, sleepers, wristlock) and not a lot of revfersals. Then they get past the feeling out process and starting doing lightning quick counters, then Collyer goes after the leg and looks like he is going to pull out an upset. The match goes close to twenty minutes and really has a great arc to it, AWESOME WRESTLING, but the start did take a little to long to make it an AWESOME match...still a great one though

Rating: ***3/4

#1 Contenders Scramble Match
Red/Jay Briscoe vs Da Hit Squad vs The Sat vs Special K (Joey and Derranged)

One of the better Scrambles ive seen, and only Derrangeds second match in RoH. A really good length and some absolutely INSANE stuff by Red towards the end, Red Dead lifts JOEL MAXIMO (not jose, the small one...JOEL) and hoists him over his head and hits an F5! Then Joel Maximo proceeds to kill Red with five piledrivers and some insane impact moves. I feel the winner of this match should have been Red/Jay setting up a good match between them and the Prophecy (because i know the SAT vs The Prophecy match at Final Battle 2002 was awful). But The SATs did look very good in this contest. Sick Match

Rating: ***1/2

Up Next: Divine Storm vs Shockwave/Jeff Star, Paul London vs American Dragon

[Carnage]

I realize that i forgot to Review this earlier:

CM Punk vs Colt Cabana

This is Cabanas debut in RoH and he dosent disappoint, very good fast paced match between the two. IMO its a million times better than there Final Battle 2002 match but not as good as many of there other encounters. Good Match though

Rating: ***

Divine Storm vs Jeff Star/Shockwave

I was expecting this to be awful, and it was not, just short. Jeff Star and Shockwave basically got squashed but Devine and Quiet Storm both didnt screw anything up and looked quite impressive. Still nothing amazing though

Rating: **

Note: Cool angle with CW Anderson after the match, very realistic and well done

#1 Contenders Tournament Final
Paul London vs Brian Danielson

AWESOME FN MATCH. Definitly a great showing out of both men, IMO its equal to Epic Encounter wrestling wise, but psychology and stamina wise its not the same (Although this was Londons third match as he had a match against Angel Dust during the earlier TV taping). Awesome Match

Rating: ****

Post Match both men put each other over and London calls Danielson the best wrestler in the world

Up Next: Styles vs Xavier, Cide/Abdullah vs The CC

[Agent Kev]

London/Danielson is definitely under-pimped IMO. I liked it a lot. I also really dug Xavier/AJ.

[Carnage]

Xavier vs AJ Styles

The Opening to this match was not nearly as climatic as i assumed. They actually botched it in a way because they claimed Simply Luscious was the reason Xavier got his foot on the bottom rope, but because Luscious was nowhere NEAR his foot Xavier had to put it there on his own. Killing the whole "luscious helped him keep the belt" theory that they kept repeating throughout the match. Anyways, there wasnt much flow to this match and the ending sequence was good but RANDOM. APPARENTLY Xavier worked over AJs knee during the match...i dont know, cause i didnt see it...and i was WATCHING THE MATCH. Because AJ randomly starting selling the knee after a top rope move which eventually led to the finish. Now if the knee had been more isolated and there had a been a little bit of work done to it than that would have been fine...but there was NOTHING. This whole match wasnt bad, but there was no story told and really no flow to it. So although both men hit some nice looking move, it didnt intrest me at all

Rating: **

Abdullah/Homicide vs The Carnage Crew

Granted I am a huge Homicide and Carnage Crew Fan, so i was excited to see them go at it. But GOD Abdullah was AWFUL, never have i actually seen someone just do ONE THING throughtout a whole match...but Abdullah did. And it wasnt even a move...it was STABBING PEOPLE. Aside from Abdullah the CC and Homicide busted there butts, but with Abdullah taking up so much space they really didnt have a lot to work around. Homicides dive through a table is the highlight of the match, but you can see the same dive in his WrestleRave match with Trent Acid...and its a one BILLION times better match

Rating: .3 Stars (.1 for Loc, Devito and Homicide just being there). If you a big Fan of Red i suggest you do find someway to watch this show as he gives one of his best peformances and displays more stength than i have EVER seen him display. But other than that, you can skip this show and rest easy at night

Post Show Promos: Homicides promo is...a Homicide Promo. The CC cut a good promo and Punk and Cabana have an intresting angle play out to lead up to there Final Battle Match. To bad the match didnt live up to the hype

Overall: This is probably RoHs worst show workrate wise, ill admit. But i still hate Final Battle 2002 more because so many of the matches are clipped...but from a live perspective that must have been an infititly better show. So in other words, if your a big fan of London vs Dragon...go for EE and watch it twice.