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First is the match where Xavier defeated Low Ki to win the ROH World Title after turning heel and revealing himself as a member of the Prophecy. Xavier had been portraying himself as a squeaky clean good guy since the beginning of ROH, and had challenged Low Ki to a title match in a sportsmanlike, face-to-face backstage conversation. Once they got in the ring, however, Xavier's offense was largely ineffective, as Low Ki decimated him until they went out on the floor and Xavier drove a concrete brick into Low Ki's ribs and bashed it into him with a chair. Low Ki was badly injured and clearly suffering from internal injuries after that, and though he managed to crawl back to the ring to continue the match, he was practically helpless as Xavier hit a 450 splash to become the second ROH World Champion. Shocking finish to the match and a surprisingly quick end to Low Ki's title reign.
The second match was the famous Streetfight between Paul London and Michael Shane, two graduates of the Texas Wrestling Academy who had been fighting over who the best wrestler to come out of the TWA really was. This was one of the matches that was thrown together at the last minute when the show was rebooked, but was easily the most memorable because of the series of insanely dangerous spots they pulled out, leading to the first ever "please don't die" chant directed at London. Perhaps the most famous (and replayed) spot in the match was the one where Shane was on the floor, and London set up a ladder in the corner and used it as a ramp that he ran up to hit a somersault dive onto Shane. Shane hit the Picture Perfect Elbow off the ladder but only got 2, and London was able to turn the momentum around and hit a shooting star press off the ladder for the win.
Finally, we come to the main event of Unscripted as Christopher Daniels & Donovan Morgan faced Bryan Danielson & Mike Modest in the finals of the tournament to crown the first ROH Tag Team Champions. The tournament had been badly decimated by the changes to the lineup, resulting in only three first round matches and Danielson & Modest making it to the finals even though they weren't even supposed to team up that night. Daniels, as the leader of the Prophecy, and Morgan, as the first recruit, were on the same page and had time to prepare ahead of time, giving them enough of an advantage that they got the win after Daniels pinned Danielson following Last Rites. Unscripted ended with the Prophecy, the top heel group in ROH, holding all the titles and all the power.
Now that they had all the titles, the Prophecy didn't want to let Low Ki anywhere near them ever again, and they hired a badass enforcer named Samoa Joe to take Low Ki out at Glory By Honor in the next match on the DVD. Even though Joe was technically on the Prophecy's side, he was a hired gun and didn't share in their beliefs regarding the Code of Honor, so while he didn't shake hands here due to this being a Fight Without Honor (the first in company history), his willingness to do so under normal circumstances led to frequent disagreements with his employers. Joe and Low Ki spent 20 minutes beating the crap out of each other in the kind of stiff strike exchange we wouldn't see again to this degree until years later when Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards, and Roderick Strong had their series and would pound each other into oblivion every night. Low Ki came out on top, but instead of a hot finish with some big flashy move, he just destroyed Joe with kicks and drilled him with forearms until Joe went down and Ki covered him for the win.
Next up is the first of three meetings in ROH between Bryan Danielson and AJ Styles, as they faced off for the #1 Contender's Trophy at All Star Extravaganza. Just to give a bit of background on the trophy for people who have never heard of it: because of the way Xavier got the ROH World Title simply by asking Low Ki face-to-face for a title shot, ROH decided that except for special circumstances (like someone pinning the champion in a non-title match), only the holder of the #1 Contender's Trophy would be able to challenge the champion. It was a title itself in a sense, because the person holding the trophy carried it around with them until they got their title shot and lost it if someone else beat them in the meantime. Once the title shot was received, the trophy would be vacated and some kind of mini-tournament would be held to crown a new #1 contender. The winner of this match would be the first person to hold the trophy and AJ came out on top, but not after Danielson put up a hell of a fight. Styles went for the Styles Clash late in the match, and Danielson desperately held onto the ropes and forced Styles to ram him headfirst into the corner until Danielson's grip broke. Even after that, Danielson wouldn't let AJ gets his legs over his arms to complete the move, so AJ muscled him up and hit a hard powerbomb, and that finally softened Danielson up enough to hit the Styles Clash and get the win.
Later on in the same show, Low Ki & Steve Corino took on Shinjiro Ohtani and Masato Tanaka from Zero One in Japan. ROH brought in a wide variety of outside talent early on, understanding that it would take some name value to get people watching and expose them to the ROH product and their full time roster. In this case, Steve Corino and Low Ki worked for Zero One at the time and ROH used the connection to get Ohtani and Tanaka in to work this show. Miscommunication led to victory for the Japanese, as Low Ki accidentally knocked Corino out with a springboard enziguiri, allowing Ohtani to hit the Spiral Bomb for the win.
Next up is what I believe to be the first ever Scramble Match in ROH, as the SAT, Amazing Red, and Divine Storm took on five members of Special K at the aptly-named Scramble Madness event in Massachusetts. We don't see these matches in ROH anymore, but basically they took place under Lucha rules where someone new can come in as soon as one of their partners leaves the ring without having to tag, and it turns into this big spotfest where they pulled out all kinds of ridiculous, contrived BS moves as they built to the finish. I'm pretty sure you can guess how I feel about this style of wrestling, and Special K was designed around it. Now, for those who have never heard of Special K, their story was that they were a bunch of spoiled rich kids who didn't want to do anything with their lives other then leech off their parents and party at raves. They all had cute drug reference names like Hydro, Slim J, Yeyo, Mellow, and Angel Dust, and would come out acting like they were all hopped up on something. Various people would randomely float in and out of the group with little or no explanation, including some oddballs like Joey Mercury, Mikey Whipwreck, and even Ox Baker finding their way into the mix at various points. Though Special K did introduce us to Jay Lethal and included other people with some level of talent, it was also home to some of the shittiest spot monkeys to ever find their way through the Northeastern independent scene in the early 2000s, and every single match looked exactly the same. They flipped, they flopped, they hit a lot of crazy spots, they missed a bunch of others, and the non-Special K team got the win when Red came off the top rope with the Infrared, landing square on Angel Dust's face for the win.
Back to actual wrestling, as AJ Styles challenged Xavier for the ROH World Title at Night of the Butcher. Incidentally, this show was named that because Abdullah the Butcher was teaming with Homicide to face the Carnage Crew in the main event, but that match isn't included for some reason. AJ hit the Styles Clash about ten seconds in, but Xavier's valet Simply Luscious put Xavier's foot on the rope to save him. Alexis Laree (who would go on to fame as Mickie James, and was in AJ's corner here) took Luscious out, making it a straight one-on-one encounter. It's a real drag that history hasn't been kinder to Xavier, because the dude was an amazing worker and never got his due because of the way he was presented during the Prophecy angle. Xavier was a solid wrestler with great timing, he had a great look, and understood the subtleties about doing little things to get crowd heat like shoving AJ's head around with his boot and dangling the belt in AJ's face while he had him down. Xavier was a classic heel champion and was good at his job, and AJ was so crazy over as a babyface that the crowd heat alone made this one a winner. Xavier worked over AJ's legs throughout the match, so when AJ hit a Styles Clash off the second rope later on, he hurt himself and wasn't able to pin Xavier in time. Xavier smartly took AJ's knee out with a kick and got a rolling figure four cradle for the win.
Bryan Danielson got another shot at the #1 Contender's Trophy at Night of the Butcher, this time facing Paul London to determine who would go on to challenge Xavier at Final Battle 2002. London and Danielson trained together at the Texas Wrestling Academy, and along with Spanky and Michael Shane, a fairly major storyline in 2002 revolved around who the best graduate from the TWA was. Danielson and London had the most success out of the bunch, and their rivalry would continue to grow from here and eventually culminate in the legendary two out of three falls match at Epic Encounter. But that was still a few months away, and this time around London pinned Danielson after hitting a shooting star press to again deny Danielson the title shot he so desperately wanted.
We wrap the DVD up with London challenging Xavier for the ROH World Title at Final Battle 2002. I don't know that I'm necessarily on board with the people who consider London this vastly underutilized wrestler who would have been a huge star if WWE hadn't mishandled him so badly, but I do think that matches like this show that they could have gotten a lot more out of him than they did. He was heavily reliant on spots, but he also had that sort of Ricky Morton-esque victim charisma where the fans got more and more behind him the worse he got his ass kicked during the match. They teased the fans by having London pin Xavier for 3 while Xavier had his foot on the ropes, leading to the match continuing and Xavier hitting a sleeper suplex followed by the X-breaker for the win.
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There was a lot of good stuff on this DVD set and they covered many of the most important moments, but I think this would have been better served as a three disc set since it's impossible to cover ALL the important things to happen on just two discs. A lot of good stuff like Eddy Guererro vs Super Crazy, the AJ Styles vs Low Ki rematch from Honor Invades Boston, the appearance by Abdullah the Butcher, and the four way time limit draw that main evented Final Battle 2002 were all left out, and I think it would have been good to include more backstage promos and other storyline segments so we knew why many of the folks involved wanted at each other.
One of the major problems with the ROH DVD compilations has been that they just include matches and nothing else to give you a context for anything that's going on, or even some narration to tell you why the matches we're watching are happening. The matches are terrific, no doubt about that, but we need to know more about the reasons these guys are wrestling each other since not everyone has been watching ROH since 2002, and not all the fans who came along later are motivated enough to catch up on a decade of history.
Thumbs way up for the wrestling content, thumbs way down on letting us know why those matches were happening.
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