Death Becomes Her (Fighting Spirit Magazine, Issue 131; April 2016)

by Alan Counihan

Ten years after the start of arguably the greatest feud in the history of independent pro wrestling, Alan Counihan talks to those involved to recount the drama and violence of ROH vs. CZW.

ROH NEWSWIRE - APRIL 18, 2006

The ROH fans are talking about bringing red and black streamers for the home team this Saturday in Philadelphia. Will the CZW fans respond with yellow and black streamers? Will the CZW fans show up to support their team? Will CZW be embarrassed by an empty side of bleachers?

The ROH staff will do everything possible to make all the CZW fans feel at home. CZW will have its own set of bleachers close to the ring. Be there this Saturday and see Team ROH of Samoa Joe, BJ Whitmer and Adam Pearce battle Team CZW of Chris Hero, Necro Butcher and Super Dragon.

This is sure to be a very unique atmosphere, and one that people will be talking about for years. This is one event that you will truly need to experience live. It will be a great moment in ROH history when we defeat the CZW team and end the 100th ever event and Milestone Series with a huge celebration!

ROH NEWSWIRE - APRIL 23, 2006

ROH lost much more than a match in last night’s main event. The CZW team defeated the ROH team when Claudio Castagnoli turned on ROH and sided with Chris Hero, who he teams with in every other promotion. ROH’s 100th show ended with team CZW celebrating in the CZW bleachers, and the ROH fans shocked.

We did not work for 100 shows to have things end like this. CZW already ruined our ECW Arena debut and now they’ve taken our 100th show celebration away from us. There will be hell to pay and it will start next week in Ohio.

Posts like the those from the ROH Newswire were commonplace on the Ring Of Honor website in the spring of 2006. Booker Gabe Sapolsky was fanning the flames of a very real promotional rivalry between ROH and Combat Zone Wrestling, which also included fans taking sides, and in turn orchestrating one of the most memorable pro wrestling feuds of the last two decades, and the definitive storyline in U.S. indie wrestling to date.

While the feud went deeper into 2006 with a huge climax at Death Before Dishonor IV, the point at which it became legendary was at ROH’s 100th Show on April 22. That was a truly special night, where the war felt real because the emotion was real and the heat was unmistakably so. For pro wrestling, it was more akin to the 1980s than it was the 2000s, but it all had a modern spin.

To understand how it got to that point, one must go back to the infancy of the feud, and even the period before it started.

READY FOR COMBAT

“If you look back as far as 2002, CZW was strong in Philly, and XPW invaded their territory,” said Chris Hero, one of the key men in the ROH versus CZW feud, and the driving force behind the CZW side. “I don’t know if people were ready to work together then, but I knew there was massive interest, and I knew that Philadelphia, with the history of ECW, there was definitely potential there. It seemed like if people could work together, it could be done really well.

“Not just for me, but for the fans of CZW there was a feeling of elitism that went around with Ring Of Honor,” Hero told FSM. “It was just this feeling that they – as a promotion, the wrestlers, the fans – thought, ‘We’re better.’”

Hero took his feelings and those of CZW fans and made them known in a promo at the group’s 2005 Cage Of Death show.

“There is a promotion that waltzes into every territory twice a year and expects the home promotions to arrange their schedules around theirs,” he stated for the audience, referring to the ROH show on January 14, 2006 that bumped CZW to the afternoon that day. “Well, I am sick and tired of conforming to that bullshit!”

This statement of intent was viewed as a shoot promo by the many who’d thought much the same thing, and by the time Hero handed back the microphone, the CZW fans were entirely behind the man who had been a vehement heel on its shows.

On the ROH side, Gabe Sapolsky was looking for a way to boost flagging business in the Philadelphia market, and in turn tie up some loose ends involving champion Bryan Danielson. In September 2005, “The American Dragon” put Hero over clean in IWA Mid-South’s Ted Petty Invitational tournament. Danielson getting his win back was something that, according to Hero, was an added bonus to a show that would become known as Hell Freezes Over. For him, it may have felt like that considering that he’d had been on the outside looking in since ROH launched in 2002.

“When they started booking people for Ring Of Honor, I got the cold shoulder,” Hero explained. “They wanted Punk, they wanted Cabana, but there was never any interest in me.”

Hero was fine with that for the most part, because he was able to spread his wings far and wide, and carve out his own niche.

“If I was going to come in, I didn’t want to come in as just a guy in a Scramble match or something like that. I wanted there to be a big impact, and it was crazy how it ended up working out in the perfect way.”

OLD-SCHOOL SOCIAL MEDIA

In the weeks leading up to the Danielson versus Hero collision, the CZW star took a unique approach to building interest in the match, using what is now a relic of the social media world.

“I went to LiveJournal and started to articulate my feelings on the situation. There wasn’t a whole lot of animosity, but it came from a real place. It was the infancy of social media, but it generated a lot of interest and Gabe was really happy with how that went.”

“So, yes, I signed the contract,” he wrote at LiveJournal. “Somewhere pigs are flying, little internet kids are e-mailing and text messaging their friends, and we will all see the debate shift from, ‘Why hasn’t Chris Hero wrestled for ROH?’ to ‘Will Chris Hero even come back to ROH to defend his title..?’

“How poetic it’ll be when the wrestler that was never good enough for Ring of Honor walks away from the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory in Philadelphia [as] the new and undisputed Ring of Honor World heavyweight champion.

“I haven’t always been the best, but now that I am the best, I plan on staying that way. See you on the 14th, Danielson. It’ll be nice meeting you too, Gabe.”

“Many individuals have been browbeaten into actually believing that the ‘big and bad’ promotion, Ring of Honor, is the end-all and be-all of independent wrestling,” Hero had written 9 days earlier. “I am living, breathing, walking and talking proof that you can be a success without playing politics and without having to kiss anyone’s ass in the process. Heroes don’t kiss ass and heroes don’t back down. I will not back down from Ring of Honor.”

Thus, Hell Freezes Over was an important point in the feud, not because the match was a must-see classic, but because of the feel of having the CZW guys on ROH turf. The dynamic at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory on January 14, 2006 was special from the start; the CZW crew really came across as outsiders, from the way they carried themselves to the gaudy, bright yellow t-shirts they sported. While there was no solid plan for anything past this show, ROH knew that it was onto something.

“That atmosphere was a clear indication to everyone involved that the ROH versus CZW concept, as well as Hero in ROH, period... needed to continue into the future,” explained the ROH commentator of the time, Dave Prazak, who now runs the SHIMMER promotion. “It was a classic case of seeing how the fans get into a particular story, and regardless of what might have been the general plan for the immediate future, switching gears, and putting everything behind the direction the fanbase wanted.”

The feeling quickly became that anything can happen when CZW shows up, and the group continued to do so in different markets on the ROH loop. At Tag Wars in Dayton on January 27, Hero and Necro Butcher took seats in the crowd and were heckling the ROH wrestlers throughout the show, before finally being ejected. They caused quite the disturbance on the way out.

“We basically ripped down the entire setup, exposing the locker-room,” remembered Hero. “It was something you would not expect to see at a live event. Being able to do those chaotic things was a really cool element of the whole feud.”

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY... FUCK YOU!”

On February 25 in New Jersey, ROH celebrated its fourth anniversary, and with it launched “The Milestone Series” – a string of shows that would begin with the Fourth Anniversary Show and end with The 100th Show in April. No-one from the CZW side was in the mood for waiting to crash the party, and in a crazy scene, Hero stormed the ring during a match that had spilled into the crowd. Getting on the mic, he began to sing the most sarcastic rendition of Happy Birthday ever heard, and when ROH wrestlers tried to get to him, they were cut off by the CZW backup. It was the first all-out brawl of the feud, and amidst the carnage, Hero ended up back in the ring on his own (with his jeans ripped apart from the mêlée), launching into another promo when suddenly Mr. ROH, Samoa Joe, appeared in the aisle and hit the ring, double-legging Hero as confetti fell from the ceiling. It was an amazing moment.

As the feud grew, many side stories blossomed. ROH commissioner Jim Cornette’s hatred for what he perceived as mindless hardcore wrestling carried ROH on the promo end, while Claudio Castagnoli was determined to prove to the rest of the ROH locker-room that he did not stand with CZW. Conspicuous by his absence in the storyline was Homicide, and that later became the central aspect of proceedings.

Everything played out at the perfect speed, and Sapolsky did an incredible job of never giving away too much. The ROH versus CZW interactions would be sudden and impactful, never coming close to wearing out their welcome.

At The 100th Show in Philadelphia on April 26, Team CZW of Super Dragon, Necro Butcher, and Hero took on Team ROH of Joe, Adam Pearce and BJ Whitmer. The participants alone made for a tasty recipe: for CZW, Hero was the lightning rod, Necro was the uncontrollable wildman, and Super Dragon was the cocksure ass-kicker. Meanwhile, on the ROH front, a determined BJ Whitmer was out for blood after being savagely mugged by the CZW wrestlers at Arena Warfare on March 11, while Adam Pearce was the old-school brawler standing up for what he believed in, and Samoa Joe was the ace and flag bearer.

In addition to the wrestlers, you had the crowd factor, and the home and away team atmosphere that the split bleachers achieved. Hero took full advantage of the setup in a promo that happened early in the show.

“I came out and I started cutting my promo on the ROH side where everybody hated me and were booing me, and then I walked all the way around through the crowd and ended my promo in the bleachers with the CZW fans. What a cool feeling that was, to start a promo one way and end it in a completely different direction, with a different energy.”

For Prazak, the match is one of the shining lights of the feud.

“The first thing that pops into my mind from that period is that wild six-man Streetfight in Philadelphia. [It was] such an electric crowd atmosphere, and straight chaos in the brawl between the two sides.”

The invaders got their tails whipped for a lengthy period of the match, only mounting fleeting comebacks from time to time. Eventually, however, they turned the tide with the incredible visual of Whitmer taking a Psycho Driver through a table from Super Dragon. Pearce also suffered a terrible gash to his head, and was bleeding like a stuck pig. Joe was doing an admirable job fending off the CZW clan, but it eventually became too much for him. Claudio Castagnoli then emerged to help Joe, but in a shocker, he turned and aligned himself with CZW.

Hero then pinned Joe, and the instantly recognisable CZW music played as its wrestlers celebrated in the bleachers with their fans.

RING OF HOMICIDE

“Look around you, there’s a war going on. Are you men or mice? Are you dogs or pussies?” Samoa Joe chastised Homicide, who had stayed out of the feud thus far. Indeed, the post-100th Show period really centred around whether or not Homicide would finally arrive to save the company he’d been with since the beginning. Homicide had been a full-on heel in ROH for several years, and had just come off a blood feud with the popular Colt Cabana, but the fans respected him as one of ROH’s toughest guys, and he was thought of as the soldier that would make the difference.

The May 13 in Edison, New Jersey card was supposed to be capped by Samoa Joe versus Necro Butcher in a much anticipated main event. Before the match could really get going, however, Joe was taken out at the knee, and helped backstage. A brawl started up involving some of the other key players in the feud, but it was not what the fans had paid to see. The CZW side was getting legitimate heat for taking away the bout fans had paid for, but then all of a sudden, the familiar opening of Beanie Segel’s The Truth hit, and the atmosphere in the room turned on a sixpence. The track signified that Homicide was entering the war, and he cleaned house, bringing it down to he and Necro. The referee rang the bell, and all of a sudden, there was a new main event – one that the fans were electric to experience.

The bout was one of the most unique in company history, best remembered for the amazing scene of flying chairs from the crowd covering up Necro in the middle of the ring. The near-falls were crazy, with Homicide dishing out all kinds of punishment on the barefoot brawler. It took several attempts, but eventually Homicide put him down with a huge lariat, after which he stood tall in the ring, declaring that this was the “ring of Homicide” (later the DVD title for this show) and that he was waiting on anyone that wanted to challenge him in it.

Still, however, there was another twist in the Homicide tale, as the good vibes only lasted a few weeks, until he felt that he was screwed over in a couple of title opportunities, most notably on June 6 at Destiny against Danielson.

The question started to become, “Which side is Homicide really on?” as the hype ramped up for Death Before Dishonor in July, and the match that would be the true climax of the feud.

CAGE OF DEATH

The hype leading into the Cage of Death match was enormous. While the six-man tag at The 100th Show was built on being the first full-on clash between the sides, the Cage of Death had its buzz because of the number of stories that were part of its fabric. For example, BJ Whitmer and Ace Steel had taken out Super Dragon, and were marked men by CZW as a result, while Castagnoli had shown himself to be a traitor. Both sides also had empty slots on their five-man squads, and speculation was rampant over who would fill them, particularly as Cornette was trying to persuade Homicide to do so, while there was the potential for him to join the CZW team. Meanwhile, Hero’s most hated rival in the Combat Zone, Eddie Kingston, was thought by many to be the ace up the CZW sleeve.

The masterful booking of Sapolsky had led to a strong finishing straight.

The other thing the Cage of Death had going for it was the gimmick itself. The bout was synonymous with CZW and its deathmatch workers, and was something that nobody ever thought would occur in an ROH ring. It was essentially a War Games affair, but worked inside a different style of cage, with more of a reliance on weapons. In the War Games spirit, Cornette had recruited his pal, JJ Dillon – on the Horseman team for the first such match in 1987 – to act as the supervisor at the door. During the show, ROH champion Danielson, who had avoided the feud due to his hectic schedule of title defences, claimed the last spot on Team ROH, and as a result Cornette was more than happy to be able to avoid giving in to Homicide’s list of demands.

The bout started with Castagnoli and Joe, and the intensity was off the charts. The National Guard Armory in Philadelphia was once again split, with the CZW fans having their own section. The two teams took turns adding members, and when Danielson arrived, ROH had all the momentum in the world.
The champion laid waste to Hero and Castagnoli, and was about as big a babyface as anyone could possibly be at a given moment in time.

But then, he turned into the biggest heel. Danielson clipped he injured knee of Joe, and destroyed him. “The Samoan Submission Machine” had to be helped away, and then with the most sinister of grins, Danielson left the cage, passing a raging Cornette, content that he had taken out a major championship challenger.

Danielson didn’t care about helping ROH at all.

It was a stroke of booking genius by Sapolsky; possibly his finest chess move to date. In the span of a few moments, ROH had essentially lost two men. CZW had a major advantage, and for Hero, this was his time to shine. He got on the mic, and gave play-by-play as he orchestrated a beatdown of ROH’s wounded soldiers Whitmer, Pearce and Ace Steel.

“It was me finally getting that moment in ROH, where it was my ring. It was a case of, ‘I’ve earned this. I’ve fought for this, and now I’m in the ring, you guys all have to listen to me, you have to watch me, regardless of whether you want to or not.’ I was the antagonist and the protagonist for the crowd – for both sections. That was my opportunity to take centre stage.”

There was another man who seized the opportunity in the Cage of Death. “Spider” Nate Webb was the unheralded star of the match; he was the bump machine of the CZW side, and did everything he could to take the contest to yet another level.

“The unsung hero of that match was Nate,” Hero confirmed. “He came in and just destroyed everyone and everything, and then in turn got destroyed himself. Without Nate Webb, that match doesn’t happen the way it did. He was like our Sabu-esque mercenary”.

In the later stages of the match, the big twists involved Kingston and Homicide. “The King Of Diamonds” was revealed by Hero as the final CZW entrant, but the team soon fell apart when the pair failed to coexist. Homicide’s music played, and in a scene reminiscent of New Jersey, he cleaned house. One of the most memorable spots of the match was when he emptied a bag of thumbtacks in front of a charging Necro Butcher, who was barefoot as always, and then stabbed him with his trusty fork.

With Homicide in the mix, the pace picked up, and the ROH side mounted its comeback. Hero finally got what was coming to him, and then Webb was the recipient of the incredible match-ending and feud-concluding Cop Killa onto a barbed wire board.

Homicide had saved ROH.

A post-match angle involving Cornette, Pearce and Dillon turning on Homicide was as well booked as the match itself, and that set the company up for it’s next big storyline: Homicide’s chase for Danielson’s title.

CAREER DEFINING CAGE

“The feud did a lot for the careers of so many guys involved,” Prazak stated. “Not just Hero, but also Claudio, Pearce, Necro and more. Necro ended up still having a role in ROH into 2011, and this was his foot in the door. It also opened up some opportunities for guys like Webb, Kingston, and Super Dragon to appear on ROH shows and mix it up with the ROH regulars. It made for some exciting, fresh matches along the way.”

The feud was really one of the sparks that made 2006 the year that most ROH fans consider the critical peak of its history. It offered the promotion something really deep and meaningful that the fans could sink their teeth into, in addition to the great matches that were a given at that point. For Prazak, someone who has now been around independent wrestling for nearly 20 years, the feud deserves to be held in that kind of special regard.

“In wrestling, it’s not often that you find two promotions – which aren’t necessarily friendly with one another to begin with – that decide to put all egos aside and work with one another, for the common goal of doing great business while giving their respective fanbases what they want.

“That’s exactly what happened between ROH and CZW at the time. It was lightning in a bottle.”