As Ring of Honor continue to release their shows on DVD at great pace, it's not surprising that they can't get their top talent on each and every show.
Steel City Clash is a fine example of this. Even though it includes marquee names such as World Champion Nigel McGuinness and Bryan Danielson, it has the feeling of a 'B' show, not that there's anything wrong with that, because it still provides some great entertainment. Well, most of the time.
Sterling James Keenan's performance against the newly-turned Delirious doesn't exactly set the pulses racing. Things get a little better with the great team of Kenny King and Rhett Titus in the next match, as they go up against Erick Stevens and Matt Cross.
Things get a whole lot better in the third match, a technical classic between Mike Quackenbush and the aforementioned Danielson. It continues with the strong three way featuring Claudio Castagnoli, Brent Albright and the always watchable Jerry Lynn, but take a distinct downturn when Necro Butcher and Tyler Black team to take on their former Age of the Fall stablemates Jimmy Jacobs and Brodie Lee.
Thankfully, normal service is resumed when former partners Austin Aries and Roderick Strong face off, although Aries continues to wear those awful trunks. Finally, the main event sees McGuinness teaming with one half of ROH's best tag team, Davey Richards, against visiting Japanese star KENTA and one half of the tag team champions, El Generico. It's a very good match, although it's really just an advertisement for the following night's marquee matches at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.
There's also an unexpected bonus in the extras section. Along with the usual ROH Newswire, there's a couple of bonus matches featuring some of the company's up and coming stars.
So in all, it's not bad, but it's certainly not the best Ring of Honor DVD I've reviewed this year.
Rating: 3 Stars.
Extras: 3 Stars.
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