This year's ROH Tag Wars DVD included a four team Trios Tournament, as opposed to the spectacular eight team version they did last year. I found the prior Trios tournament to be very entertaining, but cutting the brackets in half this year kind of diminished the spectacle. Despite this, Tag Wars 06 was a great event with the usual Ring of Honor action.

The lower mid-card contests were highlighted by the invasion of CZW's Chris Hero & Necro Butcher. While Claudio Castagnoli and Chad Collyer grappled inside the ring, Hero & Butcher showed up with tickets and sat in amongst the fans. This turned out to be a major distraction for one the participants of the following match. Ace Steel took great offense to the presence of the CZW contingent and stopped the match to address their cat calls. Steel did not beat around the bush, and quickly challenged Hero & Butcher to a fight. Upon jumping the rail, Hero & Butcher were crushed and eradicated by the entire ROH roster. During the mêlée, ROH Commissioner Jim Cornette was blind-sided by a mystery assailant and ended up with a bloody lip. Cornette power-walked to the ring and cut a flavorful promo on the "garbage wrestlers" and challenged them to a fight some time in the future. This wasn't as good as the original riot at the 1st Anniversary show, but still had a feverish aura of realism. This was yet another great step towards the forthcoming ROH vs CZW war.

Christopher Daniels took the fight to long time rival Low Ki in one of the night's featured bouts. They took the time to display the history between these two men, including playing footage of Daniels blowing off Ki's handshake at the "Era of Honor Begins" back in 2002. Ever since the first ROH show, there has been a code of honor which requires wrestlers to shake hands before and after the match. Daniels has NEVER obeyed this code. After the match, Daniels surprisingly extended his hand to Low Ki, who promptly paid Daniels back by refusing to shake. (**** 1/4)

The first two matches of the Trios Tournament actually kicked off the show, but I wanted to wait and discuss it all at once. The first match between Matt Sydal & Jack Evans & Jimmy Yang and Jimmy Jacobs & BJ Whitmer & Adam Pearce - and featured Evans giving us the "holy shit" moment of all time when he did a running springboard corkscrew dive over the top rope and landed on Whitmer's shoulders and finished it off with a hurancanrana (is there a correct spelling for this move?) on the floor causing the fans to erupt with cheers of admiration. Truly incredible. (****) Next up we had the Embassy combination of Alex Shelley & Jimmy Rave & Abyss taking on Tony Mamaluke & Sal Rinauro & Jay Fury. Fury is one of the stars of Full Impact Pro and pulled out all the stops to get noticed by the loyal ROH audience. (*** ½)I have purposely left out the winners of each match to maintain a little suspense, but if you examine the teams it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what teams made it to the finals. (*** ¾)

The main event was a match between ROH Tag Team Champions Roderick Strong & Austin Aries and challenger ROH World Champion American Dragon with his hand picked partner Jay Lethal. Dragon played the cowardly heel Champion for the duration of the match, not wanting to tag in whenever Roderick Strong was in the ring. The match concluded with Dragon tapping out to Roderick's Stronghold this solidifying a future rematch between the two men for the ROH World title (****)

Final Thoughts: If I were booker (those are magic words, aren't they?), I would have done a few things differently on this show. The CZW riot was very intense and beautifully done. The Trios matches were great non-stop action. The Ki/Daniels and main event were solid matches. If you would like to purchase this or any other ROH DVD, please check out ROHwrestling.com - Thank you!