I think it's time for Delirious to step down as booker

[Thelone]

The only way we have a clean finish was with Kyle winning, i don´t think that was a right decision right now. Lethal winning clean here would burry Kyle so that´s also a bad decision, so i think the Main Event was booked in the best posible way.

Which is why they should have done the world title match in the opener. Let them go 20 minutes with O'Reilly having the upper hand, but Lethal is getting desperate and surprises KOR with a roll-up holding the tights or something. You do the TV title match last and you let Fish win clean because Lethal is battered after the first match and just can't keep up anymore.

[DBSommer]

I get that PWG is a niche product, and I'm not expecting ROH to be a PWG clone. When I buy PWG DVD's or attend show I know what I'm paying for and know I'm getting my money's worth. I have faith that Super Dragon and Excalibur will put on good to great shows for the most part.

Super Dragon and Excaliber's booking is the following:

90% Wrestler A vs. Wrestler B. It doesn't matter who they are. The match is random since there's no story behind it anyway.

10% The one storyline they have going, usually entailing the YB being dicks.

Seriously. Give me (or anyone) the roster for any given night, we will come up with a card that is no different than what the duo come up with and would be just as good. The wrestlers are the ones putting on the matches, and I'm pretty sure multiple guys explained PWG is the place you have to give a 100% because of the hype and it's a showcase. Which means you aren't giving it that 100% other places. You might do it here and there, especially in a bigger venues, but it's not going to be like it is in PWG where everyone does it, because that's the place you do it. And if you don't you end up Adam Thornstowe or Kenny King (yep, he was brought on a couple of cards then... poof. Like he was never there)

But really, what is it you think SD and EX do? They see who's available on some weekend. They have 'x' amount of money to spend on them. The only 'difficult' thing they have to do is try and make sure the guys aren't working a bigger platform (NJP, ROH, LU if they come back) on that given weekend. They don't change venues. They don't even bother with iPPVs. Don't get me wrong. They managed to come up with this simple working formula, and it does work. But at the same time don't act like it's some kind of rocket science. Love or hate Delirious' booking, he has a far, far more difficult job than they do.

[Big Red Machine]

Yeah. Delirious needs to go. There's just too many random title shots, too much instant reward/win a multi-person match and get a title shot later tonight, and most importantly, there are too many loose ends:

Sydal & Delirious got a completely clean win over the tag champs in Collinsville. I don't think it has even been mentioned since then, never mind actually materializing into a title shot, and now the Addiction have already lost the belts. reDRagon still haven't had a blow-off with the Addiction either. They lost the belts on TV, Sabin screwed them at BITW, they didn't get pinned at DBD... and then nothing has happened on that front at all.
Jay Briscoe hasn't given any indication that he is even thinking about asking for a return match for the World Title that he loves so much that he went cray the last time he lost it. He was still feuding with Lethal for a month after losing it, but then they just dropped that and I guess he's not interested in the world title. Elgin has only been in one title match since he lost the belt last year, and that was a four way he didn't even get pinned in.
During the period from Aug. 2014 to Feb. 2015, both AJ Styles and Roderick Strong cleanly pinned both tag champs. One would think this would lead to a title shot, but it didn't. I understand that they really wanted to do the matches with AJ and that New Japan wouldn't let him lose, but if you're not going make something out of it, what is the point of Roddy beating the champs? (And to make matters worse, while this was all not going on, ACH was cleanly pinned by ROH World Champion Jay Briscoe and was awarded a world title match as a result).

Even when something actually does lead to a match, like Hanson getting his most recent TV Title shot, it happens EIGHT MONTHS after he defeated the champion cleanly, and said clean victory was never mentioned in the interim.
And that's another problem. How many times have there been things where there does actually seem to be a story behind the match, but they never did anything to actually push it so it feels like it's coming out of nowhere? The Silas-Ferrara thing was a perfectly good story to build up to their undercard PPV match, but they never mentioned the fact that Ferrara spoiled Silas' return from injury in his home town by defeating him until during the match itself! Or how about Bobby Fish being the last guy to pin Jay Briscoe? Did anyone even remember that before they put the article up on the website announcing that Briscoe was defending his title against Fish? The ACH vs. Sydal best of five is another great example of this. If there was some sort of story building up to this that we were supposed to be paying attention to, both the booking and the announcing didn't a poor job of letting us know about it because it seems to me that all they've been doing this year is having random tag matches.

I have seen every single ROH show this year aside from the 8/29 Atlanta show, and in the ring this year ROH has been FANTASTIC. Even the bad shows have actually been pretty darn good. There have only been two shows that haven't had at least two matches that I have rated at 7.5/10 or higher, and most of them have had at least three in that range. The problem is that as the year develops, the more it seems like 99% of the matches on those shows haven't mattered in any way at all. Don't get me wrong: I have no problem with the idea that these men are professional fighters so they have matches for no other reason than this is the match that the matchmaker has booked. The problem comes when the match doesn't have a point. When it doesn't accomplish anything. We need to build up X, so we'll give him a win. We need to establish that these partners aren't getting along, so we'll have them lose because of a miscue and then argue. It's even okay for the point to occasionally be "this would be a fun/interesting main event that should make for a great match" (the ROH All-Stars vs. Bullet Club match or the Roddy & War Machine vs. Kingdom match are good examples of that). But on the house shows this year, it has felt like most of the matches have been completely pointless. With the exception of the Briscoes vs. Kingdom blow-off, the two matches that led to the Whitmer-Jacobs break-up, the matches used to build Kyle up as a challenger for Lethal, the TV Title #1 contedership tournament, and the ODB vs. Truth stuff (it was bad, but it least it felt like there was some sort of progressing story that led from A to B), there have been almost no house show match that has felt like it had a purpose creatively. I singled those matches above out because the others that feel like they have had a creative purpose- such as the Sydal & Delirious victory over the Addiction or the Lethal vs. Rowe match from Road to Best in the World: Collinsville- that felt like they have had a point at the time, have turned out to have been completely pointless.
The aforementioned Collinsville match is a great example of how NOT to book. In that match, not only did Lethal need to cheat to beat Rowe, but Rowe even got a visual pinfall on him. This has not been followed up on in any way at all! If you're not going to follow up on something like that, you shouldn't book it. Especially in a promotion that has prided itself and built its reputation on clean finishes like ROH has.

As has been said by others before: Screwy finishes are good when used sparingly. Last night's PPV had FOUR. That's half the card! We get them all the time on TV and way too often on regular shows and PPVs. If you don't understand why that is bad, then I hope you enjoy yourself when you go to your next WCW live event. Oh. Right. You can't.
This is the promotion that is supposed to be about clean finishes and more of a Puro-esque "real sports" feel, and yet Delirious books so many screwy finishes that it often makes the babyface authority figure look like he is selectively enforcing the rules, which undermines the feel of the whole thing.

Yes, Delirious might occasionally have some good big picture ideas, but the execution is often very poor, and his booking leaves so much else wanting (like everything in every undercard ever and good show-to-show build of ideas both major and minor) that it often makes the product feel unexciting even with an amazing year of in-ring action.

[Big Red Machine]

I get that PWG is a niche product, and I'm not expecting ROH to be a PWG clone. When I buy PWG DVD's or attend show I know what I'm paying for and know I'm getting my money's worth. I have faith that Super Dragon and Excalibur will put on good to great shows for the most part.

Super Dragon and Excaliber's booking is the following:

90% Wrestler A vs. Wrestler B. It doesn't matter who they are. The match is random since there's no story behind it anyway.

10% The one storyline they have going, usually entailing the YB being dicks.

Seriously. Give me (or anyone) the roster for any given night, we will come up with a card that is no different than what the duo come up with and would be just as good. The wrestlers are the ones putting on the matches, and I'm pretty sure multiple guys explained PWG is the place you have to give a 100% because of the hype and it's a showcase. Which means you aren't giving it that 100% other places. You might do it here and there, especially in a bigger venues, but it's not going to be like it is in PWG where everyone does it, because that's the place you do it. And if you don't you end up Adam Thornstowe or Kenny King (yep, he was brought on a couple of cards then... poof. Like he was never there)

But really, what is it you think SD and EX do? They see who's available on some weekend. They have 'x' amount of money to spend on them. The only 'difficult' thing they have to do is try and make sure the guys aren't working a bigger platform (NJP, ROH, LU if they come back) on that given weekend. They don't change venues. They don't even bother with iPPVs. Don't get me wrong. They managed to come up with this simple working formula, and it does work. But at the same time don't act like it's some kind of rocket science. Love or hate Delirious' booking, he has a far, far more difficult job than they do.

This. PWG isn't "booking." It's pulling names out of a hat. Wins don't matter. Losses don't matter. Title belts barely matter. They're just lucky they lucked into this atmosphere that everyone talks about.

[Marketh.]

What I find with Delirious' booking is you're usually gonna get a good buildup with a bad blowoff, or a bad buildup with an unexpectedly good blowoff. It doesn't feel often you get two of the same.

[trufreedom]

I think Moose could have come out, put a chair in the ring, and read the Fifty Shades of Grey for the entire three hours, and joeism would have found it a well booked show.

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

After the pay-per-view let down, Marketh has just summed up my thoughts exactly. I was riding a little bit of an ROH high before the show, then poof....gone in a cloud of smoke after the last 2 matches. Why do the heel champs just always have to have some outside interference to retain the world title? Call me old fashioned, but in the territory days when Flair or Race retained how they retained the title made sense. Now it's like the only way the heel champ wins is thru outside interference. It fucking sucks. The tag title match ended in complete bullshit. Nigel set up the 3 way to curb outside interference, and yet that match ends in a fuck finish too. The one conclusion I can safely say out of this is if Delirious decides to put the tag belts on the Young Bucks again, I believe everyone in the audience will have their eardrums pop from the win.

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

Damn tru freedom, that was funnier than hell.

[187_Joeism]

I think Moose could have come out, put a chair in the ring, and read the Fifty Shades of Grey for the entire three hours, and joeism would have found it a well booked show.

That was a funny one i have to admit it

[DBSommer]

I think Moose could have come out, put a chair in the ring, and read the Fifty Shades of Grey for the entire three hours, and joeism would have found it a well booked show.

As opposed to the standard smarky smark who would complain about the order of the matches on the card and declare how terrible everything is and how Bill Watts would never have booked it that way.

Smark: Steamboat Flair from 89? Recycling old feuds and keeping new talent from ever rising to the top of the card was all that was. Anyone with any vision would have realized a talent like Eddie Gilbert was ready for the top dog spot in the promotion. Could you imagine that man having the crowd alternating between eating out of the palm of his hand or wanting to rip him limb from limb the way a heel should be hated? A real booker would have had him beat Flair, align with Funk, and team up Flair and Steamboat for something fresh. Instead you get the obligatory annual Flair drops the title only to win it back a short while later, and "Woo, Space Mountain," promos until your ears bleed.

There is no card that a smark couldn't make better, which is why everything sucks.

[IchaelMelgin]

My only problem with the main event finish wasn't ~the twist~, I liked that. Quite clever to do an assumed face turn I think. They've been conspicuous with their separate ways, kept the same theme, had in-fighting but never hossed it out. Pretty satisfying stuff the more I think about it. It was just a bit much though to have Dijak run in, then Fish, THEN Cole. Dijak should've been at ringside anyway, would've made a small difference. Don't see the point in chucking Truth out if there's then no clean finish
And if the masked man wasn't Cole I don't know what to think of that then. I thought it did just look coincidental that Kingdom picked up that win. With red-mask's contribution, the Bucks could've easily been victorious. I'll go against my positive instincts and say this one sucked, but I guess it depends who it is and if there's a satisfying reason.

[WHG]

Hope this is vague enough to avoid being a spoiler for TV, but I was 100% sure after ASE that the masked guy was Cole and that all tied together with the Kingdom winning the titles and that was supposed to be obvious...but after seeing the spoilers it appears that may not have been the case? Not sure I can think of anything I want less than to see another few months of red mask run ins.

I'm not as negative as many about Delirious because I think overall he does a good job keeping me compelled (Marketh makes a great point about the build and blowoff rarely both being good, though). That said, the most alarming things about his booking right now is that he seems to be a bit tone deaf when it comes to how things come off and not learning from mistakes.

I thought he'd have learned from the issues with the 13th Anniversary Show main event...he came back with a clean BITW and everyone loved it. It seemed to me at the time that he'd learned from a mistake. Now I don't believe that to be the case.

Same with the KRD angle. It was almost universally disliked, but he managed to get himself out of it okay because the reveal was well executed. Still, I was sure that coming out of it he'd be relieved it was over and would be resolved not to do anything like that again.

Finally, for anyone follwing the WWE in 2015, one of the biggest criticisms is the over-use of the distraction roll up finisher this year. If he were really in touch with the hardcore fanbase (typically people looking for an alternative to the WWE) he wouldn't also be way overusing that finish this year.

So, I'm not down on Delirious, but the last couple weeks of TV and the PPV did give me cause for concern and reason to believe he may not be as in touch and able to learn from the past as I was giving him credit for.

[Kenny]

I had a great time watching the PPV and came out of it quite high on the booking.

Lethal wasn't going to lose both belts on his first PPV because it's too good of a story - the arrogant heel cheating like mad and Honkey Tonking his way into a successful title defense only to go on being arrogant as all get out. If anything, I was shocked by the lack of cheating in the first title defense. Holding the tights isn't really that big a deal and Lehal got out in good shape for the world title defense.

My only regret about the world title defense is it was too short. I think it would have been a stronger pay-off if the match had gone on for a while first, but I'm ok with it. It makes sense for Fish to run out first and it makes sense for Cole to run out, too.

Cole was always going to turn on O'Reily...that's the drama. Cole and the Kingdom never got physical with each other. He just started working with O'Reily and the Kingdom told him to get lost, but they never got physical with each other. O'Reily trusted Cole not to bite him, but Cole is a snake - he was always going to bite O'Reily.

I'm pumped because now we're going to have another excellent O'Reily/Cole feud and we're going to build towards Styles getting the belt at Final Battle. Who else but the former IWGP champ can beat Lethal and Lethal still looks strong?

[Thelone]

Except it wasn't dramatic at all because they teamed up like three times at best after Cole "left" the Kingdom.

You want this feud to be dramatic ? How about you actually let them run as a team for a while since you know, they would have been the perfect foil for the Kingdom. Hell, give them the belts, that's something new and fresh unlike pretty much everything in the tag division these days. From that point on, you can go in multiple directions to build up tension between them.

[Kenny]

How would they be a foil for the Kingdom if they can't fight the Kingdom due to the long con? Waiting on the betrayal would have been better, I agree, but it was always going to happen.

[Burnside]

Why does the fact that Cole never fought the Kingdom automatically make this angle awesome and cause all the other plot holes to disappear?

[IchaelMelgin]

Nobody can enjoy this angle!! I won't allow it!
I hope I never turn into a fan like this, as controversial opinion here: I like to enjoy things. Anyway, who said it was "awesome"?

non-sarcy bastard answer: what plot-holes really? The biggest downer on the match was there being 3 run-ins. The biggest downer on the angle is it didn't have longer to develop. I have no clue what is so apparently polarizing about this.
What is actually the issue? Be specific. Thelone doesn't engage with ROH TV much these days, by his own admission so excuse me for not taking that viewpoint as gospel. Them only having a couple matches in this run is hardly worth shouting about - that's incredibly nitpicky - the angle still got across if you actually watch ROH TV. And that's with our shitty commentary. Seriously simple stuff.

[Burnside]

Adam Cole faked a face turn for five months with the goal of running in on a match that prior to about a month ago he could have no idea would happen. He did this so that he could attack Kyle O'Reilly, which he could have done just as well without the effort of spending half a year pretending to be a face. He also for some reason SAVED O'Reilly from Donovan Dijak by beating up Dijak, moments before beating up O'Reilly himself. This is because MIND GAMES or some such horseshit.

[Kenny]

I have to admit I'm a bit flummoxed. Cole never faked a face turn...he was a de facto face by teaming up with O'Reily. Maybe I missed something there? Other than talking about what a good friend O'Reily was to him, Cole was never really a face...he just wasn't hanging around with the Kingdom anymore.

The storyline seems pretty direct to me. Cole was upset with the KRD for pretending to be the Kingdom. He wanted to go after the Addiction and the Kingdom were more interested in something else. O'Reily came to Cole's aid, they reformed Future Shock, and O'Reily made the mistake of trusting Cole. Cole stabbed O'Reily in the back because he didn't want someone he thinks is beneath him winning the world championship.

The only part of the story that's confused me is why the Kingdom lost interest in the Addiction so quickly.

[Robareid]

Yeah, I'm totally with Burnside here, it just doesn't make sense if it was planned all along. He literally gained nothing by pretending to be a good guy, he could have just as easily made a run-in without being aligned with O'Reilly. Now if it is explained as a spur of the moment thing where Cole actually was thinking of splitting with the Kingdom and getting back with his old buddy O'Reilly until his insecurity got the better of him as he realised that O'Reilly was going to win the world title and overshadow him in the Future Dragons unit then that would make sense and I'd be into it.

My money is that they're going with the "my plan all along" route though, which if you put thirty seconds worth of thought in doesn't hold up.