Glory By Honor XIV Review

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Big Red Machine
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Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 10:10 pm

Glory By Honor XIV Review

Post by Big Red Machine »

ROH Glory By Honor XIV (10/24/2015)- Dayton, OH

SILAS YOUNG & THE BEER CITY BRUISER PULL INTO THE PARKING LOT- they made The Boys ride in the trunk. I guess this was supposed to be funny (it wasn’t). Isn’t Silas’ whole thing that he is giving them tasks that will teach them how to be real men rather than be submissive servants like they were for Dalton Castle? So isn’t making them ride in the trunk the opposite of this?
Between this segment and the vignette that aired on the 11/8 ROH TV, I think the mistake they are making with these vignettes is that they are trying to write funny gags, whereas what they should be doing is writing these vignettes completely straight because the real comedy is in the things Silas believes you need to do to be a real man is this day and age, like chopping firewood or some similar physical task.

RAE LYN vs. KELLY KLEIN (w/BJ Whitmer)- bad squash
Veda Scott and some dude named Ian are on commentary, this Ian fellow needs to learn that you can’t say someone is “in the Women of Honor” like you would say she is “in the women’s division” because IT SOUNDS F*CKING TERRIBLE.
Klein shoved her down a few times, hit a clothesline, a suplex, and then a “modified guillotine choke” for the submission victory. She didn’t really get over because she didn’t do anything that looked impressive or impactful, and Rae Lynn moved around really awkwardly.
After the match, Whitmer cut a promo talking about this being the “genesis” of Kelly Klein and about wanting to “be the first to introduce the world to Kelly Klein” (well… aside from tonight’s ring announcer, I guess), which made it seem like this was Klein’s ROH debut, but Veda and Ian were talking about a match she had at Reloaded Tour: California, so it clearly wasn’t her debut here. It was awkward.

We get the standard intro (I guess the women’s match was a pre-show match) and we now have Kevin Kelly and BJ Whitmer on commentary, which is a vast improvement.

ADAM COLE vs. WILL FERRARA- 6/10
Ferrara actually showed a lot of fire in this match and did a decent job of getting the people behind him.

SILAS YOUNG PROMO- he explains because he is not an egomaniac like Dalton Castle, he is going to be generous and give the Boys the opportunity to wrestle ANX instead of him and the Beer City Bruiser as the match was originally booked as.
The fans chanted “free the boys!” except that until Kevin Kelly told me what they were chanting, I honestly thought they were chanting “we love boys” like it was a NAMBLA convention or something.

ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. THE BOYS (w/Silas Young & The Beer City Bruiser)- no rating.
They did some stuff, but when the Boys went to fan Kenny King, Silas yelled at them kicked them out of the match, and instead we got our originally scheduled bout of…

ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. SILAS YOUNG & THE BEER CITY BRUISER (w/the Boys)- 5.75/10
Kenny King, who is theoretically a babyface, started the match off by rolling Silas up when he was distracted yelling at the boys, before Silas was ready for the match to start, and before the Beer City Bruiser was even up on the apron. In fact, instead of getting up on the apron, BCB replaced Silas on commentary. Kevin Kelly asked him why he wasn’t on the apron so he could be tagged in to the match, but he assured him they had a plan, which, it turns out, was to use the boys as a distraction and have BCB jump ANX from behind. The plan worked which led to the heat and then we got the standard comeback and finish. A decent match.

CAPRICE COLEMAN vs. SAMSON WALKER- 4.75/10
Walker came out with a towel over his head and trying to do a Taz-like deal. He looked like an idiot. Caprice cut a pre-match promo in which he put Walker over, but showed… something bordering on the line between confidence and arrogance. If that’s what he was shooting for, then he did a perfect job of straddling that line.
The finish was good for Coleman’s new win at all costs attitude, and stupid entrance aside, I thought that Walker once again had a good showing for himself. Next time ROH books him, I’d love to see them put him against someone who will really let him show what he’s got and give him the time to put on a great match. Adam Cole or Matt Taven seem like they’d be a great for this spot.

BOBBY CRUISE INTRODUCES OUR GUEST RING ANNOUNCER… STEVE CORINO!
Cruise gave a nice little speech about how Corino helped get him into ROH way back in 2003.

MICHAEL ELGIN vs. DONOVAN DIJAK (w/the House of Truth)- 7.25/10
Prince Nana has replaced BJ Whitmer on commentary. He is terrible at it, and I have no idea why ROH keeps him around.
This was definitely Dijak’s best match in ROH so far. At well over fifteen minutes, it was also by far his longest. ROH needs to give guys like Dijak the chance to show their stuff more often.

ADAM COLE PLUGS HIS T-SHIRTS- I really don’t like them plugging t-shirts on a DVD/VOD release. Everyone watching this will already know where to go to buy ROH merch, because IT’S PROBABLY THE SAME PLACE THEY BOUGHT THIS SHOW FROM (and even if it wasn’t, they’ll have found out about it from the inside cover of the DVDs, which have been turned into a big ad for Ringside Membership)!

Nana has been replaced by that Ian guy, whose last name is apparently “Riccaboni.”

SHAHEEM ALI vs. JOEY DIESEL DADDIEGO (w/the House of Truth)- 3/10
This is the second time that the graphic has only announced a House of Truth member as being accompanied to the ring by Truth Martini even though Taeler Hendrix is right there as well. What the hell?
Daddiego is the man formerly known as J. Diesel. Ian Riccaboni called him an “excellent competitor,” which I guess shows you how much he knows about ROH. Can we have Prince Nana back? Kevin Kelly informed us that Diesel changed his name because this new name honors his family roots. If he really wants to honor his family, a good way to start would be by finding a job he’s actually good at.
Truth cut a terrible pre-match promo trying to get “who’s your daddy?” over as a catchphrase for Daddiego. Just… stop.
The match was short. Ali looked fine. He certainly looked like he’d be a much better representative of the ROH Dojo on these shows than Joey Diesel Daddiego would be.
Hendrix tried to interfere towards the finish and got bumped for it, and the announcers made a point of letting us know that as soon as Daddiego was announced as the winner, Truth stopped tending to Taeler to go celebrate the victory. This seems to be building towards a Taeler Hendrix face turn, which seems like a very bad idea.

FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH: Cliff Compton vs. “Brutal” Bob Evans (w/”terrible” Tim Hughes) vs. Cedric Alexander (w/Veda Scott) vs. Adam Page (w/BJ Whitmer & Colby Corino)- 0.5/10
Compton came out to NO REACTION WHATSOEVER aside from polite applause from one or two people, and few people reaching out for high fives. Ian Riccaboni said that Compton “could take this match in any number of directions,” which is yet more proof that Ian knows nothing about ROH, because anyone who has seen Compton’s matches in ROH knows that the only direction his involvement can bring a match is down. With all of the opportunities he has had in ROH in the past two and a half years, he has not gotten over at all and put on only ONE good match (I’m not giving him credit for the Steel Cage Warfare match- that was an eight man and he didn’t do much). WHY DO THEY KEEP BOOKING HIM?!
Cheeseburger was supposed to be in this match, but Brutal Bob broke his hand last night… so ROH is rewarding Bob by giving him Cheeseburger’s spot in this match? That doesn’t seem right.
Compton cut a promo in which he tried to thank the fans for the support they showed him after his seizure back in August, but because of his cadence and his tone, it came off like he was trying to milk the seizure to butter the fans up so they would be more into him during the match. I say this because he then transitioned into talking about how the people “don’t care” about Brutal Bob, “Adam Page and his drug addict manager” (there’s a wild accusation), and Cedric Alexander and his “two dollar hooker” (and even wilder and more offensive accusation). This man is trying to be a babyface and failing miserably.
He ended this promo by saying “Cliff Compton, it is time to die,” which seems like a really dumb and callous catchphrase for someone who just recently learned he can have seizures and couldn’t even drive home from the place he had the seizure BECAUSE HE MIGHT HAVE ANOTHER SEIZURE WHICH COULD CAUSE HIM TO CRASH HIS CAR AND DIE.
Well I’ll be damned. There are actually a few people chanting for Compton. I assume they must be members of his immediate family, or perhaps paid actors.
All of the people on the outside were quickly ejected for interfering in the match. Then some people did stuff (well… mostly Cedric), before the ref got distracted tending to Compton, who had gotten crotched. This allowed Cheeseburger to run in and give Brutal Bob a palm strike, which Bob sold in a ridiculous manner, allowing Compton to roll him up. The match went, at most, seven and a half minutes, and it just felt like a HUGE waste of both Page and Cedric. At the very least you could let one of those two get the win instead of Compton, who ISN’T EVEN ON THE ROSTER. So basically, we wasted to of the top up-and-coming talents in the company in order to give a win to a guy who isn’t even on the roster and to get over the feud of BRUTAL BOB VS. CHEESEBURGER. Shouldn’t Bob taking Cheeseburger’s spot in the match because he broke his hand last night have been enough get that feud onto the show for tonight?

CHEESEBURGER PROMO- wow. This was pretty great. It actually almost made me care about their match at Final Battle. More importantly, though, it shows that Cheeseburger does have the mic skills to be more than just a one-note character.

WAR MACHINE vs. THE BRISCOES- 8/10
Ian called the Briscoes “Delaware’s toughest export.” Look. The “Canada’s greatest export” moniker worked for Trish Stratus. Neither it nor any variant thereof have EVER worked for anyone else. A large part of the reason for that is because using that nickname immediately conjures up comparisons with Trish Stratus… which is absolutely not what you want to do when you’re trying to get these guys over as “tough” (and I’m not saying Trish isn’t tough. I’m just saying that people like the Briscoes are a completely different level of tough, so the image you should be trying to conjure up is more of a Dick the Bruiser than it is Trish Stratus).
They had an awesome brawl here. It started off as good quasi-amateur-style stuff with an emphasis on power, but then transitioned into a wild brawl. There was definitely a point where they were on the outside for WAY too long and Sinclair seemed to give up on trying to force guys back into their corners when they weren’t legal, but overall, it was quite awesome.
I know this sounds completely contrary to what I would normally say, but I actually liked the fact that The Briscoes won here, even though War Machine are the #1 contenders to the tag titles. The reason for this is that War Machine are now 0-2-2 against the Briscoes, which means that if War Machine win the tag belts at Final Battle (and I expect that they will), you have a perfect story already build in to set the Briscoes up as challengers in what should make for a great PPV tag title match for the 14th Anniversary show.

CHAMPIONS VS. ALL-STARS EIGHT MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH: ROH Champions (Jay Lethal, Roderick Strong, & The Kingdom) (w/Adam Cole, Maria Kanellis, & the House of Truth) vs. ROH All-Stars (The Addiction, Dalton Castle, & Moose) (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 7.75/10
AJ Styles did commentary for this match because he is injured and can’t wrestle in it like he was supposed to. He was very good.
The match was great, but was not at the level of the previous Champions vs. All-Stars matches, and never really even felt like it was approaching that level. The announcers kept talking about how these teams might not be able to get along, but the wrestlers completely squandered that story. At one point the Boys came out to cheer Castle on, but Silas dragged them to the back. This did not matter to the match at all. Castle was more serious than before he lost the Boys, but the announcers never once connected these two facts (which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be the story).
They did do a spot at the end to sort of push Moose in the direction of a world title shot, which they’ve kind of been doing slowly since the beginning of September, but it’s something that requires follow-up on commentary, and neither thing that they did in September has gotten any follow-up on commentary whatsoever, so I’m not too hopeful that this will actually build to something.
The champs won, with Roddy and Lethal surviving, and getting in each other’s faces afterwards. Then AJ got into the ring and got into it with Lethal as well.

This was a decent show. There was a lot of good and a lot of very bad as well. The biggest problem this show had was that the entire undercard felt like it didn’t mean a damn thing, and if the wrestling was good that could have been excused, but it really wasn’t. The opener was fine and Elgin vs. Dijak was great, but everything else until Briscoes vs. War Machine was unimportant and mostly bad. Even the two main events, while both great, didn’t feel like they meant anything at all.
One of the complaints about ROH in recent years has been the devaluing of the Glory By Honor name. Glory By Honor was intended to be the biggest show of the year. While that only lasted until about 2004 as Final Battle and Death Before Dishonor soon caught up to it, it was still always treated as a VERY strong #2 or #3 show, even when it became clear that Final Battle was really ROH’s WrestleMania.
In the last three years, that has clearly changed, with last year’s show feeling very much like a B show, while this year’s show followed in footsteps of the 2013 edition, being completely swallowed up by the fact that it was main evented by the annual Champions vs. All-Stars match. Yes, I know there were injuries and a lot of stuff had to be changed, but even so, the originally announced card still had fans disappointed, as both reDRagon and the Young Bucks were working in Japan and the Champions vs. All-Stars match felt like it completely drained the rest of the roster of star power… and that would have been fine if they had done what they did last year and just called the show “Champions vs. All-Stars.” When you see Champions vs. All-Stars, you expect a one-match show with a pointless undercard. When you see Glory By Honor, you expect something big and important,, and this wasn’t that, and thus it was disappointing.
I have said many times that ROH’s big fall show should be Glory By Honor and not, as it has been the past two years, All-Star Extravaganza, as doing so would preserve the history and tradition of both shows (the first five All-Star Extravaganzas were all noted for their use of big-name outside talent, while the past two have just been the big fall show with no outside talent at all). I know that this seems like a silly thing to complain about, and I wasn’t even going to complain about it in this review (I have other threads for that), until Kevin Kelly signed off by saying “thank you for joining us here at Champions vs. All-Stars.” This show felt so much like a one-match “Champions vs. All-Stars” show instead of feeling like a big Glory By Honor that even the lead announcer screwed it up.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. With ALL of the sh*t we’ve seen in wrestling rings over the years, Kevin Kelly decries Brutal Bob breaking Cheeseburger’s hand as “criminal.”
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