ROH Honor Rising Night 1

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Big Red Machine
Posts: 4376
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 10:10 pm

ROH Honor Rising Night 1

Post by Big Red Machine »

I decided to watch this one (I'm not watching night 2).

ROH/NJPW Honor Rising: Night 1 (2/19/2016)- Tokyo, Japan

DALTON CASTLE & RYUSUKE TAGUCHI vs. MATT SYDAL & JUSHIN “THUNDER” LIGER- 5.75/10
Dalton has found himself some Japanese Boys, who I assume will be brought over to feud with their American counterparts when New Japan comes to ROH in May. At one point in the match, Castle and Taguchi did butt stuff together (and no, I don’t these Ryusuke Taguchi “butt stuff” jokes will ever cease to be amusing).

GEDO vs. DELIRIOUS-2/10
Lots of antics by Delirious, but only one was actually funny. Most of his other antics were actually just heel spots, but done in a very Delirious fashion. They did succeed in making me want to see Gedo beat Delirious, so I guess there is that.

FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. KUSHIDA- 6.5/10

HIROSHI TANAHASHI, MICHAEL ELGIN, TOMOAKI HONMA, & MOOSE vs. BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, Cody Hall, & Yujiro Takahashi)- 6.5/10

THE ELITE (Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks) vs. KATSUYORI SHIBATA & reDRagon- 6.5/10
Am I the only one who doesn’t like this “Elite” label? It gives me a major nWo Wolfpac/nWo Black & White feel.
Anyway. They had… a match. They did stuff, but nothing close to what you’re used to seeing from any of these guys. For some reason, the guy challenging for the ROH World Title in the main event of the PPV in one week was the guy who got pinned. Why the hell weren’t one of the Bucks pinned? You already announced the six man tag team title shot, so it’s not like you needed to give them this win to justify giving them that shot, so why not just pin one of the Bucks because they are the two guys in this match who either aren’t currently champion or aren’t challenging for a title on PPV in a week! Hell… if you give reDRagon and Shibata the win here and then put the belts on the Bucks in a few days, that sets up a title match at some point down the line, either at the ROH/New Japan shows in the US in May (where it would be a strong main event) or on the weaker half of one of New Japan’s split PPV shows (where it could sure up the card and make sure that most of the guys involved have important matches on both shows instead of one important match and one filler match).

THE BRISCOES vs. BULLET CLUB (Doc Gallows & Karl “Machine Gun” Anderson)- 6.75/10
They did the best with the time they got, but I was expecting a hell of a lot more out of this. This felt like a rushed TV main event, not a big match on a theoretically historically important house show (or a swansong for a top tag team, either, for that matter).

CHAOS (YOSHI-HASHI & Kazuchika Okada) vs. JEY LETHAL & TETSUYA NAITO (w/Truth Martini & Los Ingobernables de Japon)- 6.75/10
The Lethal and Okada stuff belt like a big deal and the match was pretty great, but I could have done without the overbooking. Can we really not afford to let YOSHI-HASHI get beaten cleanly?

ROH TV TITLE MATCH: Roderick Strong(c) vs. Tomohiro Ishii- 8.5/10
Now THIS is the kind of match I’d like to see out of Ishii more often! This match was built around Ishii selling, as opposed to the usual Ishii match which is built around all of the things that he no-sells (the only spot they had that I didn’t like is the one where Ishii drive the other guy backwards by blocking forearm shots with his face). Roddy worked over his back and Ishii sold it brilliantly. Once Ishii started his comeback (mostly using the strength of his arms because his back was giving him trouble getting Roddy up for moves), it became a contest of will and toughness to see who could finally keep the other guy down. An awesome match… and, quite frankly, the kind of match I wish we had been getting more of on this show.

Despite the awesome main event, I was quite disappointed with this show. I was expecting a lot more out of the undercards, like we usually get when the New Japan guys come to the US. Unfortunately, this felt like a New Japan “Road to” show with a bunch of ten minute big tag team matches on the undercard whose goal is pretty much to tease the match-ups we’ll see on the PPV… except that there is no PPV being built to here. This was ROH’s first show in Japan since September 2008, and I was expecting them to come in and try to blow the fans away. Instead we got a bunch of meh topped off by one awesome match.
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