Night 2 thoughts and reactions:
First half of the show was pretty underwhelming but there were some bright spots in the second half. It did a real nice job of promoting and setting up BITW with a combination of matches, outcomes, and promos which was real nice. I definitely prefer that over random matches.
Preshow- Cheeseburger vs ??? Duggan- This is exactly how and where Cheeseburger should be used.
Corino comes out and cuts a good promo on Whitmer.
Addiction vs Kamaitachi & Robinson- Pretty standard tag match but I like that they seem to be using the Kamaitachi/Robinson team regularly.
Castle vs Ferrara- Not a that great. I guess on par with the normal Ferrara match with Castle's antics thrown in. Ferrara kept calling himself "Big Willy." I didn't realize that was a thing. He teased a possible heel turn at the end.
Moose & Rush vs MCMG- Moose and Rush were more over than MCMG with the crowd. I was especially impressed with Rush. It came to mind that he's what Tadarius Thomas should have been.
Berretta vs Dijak- Seemed like kind of a mediocre match but the finishing sequence was awesome.
4CS- First real good match of the show, which is maybe expected considering it's the first to feature any real star power. Lots of action as you would expect. O'Reilly seemed most over, which is good if they're continuing in that direction. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.
Whitmer comes out and has Corino's beat up unconcious body dragged to the ring and cuts a promo. Say what you will about this feud being way to drawn out between two over the hill wrestlers (yeah that's all true) but the build to this match is actually quite good.
War Machine vs Jerrod Jax and ???- Squash
Romero vs Fish- Crowd was quite for this one but it seemed less like they were dead and more like they were just watching with interest. Unfortunately in never kicked into that second gear like I hoped it would. Then again, do Rocky's singles matches ever live up to what I hope for? Rarely.
Tag Tourney Finals- Really good match here. Much better than I expected as I'm not an ANX fan and while I love BCB/Silas they don't immediately come to mind when I think of the great tag teams in ROH. But they definitely shined in this match, especially BCB who played things a little more serious than he sometimes does. Great action from everyone. Naturally BCB and Young were super over with the crowd and giving them the unsuspected win was awesome.
The Addiction came out to attack the winners, but BCB and Young got one up on them.
Lethal & Cabana vs Young Bucks- Great tag team main event, and yes probably better than Cabana vs Cole would have been. With all the tag matches on this show I thought this might underwhelm but fortunately I was wrong. Best match on the show in my opinion. Less of a typical YB "superkick party" which actually made for a more interesting match. Less infighting between Lethal and Cabana than I expected too.
Overall the show wasn't anything must-see but definitely enjoyable.
Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
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Northwoods_Nightmare
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Vanilla Gorilla
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Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
IDK what you hope for, but I really liked his work in the BOSJNorthwoods_Nightmare wrote: Romero vs Fish- Crowd was quite for this one but it seemed less like they were dead and more like they were just watching with interest. Unfortunately in never kicked into that second gear like I hoped it would. Then again, do Rocky's singles matches ever live up to what I hope for? Rarely.
Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
Don't really like the choice to use local rings in Hopkins and Milwaukee.
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Big Red Machine
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Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
My review of the Collinsville show. I thought it was pretty great.
ROH Road to Best in the World 2016: Collinsville (6/3/2016)- Collinsville, IL
There is a new ring announcer. She is wearing ripped jeans. It looks highly unprofessional. Ring announcers should be wearing suits, tuxedos, or long dresses.
CAPRICE COLEMAN vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 6.75/10
Caprice cut what sounded like a good promo except he was talking too fast to understand. This was a very good opener. I was very glad to see Dalton’s wackiness toned down while the actual match was going on.
MARK BRISCOE vs. JASON KINCAID- 6.75/10
Kincaid comes off as one of those guys that are all too prominent on the indies nowadays who have a weird look and act weird just for the sake of it. I get the whole “standing out” thing, but you’ve got to have some sort of character behind it or else you’re never going to be more than just a weirdo on the undercard.
Kincaid’s “character” is that he claims to have “technical wizardry” in professional wrestling. Stealing catchphrases is never good, but stealing Joey Ryan’s is an even worse idea now that we know he’s an undercover cop. Also, Kindcaid sometimes sits cross-legged in the middle of the ring.
At one point early one they had just finished an exchange of pretty basic moves, with Kincaid getting the last laugh with an arm drag. At this point Kincaid sat down in the middle of the ring, raised his arms in the air and shouted “TECHNICAL WIZARDRY.” This did NOT sit well with veteran Mark Briscoe, so on their next exchange, Mark slapped Kincaid really hard in the face. Kincaid now also got angry and they went nose-to-nose and started trading strikes and really picked up the intensity. That was GREAT and it set the tone for this match which was Kincaid trying to prove himself in this big chance in ROH while veteran Mark Briscoe did not take well to what he perceived to be disrespect.
Kincaid does a lot of interesting new variations on things that I haven’t seen before and they gave him quite a lot here, even letting him kick out of Mark’s Fisherman Buster (the best one in all of pro wrestling) and a really great nearfall. Roddy cutting a promo burying Mark for wrestling in the second match on the card, against a guy who isn’t even a member of the roster, and even almost losing would be a good way to help get their feud over. I’m excited to see how Kincaid fares the rest of this weekend.
ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS PROMO- great. They bury other tag teams, saying that the Young Bucks look like belong in the women’s division, the Briscoes are drunkards, and War Machine is out of shape (“they don’t even have one ab between them). They demand that an ROH official come out here and that some opponents come out here for them so they can kick someone’s ass. This resulted in…
THE ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. KEITH LEE & SHANE TAYLOR- 5.5/10
Well… if you’re going to claim that War Machine is out of shape then I don’t know what you would say about Lee and Taylor. Lee and Taylor apparently go by the utterly atrocious name of the “Pretty-boy Killers.”
The match was perfect for what it was. Lee and Taylor got over doing their thing and the execution on the DQ finish was PERFECT. A great cheap win for ANX.
ACH vs. BEER CITY BRUISER (w/Silas Young)- 6/10
Silas provided guest commentary for this match. They stuck to their story (Bruiser working over ACH’s back) and told it well.
ALEX SHELLEY vs. LIO RUSH- 7.5/10
GREAT match! Rush had a great showing here, and Shelley gave him enough to make the false finishes very believable. Shelley worked over Rush’s head and pulled out a really cool new DDT variation. Shelley put Rush over very strong after the match.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- he buries Steve Corino and calls him a failure. He claims Corino didn’t show up tonight because he is afraid of BJ, but the announcers tell us he is in Japan. BJ then proceeded to bury Colby Corino, saying that he will grow up to be a failure just like Steve. Colby apparently is in the building tonight, the first time we’ve seen him since BJ turned on him and assaulted him in front of his father. Colby slaps BJ and they wind up having a match…
BJ WHITMER vs. COLBY CORINO- no rating, good segment.
Colby got a brief burst of offense and got to get his sh*t in, BJ got to look like a dick for pulling Colby’s shoulders up so he could continue the beating multiple times.
CHRIS SABIN PROMO- he makes sure everyone is caught up on the Bullet Club invasion angle, then cuts a promo saying that he wants his match with Adam Page tonight to be have no count-outs and no disqualifications. Apparently he has the power to do this.
NO DISQUALIFICAITONS MATCH: Adam Page vs. Chris Sabin (w/Alex Shelley)- 7.5/10
Shelley stayed on commentary because, as he noted, if he were to get involved in this match it would make him no better than the Bullet Club.
The match was great, and Page had a good enough showing that I might buy tomorrow night’s show as well to see how performs in a main event situation (and hopefully this time there won’t be any injuries). They based the first part of it around the noose, then went to using a chair, and then went back to the noose for the finish. The only real problem I have with it was that the finish was Sabin using a submission hold with the noose and Page tapping out clean… so the babyface got his revenge and the feud should be over, right? I mean… what are we supposed to pay to see?
If I was booking this I would have had someone from ROH management (Nigel, Cary, even Senior Referee Todd Sinclair) come out and tell Sabin that he can’t change the rules of the match so drastically without Adam Page’s approval. I’d have Page, being the heel, insist that it remain a regular match (after all, he and Cole are the only Bullet Club members in the building tonight, while there are a heck of a lot of being who hate the Bullet Club- Sabin, Shelley, Lethal, and the Briscoes- on the card tonight). Sabin would agree to let it be a regular match, but would charge at Page right after the bell rings, pound on him a bit, toss him out of the ring, then go use a chair anyway, intentionally getting himself DQed. I’d have them do a weapons brawl for about two or three minutes with Sabin winning until Cole runs in to save Page. Cole would beat Sabin down for a moment until Shelley made the save, and Cole and Page would bail. This would not only build up tomorrow night’s tag team main event between these four, but it would also get over Sabin’s hatred and desire for revenge on Page (so much so that he was perfectly happy to get himself disqualified), and it also builds up to a No DQ’s match between Page and Sabin at some point in the future where you can blow this off with the noose spot they ended this match with here.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Cole attacks Sabin, Shelley makes the save, Cole and Page bail.
FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Stevie Richards vs. Moose (w/Stokely Hathaway) vs. Silas Young (w/Beer City Bruiser)- 6.5/10
ADAM COLE vs. KAMAITACHI- 7.75/10
Kamaitachi’s best showing in ROH yet. He also took a really scary bump on his back from the top rope to the floor but appeared to be okay. Cole worked over Kamaitachi’s head while Kamaitachi was just trying to prove himself against Cole.
JAY BRISCOE & WAR MACHINE vs. THE ADDICTION & JAY LETHAL (w/the House of Truth)- 8/10
They did a great job of building up to the big Lethal vs. Briscoe confrontation, and that confrontation did not disappoint. This match wasn’t only an awesome cap to a great night of professional wrestling, but it also did more than anything they have done so far to make me want to see the Lethal-Briscoe rematch. The finish of the match was quite interesting, as it saw Lethal go for a Lethal Injection on Briscoe but Daniels attacked Briscoe so Lethal couldn’t hit the move. Lethal and Daniels had a shouting match which ended when Briscoe shoved Daniels into Lethal and they conked heads, and then Briscoe rolled Daniels up for the pin. They then did a post-match angle where The Addiction attacked Briscoe. Lethal got back into the ring to argue with Daniels. Kaz tried to play peacemaker but Lethal was being really annoying so Kaz punched him and The Addiction tried to beat Lethal down but he managed to catch them both with a double Lethal Injection. Then Briscoe and Lethal had a stare-down to end the show.
This not only seems to be building towards and Lethal face turn, but also sets up a potential title match with Daniels and maybe could even be used to build to the House of Truth challenging for the tag titles. Briscoe pinning one of the tag champs also theoretically sets up for the Briscoes getting a title shot… which, if Addiction lose the belts at Best in the World 2016 could mean that we’d finally get the long-awaited rubber match between MCMG and the Briscoes that they teased doing at the Dearborn show last month.
A GREAT show from ROH. Solid wrestling all up and down the card, good build to the upcoming PPV, good performances by some of the newer faces, and a very easy show to sit through. Props are also due to Veda Scott and Ian Riccaboni for their commentary. They are SOOOOOO much better than Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino. This is definitely a show you should pick up if you just want to watch some quality professional wrestling.
ROH Road to Best in the World 2016: Collinsville (6/3/2016)- Collinsville, IL
There is a new ring announcer. She is wearing ripped jeans. It looks highly unprofessional. Ring announcers should be wearing suits, tuxedos, or long dresses.
CAPRICE COLEMAN vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 6.75/10
Caprice cut what sounded like a good promo except he was talking too fast to understand. This was a very good opener. I was very glad to see Dalton’s wackiness toned down while the actual match was going on.
MARK BRISCOE vs. JASON KINCAID- 6.75/10
Kincaid comes off as one of those guys that are all too prominent on the indies nowadays who have a weird look and act weird just for the sake of it. I get the whole “standing out” thing, but you’ve got to have some sort of character behind it or else you’re never going to be more than just a weirdo on the undercard.
Kincaid’s “character” is that he claims to have “technical wizardry” in professional wrestling. Stealing catchphrases is never good, but stealing Joey Ryan’s is an even worse idea now that we know he’s an undercover cop. Also, Kindcaid sometimes sits cross-legged in the middle of the ring.
At one point early one they had just finished an exchange of pretty basic moves, with Kincaid getting the last laugh with an arm drag. At this point Kincaid sat down in the middle of the ring, raised his arms in the air and shouted “TECHNICAL WIZARDRY.” This did NOT sit well with veteran Mark Briscoe, so on their next exchange, Mark slapped Kincaid really hard in the face. Kincaid now also got angry and they went nose-to-nose and started trading strikes and really picked up the intensity. That was GREAT and it set the tone for this match which was Kincaid trying to prove himself in this big chance in ROH while veteran Mark Briscoe did not take well to what he perceived to be disrespect.
Kincaid does a lot of interesting new variations on things that I haven’t seen before and they gave him quite a lot here, even letting him kick out of Mark’s Fisherman Buster (the best one in all of pro wrestling) and a really great nearfall. Roddy cutting a promo burying Mark for wrestling in the second match on the card, against a guy who isn’t even a member of the roster, and even almost losing would be a good way to help get their feud over. I’m excited to see how Kincaid fares the rest of this weekend.
ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS PROMO- great. They bury other tag teams, saying that the Young Bucks look like belong in the women’s division, the Briscoes are drunkards, and War Machine is out of shape (“they don’t even have one ab between them). They demand that an ROH official come out here and that some opponents come out here for them so they can kick someone’s ass. This resulted in…
THE ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. KEITH LEE & SHANE TAYLOR- 5.5/10
Well… if you’re going to claim that War Machine is out of shape then I don’t know what you would say about Lee and Taylor. Lee and Taylor apparently go by the utterly atrocious name of the “Pretty-boy Killers.”
The match was perfect for what it was. Lee and Taylor got over doing their thing and the execution on the DQ finish was PERFECT. A great cheap win for ANX.
ACH vs. BEER CITY BRUISER (w/Silas Young)- 6/10
Silas provided guest commentary for this match. They stuck to their story (Bruiser working over ACH’s back) and told it well.
ALEX SHELLEY vs. LIO RUSH- 7.5/10
GREAT match! Rush had a great showing here, and Shelley gave him enough to make the false finishes very believable. Shelley worked over Rush’s head and pulled out a really cool new DDT variation. Shelley put Rush over very strong after the match.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- he buries Steve Corino and calls him a failure. He claims Corino didn’t show up tonight because he is afraid of BJ, but the announcers tell us he is in Japan. BJ then proceeded to bury Colby Corino, saying that he will grow up to be a failure just like Steve. Colby apparently is in the building tonight, the first time we’ve seen him since BJ turned on him and assaulted him in front of his father. Colby slaps BJ and they wind up having a match…
BJ WHITMER vs. COLBY CORINO- no rating, good segment.
Colby got a brief burst of offense and got to get his sh*t in, BJ got to look like a dick for pulling Colby’s shoulders up so he could continue the beating multiple times.
CHRIS SABIN PROMO- he makes sure everyone is caught up on the Bullet Club invasion angle, then cuts a promo saying that he wants his match with Adam Page tonight to be have no count-outs and no disqualifications. Apparently he has the power to do this.
NO DISQUALIFICAITONS MATCH: Adam Page vs. Chris Sabin (w/Alex Shelley)- 7.5/10
Shelley stayed on commentary because, as he noted, if he were to get involved in this match it would make him no better than the Bullet Club.
The match was great, and Page had a good enough showing that I might buy tomorrow night’s show as well to see how performs in a main event situation (and hopefully this time there won’t be any injuries). They based the first part of it around the noose, then went to using a chair, and then went back to the noose for the finish. The only real problem I have with it was that the finish was Sabin using a submission hold with the noose and Page tapping out clean… so the babyface got his revenge and the feud should be over, right? I mean… what are we supposed to pay to see?
If I was booking this I would have had someone from ROH management (Nigel, Cary, even Senior Referee Todd Sinclair) come out and tell Sabin that he can’t change the rules of the match so drastically without Adam Page’s approval. I’d have Page, being the heel, insist that it remain a regular match (after all, he and Cole are the only Bullet Club members in the building tonight, while there are a heck of a lot of being who hate the Bullet Club- Sabin, Shelley, Lethal, and the Briscoes- on the card tonight). Sabin would agree to let it be a regular match, but would charge at Page right after the bell rings, pound on him a bit, toss him out of the ring, then go use a chair anyway, intentionally getting himself DQed. I’d have them do a weapons brawl for about two or three minutes with Sabin winning until Cole runs in to save Page. Cole would beat Sabin down for a moment until Shelley made the save, and Cole and Page would bail. This would not only build up tomorrow night’s tag team main event between these four, but it would also get over Sabin’s hatred and desire for revenge on Page (so much so that he was perfectly happy to get himself disqualified), and it also builds up to a No DQ’s match between Page and Sabin at some point in the future where you can blow this off with the noose spot they ended this match with here.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Cole attacks Sabin, Shelley makes the save, Cole and Page bail.
FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Stevie Richards vs. Moose (w/Stokely Hathaway) vs. Silas Young (w/Beer City Bruiser)- 6.5/10
ADAM COLE vs. KAMAITACHI- 7.75/10
Kamaitachi’s best showing in ROH yet. He also took a really scary bump on his back from the top rope to the floor but appeared to be okay. Cole worked over Kamaitachi’s head while Kamaitachi was just trying to prove himself against Cole.
JAY BRISCOE & WAR MACHINE vs. THE ADDICTION & JAY LETHAL (w/the House of Truth)- 8/10
They did a great job of building up to the big Lethal vs. Briscoe confrontation, and that confrontation did not disappoint. This match wasn’t only an awesome cap to a great night of professional wrestling, but it also did more than anything they have done so far to make me want to see the Lethal-Briscoe rematch. The finish of the match was quite interesting, as it saw Lethal go for a Lethal Injection on Briscoe but Daniels attacked Briscoe so Lethal couldn’t hit the move. Lethal and Daniels had a shouting match which ended when Briscoe shoved Daniels into Lethal and they conked heads, and then Briscoe rolled Daniels up for the pin. They then did a post-match angle where The Addiction attacked Briscoe. Lethal got back into the ring to argue with Daniels. Kaz tried to play peacemaker but Lethal was being really annoying so Kaz punched him and The Addiction tried to beat Lethal down but he managed to catch them both with a double Lethal Injection. Then Briscoe and Lethal had a stare-down to end the show.
This not only seems to be building towards and Lethal face turn, but also sets up a potential title match with Daniels and maybe could even be used to build to the House of Truth challenging for the tag titles. Briscoe pinning one of the tag champs also theoretically sets up for the Briscoes getting a title shot… which, if Addiction lose the belts at Best in the World 2016 could mean that we’d finally get the long-awaited rubber match between MCMG and the Briscoes that they teased doing at the Dearborn show last month.
A GREAT show from ROH. Solid wrestling all up and down the card, good build to the upcoming PPV, good performances by some of the newer faces, and a very easy show to sit through. Props are also due to Veda Scott and Ian Riccaboni for their commentary. They are SOOOOOO much better than Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino. This is definitely a show you should pick up if you just want to watch some quality professional wrestling.
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FanSinceHDNet
- Posts: 248
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Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
Thanks for the reviews on these shows. They can be a mixed bag so it's good to know where these fall before buying.
Re: commentary - Kelly has been doing a pretty good job with Corino in Japan but seems sort of bored in ROH. Both Riccaboni and Scott seem to try pretty hard when they're given opportunities and are getting better. Nice to hear that they did well, especially considering where both started.
Re: commentary - Kelly has been doing a pretty good job with Corino in Japan but seems sort of bored in ROH. Both Riccaboni and Scott seem to try pretty hard when they're given opportunities and are getting better. Nice to hear that they did well, especially considering where both started.
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monster mafia
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Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
!
ROH's best story in 2016.
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monster mafia
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Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
anyone have more reviews of this shows??? worth the price?
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Big Red Machine
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Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
Here's Columbus:
ROH Road to Best in the World 2016: Columbus (6/5/2016)- Columbus, OH
OPENING SEGMENT- Jay Briscoe comes out and says that ROH officials think he isn’t healthy enough to compete tonight (commentators Ian Riccaboni & BJ Whimter had already detailed Jay’s injuries from the past two nights for us). Roddy comes out and basically accuses Jay of cowardice by condescendingly telling him to take the night off and rest up for his big title match in two weeks. He also called Jay a bitch. Jay says that what he was trying to say was that ROH officials were the ones who didn’t want him to compete, but he did, so the match would still happen.
I didn’t like this very much at all. Everything got big pops from the live crowd, but to me watching at home it came off like cheap drama because there is no way they’re going to go back on this match after advertising it as main event. I’m also not thrilled with the idea that ROH officials told Jay that he can’t compete, but Jay has just decided that he wants to and so he is allowed to. It just makes you want to ask why this doesn’t happen every other time a babyface is injured but still wants to compete.
If they are trying do something like this I think it’d be better to have Roddy and Jay both come out to hype up the main event and have Roddy attack Jay and injure his back. This way Jay looks tougher for fighting, you avoid the “ROH officials said I can’t but I’m going to anyway” issue, and you can have Mark Briscoe run out to chase Roddy off to give us some build to their PPV match. “Giving Jay time to recover” would also create a perfect excuse for why this match should go on in the main event over the No DQ’s blow-off for the ROH World Tag Team Titles (as opposed to just announcing this meaningless singles match as the main event over that match, effectively burying the tag titles and the two teams involved, which is the last thing you want to do after having taken the belts off of War Machine the way that ROH did. Their quest to regain them should be a big deal).
CAPRICE COLEMAN PROMO- he gets cheap heat by burying Ohio State and putting over Michigan, then putting over the Golden State Warriors and burying the Cavaliers.
CAPRICE COLEMAN vs. ACH- 6.5/10
Fine opener. Silas Young was on commentary.
MARK BRISCOE vs. STEVIE RICHARDS- 6.25/10
Ian Riccaboni claimed that Mark Briscoe told him he is focused on winning the TV Title. This is not the first time an announcer has made such a claim. Unfortunately, we have never heard MARK HIMSELF say something, so it comes across as total bullsh*t, especially when Mark has spent so much of the year trying to win the tag titles.
They also need to stop it with this “having the TV Title means you’re the best wrestler on television” bullsh*t. It’s not a magical talisman that gives you a +5 bonus to all of your stats as long as there is a TV camera around. It’s a title belt, and it has almost always been portrayed as being subordinate to the ROH World Title (as it should be). It does not make you better than the world champion at all, any distinction between whether something is being televised or taking place on live TV is completely idiotic.
The match was surprisingly short. Stevie started playing the heel a bit as things progressed. He looked pretty good in the ring.
BEER CITY BRUISER vs. CHEESEBURGER- 4.75/10
Silas Young came out to do commentary. He said normally he would manage the Bruiser, but realized that he was facing lowly Cheeseburger tonight so that wouldn’t be necessary. This was a very well-done big man vs. little man match.
Ian Riccaboni pointed out that at Global Wars, LigerBurgers defeat the men who are currently the ROH World Tag Team Champions, which, given Delirious’ usual booking patterns, has me infinitely worried that when the New Japan guys come in next- the Death Before Dishonor PPV weekend- that we are going to see f*cking Cheeseburger getting a shot at the ROH World Tag Team Titles on PPV.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Silas cut a promo on Cheeseburger. He then went to beat up Cheeseburger but ACH showed up so Silas and the Beer City Bruiser bailed.
ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS- 6.5/10
Standard stuff aside from the finish, which was MCMG winning with a move I’ve never seen before: a double team Electric Chair Driver.
ADAM PAGE vs. JAY LETHAL (w/Taeler Hendrix)- 7.75/10
A good hot start to the match that added some real fuel to this fire, considering that Lethal and Page haven’t actually interacted yet in this angle. Good selling of the leg by both guys (especially Lethal), and a much-needed strong singles showing for Page… but Page has now wrestled five matches since his big heel turn and he’s lost EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. If you’re going to do f*ck finishes as frequently as Delirious does, why not use them in places where it actually makes sense?! Hell… I wouldn’t have minded Page getting a count-out win over Lethal or even pinning him after interference from the Bucks to set up a title match at some point in the summer. Surely they’re much better than having Lethal- who is selling an injury from last night- get the best of both Young Bucks as well as Page singlehandedly.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- okay… the fans need to just shut the f*ck up and let Whitmer cut his promo. It’s REALLY frustration to sit here for five minutes and listen to nothing, and no, this isn’t “heat,” because it’s not Whitmer I’m pissed at, it’s the fans because all Whitmer is trying to do is cut his promo and they’re not letting him. Whitmer eventually gave up, meaning we wasted five minutes on nothing.
KAMAITACHI vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 7.5/10
Great showing from both men. This is the Dalton Castle I like to see: more wrestling and less goofy antics.
ADAM COLE vs. LIO RUSH- 7.25/10
Bullet Club came out to the ring with Cole, and then just went to the back. Not sure what the point of that was. Cole worked over Rush's head and neck, as those body parts had been worked over in his match last night. Another great showing for Rush. One of these days he’s going to actually win one and it’s going to be awesome.
After the match Cole put Rush over and offered him a handshake and gave him a big hug, but it was all a set-up to distract him so the Bucks could come out and superkick him… and all of the fans who were just cheering for Rush all cheered that this was too sweet. F*cking idiots. Bullet Club then nailed Rush with a triple superkick. MCMG came out to prevent them from doing any further damage.
NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH FOR THE ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: The Addiction(c) vs. War Machine- 8.5/10
Twenty minutes of weapons and violence! Then we got some interference by Keith Lee and Shane Taylor that, while disappointing, does at least give some new faces some immediate direction. Also, that table shattering on the finish looked awesome.
RODERICK STRONG vs. JAY BRISCOE- 8.5/10
The story here was that Jay was coming in with injured ribs so Roddy worked them over all match. Jay worked over Roddy’s head and neither man left their targeted bodypart alone the entire match. Jay got a visual pinfall after a ref bump, but it was Roddy who got his hand raised in the end. It’s very curious that Roddy beating the #1 contender didn’t lead to Roddy getting a title match because Roddy getting one more shot at the world title on his last night in the company at the post-PPV TV taping. His opponent there would have either been Lethal- who never beat him cleanly last year, or Briscoe, who he just beat here, and he could put his opponent over cleanly on the way out in a main event (O’Reilly’s title shot could have easily waited until the next set of TV tapings). It makes a hell of a lot more sense than him putting over Dalton Castle in the middle of the card in a meaningless match for his big ROH goodbye.
A pretty awesome show from ROH, with an undercard ranging from solid to great, and a very strong one-two punch at the top of the card.
ROH Road to Best in the World 2016: Columbus (6/5/2016)- Columbus, OH
OPENING SEGMENT- Jay Briscoe comes out and says that ROH officials think he isn’t healthy enough to compete tonight (commentators Ian Riccaboni & BJ Whimter had already detailed Jay’s injuries from the past two nights for us). Roddy comes out and basically accuses Jay of cowardice by condescendingly telling him to take the night off and rest up for his big title match in two weeks. He also called Jay a bitch. Jay says that what he was trying to say was that ROH officials were the ones who didn’t want him to compete, but he did, so the match would still happen.
I didn’t like this very much at all. Everything got big pops from the live crowd, but to me watching at home it came off like cheap drama because there is no way they’re going to go back on this match after advertising it as main event. I’m also not thrilled with the idea that ROH officials told Jay that he can’t compete, but Jay has just decided that he wants to and so he is allowed to. It just makes you want to ask why this doesn’t happen every other time a babyface is injured but still wants to compete.
If they are trying do something like this I think it’d be better to have Roddy and Jay both come out to hype up the main event and have Roddy attack Jay and injure his back. This way Jay looks tougher for fighting, you avoid the “ROH officials said I can’t but I’m going to anyway” issue, and you can have Mark Briscoe run out to chase Roddy off to give us some build to their PPV match. “Giving Jay time to recover” would also create a perfect excuse for why this match should go on in the main event over the No DQ’s blow-off for the ROH World Tag Team Titles (as opposed to just announcing this meaningless singles match as the main event over that match, effectively burying the tag titles and the two teams involved, which is the last thing you want to do after having taken the belts off of War Machine the way that ROH did. Their quest to regain them should be a big deal).
CAPRICE COLEMAN PROMO- he gets cheap heat by burying Ohio State and putting over Michigan, then putting over the Golden State Warriors and burying the Cavaliers.
CAPRICE COLEMAN vs. ACH- 6.5/10
Fine opener. Silas Young was on commentary.
MARK BRISCOE vs. STEVIE RICHARDS- 6.25/10
Ian Riccaboni claimed that Mark Briscoe told him he is focused on winning the TV Title. This is not the first time an announcer has made such a claim. Unfortunately, we have never heard MARK HIMSELF say something, so it comes across as total bullsh*t, especially when Mark has spent so much of the year trying to win the tag titles.
They also need to stop it with this “having the TV Title means you’re the best wrestler on television” bullsh*t. It’s not a magical talisman that gives you a +5 bonus to all of your stats as long as there is a TV camera around. It’s a title belt, and it has almost always been portrayed as being subordinate to the ROH World Title (as it should be). It does not make you better than the world champion at all, any distinction between whether something is being televised or taking place on live TV is completely idiotic.
The match was surprisingly short. Stevie started playing the heel a bit as things progressed. He looked pretty good in the ring.
BEER CITY BRUISER vs. CHEESEBURGER- 4.75/10
Silas Young came out to do commentary. He said normally he would manage the Bruiser, but realized that he was facing lowly Cheeseburger tonight so that wouldn’t be necessary. This was a very well-done big man vs. little man match.
Ian Riccaboni pointed out that at Global Wars, LigerBurgers defeat the men who are currently the ROH World Tag Team Champions, which, given Delirious’ usual booking patterns, has me infinitely worried that when the New Japan guys come in next- the Death Before Dishonor PPV weekend- that we are going to see f*cking Cheeseburger getting a shot at the ROH World Tag Team Titles on PPV.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Silas cut a promo on Cheeseburger. He then went to beat up Cheeseburger but ACH showed up so Silas and the Beer City Bruiser bailed.
ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS- 6.5/10
Standard stuff aside from the finish, which was MCMG winning with a move I’ve never seen before: a double team Electric Chair Driver.
ADAM PAGE vs. JAY LETHAL (w/Taeler Hendrix)- 7.75/10
A good hot start to the match that added some real fuel to this fire, considering that Lethal and Page haven’t actually interacted yet in this angle. Good selling of the leg by both guys (especially Lethal), and a much-needed strong singles showing for Page… but Page has now wrestled five matches since his big heel turn and he’s lost EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. If you’re going to do f*ck finishes as frequently as Delirious does, why not use them in places where it actually makes sense?! Hell… I wouldn’t have minded Page getting a count-out win over Lethal or even pinning him after interference from the Bucks to set up a title match at some point in the summer. Surely they’re much better than having Lethal- who is selling an injury from last night- get the best of both Young Bucks as well as Page singlehandedly.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- okay… the fans need to just shut the f*ck up and let Whitmer cut his promo. It’s REALLY frustration to sit here for five minutes and listen to nothing, and no, this isn’t “heat,” because it’s not Whitmer I’m pissed at, it’s the fans because all Whitmer is trying to do is cut his promo and they’re not letting him. Whitmer eventually gave up, meaning we wasted five minutes on nothing.
KAMAITACHI vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 7.5/10
Great showing from both men. This is the Dalton Castle I like to see: more wrestling and less goofy antics.
ADAM COLE vs. LIO RUSH- 7.25/10
Bullet Club came out to the ring with Cole, and then just went to the back. Not sure what the point of that was. Cole worked over Rush's head and neck, as those body parts had been worked over in his match last night. Another great showing for Rush. One of these days he’s going to actually win one and it’s going to be awesome.
After the match Cole put Rush over and offered him a handshake and gave him a big hug, but it was all a set-up to distract him so the Bucks could come out and superkick him… and all of the fans who were just cheering for Rush all cheered that this was too sweet. F*cking idiots. Bullet Club then nailed Rush with a triple superkick. MCMG came out to prevent them from doing any further damage.
NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH FOR THE ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: The Addiction(c) vs. War Machine- 8.5/10
Twenty minutes of weapons and violence! Then we got some interference by Keith Lee and Shane Taylor that, while disappointing, does at least give some new faces some immediate direction. Also, that table shattering on the finish looked awesome.
RODERICK STRONG vs. JAY BRISCOE- 8.5/10
The story here was that Jay was coming in with injured ribs so Roddy worked them over all match. Jay worked over Roddy’s head and neither man left their targeted bodypart alone the entire match. Jay got a visual pinfall after a ref bump, but it was Roddy who got his hand raised in the end. It’s very curious that Roddy beating the #1 contender didn’t lead to Roddy getting a title match because Roddy getting one more shot at the world title on his last night in the company at the post-PPV TV taping. His opponent there would have either been Lethal- who never beat him cleanly last year, or Briscoe, who he just beat here, and he could put his opponent over cleanly on the way out in a main event (O’Reilly’s title shot could have easily waited until the next set of TV tapings). It makes a hell of a lot more sense than him putting over Dalton Castle in the middle of the card in a meaningless match for his big ROH goodbye.
A pretty awesome show from ROH, with an undercard ranging from solid to great, and a very strong one-two punch at the top of the card.
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monster mafia
- Posts: 4472
- Joined: Sat Aug 23, 2014 11:13 am
Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
question..
if you are a ringside member..the vod prices stays at the same price ?
if you are a ringside member..the vod prices stays at the same price ?
Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
I think VOD's are 15% off. I was trying to check but every time I tried to order one to check it out, it kept giving me errors.
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BurningHammer
- Posts: 2160
- Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:58 am
Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
Yeah you always get the usual discount with the membership on VOD's. It's one of the reasons why I actually get so many and can live with it possibly being a poor show.
That being said there has only been two "events" this year that I would say I could have left one was SuperCard of Honor night 2 and the second was West Warwick.
As for the Road to Best in the world for me it was of the most compete set of quality shows ROH has done in a long time and actually had me wanting to see the PPV. Even though Tag Wars didn't really have a lot of build or prestige behind the matches overall delivered and I actually didn't mind Silas and the BCB getting their shot at the titles.
I do think that the Cole vs Rush was a sleeper match for this year, it really had a great dynamic of a strong babyface meeting a much strong opponent and it really worked. I do think for all of the criticism directed towards ROH lately, bar the PPV's the match quality has been really high of late and many seem to finding a groove again that I hope will take ROH forward strongly over the coming months.
That being said there has only been two "events" this year that I would say I could have left one was SuperCard of Honor night 2 and the second was West Warwick.
As for the Road to Best in the world for me it was of the most compete set of quality shows ROH has done in a long time and actually had me wanting to see the PPV. Even though Tag Wars didn't really have a lot of build or prestige behind the matches overall delivered and I actually didn't mind Silas and the BCB getting their shot at the titles.
I do think that the Cole vs Rush was a sleeper match for this year, it really had a great dynamic of a strong babyface meeting a much strong opponent and it really worked. I do think for all of the criticism directed towards ROH lately, bar the PPV's the match quality has been really high of late and many seem to finding a groove again that I hope will take ROH forward strongly over the coming months.
Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
Road to BITW 16' Colombus was a great show. Sold undercard and a great second half. The first matches (ACH vs Coleman, Bruiser vs Cheese and Guns vs ANX) were all very entertaining. Page vs Lethal was good until the overbooked finish, I really liked Page here. Castle-Kamaitachi didn't worked for me, they finished the match when it was getting interesting. Last three matches were awesome. The only problem with this shows is the shitty and quiet crowd from Colombus, shuch a shame.
- Lio Rush vs Adam Cole [***3/4]
- (No DQ Tag Titles) Addiction vs War Machine [***3/4]
- Briscoe vs Strong [****] Fantastic match very very well worked in a slow pace.
The other show I saw was the Milwaukee one. Better than Colombus and one of my favoirite ROH shows this year. Great atmosphere, a great list of talent and awesome wrestling. Worth the price.
- Addiction vs Robinson & Kamaitachi [***] Short match but the definition of the perfect opener.
- Machine Guns vs Rush & Moose [***1/2] Rush and Moose were such an interesting combination.
- Dijak vs Barretta [***1/4]
- O'Reilly vs ACH vs Elgin vs Strong [****] MOTN
- Fish vs Romero [***]
- (Tag Wars Finals) Young/Bruiser vs ANX vs Briscoes [***1/2+] Very nice finals, great crowd and commentary
- Bucks vs Cabana/Lethal [****]
- Lio Rush vs Adam Cole [***3/4]
- (No DQ Tag Titles) Addiction vs War Machine [***3/4]
- Briscoe vs Strong [****] Fantastic match very very well worked in a slow pace.
The other show I saw was the Milwaukee one. Better than Colombus and one of my favoirite ROH shows this year. Great atmosphere, a great list of talent and awesome wrestling. Worth the price.
- Addiction vs Robinson & Kamaitachi [***] Short match but the definition of the perfect opener.
- Machine Guns vs Rush & Moose [***1/2] Rush and Moose were such an interesting combination.
- Dijak vs Barretta [***1/4]
- O'Reilly vs ACH vs Elgin vs Strong [****] MOTN
- Fish vs Romero [***]
- (Tag Wars Finals) Young/Bruiser vs ANX vs Briscoes [***1/2+] Very nice finals, great crowd and commentary
- Bucks vs Cabana/Lethal [****]
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Big Red Machine
- Posts: 4376
- Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 10:10 pm
Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
ROH Road to Best in the World 2016: Indianapolis (6/4/2016)- Indianapolis, IN
THE ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. STEVIE RICHARDS & DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 5.5/10
This was supposed to be Stevie vs. Dalton in a singles match but ANX came out and cut a good promo on them, which led to this being a tag team match. It would have been nice if Nigel or someone could have made this official (even just have Ian Riccaboni or Veda Scott pretend to have gotten word of their headsets or something), but whatever. I did like that Scarlett re-did the intros to officially inform the crowd that this was a tag team match. Dalton needs to call people “turds” more often. It just kind of works.
ANX gets another cheap win, this time after Stevie had a visual pinfall on Rhett but the ref was distracted with Dalton, allowing Kenny King to hit Stevie with a chair an flip them over so it was Rhett doing the pinning.
The lights in the building kept fading out for some reason. I guess Undertaker was debating whether or not he would make an appearance.
CHEESEBURGER vs. CAPRICE COLEMAN- DUD!
Caprice cut a promo where he talked too fast for me to understand. Then he offered Cheeseburger some sort of food item during the pre-match handshake. Instead of just saying “no thanks,” Cheeseburger slapped it out of Caprice’s hand like a jerk. Maybe this played into Caprice’s promo, but the announcers didn’t do anything to really indicate that it did. Cheeseburger also did stick his hand out for the Code of Honor-mandated handshake right afterwards so it came across more like Cheeseburger wanted this to be serious… except that explanation falls apart because the motherf*cker’s name is “CHEESEBURGER.”
They did some crap with the cereal bars, including Cheeseburger hitting Coleman in the face with one, which should have been a DQ. The reason they were able to get at them so easily was that the referee let Coleman leave the big jar of them (as well as a bag of something else) right there in the corner of the ring, which is the opposite of what you are supposed to do. As I will discuss in the “Stupid Announcer Quotes” segment, the commentary here was infuriating, and the match was short. The most enjoyable part of this was Veda Scott’s defense of her unprofessional behavior of eating on while doing commentary by saying “it’s a free cereal bar!” through a big mouthful of said cereal bar.
CHRISTOPHER DANIELS vs. RAYMOND ROWE- 6.25/10
Ian Riccaboni remembers that Rowe had a visual pinfall on then-ROH TV Champion Jay Lethal, and points to his as evidence that Rowe can win big singles matches. This is a good point. So good a point that it makes you wonder why Rowe has never even been talked about as part of the TV Title picture in the YEAR since then. He hasn’t even gotten a Proving Ground match, despite ample opportunity to have done so (Aftershock Tour: Hopkins comes immediately to mind, when Rowe’s partner Hanson was also being built for a TV Title shot, so giving him a singles win would have made sense, freeing Rowe up for a title shot or proving ground match against Lethal [which would have also helped put over this idea that choosing to keep and defend both the TV and world titles could result in Lethal being overworked by having him defend the belt on his very first show as champion], but instead we got War Machine beating perennial losers Silas Young & Beer City Bruiser, while double champion Jay Lethal was wasted in a pointless tag team match that was built around a feud between manager Truth Martini and stale comedy act ODB).
Also, it is just astonishing that Ian is able to remember this one result from a show a full year ago while he says… well… go check out the first Stupid Announcer Quote.
Anyway, these guys had their match and it was fine while it lasted, but the whole time I had my eye on the curtain because I was 100% certain that the finish would involve some sort of run-in from Kazarian, either as a distraction or physical interference either leading to the pin or to a DQ… and of course I was right. The reason I expected this is because (as if the pair of singles matches between the partners wasn’t warning enough), Delirious almost always overbooks, and especially when involving heel champions or the Addiction. The aforementioned match where Raymond Rowe got a visual pinfall on Jay Lethal that led to absolutely nothing is just one example (perhaps more egregious was Lethal’s inability to cleanly defeat Takaaki Watanabe- a New Japan Dojo trainee in ROH for his learning excursion, in an ROH TV Title match on Watanabe’s last show in the US before going back to New Japan. Another, more recent example, would be at the recent show in West Warwick, when, we also had Kaz and Daniels scheduled in separate singles matches, and Daniels match with Lio Rush ended in a DQ when Kaz interfered, at which point Kaz’s scheduled opponent came out to make the save and it resulted in a tag team match (which the Addiction lost when Rush pinned Daniels anyway).
So this dirty finish here was no surprise… but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t frustrating and annoying. So far we’ve had three matches tonight, which have been one bad squash with comedy in it, and two dirty finishes. This is RING OF HONOR. The company that was founded on this sort of sh*t NOT happening, and that continued for be a guiding philosophy until about a year ago, at which point things have seemed to turn to sh*t.
For those wondering how I would solve the problem of not having a dirty finish while also not beating either the champions or the #1 contenders, the answer is very simple: I wouldn’t have booked these matches in the first place. These guys don’t need to interact tonight. They wrestled last night in a six-man tag and they’re wrestling tomorrow in a No DQs match for the tag titles (plus they wrestled on the last show before this tour as well). Putting them in here together doesn’t do anything other than make their in-ring meetings less special because they’ve already wrestled so many times. That’s one of WWE’s major problems nowadays, and it seems to have made its way into ROH recently as well.
So as expected, the Addiction beat War Machine down but War Machine make their own comeback and Rowe and Daniels brawl to the back, leaving us with…
FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. HANSON- 4/10
Props to Scarlett for doing the intros for this impromptu match while the action was going on. It makes things feel more official, which helps them feel a little bit more real.
Hanson won clean in the middle of the ring, defeating one half of the ROH World Tag Team Champions in just five minutes. Between losses like this all of the DQs, and the whole angle where they were on this massive losing streak before winning the titles via belt shot over opponents who had already wrestled, the Addiction have pretty much been killed off as believable tag champs. There is heel heat, and then there is irreparable damage, and this is much more towards the second one than the first.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- and on that note, Daniels jumps Hanson after the match, but Rowe comes right out to make the save and beats Daniels up, pretty much nullifying Daniels’ already-tarnished victory by removing any heat it might have gotten. Then War Machine lay Daniels out with their finisher. Anyone who thinks that this was good because it shows people that War Machine can beat the Addiction and thus we should think that they are going to win the tag titles tomorrow night is overlooking the important point that such a feeling was already established via the very heelish manner in which Addiction won the belts from War Machine and the finish their rematch at the New York show in which Addiction got themselves purposely disqualified to keep the belts because they thought they were going to lose. The last fifteen minutes of this show have served no purpose other than to bury the ROH World Tag Team Champions.
SIX MAN MAYHEM: Roderick Strong vs. Kamaitachi vs. ACH vs. Will Ferrara vs. Lio Rush vs. Jason Kincaid- 7/10
This was a really fun spotfest that managed to function like a second opener for me. A fun, exciting reset after a fifty minutes of crap. Ian and Veda note what appears to be a developing storyline with Roderick losing multi-man matches but not taking the fall, which makes you wonder how close they were to keeping Roddy around and when the final decision was made.
MATT SELLS vs. BJ WHITMER- 0.5/10
They did a segment where (after the traditional several minutes of “shut the f*ck up!” chants), Whitmer cut a promo noting that his opponent looked like Old School Steve Corino. They’re both Caucasian, both sometimes wore black kneepads, black boots, and yellow trunks, and both are naturally dark-haired but dyed their hair blond, so I guess they look the same. You know… in the same way that pre-beard and haircut Triple H looks like Adam Cole because they’re both Caucasians who sometimes where black trunks, boots, and kneepads, and have long hair. Just because they are different sizes and have different facial hair doesn’t mean they can’t look the same, right? Hell… at least both Cole and Hunter don’t have tattoos, whereas Corino only has a few on his arm but Sells has them all over the place.
The story of this match was that Whitmer beat the sh*t out of Sells and kept pulling him up at two. This almost cost Whitmer as Sells got a small comeback but then Whitmer beat him.
Can we PLEASE stop it with these f*cking Cheeseburger (and Women of Honor) t-shirt commercials on the VODs/DVDs. There is NO ONE who is buying a DVD or VOD from the ROH website that does not know that these products are available from the ROH website, so they’re not actually doing anything for sales, and the Cheeseburger one in particular is extremely obnoxious. No one wants to hear a bunch of people yell “CHEESEBURGER!” and make other obnoxious sounds over and over again.
KEITH LEE & SHANE TAYLOR vs. SILAS YOUNG & THE BEER CITY BRUISER- 5.25/10
The match was fine for what it was: Big dudes doing stuff to each other, Silas working on Lee’s knee, and Lee & Taylor getting to show off their stuff. Silas & the Bruiser do yet another job. I’m not saying Lee and Taylor shouldn’t have won here, but it’d be nice if this win felt like it meant something rather than them beating a team that is so worthless that Delirious wouldn’t even give them the win against a tag team that was about to break up right after their match.
JAY BRISCOE vs. MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 7.75/10
This was pretty awesome slugfest. There was only one spot in the match that I didn’t like (which keeps this from being an 8/10), and believe it or not, it wasn’t the spot where Moose fighting spirit-ed up after taking a superplex. That spot worked perfectly. The spot I didn’t like was Moose powerboming Briscoe through a table right in front of the referee. That definitely should have been a DQ but wasn’t. This match (and that spot in particular) continued the story of this weekend’s three shows, which was Jay Briscoe’s ribs being injured, which would pay off tomorrow night in Columbus against Roderick Strong. I believe this was Moose’s best singles match in ROH aside from his No DQs match with Cedric Alexander.
MARK BRISCOE vs. JAY LETHAL (w/Taeler Hendrix)- 7/10
This didn’t start off well at all. Early on Jay Lethal, who is clearly supposed to be in the middle of a face turn, and who just last night not only followed the Code of Honor (in a match against Mark’s brother Jay, no less), but even got into a fight with his own heel partners… started this match off by refusing to follow the Code of Honor and doing general heel stuff. Later on he got help from Taeler Hendrix and also tried to hit Jay Briscoe’s Jay Driller, like a complete and total heel. There was also a spot where the referee just decided not to start counting the wrestlers out, despite both being down outside of the ring. This only gets brought up to a 7/10 because of the great finishing sequence.
MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS vs. BULLET CLUB (Adam Cole & Adam Page) (w/the Young Bucks)- 7.5/10
Bullet Club use heel tactic, including copious interference form the Bucks, to get the advantage. Referee Tod Sinclair eventually ejected them from ringside. MCMG made their comeback and everything was going well until MCMG had the match won but Adam Cole pulled Sinclair out of the ring. Even though it was clear that Cole did it, he was not disqualified. We then got a ref bump which allowed the Bucks to interfere for a quite a while before MCMG eventually overcame the odds and won, with Page doing yet another job.
I really didn’t like the overbooking here. First of all, this is ROH, and a main event no les, so I’d rather not see it for that reason alone. Then we have the fact that this four-on-two was going on for quite a while, and no one came out to help MCMG. Jay Briscoe is kayfabe injured, but both Jay Lethal and Mark Briscoe are feuding with Bullet Club and should have no reason not to help Sabin and Shelley. Having them chase the Bucks away would also have saved Bullet Club- theoretically our top heels, from being punked out despite a four-on-two advantage. They were already losing the match because MCMG are headed into a PPV tag title shot, even though neither Cole nor Page should be losing right now (which is why this match shouldn’t have been booked in the first place), but having them get punked out as a big unit was both counterproductive and entirely unnecessary.
A disappointing show from ROH, filled with a lot of the things about current product that frustrate me the most. It is baffling to me that Delirious will take the time to think out this “Jay Briscoe’s ribs get injured” angle for this weekend- which, while a good story, is really a small thing that doesn’t actually do much for anyone-, but can’t be bothered to come up with a direction for 75% of the midcard. It’s like he has been hired to build a building and he has built one side of it and is focusing on the intricate details of the gargoyles on the outside when he is on a deadline and really should be putting his effort into building the other three walls. I’d recommend that you stay away from this one, especially with the wretched first half of the show.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Ian Riccaboni described Cheeseburger as being on “an impressive winning streak, with a win over Foxx Vinyer on a recent episode of Ring of Honor television as well as win over P-Dog back in Nashville.”
SOOOO much wrong here:
1. Two wins a in a row barely qualifies as a “streak.”
2. It’s wins over two jobbers who are even lower on the totem pole than Cheeseburger himself, so it doesn’t really qualify as “impressive,” either.
3. I remembered neither of these matches, so I looked back at some records. Cagematch.net records the match with Vinyer as actually being a no-contest, while my own review seems to indicate that Vinyer was the one who the interlopers attacked, so it really should have been Cheeseburger losing via DQ… so not only is Ian wrong about the result of a match, but his error whittles this supposed “streak” down to just one win, which isn’t actually a streak.
4. Cheeseburger actually does have a real victory between now and the time those episodes aired (which was back in late March). That win? The so-called “biggest win of his career” when he pinned Christopher Daniels live on ROH PPV at Global Wars (plus he actually won a dark match at the NYC show, too).
5. But that wouldn’t really even make it a “streak” either, because in between this match and the “wins” that Ian describes (and even the ones he doesn’t), Cheeseburger has lost SIX matches, including an ROH World Title match at Supercard of Honor X: Night 2.
So no matter how you try to spin it, Ian Riccaboni is 100% WRONG… and all because he felt the need to say something to add some credibility to A 90 LBS JOBBER NAMED “CHEESEBURGER!” Credibility left him a long time ago.
2. Ian Riccaboni (also about Cheeseburger)- “He went to the ROH Dojo. His goal: to get to Japan.”
How about if maybe we don’t talk about the fact that people go to the ROH Dojo with any goal other than to GET INTO ROH. So Ian will bend over backwards to put over Cheeseburger, but won’t leave out one minor detail to in order to avoid burying ROH. F*cking idiot.
3. Ian Riccaboni said that Lee & Taylor and Silas & Bruiser were “just two of dozens of teams” in ROH. “Dozens?” Really? Using the nicest possible definition, “dozens” would mean twenty-four tag teams. To be EXCEEDINGLY nice to Ian, we will very broadly define how often you have to team up to be considered a viable tag team, and not just count teams in ROH, but also pairings from New Japan that have teamed up in ROH on a semi-regular basis. Using that, I count eighteen. Nineteen at most. And that includes jobber teams like Brutal Bob & Tim Hughes, teams that only seem to exist as on-paper entities but don’t seem to be a real team like Roddy & Lethal, guys in the same stable who never team together as a two-man unit like Lethal & Daddiego, and even the freakin’ Boys. Why couldn’t Ian have just called it the “the deepest tag team division in professional wrestling?” (which it is. ROH alone has nine well-established teams, and that’s without going into anyone who actually has a contract with New Japan but shows up for ROH often enough anyway like Roppongi Vice, or forced-together pairings like Moose & Rush). Why did he have to go and try to make it sound bigger by saying something utterly ridiculous? BY FAR ROH’s best announcers are Veda Scott and BJ Whitmer. Why? Because unlike Ian or Kevin Kelly or Corino, they know how to put something over without using hyperbole to the point that it shatters credibility.
4. Right after talking about how long Mark Briscoe has been in ROH for, Ian Riccaboni tells us that “it has always been Mark Briscoe’s dream to capture the ROH World Television Title.”
Yes. It has “always” been Mark’s dream to win a title that did not exist for the first half of his ROH career.
5. Ian Riccaboni claimed that Mark Briscoe was “undefeated singles match from June 2015 to January 2016.”
I had never heard any mention of this before, so I was sure it was untrue. I did some checking and- if we are counting “singles matches” as meaning only one-on-one contests (excluding, say, Four Corner Survivals and the like), then Ian is still not correct, as Mark lost a singles match in July to Christopher Daniels as well as a world title match to Jay Lethal in June. But he was, actually, undefeated in one-on-one contests from August 2015 until the last ROH show of January 2016. This seems like the sort of thing that is supposed to be important, so why the hell am I only hearing about it for the first time now, almost four and a half months after this streak ended? And now that it’s well over, why even bring it up? The decisions the announcers make about what to bring up in this company are completely incomprehensible. It’s also astonishing to me that Ian can remember unimportant crap like this from months and months ago, but can’t remember the results of Cheeseburgers two most high-profile matches, both of which happened within just over two months of this show.
THE ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. STEVIE RICHARDS & DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 5.5/10
This was supposed to be Stevie vs. Dalton in a singles match but ANX came out and cut a good promo on them, which led to this being a tag team match. It would have been nice if Nigel or someone could have made this official (even just have Ian Riccaboni or Veda Scott pretend to have gotten word of their headsets or something), but whatever. I did like that Scarlett re-did the intros to officially inform the crowd that this was a tag team match. Dalton needs to call people “turds” more often. It just kind of works.
ANX gets another cheap win, this time after Stevie had a visual pinfall on Rhett but the ref was distracted with Dalton, allowing Kenny King to hit Stevie with a chair an flip them over so it was Rhett doing the pinning.
The lights in the building kept fading out for some reason. I guess Undertaker was debating whether or not he would make an appearance.
CHEESEBURGER vs. CAPRICE COLEMAN- DUD!
Caprice cut a promo where he talked too fast for me to understand. Then he offered Cheeseburger some sort of food item during the pre-match handshake. Instead of just saying “no thanks,” Cheeseburger slapped it out of Caprice’s hand like a jerk. Maybe this played into Caprice’s promo, but the announcers didn’t do anything to really indicate that it did. Cheeseburger also did stick his hand out for the Code of Honor-mandated handshake right afterwards so it came across more like Cheeseburger wanted this to be serious… except that explanation falls apart because the motherf*cker’s name is “CHEESEBURGER.”
They did some crap with the cereal bars, including Cheeseburger hitting Coleman in the face with one, which should have been a DQ. The reason they were able to get at them so easily was that the referee let Coleman leave the big jar of them (as well as a bag of something else) right there in the corner of the ring, which is the opposite of what you are supposed to do. As I will discuss in the “Stupid Announcer Quotes” segment, the commentary here was infuriating, and the match was short. The most enjoyable part of this was Veda Scott’s defense of her unprofessional behavior of eating on while doing commentary by saying “it’s a free cereal bar!” through a big mouthful of said cereal bar.
CHRISTOPHER DANIELS vs. RAYMOND ROWE- 6.25/10
Ian Riccaboni remembers that Rowe had a visual pinfall on then-ROH TV Champion Jay Lethal, and points to his as evidence that Rowe can win big singles matches. This is a good point. So good a point that it makes you wonder why Rowe has never even been talked about as part of the TV Title picture in the YEAR since then. He hasn’t even gotten a Proving Ground match, despite ample opportunity to have done so (Aftershock Tour: Hopkins comes immediately to mind, when Rowe’s partner Hanson was also being built for a TV Title shot, so giving him a singles win would have made sense, freeing Rowe up for a title shot or proving ground match against Lethal [which would have also helped put over this idea that choosing to keep and defend both the TV and world titles could result in Lethal being overworked by having him defend the belt on his very first show as champion], but instead we got War Machine beating perennial losers Silas Young & Beer City Bruiser, while double champion Jay Lethal was wasted in a pointless tag team match that was built around a feud between manager Truth Martini and stale comedy act ODB).
Also, it is just astonishing that Ian is able to remember this one result from a show a full year ago while he says… well… go check out the first Stupid Announcer Quote.
Anyway, these guys had their match and it was fine while it lasted, but the whole time I had my eye on the curtain because I was 100% certain that the finish would involve some sort of run-in from Kazarian, either as a distraction or physical interference either leading to the pin or to a DQ… and of course I was right. The reason I expected this is because (as if the pair of singles matches between the partners wasn’t warning enough), Delirious almost always overbooks, and especially when involving heel champions or the Addiction. The aforementioned match where Raymond Rowe got a visual pinfall on Jay Lethal that led to absolutely nothing is just one example (perhaps more egregious was Lethal’s inability to cleanly defeat Takaaki Watanabe- a New Japan Dojo trainee in ROH for his learning excursion, in an ROH TV Title match on Watanabe’s last show in the US before going back to New Japan. Another, more recent example, would be at the recent show in West Warwick, when, we also had Kaz and Daniels scheduled in separate singles matches, and Daniels match with Lio Rush ended in a DQ when Kaz interfered, at which point Kaz’s scheduled opponent came out to make the save and it resulted in a tag team match (which the Addiction lost when Rush pinned Daniels anyway).
So this dirty finish here was no surprise… but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t frustrating and annoying. So far we’ve had three matches tonight, which have been one bad squash with comedy in it, and two dirty finishes. This is RING OF HONOR. The company that was founded on this sort of sh*t NOT happening, and that continued for be a guiding philosophy until about a year ago, at which point things have seemed to turn to sh*t.
For those wondering how I would solve the problem of not having a dirty finish while also not beating either the champions or the #1 contenders, the answer is very simple: I wouldn’t have booked these matches in the first place. These guys don’t need to interact tonight. They wrestled last night in a six-man tag and they’re wrestling tomorrow in a No DQs match for the tag titles (plus they wrestled on the last show before this tour as well). Putting them in here together doesn’t do anything other than make their in-ring meetings less special because they’ve already wrestled so many times. That’s one of WWE’s major problems nowadays, and it seems to have made its way into ROH recently as well.
So as expected, the Addiction beat War Machine down but War Machine make their own comeback and Rowe and Daniels brawl to the back, leaving us with…
FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. HANSON- 4/10
Props to Scarlett for doing the intros for this impromptu match while the action was going on. It makes things feel more official, which helps them feel a little bit more real.
Hanson won clean in the middle of the ring, defeating one half of the ROH World Tag Team Champions in just five minutes. Between losses like this all of the DQs, and the whole angle where they were on this massive losing streak before winning the titles via belt shot over opponents who had already wrestled, the Addiction have pretty much been killed off as believable tag champs. There is heel heat, and then there is irreparable damage, and this is much more towards the second one than the first.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- and on that note, Daniels jumps Hanson after the match, but Rowe comes right out to make the save and beats Daniels up, pretty much nullifying Daniels’ already-tarnished victory by removing any heat it might have gotten. Then War Machine lay Daniels out with their finisher. Anyone who thinks that this was good because it shows people that War Machine can beat the Addiction and thus we should think that they are going to win the tag titles tomorrow night is overlooking the important point that such a feeling was already established via the very heelish manner in which Addiction won the belts from War Machine and the finish their rematch at the New York show in which Addiction got themselves purposely disqualified to keep the belts because they thought they were going to lose. The last fifteen minutes of this show have served no purpose other than to bury the ROH World Tag Team Champions.
SIX MAN MAYHEM: Roderick Strong vs. Kamaitachi vs. ACH vs. Will Ferrara vs. Lio Rush vs. Jason Kincaid- 7/10
This was a really fun spotfest that managed to function like a second opener for me. A fun, exciting reset after a fifty minutes of crap. Ian and Veda note what appears to be a developing storyline with Roderick losing multi-man matches but not taking the fall, which makes you wonder how close they were to keeping Roddy around and when the final decision was made.
MATT SELLS vs. BJ WHITMER- 0.5/10
They did a segment where (after the traditional several minutes of “shut the f*ck up!” chants), Whitmer cut a promo noting that his opponent looked like Old School Steve Corino. They’re both Caucasian, both sometimes wore black kneepads, black boots, and yellow trunks, and both are naturally dark-haired but dyed their hair blond, so I guess they look the same. You know… in the same way that pre-beard and haircut Triple H looks like Adam Cole because they’re both Caucasians who sometimes where black trunks, boots, and kneepads, and have long hair. Just because they are different sizes and have different facial hair doesn’t mean they can’t look the same, right? Hell… at least both Cole and Hunter don’t have tattoos, whereas Corino only has a few on his arm but Sells has them all over the place.
The story of this match was that Whitmer beat the sh*t out of Sells and kept pulling him up at two. This almost cost Whitmer as Sells got a small comeback but then Whitmer beat him.
Can we PLEASE stop it with these f*cking Cheeseburger (and Women of Honor) t-shirt commercials on the VODs/DVDs. There is NO ONE who is buying a DVD or VOD from the ROH website that does not know that these products are available from the ROH website, so they’re not actually doing anything for sales, and the Cheeseburger one in particular is extremely obnoxious. No one wants to hear a bunch of people yell “CHEESEBURGER!” and make other obnoxious sounds over and over again.
KEITH LEE & SHANE TAYLOR vs. SILAS YOUNG & THE BEER CITY BRUISER- 5.25/10
The match was fine for what it was: Big dudes doing stuff to each other, Silas working on Lee’s knee, and Lee & Taylor getting to show off their stuff. Silas & the Bruiser do yet another job. I’m not saying Lee and Taylor shouldn’t have won here, but it’d be nice if this win felt like it meant something rather than them beating a team that is so worthless that Delirious wouldn’t even give them the win against a tag team that was about to break up right after their match.
JAY BRISCOE vs. MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 7.75/10
This was pretty awesome slugfest. There was only one spot in the match that I didn’t like (which keeps this from being an 8/10), and believe it or not, it wasn’t the spot where Moose fighting spirit-ed up after taking a superplex. That spot worked perfectly. The spot I didn’t like was Moose powerboming Briscoe through a table right in front of the referee. That definitely should have been a DQ but wasn’t. This match (and that spot in particular) continued the story of this weekend’s three shows, which was Jay Briscoe’s ribs being injured, which would pay off tomorrow night in Columbus against Roderick Strong. I believe this was Moose’s best singles match in ROH aside from his No DQs match with Cedric Alexander.
MARK BRISCOE vs. JAY LETHAL (w/Taeler Hendrix)- 7/10
This didn’t start off well at all. Early on Jay Lethal, who is clearly supposed to be in the middle of a face turn, and who just last night not only followed the Code of Honor (in a match against Mark’s brother Jay, no less), but even got into a fight with his own heel partners… started this match off by refusing to follow the Code of Honor and doing general heel stuff. Later on he got help from Taeler Hendrix and also tried to hit Jay Briscoe’s Jay Driller, like a complete and total heel. There was also a spot where the referee just decided not to start counting the wrestlers out, despite both being down outside of the ring. This only gets brought up to a 7/10 because of the great finishing sequence.
MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS vs. BULLET CLUB (Adam Cole & Adam Page) (w/the Young Bucks)- 7.5/10
Bullet Club use heel tactic, including copious interference form the Bucks, to get the advantage. Referee Tod Sinclair eventually ejected them from ringside. MCMG made their comeback and everything was going well until MCMG had the match won but Adam Cole pulled Sinclair out of the ring. Even though it was clear that Cole did it, he was not disqualified. We then got a ref bump which allowed the Bucks to interfere for a quite a while before MCMG eventually overcame the odds and won, with Page doing yet another job.
I really didn’t like the overbooking here. First of all, this is ROH, and a main event no les, so I’d rather not see it for that reason alone. Then we have the fact that this four-on-two was going on for quite a while, and no one came out to help MCMG. Jay Briscoe is kayfabe injured, but both Jay Lethal and Mark Briscoe are feuding with Bullet Club and should have no reason not to help Sabin and Shelley. Having them chase the Bucks away would also have saved Bullet Club- theoretically our top heels, from being punked out despite a four-on-two advantage. They were already losing the match because MCMG are headed into a PPV tag title shot, even though neither Cole nor Page should be losing right now (which is why this match shouldn’t have been booked in the first place), but having them get punked out as a big unit was both counterproductive and entirely unnecessary.
A disappointing show from ROH, filled with a lot of the things about current product that frustrate me the most. It is baffling to me that Delirious will take the time to think out this “Jay Briscoe’s ribs get injured” angle for this weekend- which, while a good story, is really a small thing that doesn’t actually do much for anyone-, but can’t be bothered to come up with a direction for 75% of the midcard. It’s like he has been hired to build a building and he has built one side of it and is focusing on the intricate details of the gargoyles on the outside when he is on a deadline and really should be putting his effort into building the other three walls. I’d recommend that you stay away from this one, especially with the wretched first half of the show.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Ian Riccaboni described Cheeseburger as being on “an impressive winning streak, with a win over Foxx Vinyer on a recent episode of Ring of Honor television as well as win over P-Dog back in Nashville.”
SOOOO much wrong here:
1. Two wins a in a row barely qualifies as a “streak.”
2. It’s wins over two jobbers who are even lower on the totem pole than Cheeseburger himself, so it doesn’t really qualify as “impressive,” either.
3. I remembered neither of these matches, so I looked back at some records. Cagematch.net records the match with Vinyer as actually being a no-contest, while my own review seems to indicate that Vinyer was the one who the interlopers attacked, so it really should have been Cheeseburger losing via DQ… so not only is Ian wrong about the result of a match, but his error whittles this supposed “streak” down to just one win, which isn’t actually a streak.
4. Cheeseburger actually does have a real victory between now and the time those episodes aired (which was back in late March). That win? The so-called “biggest win of his career” when he pinned Christopher Daniels live on ROH PPV at Global Wars (plus he actually won a dark match at the NYC show, too).
5. But that wouldn’t really even make it a “streak” either, because in between this match and the “wins” that Ian describes (and even the ones he doesn’t), Cheeseburger has lost SIX matches, including an ROH World Title match at Supercard of Honor X: Night 2.
So no matter how you try to spin it, Ian Riccaboni is 100% WRONG… and all because he felt the need to say something to add some credibility to A 90 LBS JOBBER NAMED “CHEESEBURGER!” Credibility left him a long time ago.
2. Ian Riccaboni (also about Cheeseburger)- “He went to the ROH Dojo. His goal: to get to Japan.”
How about if maybe we don’t talk about the fact that people go to the ROH Dojo with any goal other than to GET INTO ROH. So Ian will bend over backwards to put over Cheeseburger, but won’t leave out one minor detail to in order to avoid burying ROH. F*cking idiot.
3. Ian Riccaboni said that Lee & Taylor and Silas & Bruiser were “just two of dozens of teams” in ROH. “Dozens?” Really? Using the nicest possible definition, “dozens” would mean twenty-four tag teams. To be EXCEEDINGLY nice to Ian, we will very broadly define how often you have to team up to be considered a viable tag team, and not just count teams in ROH, but also pairings from New Japan that have teamed up in ROH on a semi-regular basis. Using that, I count eighteen. Nineteen at most. And that includes jobber teams like Brutal Bob & Tim Hughes, teams that only seem to exist as on-paper entities but don’t seem to be a real team like Roddy & Lethal, guys in the same stable who never team together as a two-man unit like Lethal & Daddiego, and even the freakin’ Boys. Why couldn’t Ian have just called it the “the deepest tag team division in professional wrestling?” (which it is. ROH alone has nine well-established teams, and that’s without going into anyone who actually has a contract with New Japan but shows up for ROH often enough anyway like Roppongi Vice, or forced-together pairings like Moose & Rush). Why did he have to go and try to make it sound bigger by saying something utterly ridiculous? BY FAR ROH’s best announcers are Veda Scott and BJ Whitmer. Why? Because unlike Ian or Kevin Kelly or Corino, they know how to put something over without using hyperbole to the point that it shatters credibility.
4. Right after talking about how long Mark Briscoe has been in ROH for, Ian Riccaboni tells us that “it has always been Mark Briscoe’s dream to capture the ROH World Television Title.”
Yes. It has “always” been Mark’s dream to win a title that did not exist for the first half of his ROH career.
5. Ian Riccaboni claimed that Mark Briscoe was “undefeated singles match from June 2015 to January 2016.”
I had never heard any mention of this before, so I was sure it was untrue. I did some checking and- if we are counting “singles matches” as meaning only one-on-one contests (excluding, say, Four Corner Survivals and the like), then Ian is still not correct, as Mark lost a singles match in July to Christopher Daniels as well as a world title match to Jay Lethal in June. But he was, actually, undefeated in one-on-one contests from August 2015 until the last ROH show of January 2016. This seems like the sort of thing that is supposed to be important, so why the hell am I only hearing about it for the first time now, almost four and a half months after this streak ended? And now that it’s well over, why even bring it up? The decisions the announcers make about what to bring up in this company are completely incomprehensible. It’s also astonishing to me that Ian can remember unimportant crap like this from months and months ago, but can’t remember the results of Cheeseburgers two most high-profile matches, both of which happened within just over two months of this show.
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Big Red Machine
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Re: Official Road To "Best In The World '16" Thread
ROH Road to Best in the World 2016: Hopkins (6/11/2016)- Hopkins, MN
JUICE ROBINSON vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 5.5/10
Castle’s Boys have different hair tonight, and are noticeably paler. It’s entirely possible that they’re Sheamus’ nephews. In other appearance-related news likely related to the fact that they’re in Minnesota, there is a woman in the front row who appears to be wearing nothing on top but her bra. In her defense, it’s Minnesota, and this might well be the only week of the year she can do this without risking frostbite.
Dalton picks up the win in a solid match, with no obnoxious comedy whatsoever. This match right here is proof that he can still be Dalton Castle, without devolving into stupid, pointless comedy. This is what I’d like to see a lot more of out of him.
LIVE FISH TANK WITH BOBBY FISH- sh*t.
His guess was Dalton Castle. They had “no room in the budget” for chairs so they used the Boys instead. They did some comedy with this. Dalton seemed to lose his Dalton Castle voice for the first chunk of this, so if you’ve ever wondered what he sounds like when he’s not being a weirdo or a sailor, buy this DVD to find out.
This segment was a huge waste of time. Fish’s question to Dalton was “what is going to go down in our match?” for the TV Title at the PPV. They vowed to have brunch together after their match. They continued to converse, spending almost ten minutes saying absolutely nothing with any value until Dalton had one line about how there was no way he was going to let the TV Title slip away from him. Then they went right back to comedy, ending the segment with Dalton declaring that brunch was cancelled. If they had given these twelve minutes to one of the matches or even split them among two or three matches, it would have made this show much better.
CHRIS SABIN vs. WILL FERRARA- 5.75/10
TAG WARS 2016 FIRST-ROUND MATCH: War Machine vs. Silas Young & Beer City Bruiser vs. Lio Rush & Moose (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 6.75/10
Christopher Daniels joined the commentary team. They had a graphics screw-up so that the graphics for War Machine read “The Addiction, ROH World Tag Team Champions.” That’s embarrassing. Doesn’t anyone watch these before they put them up in order to catch things like this?
BJ Whitmer referred to the team of Lio Rush & Moose as “Moose & Squirrel.” BRILLIANT!
The big men did big-man stuff, Lio Rush did small-man stuff, and Silas Young was just kind of there. Fun match.
ACH vs. ALEX SHELLEY- 6.25/10
WAY too short. So short in fact (just ten minutes) that what should be a big singles win and a step up for ACH didn’t really feel that important. This right here is a match that could have used those twelve minutes they gave to the Fish Tank.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- After the match ACH put Shelley over on the mic, which seemed completely unnecessary. He’s Alex Shelley. We don’t need some young up-and-comer to tell us that he’s great. Shelley then put ACH over in a way that felt more authentic, but Shelley’s big speech about how hard ACH works and how much he busts his ass every night would have felt like it meant a lot more coming after a match that went twenty minutes instead of just ten.
Then we got to the real meat of this segment, which was Shelley telling ACH that he doesn’t like Sias Young either and Silas always has BCB with him, so if ACH ever needs any help Shelley would be honored to help him. In fact, he would be so honored to team with ACH that he says that if they ever need a third member of MCMG, they want it to be ACH. And in return, they’d like ACH to have their backs against Bullet Club because Bullet Club has so many guys.
So here were are four and a half months later: ACH and Silas finished their feud off… and yet the Guns never once helped ACH (they didn’t even have a house show where Silas was angry that they offered to stick their nose in his business and demanded that MCMG face him and the Bruiser without ACH being there). MCMG continued to feud with Bullet Club… and yet ACH never helped them once in that feud, either. We’ve got a tournament for the new ROH Six-Man Tag Team Titles going on… and ACH is teaming with some other guys while MCMG aren’t even in the tournament. So basically NOTHING THAT HAPPENED IN THIS SEGMENT EVER MATTERED… so why waste everyone’s time doing it?
STEVE CORINO PROMO- and the Kevin Sullivan bullsh*t begins. Also, did Corino really think anyone would be able to take anything he said seriously after claiming to have “tasted the cosmic cookie?” This would have been a great promo without the Kevin Sullivan-esque bullsh*t. Also, the threats of murder.
CHEESEBURGER vs. DONOVAN DIJAK (w/Prince Nana)- 5/10
This was your standard Cheeseburger match. It’s not bad per se, but it’s been over two years of this with no progression whatsoever for young Cheeseburger. Kevin Kelly made reference to his big pin on Daniels at War of the Worlds 2016 just a month before this… and he’s already right to feeling like the same jobbers we’ve been seeing for years.
TAG WARS 2016 FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Young Bucks vs. Roppongi Vice vs. The All-Night Express- 7/10
Being members of Bullet Club the Young Bucks are supposed to be ROH’s top heels… so of course we start this match off by having Kenny King cut a heel promo on them then have Kevin Kelly act like ANX are doing something wrong by going after the Buck’s injured bodyparts, both of which do nothing but build up sympathy for the Bucks. Then ANX and Roppongi Vice teamed up on the Bucks. THIS IS SO BACKWARDS. So the top heels proceeded to be the babyfaces in peril for a while until finally the hot tag was made and they made their comeback. Then the match got pretty good for the last five minutes. Then ANX won by stealing the Bucks’ pin. Again… SO BACKWARDS.
MICHAEL ELGIN vs. KAMAITACHI- 7.75/10
Elgin deserves a lot more credit as a workhorse than he gets. Kamaitachi looked great in his best singles outing in ROH so far, and it was different to see him not playing the heel.
DANIELS PROMO- Nothing much. Just a short promo to the point that you wonder what the point of it was.
TAG WARS 2016 FIRST-ROUND MATCH: The Briscoes vs. reDRagon vs. Roderick Strong & Jay Lethal- 8.25/10
Lots of great action in here and the match escalated very well. The Young Bucks attacked Lethal and cost him the match to get the Lethal vs. Bullet Club feud on this show and to take him out so he couldn’t save Roderick from the Jay Driller. The Briscoes cut a great babyface promo after the match.
Booking-wise I will give credit where credit is due here and point out that this match was put together to highlight not just the matches going on at Best in the World 2016 (Jay Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal, Mark Briscoe vs. Roderick Strong), but also some other important matches/potential matches that were to come over the summer (Kyle vs. the Briscoe/Lethal winner the day after BITW and Fish vs. Mark at Death Before Dishonor XIV). Because of that, though, I need to take issue with the name of this show. It wasn’t just building to Best in the World 2016, as some of the matches build to here as well as the title shot the winner of the Tag Wars tournament would get would be on later shows, so this show (and tomorrow night’s show) should not have been “Road to Best in the World 2016: City X.” Tag Wars 2016 nights one and two would have been much better names as that is where the focus of these shows is. After all, the Survival of the Fittest shows are not called “Road to Final Battle,” right?
As for the show itself… it was pretty skippable. Most of the card is rather unremarkable, there is nothing really worth going out of our way to see, and the only storyline value this show has is as the first night of a two-night tournament, so if you’re not both planning to watch night two and spoiler free (which you’re not if you’ve been reading carefully because I told you who won two of the tournament matches), then there really isn’t much for you here. You won’t be unhappy watching it (unless you’re like me and get really annoyed by stuff like the Shelley-ACH segment that highlights the lack of storyline cohesion you’ll find between any given non-televised show and the general product), but I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to see it either. Even if you’re a completionist, I’d say wait a year or two for the price to drop and then buy it during a Black Friday sale.
JUICE ROBINSON vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 5.5/10
Castle’s Boys have different hair tonight, and are noticeably paler. It’s entirely possible that they’re Sheamus’ nephews. In other appearance-related news likely related to the fact that they’re in Minnesota, there is a woman in the front row who appears to be wearing nothing on top but her bra. In her defense, it’s Minnesota, and this might well be the only week of the year she can do this without risking frostbite.
Dalton picks up the win in a solid match, with no obnoxious comedy whatsoever. This match right here is proof that he can still be Dalton Castle, without devolving into stupid, pointless comedy. This is what I’d like to see a lot more of out of him.
LIVE FISH TANK WITH BOBBY FISH- sh*t.
His guess was Dalton Castle. They had “no room in the budget” for chairs so they used the Boys instead. They did some comedy with this. Dalton seemed to lose his Dalton Castle voice for the first chunk of this, so if you’ve ever wondered what he sounds like when he’s not being a weirdo or a sailor, buy this DVD to find out.
This segment was a huge waste of time. Fish’s question to Dalton was “what is going to go down in our match?” for the TV Title at the PPV. They vowed to have brunch together after their match. They continued to converse, spending almost ten minutes saying absolutely nothing with any value until Dalton had one line about how there was no way he was going to let the TV Title slip away from him. Then they went right back to comedy, ending the segment with Dalton declaring that brunch was cancelled. If they had given these twelve minutes to one of the matches or even split them among two or three matches, it would have made this show much better.
CHRIS SABIN vs. WILL FERRARA- 5.75/10
TAG WARS 2016 FIRST-ROUND MATCH: War Machine vs. Silas Young & Beer City Bruiser vs. Lio Rush & Moose (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 6.75/10
Christopher Daniels joined the commentary team. They had a graphics screw-up so that the graphics for War Machine read “The Addiction, ROH World Tag Team Champions.” That’s embarrassing. Doesn’t anyone watch these before they put them up in order to catch things like this?
BJ Whitmer referred to the team of Lio Rush & Moose as “Moose & Squirrel.” BRILLIANT!
The big men did big-man stuff, Lio Rush did small-man stuff, and Silas Young was just kind of there. Fun match.
ACH vs. ALEX SHELLEY- 6.25/10
WAY too short. So short in fact (just ten minutes) that what should be a big singles win and a step up for ACH didn’t really feel that important. This right here is a match that could have used those twelve minutes they gave to the Fish Tank.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- After the match ACH put Shelley over on the mic, which seemed completely unnecessary. He’s Alex Shelley. We don’t need some young up-and-comer to tell us that he’s great. Shelley then put ACH over in a way that felt more authentic, but Shelley’s big speech about how hard ACH works and how much he busts his ass every night would have felt like it meant a lot more coming after a match that went twenty minutes instead of just ten.
Then we got to the real meat of this segment, which was Shelley telling ACH that he doesn’t like Sias Young either and Silas always has BCB with him, so if ACH ever needs any help Shelley would be honored to help him. In fact, he would be so honored to team with ACH that he says that if they ever need a third member of MCMG, they want it to be ACH. And in return, they’d like ACH to have their backs against Bullet Club because Bullet Club has so many guys.
So here were are four and a half months later: ACH and Silas finished their feud off… and yet the Guns never once helped ACH (they didn’t even have a house show where Silas was angry that they offered to stick their nose in his business and demanded that MCMG face him and the Bruiser without ACH being there). MCMG continued to feud with Bullet Club… and yet ACH never helped them once in that feud, either. We’ve got a tournament for the new ROH Six-Man Tag Team Titles going on… and ACH is teaming with some other guys while MCMG aren’t even in the tournament. So basically NOTHING THAT HAPPENED IN THIS SEGMENT EVER MATTERED… so why waste everyone’s time doing it?
STEVE CORINO PROMO- and the Kevin Sullivan bullsh*t begins. Also, did Corino really think anyone would be able to take anything he said seriously after claiming to have “tasted the cosmic cookie?” This would have been a great promo without the Kevin Sullivan-esque bullsh*t. Also, the threats of murder.
CHEESEBURGER vs. DONOVAN DIJAK (w/Prince Nana)- 5/10
This was your standard Cheeseburger match. It’s not bad per se, but it’s been over two years of this with no progression whatsoever for young Cheeseburger. Kevin Kelly made reference to his big pin on Daniels at War of the Worlds 2016 just a month before this… and he’s already right to feeling like the same jobbers we’ve been seeing for years.
TAG WARS 2016 FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Young Bucks vs. Roppongi Vice vs. The All-Night Express- 7/10
Being members of Bullet Club the Young Bucks are supposed to be ROH’s top heels… so of course we start this match off by having Kenny King cut a heel promo on them then have Kevin Kelly act like ANX are doing something wrong by going after the Buck’s injured bodyparts, both of which do nothing but build up sympathy for the Bucks. Then ANX and Roppongi Vice teamed up on the Bucks. THIS IS SO BACKWARDS. So the top heels proceeded to be the babyfaces in peril for a while until finally the hot tag was made and they made their comeback. Then the match got pretty good for the last five minutes. Then ANX won by stealing the Bucks’ pin. Again… SO BACKWARDS.
MICHAEL ELGIN vs. KAMAITACHI- 7.75/10
Elgin deserves a lot more credit as a workhorse than he gets. Kamaitachi looked great in his best singles outing in ROH so far, and it was different to see him not playing the heel.
DANIELS PROMO- Nothing much. Just a short promo to the point that you wonder what the point of it was.
TAG WARS 2016 FIRST-ROUND MATCH: The Briscoes vs. reDRagon vs. Roderick Strong & Jay Lethal- 8.25/10
Lots of great action in here and the match escalated very well. The Young Bucks attacked Lethal and cost him the match to get the Lethal vs. Bullet Club feud on this show and to take him out so he couldn’t save Roderick from the Jay Driller. The Briscoes cut a great babyface promo after the match.
Booking-wise I will give credit where credit is due here and point out that this match was put together to highlight not just the matches going on at Best in the World 2016 (Jay Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal, Mark Briscoe vs. Roderick Strong), but also some other important matches/potential matches that were to come over the summer (Kyle vs. the Briscoe/Lethal winner the day after BITW and Fish vs. Mark at Death Before Dishonor XIV). Because of that, though, I need to take issue with the name of this show. It wasn’t just building to Best in the World 2016, as some of the matches build to here as well as the title shot the winner of the Tag Wars tournament would get would be on later shows, so this show (and tomorrow night’s show) should not have been “Road to Best in the World 2016: City X.” Tag Wars 2016 nights one and two would have been much better names as that is where the focus of these shows is. After all, the Survival of the Fittest shows are not called “Road to Final Battle,” right?
As for the show itself… it was pretty skippable. Most of the card is rather unremarkable, there is nothing really worth going out of our way to see, and the only storyline value this show has is as the first night of a two-night tournament, so if you’re not both planning to watch night two and spoiler free (which you’re not if you’ve been reading carefully because I told you who won two of the tournament matches), then there really isn’t much for you here. You won’t be unhappy watching it (unless you’re like me and get really annoyed by stuff like the Shelley-ACH segment that highlights the lack of storyline cohesion you’ll find between any given non-televised show and the general product), but I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to see it either. Even if you’re a completionist, I’d say wait a year or two for the price to drop and then buy it during a Black Friday sale.