Official Road To "Final Battle 2016" Thread

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Road to Final Battle 2016: Ft. Lauderdale (10/21/2016)- Ft. Lauderdale, FL

LEON ST. GIOVANNI & SHAHEEM ALI vs. THE CABINET (w/Rhett Titus)- 4.75/10
This was originally booked as Ali & LSG vs. Rhett Titus & Kenny King, but Caprice Coleman decided that he wanted to wrestle so the Cabinet just allowed to swap members without the consent of ROH management or even that of their opponents (who signed to face King & Titus). Or, you know, you could have just announced the match as King & Coleman vs. Ali & LSG, which not only deliver on the match that you advertised, but also wouldn’t open up a plot hole for no reason. And when Rhett was on commentary we would learn that Caprice was scheduled to face ROH TV Champion Bobby Fish later and Rhett is now taking his spot, once again without anyone from ROH management signing off on it… which kind of buries the TV Title because Caprice is willingly giving up an opportunity to earn a title shot). So, you know… changing the advertised card for no reason is bad for a lot reasons (never mind scraping away at the trust the fans have that you will deliver what you have advertised). Just saying.
And speaking of saying things, before this match the Cabinet cut their standard promo… and it was actually tolerable. Even possibly “good.” Kenny King did the talking this time and he said that ROH was disrespecting them by constantly booking them against competition that wasn’t at their level like Ali & LSG. Holy f*ck he actually GAVE US A REASON why they feel disrespected… and all of a sudden this angle becomes a million times better because the ANX are acting rationally and complaining about things THAT WE THE VIEWERS CAN ACTUALLY SEE as opposed to just saying nebulous bullsh*t like we usually get in this angle.
And you know what… Kenny King really isn’t even wrong here. They often HAVE been booked against nobodies or losers or people who aren’t at their level. You’ve got these guys tonight, the Tempura Boyz at the previous show, they were booked against these two and Jason Kincaid in the first round of the trios tournament, they wrestled Dalton Castle and his boys on TV a few months ago, as well as teams like Ferrara and Cheeseburger (that combination more than once). Caprice faced Delirious recently, who never wins nowadays (which I guess is evidence that he’s not a total moron- though it doesn’t make him a good booker). Obviously they have also been booked against real competition, too, but I can definitely see the heel cabinet viewing guys like Jay White and Lio Rush (who they have faced often) as being below their level, too. See… if you put just A LITTLE BIT OF THOUGHT into your storylines, they stop feeling like you’re just pulling sh*t out of your ass, which is how 90% of the stories going on in ROH right now feel.
The reason I get so annoyed about this sort of thing is that as I (in the first paragraph) and Kenny King (with his promo here) have shown is that so many of the things that are hurting the ROH product right now are things that would be SOOOOOO easy to fix! All they would need is just a little more thought put into the details of the story or the logic of the situation (or basic promotional principles like “don’t deviate from the advertised card unless it is truly necessary for your story), and things would be SOOO MUCH BETTER.
The match was your standard babyface in peril story with Ali playing Ricky Morton. It was enjoyable, despite Steve Corino’s best efforts.

FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. MARK BRISCOE- 5.5/10
They brawled on the outside forever without the referee even trying to count. The match was meh, and was made worse by Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino ignoring it so they could talk about, among other things, the place they went for lunch. This should be a firing offense. Briscoe won, and Kaz grudgingly offered him a handshake afterwards.

WAR MACHINE vs. THE TEMPURA BOYZ- 4/10

ADAM PAGE vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 6.75/10
They wasted the first two minutes of this match paying attention to a f*cking dog in the crowd. This led to Steve Corino talking about his cats. This is what ROH has come to in 2016: two of the brightest stars of the future wasting time in their match so one of them could play with a puppy. Somehow, I just don’t remember that happening at any point in the famous Bryan Danielson vs. Paul London “Epic Encounter,” and all that happened to those guys is that they went on to become huge stars for ROH, so what do they know.
Then the wrestling started and FINALLY, after a f*cking year and a half of Dalton Castle doing his stupid poses that do nothing but put himself in an awkward physical position, someone finally just funs up to him and attacks him during it.
They went for a while with Page focusing on Dalton’s head. The announcers completely gloss over the fact that Dalton pinned the ROH World Champion at the last show, never once even mentioning the possibility of him earning a title match. And of course he did the job here to Page. They “protected” Dalton via low blow (although with all of the heel finishes in ROH nowadays it doesn’t really feel like much protection because it doesn’t stand out in any way, meaning that no one will remember the finish- just the result). The dirty finish also doesn’t help Page, who needed a clean win going into his TV Title shot next weekend due to Delirious’ inexplicable decision to have him tap out last weekend to the man he is challenging. In short, no competent booker would have booked these two men against each other on this show.

FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH: Kyle O’Reilly vs. Jay White vs. Kamaitachi vs. Donovan Dijak (w/Prince Nana & Team Dijak)- 7.75/10
The big takeaways from this match are that Dijak is big and strong, and that Kyle O’Reilly is awesome. Speaking of “Kyle O’Reilly” and “big and strong,” the muscle Kyle has been putting on lately was very noticeable here. The story for this match was mostly just action, but White and Dijak did do a spot for a false finish which played off of the finish of their match last weekend at Glory By Honor XV: Champions vs. All-Stars. Nana yelled at Dijak for losing, but no one smartened up the camera crew so they were focused on Kyle O’Reilly the whole time instead.

BJ WHITMER & PUNISHMENT MARTINEZ vs. WILL FERRARA & CHEESEBURGER- DUD!
Kevin Kelly called this match solo, with the given reason being that “we need to keep Corino and Whitmer as far apart from each other as possible.” Why? Every time we’ve seen them together over the past month and a half we’ve seen Corino occasionally try to throw a punch (but never more than one), which Martinez always blocks, and then Whitmer HANDS CORINO A WEAPON AND THEN TURNS HIS BACK AND WALKS AWAY. If they were going to fight each other, none of that would be happening.
Objectively the action in this match was probably in the 3-3.5/10 range, but there were several factors that made me give it the dud:
1. It feels like we’ve seen this match a million times already.
2. Burger & Ferrara got in WAY too much offense. I don’t care if it was only on Whitmer. These guys should have been dead the moment Martinez was tagged in for the first time
3. The finish. First we had both Whitmer and Martinez in the ring illegally for WAY too long, with the referee yelling at them the whole while, but never actually trying to do anything about it, which always bugs me. Martinez had Burger up for what looked like it was going to be a really awesome chokeslam, but then just dropped him. He did this so he could hold Burger’s arms while Whitmer went and got the golden spike, which the referee had inexplicably just allowed them to leave sitting in their corner on the apron. It’s a dangerous weapon! At least make them put it on the timekeeper’s table or something!
Then Steve Corino’s music started to play, so Martinez went over the entranceway to confront Corino when he came out… but Corino never came out. This distraction allowed CHEESEBURGER to roll Whitmer up and pin him. I honestly would have preferred that they get DQed for being in the ring too long without a tag than for f*cking Cheeseburger to get a roll-up victory via “sports entertainment” bullsh*t. The result of this match will be completely irrelevant (as all of the matches in this feud have been since Best in the World) so it’s not like Burger needed a pinfall victory. Furthermore, this win will not help Cheeseburger at all (five months ago he got “the biggest win of his career” when he pinned Christopher Daniels on PPV and everyone has already forgotten it and he’s still the same jobber he was before that), but it will still hurt Whitmer because not only did he lose to a pathetic scrub like Cheeseburger (still shameful even with a distraction), but if anyone is going to be pinning Whitmer nowadays, it needs to be Corino getting his revenge on him in a meaningful way.
Of course, Whitmer and Martinez went right back to beating the sh*t out of Ferrara and Cheeseburger after the match. Corino never showed up to make the save, which leaves us with one of two explanations for why the music was played (which even if you weren’t thinking about you were clearly supposed to be Kevin Kelly not only brought it up but kept coming back to it):
1. Steve Corino ordered the music to be played, but never came out to make the save because he’s a coward.
2. Someone in either ROH management or on the production team decided to play the music, meaning that someone within the company decided to try to screw competitors out of a match for no reason.

The beating resulted in Whitmer and Martinez trying to stab through Cheeseburger’s hand with the spike, making this the second straight year where we’ve had an angle around this time of year involving someone trying to maim Cheeseburger’s hand. Ferrara pulled Cheeseburger to safety. Only then did ROH security make a rare appearance in order to get destroyed by Whitmer and Martinez.

BOBBY FISH vs. RHETT TITUS (w/the Cabinet)- 4/10
Adam Page was on commentary for this match to build up his TV Title match against Bobby Fish at the TV tapings next weekend. He complained that he hadn’t had a singles title shot in ROH in almost three years. My immediate response to that was “well maybe you should try winning some matches first.” Kevin Kelly, on the other hand, assured us that Page was certainly deserving of a title shot, but these things just happen sometimes. Because I was so annoyed by this, I did some research on Cagematch.net. Up until this point in his ROH career (counting his victory earlier tonight), Adam Page’s record was 29-66-1. Not very impressive. This year, which has had multiple points that should have been big, breakout moments for him to get a push (turning face on Whitmer, winning the feud against Whitmer, joining Bullet Club, getting the big win over Jay Briscoe), his record is 8-18. Neither of those are the sort of statistics I expect from someone arguing that he should have gotten more title shots. In fact, tonight’s victory marked only the second time since last July that Page had been able to string together two straight victories.
But no, he’s totally a main event level guy and definitely deserves title shots, and just like Kevin Kelly, we should all ignore the fact that he always loses. Good job making a new star there, Delirious.
(Side note: Page did actually manage to string together six wins in a row from February to May of 2015, for which he never received any sort of title shot so… what the f*ck, Delirious?)

The Cabinet jumped Fish before the match but he fought them off. After more attempts at interference, they were ejected from ringside at which point Kevin Kelly buried Rhett Titus by basically telling us that he had absolutely no chance to win without interference from The Cabinet. Aside from the above comments, Page contributed absolutely nothing to the booth, which made this match feel like it went on forever even though it went less than nine minutes of total blandless.

PROVING GROUND MATCH: ROH World Champion Adam Cole vs. Bull James- 1/10
Bull James got a shockingly good reaction here. He has cool, customized theme music, too. It includes a rather prominent F bomb, which seems like the sort of thing ROH wouldn’t allow if they supposedly fine wrestlers for saying words like “ass” or giving people the middle finger during matches as Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino would have us believe.
We were told that Bull James earned this Proving Ground match with his good showing in the Honor Rumble last month. So Bull James gets a Proving Ground match for coming close to winning a battle royale but Adam Page couldn’t even get one after six straight last year? Personally, I don’t think that you really need much of a reason to book someone in a Proving Ground match and the reason they gave for James here was fine, but when you contrast it with something like that or with teams (like both Cabana & Castle and ANX) getting booked into a #1 contendership match on the most recent PPV despite not having won a match as a team in the shows leading up to it, it makes things seem arbitrary and meaningless.

As for the match itself… this match got pretty universally shat on. At about the half way point, I just didn’t understand why. They shined James up a bit and then Cole got the heat and started working the knee and Bull was selling it fine. I mean… it wasn’t looking like it was shaping up to be particularly great or anything, but if they kept going the way they were it probably would have been at least mediocre. I certainly won’t fault you for arguing that a semi-main event singles match with the world champion needs to be a lot better than just mediocre, but I didn’t quite understand the hate, and thought that if this was second or third on the card it wouldn’t have been so terrible.
Then Bull James just stopped selling his knee when it was time to make his comeback. Then, as part of that comeback, he did a freakin’ Pedigree without selling his knee at all. Then, after a superkick forced him to start selling it again and they did a false finish with the Figure Four, Cole just went to get his title belt to use as a weapon. Now obviously his plan all along was to distract the ref with the title belt so he could kick James in the nuts, but Cole was in complete control of the match here, so going to that strategy felt like a completely forced way to go to a completely pointless dirty finish. I mean… this is the ROH World Champion taking on f*cking Bull James in a Proving Ground match. There is no reason for Cole to need to cheat to beat him. A good showing against the world champion should be sufficient to help Bull look like a credible part of the roster, right? Or if you really don’t want to beat him, just have them go to a time-limit draw and now you’ve got an ROH World Title defense set up for O’Reilly on a house show in 2017 after he takes the belt.
But instead they had Cole need to use a low blow. Two, in fact. And Bull James STILL kicked out. Then they tried some other stuff that James botched, including f*cking SITTING DOWN TO COUNTER A SUNSET FLIP. Bull finally lost when BJ Whitmer and Punishment Martinez came out to distract him because they’re wrestling tomorrow and they somehow think that distracting him to cost him his match will help them tomorrow or something stupid like that.
So when you combine a bad in-ring performance (all James’ fault), the ROH World Champion needing WAY too much to put down a guy only known as a NXT midcarder, pointless cheating, and an extremely poorly-booked finish, you wind up with a lot of people crapping on the match. Those feelings of frustration and anger were also probably exacerbated by the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Delirious should be fired immediately
Only now is it revealed to us that Martinez and James got into a fight backstage earlier today. Well… that seems like the sort of thing you should probably put on the f*cking show so we can see it. Or at least mention it earlier so it doesn’t feel like you’re just pulling an explanation out of your ass when you realize that you need one after the fact.
Martinez started to beat Bull down while Whitmer cut a promo saying the following:
“The father said that he would return. The father told me that his disciples would return. Bull, you are nothing more than a disciple of a false prophet, and you have done nothing but perpetuate his lies.”
At this point Kevin Kelly tried to put on his angry voice and said “Come on! How dare you! Blasphemous!” At this point I completely lost it. How can Kevin Kelly claim that these statement are untrue or blasphemous if he doesn’t even know what BJ is talking about! Every time it comes up Kevin Kelly tells us that he doesn’t understand anything that is going on between Whitmer, Corino, and Sullivan, so why the f*ck is he immediately rendering judgment on it! And if he has somehow finally figured it all out over the course of the past two matches, he should have f*cking explained it to me, the extremely confused and extremely annoyed viewer.
Then Steve Corino came out in his Mr. Wrestling III guise for no reason at all other than that he wanted to wear a mask here. The reason he wanted to wear a mask here was because he was also coming out to the Midnight Rider’s music and dressed like the Midnight Rider. You know… because this is Florida and the Midnight Rider fought Kevin Sullivan here THIRTY-FOUR YEARS AGO. So I guess that means that the “false prophet” that Bull James is supposedly a disciple of is Dusty Rhodes. Yeah. That’s nice. Just use the dead guy for your stupid angle. Yup. Now it’s confirmed. Not only did Kevin Kelly say it, but Bull and Corino used Bionic Elbows to beat up the heels (why has Corino suddenly decided to brawl with Whitmer tonight, as opposed to the many other times over the past month and a half where he has had ample opportunity to do so but has chosen not to?). So anyway, the babyfaces have beaten up the heels and gotten their revenge on them, so there goes all of the heat. I hope everyone involved in booking this angle is proud of themselves.
In terms of an actual storyline that has lasted for any amount of time (which this one certainly has, despite going almost nowhere), this Kevin Sullivan CWF magical Boozar-Moo-Can bullsh*t has got to be the absolute worst in ROH history, both in terms of being an idiotic, infuriating storyline and in terms of a lack of any matches that even approach being mediocre (the Whitmer vs. Corino BITW match doesn’t count. That match was pretty f*cking great until the moment that this bullsh*t derailed it). The very fact that it has been allowed to continue for as long as it has (never mind the fact that this completely out of place magical bullsh*t happened in the first place) will forever be a black mark on Delirious’ record as a booker, and I honestly will never have complete faith in the direction of the company again until this sh*t is done.

WINNING TEAM GETS $20,000: Colt Cabana, Jay Briscoe, & Christopher Daniels vs. Jay Lethal, Silas Young & Alex Shelley (w/Chris Sabin)- 8/10
So we’ve added a completely pointless stipulation (don’t the winners of ever match get money) that no one could possibly care about. Even worse, it might actually be $30,000 instead of $20,000 because either Bobby Cruise screwed up the announcement or Kevin Kelly’s memory is bad (and in this case my bet is always that Kevin Kelly’s memory is wrong, because the alternative is that Kevin can’t remember important facts like what happened in various storylines, but can remember random minutiae like how much money is on the line in this pointless stipulation).
After a few minutes of wrestling it broke down into a big brawl on the outside. During this Jay Briscoe hit someone with both a trash can and the ring bell- the latter of which was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE REFEREE- but the ref didn’t call for a DQ. Once everyone went back to their spots on the apron it progressed just like a normal match for a while, which is the opposite of what should have happened.
This match was billed as a “Wild Card” tag team match due to the fact that each team was composed of two babyfaces and two heels, with the implication that they would have to learn to work together- especially Lethal and Silas, who are kinda-sorta feuding with right now. Now that I think about it, to play this up even more they could have swapped Shelley and Briscoe, so that Lethal and Briscoe would also be on the same team, while Shelley would now have to team with Daniels as they come out of their recently-ended feud that culminated in Ladder Wat VI.
The match really felt like it found itself when they started focusing on that story, but they but they didn’t focus on it anywhere near enough for it to really feel like a running thread. I also think it would have been better for Daniels- despite nominally being the heel on his team, to not act heelish at all as part of The Addiction’s slow-burn face turn. The biggest misstep in terms of this, though, was the execution of the finish. If the idea of the finish is that Silas wants the glory, then why not have him make a blind tag on Lethal as Lethal hits the ropes for the Lethal Injection and then you can have him hit Lethal with the lariat when Lethal gets in his face over it. That way Silas really is stealing the glory of the pinfall. The way they did it here it was just Lethal hitting his finish to help Silas because it was Silas who was the legal man the whole time, and Silas lariating Lethal felt very forced.
Meanwhile, on commentary, Kevin Kelly made jokes about beer getting splashed into his mouth meaning that he has now lost his many years of sobriety and would have to go to AA meetings, but he doesn’t have time for that because wrestling. Yes. Kevin Kelly just made a joke out of something that even VINCE RUSSO-BOOKED TNA TREATED AS A SERIOUS ANGLE.

Another miserable show from ROH despite the high quality of both the main event and the Four Corner Survival. This was a complete and total nothing show whose only storyline importance is turning tomorrow’s scheduled Martinez vs. Bull match into Martinez & Whitmer vs. Bull & Corino, and aside from the two matches I mentioned before, the matches were bland and pointless at their best. October of 2016 is proving to be the creative low-point for ROH (G-d, I hope this is as low as it gets). The Cornette Era certainly wasn’t exciting, but at least things actually happened.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly, who has been a wrestling announcer for YEARS and has been calling Caprice Coleman’s matches for YEARS now, saw Caprice hit a Snapmare Driver, and called it as the “Bless-T-O.” The “Bless-T-O” is a move of Caprice that is so-named because Caprice is a shoot minister and it is a variant of the STO (get it?). To perform an STO your opponent is in front of you to the side, and he winds up going down on his back. To perform a Snapmare Driver, you opponent stands behind you and he winds up going down on his face. HOW THE F*CK DOES KEVIN KELLY CONFUSE THESE MOVES?!

2. One of the announcers’ favorite bullsh*t talking points that they have to say in every match is the claim that Kazarian has “reinvented his in-ring style” this year, which anyone who has been watching Kaz for any length of time knowns is utter bullsh*t. Now, in this one instance, keeping things vague like this protects them from anything that is 100% demonstrably false (which is amazing to me because they make specific claims that are demonstrably false at least twice a match). Well tonight Steve Corino dropped that particular shield and justified the claim that Kaz has reinvented himself in the ring by claiming that a “springboard off the top” is something “we would have seen from Kazarian a year ago.”
Do I need pull up clips of his matches, or can we all assume that former five-time TNA X-Division Champion Frankie Kazarian probably did a bunch of springboard moves last year (never mind the many years before it)?

3. In the Cole vs. James match, Kevin Kelly described Adam Cole’s Last Shot finisher as “a neckbreaker onto the knee from a vertical suplex position.”
If Kevin believes that the Last Shot is “a neckbreaker onto the knee from a vertical suplex position,” then why does Kevin insist on always miscalling Cole’s ushigoroshi, which is a neckbreaker onto the knee from a fireman’s carry position, as the Last Shot (including just a few minutes after this quote)? The only logical explanation is that Kevin Kelly, lead announcer for a professional wrestling company and a man who has been a wrestling announcer for over twenty years, cannot identify f*cking VERTICAL SUPLEX.

4. Kevin Kelly asked Chris Sabin that if it would be “a Motor City Machine Guns payday” if Shelley was on the winning side in the main event.
Why would it be? As Sabin himself said, Shelley is the one wrestling. A tag team doesn’t normally split the purse for matches they when they’re not teaming, so why should this be any different.

[AlexROH]

Road to FB '16 was (by far) the worst tour of the year. The shows really felt like house shows and not like big shows, as other VODs. At least we got Silas vs Cole. Fantastic match.

[Big Red Machine]

Road to FB '16 was (by far) the worst tour of the year. The shows really felt like house shows and not like big shows, as other VODs. At least we got Silas vs Cole. Fantastic match.

This show definitely did. I don't know about the next night as I've only seen Cole vs. Silas, but just with that match alone I'm sure it will feel passable- like a B show with an A-show main event (which is a good way to do your b-shows if you absolutely must do them).

As for feeling like a house show, I think the West Warrick show was BY FAR the worst.

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Road to Final Battle 2016: Lakeland (10/22/2016)- Lakeland, FL

Kevin Kelly tells us that Steve Corino said he won’t be on commentary tonight. Why? Because Corino did the stupid Midnight Rider thing as Mr. Wrestling III last night because he needed a mask, and the company needs to maintain plausible deniability about Corino being Mr. Wrestling III, so we have to pretend he’s not here. Or, instead of all of this sh*t, they could have just booked Steve Corino & Bull James vs. BJ Whitmer & Punishment Martinez in the first place, but why just book a simple card with a bigger match-up when you can advertise an underwhelming match and then do a bait-and-switch? F*cking Delirious logic.

KYLE O’REILLY vs. DONOVAN DIJAK (w/Prince Nana)- 7/10
They really need to add some damn promos to these shows to help get over the storylines instead of just having Kevin Kelly explain to us what is going on secondhand based on conversations he had with the talent earlier in the day. I know I complain about this often, but this case was particularly egregious. At the beginning of this match Kevin Kelly told us that Nana had told him that, for tonight, things for Dijak “will be different. They must be.” Setting aside, for the moment, what we lose by having Kevin Kelly tell us this instead of doing a backstage promo (and stay tuned, because over the course of the past two sentences, I actually did come up with yet another reason for why they need to do promos instead of Kelly-provided exposition), in this case, the man Kevin Kelly was speaking for was Prince Nana. I can understand wanting your announcers to do the talking in place of someone whose mic skills you might not have much confidence in, like some feel about War Machine or the two men in this match. I disagree with it (they’re not going to get better if you never give them the chance), but I can understand it. But in this case they have Kevin Kelly speaking for PRINCE NANA! Why would you even book Nana if you’re not going to have him cut promos?
Now as for what we lose out on by not having the backstage promo, there is the obvious fact that the emotion is always more real when we see it firsthand, but in this particular case we not only lose out on Nana’s emotion, but on Dijak’s as well, from his reaction to Nana’s words. The angle here is that Nana is unhappy with Dijak losing, which will eventually lead to Dijak dumping Nana as his manager. In order for this to not feel like it comes completely out of nowhere, we need see Dijak’s frustration with Nana’s criticism of him.

And speaking of Kevin Kelly and Prince Nana, Kevin took time away from calling this match to scold Prince Nana for yelling at the fans. Yes, really. Kevin is so utterly infuriating for his insistence on acting like an announcer form the early 70’s scolding wrestlers and announcers for things like this, or for saying naughty words or other annoying crap like that. I cannot remember a worse lead announcer who has spent so much time in the wrestling business other than Mike Tenay, and at least with Tenay he occasionally knew what he was talking about when it came to Lucha or Puro.
Due to the aforementioned Corino/Bull/Whitmer/Martinez thing, Kevin Kelly is telling us that there is “speculation” that the originally scheduled Bull James vs. Punishment Martinez match has been changed to a tag team match, and that he’ll “need to get clarification” on that. So either they sent Kevin Kelly out here without telling him about a change in the card, or Kevin is just repeating hearsay about a possible change to tonight’s card even though it may not be true. Pick whichever one you like best. The first one makes the company look rinky-dink while the second one makes the babyface announcer into an unprofessional rumor-monger. And all because Delirious insists on booking these stupid bait-and-switches.

Oh. Right. The match. Dijak did his power stuff. Kyle first worked the arm before switching to the head, and won with a brainbuster. Nana was furious at Dijak’s loss and stormed off. Dijak was still down from the brainbuster so I don’t know if he saw it. Great opener, and finally we get something that feels like advancement in this Dijak-Nana angle.

THE CABINET CUT A STUPID WORKED SHOOT PROMO- they hate their gimmick, so they’re just not doing it anymore, I guess. Of course they didn’t actually say “we don’t like our gimmick,” because that would be breaking kayfabe. Instead they just said crap like “this is disrespectful to us” and “we deserve better than this” (paraphrasing). Normally I would be very happy that they didn’t break kayfabe, except that if you’re doing a worked shoot it requires breaking kayfabe by necessity. As a result of their tip-toeing around the issue, what they said made absolutely no sense.
Kenny walks off. He and Rhett start to beat up the group of dorks that follow them around. No one in the crowd cheered this, which is even more evidence that these Florida crowds are some of ROH’s worst and there is no reason for them to go back to Ft. Lauderdale ever again. We got a close-up of the two women in the group, who did not look surprised by this at all, so they have no idea how to do their jobs, either.

So you would think that walking out on a scheduled match and shooting on the company would result in ANX and Caprice being fired (or at the very least suspended for a while), and Kevin Kelly insisted that there would be repercussions for this. Well, at the next ROH show (the TV tapings in Baltimore the next weekend) they were allowed to come out and cut a promo… and wouldn’t you know it, they shot on the company again. Then, the next week, Rhett and Kenny both had their scheduled Survival of the Fittest qualifying matches. They were never announced for the UK tour to begin with, so them being left off of those shows is not a punishment. This brings us to Final Battle, where they wrestled in the opener under their new stable name. Yup. They sure got punished. Way to go, ROH. You sure showed them.

Now that their opponents have walked out, Shelley and White are left without opponents. White cuts a promo saying that respect is earned in the ring so he wants to wrestle tonight and makes an open challenge, which is answered by War Machine.

ALEX SHELLEY & JAY WHITE vs. WAR MACHINE- 6.5/10
Shelley and White won, which was shocking, considering that Shelley isn’t doing anything at the moment and War Machine are an established team. White got the pin, which shows you just how hard ROH is intent on pushing him- and he definitely has the talent to warrant that push- but despite his never having been pinned/made to submit (or even having never been DQed or counted out) and all of the big wins they’ve given him over Daniels, War Machine, etc. he doesn’t feel anywhere near as big as he should because they’re still not really doing anything with him. He just has matches, with no direction in sight until now when MCMG decided they like him and can trust him. (Yes, I know he was supposed feuding with Kamaitachi. I was about to go on a rant about that feud never even got a blow-off, so I went back to look at the results first just to make sure there wasn’t one that I forgot about, and I discovered that, in fact, they only had ONE singles match against each other, and that was Jay White’s first match in the company.


MARK BRISCOE vs. ADAM PAGE- 6.5/10
They kept cutting to the announcers during the match. They did it twice in less than a minute, which should NEVER happen in the middle of a match. Then they showed us the crowd. Yes, they were chanting and on their feet, but cutting the crowd also showed us how empty this building was. Bad idea. Meanwhile, Kevin Kelly and Bobby Fish were on commentary, chatting away about how jealous Steve Corino will be because Kevin and Bobby are on commentary together, with Kevin even going so far as to say that he feels like he is “cheating” on Steve. Once that discussion was done, Kevin Kelly had the audacity to say “But our attention is on Hangman Page,” which caused me to scream “NO IT F*CKING ISN’T!” at the top of my lungs. Not the announcers’ attention and not the cameramen’s, so don’t f*cking tell me that it is. And, of course, within ninety seconds they were again ignoring this match to talk about tonight’s main event.
The match itself was good, but I was extremely unhappy with the dirty finish. Yes, Page is a heel, but you’re not going to get a guy over in ROH with dirty finishes in ten-minute matches. Page NEEDS CLEAN WINS. He has already been terribly damaged by the booking this year, with all of his big wins immediately being erased by months of jobs, including one last weekend to the guy whose title he is challenging for next week. I understand protecting Dalton Castle last night because Dalton does have a world title shot coming to him at some future date (although in that case they never should have booked the two against each other in the first place), but there was no reason for Page to need to cheat to beat Mark Briscoe here. I mean… if you were willing to have him go over Jay clean on PPV, and- as the last few years of the booking have made clear, Jay is the superior Briscoe- then why the hell wouldn’t you let him beat Mark Brsicoe cleanly on a house show?

BJ WHITMER & PUNISHMENT MARTINEZ vs. MR. WRESTLING III & BULL JAMES- DUD!
Mr. Wrestling III is once again dressed like the Midnight Rider, which is a big chunk of the problem with this feud. It’s Corino and Delirious and whoever else being a f*cking mark for a feud that happened almost thirty-five years ago, and it’s coming at the expense of the product.
Kevin Kelly told us that this feud was now about “spiritual kinship.” Yeah. Because that’s what makes for good wrestling feuds. Remember when this used to be about Corino and Whitmer just plain hating each other? Can’t we please go back to that?
Kevin also told us that Bull James has become involved in this due to the “special relationship he had with the late Dusty Rhodes.” You know… something that not one single fan knew about until this moment because we have never once been shown it and no one has ever spoken about it until this moment. THAT’S NOT HOW YOU TELL AN EFFECTIVE STORY.
I know I should just skip this, but if I’m going to review a show to recommend it, I think I owe it to both the reading audience and to the promotion to watch everything, so I don’t miss a chance to praise something that deserves praise and condemn something that needs to be condemned, and that is the only reason I am watching this because just about everything in this feud makes me angrier by the moment, and it is just so terrible on so many different levels. Here is another new one for you:
Kevin Kelly’s new story is that due to this whole “spiritual connection” crap, that Punishment Martinez and Bull James “were drawn to each other” in the Honor Rumble. Well, I’ve seen that match, and their interactions in that match felt no different than anything else we’ve seen a million other battle royales, and Kevin Kelly’s commentary at the time did nothing to indicate that this interaction was anything out of the ordinary, either. Yeah, they brawled to the back, but that’s a common enough occurrence after a double elimination, and the ROH product has become so overbooked that it didn’t feel like anything out of the ordinary. Now, though, Kevin is trying to pretend as if there was some sort of feeling in the air that the moment these two laid eyes on each other you knew there was some of connection between them, when there clearly wasn’t. It’s not just revisionist history (which is never something a promotion should engage in), but it’s revisionist history that is being engaged in for no reason other than this out of place sensationalism in this obnoxious feud.
When Martinez interfered in Bull’s match with Adam Cole last night, it was like “fine. He’s pissed that Bull eliminated him from the Honor Rumble and cost him an ROH World Title shot, so now he is preventing Bull from earning an ROH World Title shot.” I can understand that. That’s normal, and normal is exactly what their interactions have felt like. But then BJ Whitmer last night tells me it’s because Bull James is connected to Dusty Rhodes because Bull was in NXT, and thus as the spiritual son of Kevin Sullivan he hates Dusty, and now I’ve got Kevin Kelly trying to tell me that there is this clear, obvious mystical link between Martinez and Bull due to their connections to Kevin Sullivan and Purple Haze and Dusty Rhodes, but this connection isn’t “clear” to me because they haven’t done anything to show it to me. Imagine if instead of months of Paul Bearer building up The Undertaker’s secret all we had gotten was some short graphics with a picture of Kane telling us that “Kane is coming.” If that was the case, when Kane showed up at IYH: Badd Blood and cost Undertaker the Hell in a Cell match, you would never have thought that they were brothers. It just would have been Paul Bearer’s new monster attacking Undertaker. Maybe you might have guessed something was up when he used the Tombstone Piledriver, but that could just be him putting Taker down with his own move to be a dick or maybe Bearer taught it to him or a number of other plausible reasons that don’t involve them being related. Then imagine that the next week on TV Jim Ross is telling you that clearly Kane and Taker are related because they’re both big and they both use the Tombstone Piledriver. That’s the way this whole thing makes me feel. I am doing my job as a fan, watching the product, but they are now putting on this feud that, in order to understand it, you need to have information that they are privy to but haven’t given me. I feel completely lost because there is stuff going on that feels like it exists in a realm that I can’t see, and yet I am expected to be able to see it, and that is extremely frustrating to me as a viewer.

Kevin Kelly spent the whole match trying to explain these spiritual bonds, but not in a way that was particularly helpful. For the most part he was just giving us the family tree that we’ve already figured out. The closest he came to being helpful was by explaining that Dusty and Bull are connected because of the love and caring that Dusty apparently had for Bull. This would have been… well, I won’t say good but I’ll say “acceptable,” except for the fact that he then tried to explain the supposed bond between Corino and Dusty as having arisen from “the many wars” they had against each other. So despite having had completely opposite relationships with Dusty, Corino and Bull have the same spiritual connection to him?
This was doubly bad because, as I understand this whole thing, Corino is a member of the “evil” family but he wants to be good and be a family man (which is why Sullivan is trying to convince him to leave his family, as he has done on commentary a few times. And, now that I think about it, that would also actually make the whole “Whitmer takes videos of Corino’s family” thing play into Sullivan choosing Whitmer over Corino at Best in the World. It would also play into Corino’s character in ROH since his return in late 2009 and convincing Steen to turn on Generico, and especially since the whole “rehab from being evil” angle started at the beginning of 2011. And no, that doesn’t mean that his feud is good or makes any sense. I should not have to be making wild guesses to make the connections between these things. I’m the audience, not the storyteller). Corino also being a member of Dusty’s “good” spiritual family therefore makes no sense, so not only was Kevin’s attempt to illustrate a bond between Corino and Dusty detrimental to his explanation of the bond between Dusty and Bull, but it also seems to be at odds with the storyline. (And while I’m wasting my time hypothesizing things they could do or say to make this crap make more sense, one could say that by dressing as the Midnight Rider instead of Steve Corino this weekend when there is no reason for him not to be Steve Corino this weekend, it shows that Corino is trying to hide from his true self by adopting the guise of a member of the “good” family.)

Oh. Right. The match. Yeah… this sucked. They had a meh brawl. I think at least fifty percent of the offensive maneuvers the babyfaces performed in this match were bionic elbows. You know, because they’re the spiritual sons of Dusty Rhodes. On a related note, if the idea is that he is doing a bunch of bionic elbows because he is the spiritual son of Dusty Rhodes because of his time spent in NXT, then maybe someone should tell Bull James that he shouldn’t also do a crotch chop followed by a pedigree. It might send an unintended message.
Corino brought a table into the ring. The referee made no effort to stop him. The referee also did not call for the bell when Whitmer put Corino through said table when he countered a bionic elbow with an exploder suplex. At least they put Martinez over, because I was seriously afraid that they were going to have the babyfaces win this one.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- pointless and bad.
The heels were going to unmask Mr. Wrestling III as Steve Corino, but then decided to try to do… something… to him with a piece of the broken table. Stab him, maybe? It didn’t matter in the end because Bull James made the save, fighting both of them off. Yes, despite sh*tting the bed last night when booked in a fifteen minute match in the semi-main event against the ROH World Champion, Bull James is apparently getting brought back, so we’ve got to make him look good.

JAY LETHAL vs. KAMAITACHI- 6.25/10
Completely out of character, Kamaitachi actually gave Lethal the Code of Honor-mandated pre-match handshake. I shouldn’t complain about this, but it was quite striking that he would randomly do so, when ignoring the Code of Honor has become something that virtually every heel does in ROH. Kevin Kelly then called him “a true rudo.” Poor Kamaitachi just can’t catch a break. Even when he follows the rules he still gets called a bad guy. He then went on to start the match off by raking Lethal’s eyes. Because the simple fact that a heel actually followed the Code of Honor has put me in such a good mood, I am going to go ahead and instead of say that it makes no sense for him to follow the Code of Honor and then do this, I will instead assume that this was his devious plan all along. He would lure Lethal into a false sense of security with the handshake, then, once the bell sounded and his actions began to matter, he would take advantage of that by going for the eyes. I can totally see Kamaitachi coming up with such a plan, and I can also see Kevin Kelly completely failing to come up with such an idea to explain it to us on commentary, because thinking has never been Kevin Kelly’s strong suit (and, to be frank, I’m not quite sure Kevin even has a strong suit).
There was absolutely no reason for these two to only get eleven minutes. This is the sort of match that if you give the guys the time to deliver a great match, it will help sell DVDs. With the price of ROH DVDs (when you factor in the outrageous shipping prices), the much higher quantity that they are now putting out, and the lack of sales like they used to offer in the pre-Sinclair Era, people are cutting back on the amount of DVDs they buy. Therefore, if you want to see DVDs, you need to either make the shows important to the ongoing stories, or make sure the quality of the wrestling is high enough that people will want to see them (which will also help general buzz). When I see a match like this only go eleven minutes, it really makes me feel like there has been a very bad change in the philosophy of the product over the past year or so. Before then, it feels like the wrestlers would have been told “go out there and sell me some DVDs!” Now it feels like they are being told “just go out there and put in your ten minutes for the night.” Like the thought process of those in charge is “they came to see Jay Lethal so we gave them some Jay Lethal” rather than “they came to see great wrestling by great wrestlers so we need to deliver great matches.”
A lot of the booking actually feels that way, too, especially on the non-major shows. The feeling seems to be that the fans have come to see the ROH wrestlers, so we give them a bunch of matches and they get to watch Jay Lethal do his thing and watch the Briscoes do their thing and watch Dalton Castle do his schtik and watch Bullet Club do their schtik, and we put over the babyfaces or the hometown guys so that the fans will be happy, and we’ll give them a main event that delivers. It’s a house-show mentality, based off of the assumption that the people have come to see that thing they watch on TV but now they get to see it live. And if you’re going to do actual “house shows”- meaning a show only for those in the house- where it doesn’t matter if the matches great because you already have their money and it doesn’t matter who wins and who loses because no one outside of the building will ever see it and you and just pretend it never happened on TV and 99% of the fanbase will be none the wiser, then that’s fine.
The problem that that’s not what ROH is doing here. This is a show that is being taped to be sold as a VOD and later as a DVD to ROH fans around the world. That means that you’re going to need to book a card that delivers in the ring to the point that it creates enough buzz to get fans everywhere else to want to check it out, and a show whose results make sense based on the overall continuity of the product. Because even the most rabid fan is eventually going to get tired of seeing all of the stars of ROH just go out there and do their schtik in meaningless ***-***1/2 matches- and even on a show like this one where the main event has been built up as a big deal, only having one excellent match is not always going to be enough to make fans part with fifteen or twenty dollars for the right to watch it.


THE TEMPURA BOYZ vs. CHEESEBURGER & WILL FERRARA vs. COAST TO COAST (Shaheem Ali & Leon St. Giovanni)- 5/10
I guess Ali and Giovanni must have come up with this name overnight because they didn’t have a name last night but they do have one tonight.
Kevin Kelly spent time putting over Chris Jericho’s list gimmick in WWE, talking about how Cheeseburger was on it because Cheeseburger did not think an invitation from Jericho to go out for drinks was serious, so he no-showed. I don’t understand what the purpose of Kevin even saying this was. Was it supposed to make be dislike Jericho? Or was it supposed to make me think that Cheeseburger is cool because Jericho wanted to hang out with him? Either way, it’s f*cking stupid because IT DOES NOTHIG FOR THE PRODUCT (and no, Jericho thinking that Burger is cool does not help the product in any way because Cheeseburger is still a comedy jobber and Jericho wanting to consume alcohol with him will not alter that portrayal in any way).
He also decided that it was necessary to inform us that Raymond Rowe, one half of ROH’s team of big, angry, scary, modern-day Vikings who call themselves “War Machine” was the one who suggested that the Tempura Boyz get some more colorful gear now that they’re not young boys in the New Japan Dojo anymore. For all I know this might well be true, but whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter. The color of someone’s gear (especially someone else’s) is not the sort of thing that the Raymond Rowe character that I watch on every ROH show would ever give a sh*t about, so all Kevin Kelly telling me this story does is shatter my perception of Rowe as this badass Viking.
The match was fine for the time it got, and pretty much solidified in my mind that Ali & LSG are good enough to be used on a regular basis. F*cking Cheeseburger getting the pin- especially off of something other than a roll-up will always infuriate me.

JAY BRISCOE vs. BOBBY FISH- no rating, bad, pointless segment.
Adam Page was doing commentary for this match. Kevin Kelly put over how “rare” it was that he had singles victories over both Briscoes. I guess that’s true, but in reality it’s only true because up until Jay’s second world title run, they were primarily tag team wrestlers, so they didn’t wrestle singles matches that often (and since Jay’s second world title run they’ve gone to insane lengths to protect him).
Well now you can add Bobby Fish to that list, as he won this match by DQ in about two minutes when Adam Page attacked him. Jay Briscoe came over to make the save and got in Page’s face. Fish and Briscoe both cut promos saying they wanted a three-way dance. Page said no, but then attacked them, and Tod Sinclair ordered the bell rung. I know Page attacked them, but never agreed to the damn match, so how can he be forced into it? Maybe he just wanted to attack them and head to the back?
This sort of thing is so frustrating to me. As I’ve said WAY too many times over the course of the last few shows, if this is the match you want to do, why not just book that match from the start? Book your three-way and have Mark face off against one of the local guys you brought in to do dark match to give that guy a good tryout, or against Delirious. What is the point wasting time on the card setting up this three-way (especially if you are operating under the rules that ROH seems to be operating under nowadays to ensure that every show is kept under three hours)? It doesn’t get any heat on Page for attacking Fish here if he is then immediately forced into a match where Fish gets to get some revenge by beating Page up.

JAY BRISCOE vs. BOBBY FISH vs. ADAM PAGE- 4.25/10
The match didn’t go very long and didn’t have much of a story, but the real problem with it was that Page’s addition to the match made it feel completely unimportant. He has already gotten his big win over Jay Briscoe and then went right back to being Bullet Club’s job-boy, so any potential finish between those two was either going to be (in the event of a Briscoe pin on Page) a diminished version of something we’d already seen and then been told didn’t matter, or (in the event of Page beating Briscoe) just more business as usual. Fish, too, had recently gotten a “big” pinfall on Jay- just last weekend, in fact- so him pinning Jay here would feel redundant, but him getting pnned by Jay here would feel like something important was being undone.
The real issue, though, comes when we get to Page and Bobby Fish. Page is getting a shot at Fish’s TV Title next week. Last week, however, Fish beat Page clean, and it had absolutely no bearing on their title match (as it shouldn’t), which tells us that any finish between these two is also completely unimportant because it won’t affect the title match in any way. It’s just a random finish between two guys, seven days before they actually have the important match where the finish actually does matter.
Page did get the win, pinning Fish, which at this point came off more like damage control to try to actually make Page look credible again after last week’s outstanding stupid decision. Despite getting the pinfall, Page once again didn’t look strong in his victory because he waited until Jay Briscoe had hit Fish with the Jay Driller, then kicked Jay in the nuts and pitched him to the outside, then picked up the already downed Fish and hit the Rite of Passage.

THE ADDICITION vs. COLT CABANA & DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 6.75/10
In the middle of this match, Kevin Kelly thought it was necessary to bring up to Mark Briscoe that Steve Corino did not know the name of the Detroit football team. If I were running a company, bullsh*t like this would be a firing offense. The job of an announcer is to call the match and get the feud over, not play your own little games and entertain yourselves.
The match was good. I actually enjoyed a lot of Cabana and Castle’s comedy (in fact, the only comedy spot that I really didn’t like was the Addiction’s arm spot). Colt and Dalton actually seem to be developing some tag team combination offense now. Which, of course, well…
Knowing where the Castle and Cabana team is going (or rather, where it isn’t going) them getting the win here makes no sense. If Colt is going to think that they will never have any success together then he comes off as completely delusional if he breaks the team up while they are winning most of their matches. If I were booking this, I would have had them go to a draw. It still preserves the Addiction’s winless streak, while playing into Colt’s turn because the team of himself and Dalton couldn’t even pick up a win against two guys who haven’t won a match in a month. But instead Delirious put Cabana and Castle over clean here because they’re the babyfaces. This is part of what I mean when I say that it feels like Delirious is just booking house shows where the results don’t matter.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Adam Cole(c) vs. Silas Young- 8.25/10
Our commentary team for this match was Kevin Kelly and Jay Lethal. Kelly was actually close to being passable here, and Lethal surprised and impressed me early on by Lethal acknowledging his time as a heel during this title run and using it to show how he has changed, rather than just doing what most companies do today and just ignoring the fact that a top babyface was ever a heel.

Lethal’s main flaw as a commentator was that he spent way too much time talking about himself. This was especially a problem here because Lethal has the next shot at the ROH World Title in what we all know is going to be a much-hyped grudge match against Cole. Jay did his best to play up the chances of him challenging either man, but Jay’s very presence was a constant reminder to me that there was no way Silas was going to win, which prevented me from putting that fact out of my head while watching the match. In doing this, though, he did do a good job of pushing the idea that when he got his title shot he “would no longer be fighting from anger,” which follows up very well from the story of their first title match.

The match itself was pretty awesome, with Silas essentially playing the role of the babyface, which was very jarring to see. The story here was simply Cole trying to put Silas down, working over both his knee and his head, while Silas was refusing to stay down. Actually, he was refusing a little too well, as there were one or two spots that, even with fighting spirit, I just couldn’t buy that he could do with his injured knee. The good news for Silas is that this match has certainly raised his stock a bit. Silas has developed (at least in my eyes) the unfortunate reputation of not quite delivering when given a big spot in ROH (for examples of this, see his Fight Without Honor against Dalton Castle, his ROH World Title shot against Michael Elgin, and his “big” win over Kevin Steen at Summer Heat Tour: Cincinnati, which I had totally forgotten about until I was trying to remember how he earned the shot against Elgin in the first place). This match was definitely an acceptable level for an ROH World Title match (although I will admit that in a match that goes over twenty-five minutes [something ROH needs more of, by the way], I was kind of hoping for a bit more).

This was basically a one-match show. That match definitely delivered, but I’m not quite sure it delivered to a truly show-saving level. Between the main event and the opener there was definitely some wrestling here worth watching, and there were several important storyline developments, so I guess I have to say that this show was important in the overall continuity, but at the same time everything else on the show feels bland or worse. I guess I’d say you should watch it for the storyline-important events and for the main event, so I’d make sure to get it if you’re a storyline person. If you’re just looking for great wrestling, though, I’d give this one a pass.

STUPID ANNOUNER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly said that ANX “while they were the world tag team champions were in a contract dispute and they decided to leave.
Actually, it was only Kenny King who decided to leave, and it was only Kenny who was having any sort of dispute with ROH. Rhett stayed in ROH for another entire year (in kayfabe, out of kayfabe he never left). It’s bad enough when an announcer doesn’t remember an important fact, but this one was even worse because Kenn leaving but Rhett staying (and thus being stripped of the tag titles) was a major motivating factor in Rhett’s decision to turn heel and join SCUM, and SCUM was not only a MAJOR angle in company history, but is also the thing that Kevin Kelly always tries to constantly remind Steve Corino about (which Steve always denies any memory of- another one of their supposed “jokes” that they have beaten into the ground over the past three years). The fact that Kevin remembers it enough to bring it up to Corino but doesn’t remember one of the key players is extremely annoying.

2. When Kaimatachi tried to pin Jay lethal with the arrogant “foot on the chest” pin, Kevin Kelly said “I don’t know why an official would even dignify that with a count.”
BECAUSE IT’S A LEGAL PINFALL, DUMBASS! The referee’s job is to enforce the rules, not to enforce humility upon the wrestlers and make sure they don’t get each other angry.

3. Kevin Kelly- “Over the course of fifteen days Jay Lethal will circumvent the globe to perhaps earn two of the most prestigious championships in the world.”
Really? He’s going to “circumvent the globe” in order to do that? Why? Is one of the matches on Mars and the other on Venus, and he’ll have to alter his flight path to go around the Earth so that he doesn’t crash into it? Because that’s what it means “circumvent” something. The word closest to circumvent that I assume Kevin confused it with would be “circumnavigate,” but even that would only make this a true statement if he left from his home in the US to go to Japan and did not fly back to the US before setting out for England almost two weeks later.

4. Kevin Kelly theorized that the Tempura Boyz would be “at a distinct disadvantage from this because Cheeseburger, Ferrara, LSG, and Shaheem Ali all train out of the ROH Dojo, so are very familiar with one another and I have a feeling that each will be able to counter what the other does.”
(And to make things worse, while he was saying this, Kevin would take about a three second pause between phrases, as if he had no idea where he was going with what he was saying when he started his sentence)
Okay, but doesn’t the inability to counter the moves of the other two teams get cancelled out by the fact that the other two teams won’t be as familiar with the Tempura Boyz’s offense and thus they will be much less likely to counter it?

5. Kevin Kelly- “If you were a doubter or a non-believer in Hangman Page, now you can point to it. Yes, he cheated. Yes, broke the rules. But, man, the role that Hangman Page is on. There isn’t any indication that this momentum will stop before that man right there Hangman Page challenges for the Ring of Honor World Television Title.”
The role he’s on? Yes, four in a row is good, but I’d definitely argue that the fact that he had to cheat to win should matter a great deal. If you want to say that his momentum- four straight victories in which he cheated in the finish of at least three of them- is good, then you should be saying that the momentum of Cheeseburger and Ferrara- four straight wins which were all 100% clean (though one was a DQ) is at least as good, and they’re f*cking Will Ferrara and Cheeseburger. And how the hell does stealing Jay Briscoe’s pin here generate momentum against a guy he tapped out to cleanly last week. If he has to keep cheating to win, Kevin Kelly should not be telling me that it is now impossible to deny how good this guy is. “Wow. He’s got a lot of momentum going into this title match” is how you hype up someone who has been winning CLEANLY. In a situation like this Kevin Kelly should be saying something like “if Page uses the tactics he used tonight in next week’s match, he could steal the ROH TV Title!”

6. Jay Lethal and Kevin Kelly both theorized that the Young Bucks were around somewhere, waiting for the perfect moment to strike should Cole need them.
Where the Bucks actually were was on tour with New Japan for the Super Juniors Tag Team Tournament. There is no excuse for Kevin Kelly to not know this.