Global Wars 2017 Thread

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AlexROH
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

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BurningHammer
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by BurningHammer »

Having seen it this morning, I felt it was probably the best show of the 3 nights I saw, I haven't seen Buffalo yet. I really could have done yet again without the Bullet Club/Chaos Bullshit in the main event but as it's a house show of sorts I can let it slide like the other nights, but 3 nights of was just too much.

Every match, promo etc delivered to a good to great level, notables for me for Marty and Gordon both of who mreally showed how much they have improved or in Gordon's case what a break out star he is this year. Marty for me went up another level in that match, he is starting to find that realism and intelligence with his work that sets the "Elite" from the rest.

Also if this puts Gordon in Chaos I would love to see Ospreay/Gordon vs The Young Bucks at some point.
Thomas Bobo
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Thomas Bobo »

Global Wars Chicago was pretty awesome last night. Seeing things that it is the 2nd largest crowd in ROH history.

I absolutely loved Ospreay vs. Flip Gordon. Gordon looks like the love child of Teddy Hart and Matt Sydal. He should not be slept on. I feel like he had a cup of coffee in EVOLVE and it is a shame they could not do more there. He could be money in ROH. I can see why he's been getting a lot of action in CMLL with their juniors. This had some pretty innovative offense and was only one of 2 matches that had me jumping out of my seat.

Main event was also pretty great. People were pro-Bullet Club and of course, pro-Omega all night. YOSHI HASHI certainly wasn't a "sexy" name when announced and the match still was pretty memorable. Kudos to Omega because he was tying in the challenge that occurred from YH in NJPW and was telling him "you aren't on my level" during the match when he was beating him down. There was a lot of gaga and extra curricular leading to the finish. I could have done without it yet it did not take away from my enjoyment of the match. Seeing Omega is a real treat. I can only imagine what it would be like to see him live on a big NJPW show. Also, have to note the oddity of not having the US belt for the first defense on US soil. Not sure what was going on there and thought it was a detail that was missing which only would have added to the atmosphere.

Minoru Suzuki is freaking amazing. His aura live and the interactions were simply awesome. I could go on further...however I'm exhausted running on 3 hours of sleep before travel and work today.
famicommander
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by famicommander »

Why didn't Kenny Omega have the IWGP US Championship belt? And why didn't Minoru Suzuki have the NEVER Openweight Championship belt?

Ospreay had the IWGP Jr Heavyweight Championship belt, Killer Elite Squad had the IWGP Heavyweight Tag team Championship belts.

It bugs me when champions don't have belts. It's bad enough that NJPW stars only come out with the NEVER Six Man belts every once in awhile, but for a US title match?
YimYac
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by YimYac »

famicommander wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:33 pm Why didn't Kenny Omega have the IWGP US Championship belt? And why didn't Minoru Suzuki have the NEVER Openweight Championship belt?

Ospreay had the IWGP Jr Heavyweight Championship belt, Killer Elite Squad had the IWGP Heavyweight Tag team Championship belts.

It bugs me when champions don't have belts. It's bad enough that NJPW stars only come out with the NEVER Six Man belts every once in awhile, but for a US title match?
Suzuki has an excuse, the last NJPW show they did an angle where Yano stole the belt from him.
famicommander
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by famicommander »

Oh right, I did see that show.

But Yano was there and he didn't have it either. But I'll let that one slide.

But no US title belt at the first title defense in the US? That's weird.
Big Red Machine
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

ROH Global Wars: Columbus (10/14/2017)- Columbus, OH


ADDICTION PROMO- bad
They buried the fans for liking other teams and not respecting them. Kazarian told the fans to “eat a dizz,” and Ian Riccaboni and Colt Cabana reacted by angrily shouting “Hey! You can’t say that!” Because nothing says that this is a cool, hip, cutting edge wrestling product than having the announcers react to a guy stopping short of even saying that word “dick” as if he just shouted the c word at the top of his lungs. And what are they even worried about? This isn’t even on TV, so there are no FCC fines or anything to worry about! And from non-kayfabe perspective, which moron thinks that you’re going to get heat on a heel in 2017 by emphasizing the fact that he said a naughty word?
Anyway, Daniels says that they’re upset because Sabin & Shelley are defending their titles against other teams. Okay… but MCMG’s whole angle is that they’re “fighting champions” and defending the belt against anyone who wants a shot (which is why undercard teams like The Kingdom or Silas Young & the Beer City Bruiser are getting title shots on this tour), so why don’t The Addiction just challenge MCMG to a title match at an upcoming show? Yeah, I know they’re heels but there is no reason why they can’t just act rationally. I’d much rather have them do that then have them waste four minutes cutting a promo that is 99% hot air.

THE ADDICTION vs. SEARCH & DESTROY (Jay White & Johnathan Gresham)- 6.5/10
They did a spot where Kaz gave Gresham an eye-rake, then tagged out to Daniels, who ran in and was immediately hip-tossed by Gresham and then ping-ponged back and forth between Gresham and White. Gresham was selling the eye-rake the whole time, which was impressive, but, if Daniels is just going to get immediately taken down by the babyfaces then why do an eye-rake at all?
Eventually Gresham got cut off and become the babyface in peril. White eventually got the hot tag and they built up to one or two very close nearfalls before The Addiction got the win with Celebrity Rehab.

KENNY KING PROMO- He lets the crowd know that his originally scheduled tag team partner for tonight, Mark Briscoe, dislocated his elbow last night and thus won’t be able to compete tonight, but he did so in a way that both put Mark over and got some cheap pops form the fans for putting over the Buckeyes. Great babyface stuff. He said he was willing to fight Bullet Club even without a partner and told them to get their asses out to the ring so he could kick them.
Instead of coming out to the ring, Adam page and Marty Scurll stayed on the stage, and Marty cut a promo mocking Kenny’s handicapped predicament. He ran his mouth, suggesting that perhaps Kenny could team with a fan or a referee, or even a commentator. Unfortunately for Marty, he forgot that one of tonight’s commentators is for NWA World Heavyweight Champion Colt Cabana. Colt was considering it, and between Kenny, Colt, and Marty’s wonderful heel temper-tantrum, they milked every last cheer they could out of the crowd to convince Colt to team with Kenny.
This was a pretty good segment, although I would have liked it if Adam Page were at least allowed to speak. Kenny King had referred to Page & Scurll as the “Bullet Club B Team,” and while I don’t think that’s quite fair to say about Marty, it is definitely how Page comes across, so anything they could do to not make him feel like the guy who exists only so his stablemates don’t have to get pinned.

JAY LETHAL vs. HIROMU TAKAHASHI- 7.5/10
These guys had a great first few minutes in which they built things up really well. The crowd responded to this by chanting “WE WANT DARRYL!” They weren’t chanting for either of the wrestlers, or either promotion, or chanting “THIS IS AWESOME!” They were chanting that they wanted to see the f*cking stuffed cat, because wrestling fans in 2017 suck.
So Takahashi went and grabbed Darryl, and hit Lethal with him, right in front of ROH Senior Official Tod Sinclair. Darryl is, of course, a foreign object- one that is almost certainly loaded, based on the finish of Hiromu’s match against Christopher Daniels a few days ago and based on the way Lethal is selling it here (which would actually be an awesome gimmick: a heel loading a stuffed animal and claiming it is a therapy stuffed animal and he doesn’t like anyone else touching it as a way to prevent anyone from ever checking it to discover that it’s loaded. It would also explain Darryl’s entire existence, because it this point it seems like Hiormu is just taking his favorite stuffed animal to work with him, like a small child would do)- so this should, of course, have been a DQ. The fans still cheered it because somehow the company that was built on clean finishes has been transformed into a place where fans will cheer for one wrestler hitting another with a stuffed animal, even if it means a DQ. Ring of Honor fans in 2017 suck.
Fortunately for Hiromu, this wasn’t a DQ; all he got was a scolding from Tod Sinclair. He hit him with a foreign object! Why isn’t this a DQ?! Ian Riccaboni even said on commentary that hitting Daniels with Darryl gave Hiromu the win in that match, so should ROH Officials have been told to be on the lookout for such shenanigans? And if, by some chance, this somehow wasn’t illegal, why is Sinclair yelling at Hiromu about it? Why is it so difficult for wrestlers nowadays to just put on matches that make sense?
So the match progresses and it’s getting really good with the story being that young punk Hiromu is trying to show up “the franchise of ROH” Jay Lethal and their chopping the hell out of each other and eventually Lethal manages to get Hiromu into the dreaded Figure-Four Leglock, which Ian Riccaboni reminds us was taught to Lethal by the legendary Ric Flair himself and Hiromu is writhing in pain in the hold and that match could end at any moment… and the fans are chanting “DARRYL, HELP HIM!” because they want the stuffed animal to run in and break up the babyface’s submission hold, because it’s all a big joke to them. Every wrestling show should have a caveat where they show each individual fan a Flair vs. Steamboat match when he or she walks in the door, and if you don’t understand the story of the match or if you ask why no one in the crowd was shouting “SWEET!” after every two count or playing with beach balls then they should be allowed to kick you out and keep your money.
When Takahashi did eventually make it to the ropes- on his own, of course, because Darryl is a f*cking stuffed cat- the fans chanted “THANK YOU, DARRYL!” because they don’t actually care about the match. They just care about trying to get themselves over. Soon after that they went into their finishing sequence and Lethal picked up the win, continuing to build him back up after losing his feud with Silas Young. A great match with an idiotic crowd.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Motor City Machine Guns(c) vs. Silas Young & the Beer City Bruiser- 6.75/10
Will Ferrara & Rhett Titus joined Ian Riccaboni on commentary. They were extremely annoying. Like, almost Vinny Marseglia-level annoying. Silas & the Bruiser jumped the Guns to start things off. The match was fine for third match on the card, but not with the tag titles on the line. This random and mediocre defense against a team that has done nothing to earn it, third on the card made the belts looks like total undercard belts.

SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki & the Killer Elite Squad) vs. CHAOS (Toru Yano, Will Ospreay, & YOSHI-HASHI)- 6.5/10
Suzuki-Gun jumped their opponents to start things off. Even in a different promotion and on a different continent, they have to do the same f*cking thing every time. Speaking of doing the same thing every time, the next thing that happened was that they all brawled on the floor, and were out there for way too long and yet the referee didn’t even try to count them out. Then we got Yano running away from Suzuki and hiding in the ropes and stalling like a total coward. Then he used an Inverted Atomic Drop purposely performed incorrectly to hit to Suzuki in the testicles. HOW IS YANO A BABYFACE?!
More crap happened. Then Suzuki started chasing referee Tod Sinclair around the ring. They did a bit more stuff together, then tagged out, and once they were out the match got pretty exciting. Ospreay in particular was great with K.E.S., but YOSHI-HASHI held up his end of the bargain as well, and also got the pin on Archer via roll-up. Suzuki-Gun was angry for a while, then Suzuki chased Yano backstage while K.E.S. just walked to the back in a very grumpy manner.

HOLIDEAD vs. SUMIE SAKAI- 4.75/10
I am completely amazed that Sumie is able to play the role of a young, peppy, energetic babyface even though she is almost forty-six years old.

JOSH WOODS vs. SHANE TAYLOR- 5/10
Fun for the time it got. I think I’d enjoy seeing these two go at it again in a longer match.

COLT CABANA & KENNY KING vs. BULLET CLUB (Marty Scurll & Adam Page)- 6/10
Cabana and Scurll do a bunch of comedy. Remember before Scurll joined Bullet Club when he wasn’t a comedy goofball? The general rule of thumb in this match was that whenever Page and King were in, there was good wrestling, and whenever Scurll and Cabana were in, it was all goofy comedy with Scurll coming across more like a cartoon character than a real human being. The babyfaces should have been DQed when Colt hit the heels with an oven mitt because, like Darryl Takahashi, it is a foreign object. For no adequately explained reason there was no DQ, and King eventually pinned Page because Page is the Ring of Honor version of Chase Owens: a curly-haired American from tobacco country who was given a Bullet Club t-shirt solely so that other people in Bullet Clubs t-shirts never have to get pinned.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Cody Rhodes(c) vs. KUSHIDA- 6/10
Remember earlier in the show when the announcers freaked out about Kazarian telling the fans to “eat a dizz” as if this watered-down substitute word for “dick” was the most rude and crass thing one could possibly say and they were afraid the company would get in trouble because of it? Well in response to being commanded to kiss Cody’s ring, KUSHIDA flipped Cody off and shouted “F*CK YOU!” and the announcers just giggled with delight and did not seem to be concerned in any way at all and did not tell KUSHIDA off for a word you can’t say on TV.
This, of course, gave Cody a reason to do his favorite thing to do, which is go to the outside and stall, this time throwing things and getting angry that the most predictable thing in the world had happened. As BJ Whitmer pointed out on commentary, this sort of thing happens every time Cody demands that someone kiss his ring, so you’d think he’d have learned to deal with it by now, but apparently not.
Cody finally got back into the ring so the bell could ring. He then spent over a minute playing to the crowd before grabbing a mic and scolding them for not cheering for him loud enough. I’m not even sure why they were cheering for him at all, considering that he’s a heel who puts on sub-par matches as the f*cking ROH World Champion, but today’s pro wrestling fan seems to be less of a fan of professional wrestling and more a fan of chanting things while attending professional wrestling shows, so I really shouldn’t be so surprised.
That ate up another minute or so. Then they spent about fifteen seconds circling each other, so we finally got our opening lock-up almost two and a half minutes after the opening bell rang. They traded hammerlocks, then Cody elbowed KUSHIDA in the face, and then we went almost another entire minute without anything happening. Then they did a nice little sequence that last about thirty seconds and then Cody rolled to the floor yet again, this time running all the way into the crowd. He went all the way to the back of the arena, and Tod Sinclair never once tried to count him out. It was over seventy seconds before he even got back into the ring, and another fifteen before the wrestlers touched again. In the first five minutes of this match we have had over four minutes of stalling, and that’s not even counting the minute and a half of stalling before Cody got in the ring to start the match.
They finally started to have a normal wrestling match and KUSHIDA was working the arm while being a great underdog babyface and he had a CRAZY reversal of the CrossRhodes into the Hoverboard Lock and the match is starting to get pretty good and we got some great reversals of big spots… and then Cody hit the CrossRhodes and got the win, ending the match right before it really started to get going. It almost felt like Cody realized that the match was starting to become exciting so he ended it right then a there just to troll me. But let the record show that Cody Rhodes was given almost twenty minutes (the match went about seventeen, plus the minute and a half of stalling beforehand) in an ROH World Title match with KUSHIDA and the best he could put on was something that would MAYBE would have been passable as an opener.

ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega)(c) vs. Flip Gordon & Best Friends- 2.75/10
The titles are on the line here because apparently the Bucks decided that they wanted to operate under “the Bullet Club Rule,” which is just the Freebird Rule, and ROH management has decided to go along with it. I assure you that this would never have been done had Kenny Omega not been working this tour, and rather than do what people actually wanted to see and book Kenny in some interesting singles matches, Delirious just decided to stick him in a bunch of repetitive six-man tags so they could have these six-man tag titles defended against a bunch of teams that have done absolutely nothing to earn a shot at them, with the defenses not being announced in advance at all so that they sold a grand total of zero extra tickets. Good job there, Delirious. Friendly suggestion: maybe you’d be able to get a bit more oxygen going to your brain if ever took Bully Ray and Gedo’s cocks out of your mouth.
Speaking of not being able to breathe, whoever this ring announcer is, ROH should never use him again. He introduced this match as “a six-man tag team affair.” IT’S CALLED A “MATCH!” A F*CKING “MATCH.” What? Do you think calling it an “affair” makes it sound fancier or makes you sound smarter? If you do, then why don’t you, Mike Tenay, and Matt Striker go asphyxiate each other so that I never have to deal with this idiotic line of thinking ever again? (See. I told you I’d make a connection to not being able to breathe. Don’t ever doubt me.)
The story early on seemed to be that Best Friends were here to take care of business and weren’t doing to put up with any of The Elite’s bullsh*t antics, but then all of a sudden they started engaging in their own antics, totally upending the story they had been telling.
At that point the whole match just started to break down into antics. At one point all of the other members of Bullet Club ran out from the back, got into the ring, and laid down so that one of the Bucks could slam Gordon’s head into all ten of their boots at the same time. This all happened right in front of the referee, but apparently Bullet Club doesn’t give a sh*t if they get disqualified and lose the match, so why should I care either. The other “fans” in the building certainly don’t care because they were all chanting “TEN BOOTS!” They don’t care if their main event title match with Kenny Omega making one of this extremely rare appearances in the US ends in a disqualification; they’ll just be happy that they got to see something silly, because apparently that’s why they buy tickets to wrestling shows.
Making matters worse is the fact that any intelligent person would immediately have realized that the way Bullet Club had to cram themselves all into position to get their feet all together in the corner meant that any attempt to slam Gordon’s face into said booted feet would almost certainly involve Page or Cody getting their face stepped on first, and because there are so many points of contact the impact on Gordon’s head will actually be less than if it was just two boots, but we’ve got to do our silly spot because the H in ROH now apparently stands for “Ha-Ha.”
So Gordon’s head gets slammed into all ten boots and the referee… just stands there and shrugs instead of calling for a disqualification. You know… like how when a basketball player picks up the ball and just runs down the court instead of dribbling, the referee just shrugs instead of calling traveling. And people say that WWE is the promotion that insults the fans’ intelligence?
Now the referee finally orders the interlopers from Bullet Club to go to the back. Too little, too late, dumbass. That boot to the face spot is now the only thing that has happened for the past two minutes. And now they’re back to trying to have a wrestling match with drama. How do they expect me to care about this when they just spent the past few minutes making it into a total farce?
Then they went and had seven straight minutes of totally awesome wrestling, and that’s almost worse than if the match had just continued to suck because all this did was show me how amazing this match could have been if they hadn’t wasted most of it on pointless moronic comedy.
These seven minutes of awesome ended with a big sequence where Chuck Taylor hit the Awful Waffle on Kenny Omega but before the referee could make the three-count the rest of Bullet Club came back out to pull him out of the ring. You’d think that returning to ringside after being ejected would cause their pals to be disqualified, but you’d be wrong. You’d also think that putting your hands on the referee to impede his performance of his duties would cause a disqualification, but you’d be wrong again.
The fans are chanting “WELCOME BACK!” at these heels interfering in a match and screwing a popular babyface out of pinning a huge star and winning some titles because they’re not actually wrestling fans; they’re Bullet Club marks, and will cheer for anything involving Bullet Club. If a random stranger ran into the ring and started molesting children, these assholes would cheer it if the child molester had a Bullet Club shirt on.
Gordon did a big dive onto all of Bullet Club to take them out. Chuck and Trent then got a table and tried to chokeslam one of the Bucks off the stage and through it but the other Buck made the save. Then The Elite hit the two of them with three superkicks to send them through the table in a spot that made it absolutely impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. Flip Gordon was then given a brief moment to shine before being given a Meltzer Driver onto the floor, after which he was rolled into the ring and pinned.
This will go down as by far one of the worse main events in Ring of Honor history. The only others that come to mind are Cody vs. Suzuki from Death Before Dishonor XV last month, and before that you’d have to go all the way back to the early days of the promotion with sh*t like the gigantic scramble match from the One Year Anniversary Show or the atrocious main event of Night of the Butcher, where something (my guess would be Kevin Sullivan) possessed Gabe to think it would be a good idea to book Abdullah the Butcher at the ripe old age of sixty-one. While this was probably the best of those matches, it is also the most frustrating because of the glimpse of what this could have been if they had just put on a f*cking wrestling match instead of doing stupid bullsh*t for the LOLz.

This is definitely one of the bottom-tier shows in ROH history. Lethal vs. Hiromu keeps it away from the very bottom, but it’s definitely down there. ROH is lucky that they have been found by this new breed of wrestling… patrons (I won’t even call them “fans”) who don’t actually give a sh*t about wrestling, because otherwise they’d be totally f*cked.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Ian Riccaboni (during the Lethal vs. Hiromu match)- “A lot of pride on the line here. 53-49-1 is New Japan’s record against Ring of Honor head-to-head, and this one could go a long way in expanding or contracting that.”
A. No it can’t. It can move the difference exactly ONE result in either direction, or not move it at all by going to a draw, because this is only ONE match.
B. I also hate it when an announcer tells me that there is so much “pride” on the line about something that I don’t recall hearing anyone- no the wrestlers or promoters from either side- ever mention even once in the now over four years that these promotions have been working together. I don’t think anything has ever even been billed as a “New Japan vs. ROH” showdown. It has always been “we are friendly promotions who are working together in a friendly manner, with no competition between us whatsoever.”

2. Ian Riccaboni- “Why not get a table out? It’s the main event of Global Wars!”
Because you’ll get disqualified? And because cheating is wrong?
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AlexROH
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by AlexROH »

Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:24 am ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega)(c) vs. Flip Gordon & Best Friends- 2.75/10
The titles are on the line here because apparently the Bucks decided that they wanted to operate under “the Bullet Club Rule,” which is just the Freebird Rule, and ROH management has decided to go along with it. I assure you that this would never have been done had Kenny Omega not been working this tour, and rather than do what people actually wanted to see and book Kenny in some interesting singles matches, Delirious just decided to stick him in a bunch of repetitive six-man tags so they could have these six-man tag titles defended against a bunch of teams that have done absolutely nothing to earn a shot at them, with the defenses not being announced in advance at all so that they sold a grand total of zero extra tickets. Good job there, Delirious. Friendly suggestion: maybe you’d be able to get a bit more oxygen going to your brain if ever took Bully Ray and Gedo’s cocks out of your mouth.
Speaking of not being able to breathe, whoever this ring announcer is, ROH should never use him again. He introduced this match as “a six-man tag team affair.” IT’S CALLED A “MATCH!” A F*CKING “MATCH.” What? Do you think calling it an “affair” makes it sound fancier or makes you sound smarter? If you do, then why don’t you, Mike Tenay, and Matt Striker go asphyxiate each other so that I never have to deal with this idiotic line of thinking ever again? (See. I told you I’d make a connection to not being able to breathe. Don’t ever doubt me.)
The story early on seemed to be that Best Friends were here to take care of business and weren’t doing to put up with any of The Elite’s bullsh*t antics, but then all of a sudden they started engaging in their own antics, totally upending the story they had been telling.
At that point the whole match just started to break down into antics. At one point all of the other members of Bullet Club ran out from the back, got into the ring, and laid down so that one of the Bucks could slam Gordon’s head into all ten of their boots at the same time. This all happened right in front of the referee, but apparently Bullet Club doesn’t give a sh*t if they get disqualified and lose the match, so why should I care either. The other “fans” in the building certainly don’t care because they were all chanting “TEN BOOTS!” They don’t care if their main event title match with Kenny Omega making one of this extremely rare appearances in the US ends in a disqualification; they’ll just be happy that they got to see something silly, because apparently that’s why they buy tickets to wrestling shows.
Making matters worse is the fact that any intelligent person would immediately have realized that the way Bullet Club had to cram themselves all into position to get their feet all together in the corner meant that any attempt to slam Gordon’s face into said booted feet would almost certainly involve Page or Cody getting their face stepped on first, and because there are so many points of contact the impact on Gordon’s head will actually be less than if it was just two boots, but we’ve got to do our silly spot because the H in ROH now apparently stands for “Ha-Ha.”
So Gordon’s head gets slammed into all ten boots and the referee… just stands there and shrugs instead of calling for a disqualification. You know… like how when a basketball player picks up the ball and just runs down the court instead of dribbling, the referee just shrugs instead of calling traveling. And people say that WWE is the promotion that insults the fans’ intelligence?
Now the referee finally orders the interlopers from Bullet Club to go to the back. Too little, too late, dumbass. That boot to the face spot is now the only thing that has happened for the past two minutes. And now they’re back to trying to have a wrestling match with drama. How do they expect me to care about this when they just spent the past few minutes making it into a total farce?
Then they went and had seven straight minutes of totally awesome wrestling, and that’s almost worse than if the match had just continued to suck because all this did was show me how amazing this match could have been if they hadn’t wasted most of it on pointless moronic comedy.
These seven minutes of awesome ended with a big sequence where Chuck Taylor hit the Awful Waffle on Kenny Omega but before the referee could make the three-count the rest of Bullet Club came back out to pull him out of the ring. You’d think that returning to ringside after being ejected would cause their pals to be disqualified, but you’d be wrong. You’d also think that putting your hands on the referee to impede his performance of his duties would cause a disqualification, but you’d be wrong again.
The fans are chanting “WELCOME BACK!” at these heels interfering in a match and screwing a popular babyface out of pinning a huge star and winning some titles because they’re not actually wrestling fans; they’re Bullet Club marks, and will cheer for anything involving Bullet Club. If a random stranger ran into the ring and started molesting children, these assholes would cheer it if the child molester had a Bullet Club shirt on.
Gordon did a big dive onto all of Bullet Club to take them out. Chuck and Trent then got a table and tried to chokeslam one of the Bucks off the stage and through it but the other Buck made the save. Then The Elite hit the two of them with three superkicks to send them through the table in a spot that made it absolutely impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. Flip Gordon was then given a brief moment to shine before being given a Meltzer Driver onto the floor, after which he was rolled into the ring and pinned.
This will go down as by far one of the worse main events in Ring of Honor history. The only others that come to mind are Cody vs. Suzuki from Death Before Dishonor XV last month, and before that you’d have to go all the way back to the early days of the promotion with sh*t like the gigantic scramble match from the One Year Anniversary Show or the atrocious main event of Night of the Butcher, where something (my guess would be Kevin Sullivan) possessed Gabe to think it would be a good idea to book Abdullah the Butcher at the ripe old age of sixty-one. While this was probably the best of those matches, it is also the most frustrating because of the glimpse of what this could have been if they had just put on a f*cking wrestling match instead of doing stupid bullsh*t for the LOLz.

This is definitely one of the bottom-tier shows in ROH history. Lethal vs. Hiromu keeps it away from the very bottom, but it’s definitely down there. ROH is lucky that they have been found by this new breed of wrestling… patrons (I won’t even call them “fans”) who don’t actually give a sh*t about wrestling, because otherwise they’d be totally f*cked.
Omg, one of the worst shows ever? It's funny to read (again) the complain about Omega's bookings. He do the same in NJPW, that's what he likes, doing trios matches and having fun and just going singles for big matches. Delirious has a lot of problems, but this isn't "his fault", it just how Kenny Omega's appareances work.

The review of the main event... Idk, if someone hate the BC shit, they'll hate the ME. You know what are you going to see, that's what they do bc people love it. If you don't like a type of match or a certain wrestler or tag team, don't watch it or don't waste your time with it. I don't like Cody's matches, but I don't write long reviews saying he is a disgrace to wrestling every week. Elite, Best Friends and Flip Gordon gave the match everybody was expecting, I understand that you didn't like it, just like I don't like PWG at all, but man, you are calling the worst ME ever to a match that every reviewer I've read has said it was a blast. BC is an amazing experience live, and that's why every time more and more people came to the shows.

Calling this one of the worst shows ROH shows in ROH history is a little too much, IMO. This wasn't TNA from 2012 or WCW from 2001, that was a fun B Show with two great matches and an awesome atmosphere, Maybe this isn't for you, maybe you don't see how ROH has evolved. I'm telling you that you have to like it, but if you hate this so much and are the only person that said this was the best show ever and the worst ME in company's history, I think you should quit watching ROH, which would be a shame bc I love reading your stuff.
Big Red Machine
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

AlexROH wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:43 am
Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:24 am ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega)(c) vs. Flip Gordon & Best Friends- 2.75/10
The titles are on the line here because apparently the Bucks decided that they wanted to operate under “the Bullet Club Rule,” which is just the Freebird Rule, and ROH management has decided to go along with it. I assure you that this would never have been done had Kenny Omega not been working this tour, and rather than do what people actually wanted to see and book Kenny in some interesting singles matches, Delirious just decided to stick him in a bunch of repetitive six-man tags so they could have these six-man tag titles defended against a bunch of teams that have done absolutely nothing to earn a shot at them, with the defenses not being announced in advance at all so that they sold a grand total of zero extra tickets. Good job there, Delirious. Friendly suggestion: maybe you’d be able to get a bit more oxygen going to your brain if ever took Bully Ray and Gedo’s cocks out of your mouth.
Speaking of not being able to breathe, whoever this ring announcer is, ROH should never use him again. He introduced this match as “a six-man tag team affair.” IT’S CALLED A “MATCH!” A F*CKING “MATCH.” What? Do you think calling it an “affair” makes it sound fancier or makes you sound smarter? If you do, then why don’t you, Mike Tenay, and Matt Striker go asphyxiate each other so that I never have to deal with this idiotic line of thinking ever again? (See. I told you I’d make a connection to not being able to breathe. Don’t ever doubt me.)
The story early on seemed to be that Best Friends were here to take care of business and weren’t doing to put up with any of The Elite’s bullsh*t antics, but then all of a sudden they started engaging in their own antics, totally upending the story they had been telling.
At that point the whole match just started to break down into antics. At one point all of the other members of Bullet Club ran out from the back, got into the ring, and laid down so that one of the Bucks could slam Gordon’s head into all ten of their boots at the same time. This all happened right in front of the referee, but apparently Bullet Club doesn’t give a sh*t if they get disqualified and lose the match, so why should I care either. The other “fans” in the building certainly don’t care because they were all chanting “TEN BOOTS!” They don’t care if their main event title match with Kenny Omega making one of this extremely rare appearances in the US ends in a disqualification; they’ll just be happy that they got to see something silly, because apparently that’s why they buy tickets to wrestling shows.
Making matters worse is the fact that any intelligent person would immediately have realized that the way Bullet Club had to cram themselves all into position to get their feet all together in the corner meant that any attempt to slam Gordon’s face into said booted feet would almost certainly involve Page or Cody getting their face stepped on first, and because there are so many points of contact the impact on Gordon’s head will actually be less than if it was just two boots, but we’ve got to do our silly spot because the H in ROH now apparently stands for “Ha-Ha.”
So Gordon’s head gets slammed into all ten boots and the referee… just stands there and shrugs instead of calling for a disqualification. You know… like how when a basketball player picks up the ball and just runs down the court instead of dribbling, the referee just shrugs instead of calling traveling. And people say that WWE is the promotion that insults the fans’ intelligence?
Now the referee finally orders the interlopers from Bullet Club to go to the back. Too little, too late, dumbass. That boot to the face spot is now the only thing that has happened for the past two minutes. And now they’re back to trying to have a wrestling match with drama. How do they expect me to care about this when they just spent the past few minutes making it into a total farce?
Then they went and had seven straight minutes of totally awesome wrestling, and that’s almost worse than if the match had just continued to suck because all this did was show me how amazing this match could have been if they hadn’t wasted most of it on pointless moronic comedy.
These seven minutes of awesome ended with a big sequence where Chuck Taylor hit the Awful Waffle on Kenny Omega but before the referee could make the three-count the rest of Bullet Club came back out to pull him out of the ring. You’d think that returning to ringside after being ejected would cause their pals to be disqualified, but you’d be wrong. You’d also think that putting your hands on the referee to impede his performance of his duties would cause a disqualification, but you’d be wrong again.
The fans are chanting “WELCOME BACK!” at these heels interfering in a match and screwing a popular babyface out of pinning a huge star and winning some titles because they’re not actually wrestling fans; they’re Bullet Club marks, and will cheer for anything involving Bullet Club. If a random stranger ran into the ring and started molesting children, these assholes would cheer it if the child molester had a Bullet Club shirt on.
Gordon did a big dive onto all of Bullet Club to take them out. Chuck and Trent then got a table and tried to chokeslam one of the Bucks off the stage and through it but the other Buck made the save. Then The Elite hit the two of them with three superkicks to send them through the table in a spot that made it absolutely impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. Flip Gordon was then given a brief moment to shine before being given a Meltzer Driver onto the floor, after which he was rolled into the ring and pinned.
This will go down as by far one of the worse main events in Ring of Honor history. The only others that come to mind are Cody vs. Suzuki from Death Before Dishonor XV last month, and before that you’d have to go all the way back to the early days of the promotion with sh*t like the gigantic scramble match from the One Year Anniversary Show or the atrocious main event of Night of the Butcher, where something (my guess would be Kevin Sullivan) possessed Gabe to think it would be a good idea to book Abdullah the Butcher at the ripe old age of sixty-one. While this was probably the best of those matches, it is also the most frustrating because of the glimpse of what this could have been if they had just put on a f*cking wrestling match instead of doing stupid bullsh*t for the LOLz.

This is definitely one of the bottom-tier shows in ROH history. Lethal vs. Hiromu keeps it away from the very bottom, but it’s definitely down there. ROH is lucky that they have been found by this new breed of wrestling… patrons (I won’t even call them “fans”) who don’t actually give a sh*t about wrestling, because otherwise they’d be totally f*cked.
Omg, one of the worst shows ever? It's funny to read (again) the complain about Omega's bookings. He do the same in NJPW, that's what he likes, doing trios matches and having fun and just going singles for big matches. Delirious has a lot of problems, but this isn't "his fault", it just how Kenny Omega's appareances work.

The review of the main event... Idk, if someone hate the BC shit, they'll hate the ME. You know what are you going to see, that's what they do bc people love it. If you don't like a type of match or a certain wrestler or tag team, don't watch it or don't waste your time with it. I don't like Cody's matches, but I don't write long reviews saying he is a disgrace to wrestling every week. Elite, Best Friends and Flip Gordon gave the match everybody was expecting, I understand that you didn't like it, just like I don't like PWG at all, but man, you are calling the worst ME ever to a match that every reviewer I've read has said it was a blast. BC is an amazing experience live, and that's why every time more and more people came to the shows.

Calling this one of the worst shows ROH shows in ROH history is a little too much, IMO. This wasn't TNA from 2012 or WCW from 2001, that was a fun B Show with two great matches and an awesome atmosphere, Maybe this isn't for you, maybe you don't see how ROH has evolved. I'm telling you that you have to like it, but if you hate this so much and are the only person that said this was the best show ever and the worst ME in company's history, I think you should quit watching ROH, which would be a shame bc I love reading your stuff.
I never said this was as bad as WCW in 2001 or TNA in 2012 (or 2013, or 2014, or 2015, or 2016). It wasn't that bad. But based on the rather high levels that ROH has set over the years, I do think this was one of the worst shows ROH has ever produced.
It was a complete and total house show with a disappointing main event. Aside from the second match on the card, every single match with a New Japan talent- the guys around whom the show was built- was disappointing, everything that happened with Adam Page seemed designed to make him look like a jobber, well over half of the time in the top three matches was spent on either comedy or stalling, and the only angles in the company right now are this Bully Ray vs. Jay Briscoe feud which didn't feature at all on this show, and The Addiction whining about not being given a title shot, which is literally the same thing they've been doing for sixteen of the last twenty-five months. I'd say that's pretty f*cking bad.

I'm fine with Omega doing trios matches. What I'm not fine with is him wasting them doing comedy. I was expecting [some comedy from the main event. What we got was 80% comedy. I was expecting Cabana to do some comedy, not every single moment he and Marty were in there to be comedy. Over the past six months, Marty Scurll has transformed from a believable person into a cartoon.
Believe it or not, I don't mind comedy in my wrestling. I loved Yano vs. Omega. But that's because everything they did made sense and flowed organically. Everything they did in that match was them trying to win a wrestling match. It's just that things they did happened to be funny.
What we got here (and in a lot of other matches) was guys doing things right in front of the referee that should have obviously been disqualifications, but they did them anyway just for the giggles, and the referee just let it go. Or guys just stopping doing their wrestling match to do comedy, like Best Friends hugging each other but then not letting Gordon in on it (which made Gordon look like a total geek, flopping around every time he missed getting in on the hug).
And the f*cking crowd just eats up anything, no matter how stupid, no matter if it should cause a DQ, no matter if it is completely antithetical to everything the promotion is supposed to stand for. You say that I don't see how ROH has "evolved" and you're right... but I desperately want to, because I don't understand how the promotion- or, perhaps, more specifically, it's paying customers- have come to this. How is it that a heel running in to interfere in a world title match PPV main event to screw over a company legend who had just been turned babyface by the fans in the same building cheering for him, elicits a huge cheer? How did we get from a place where people shat all over Xavier or Jerry Lynn due to the perception that they weren't good enough in the ring to a place where people cheer Cody, despite him putting on far worse matches than anything either of those two ever did?
It just doesn't compute to me that the promotion is being both booked and wrestled in the laziest manner it has ever been, and yet it seems to be drawing bigger crowds than before. And yet, despite selling all of these tickets, it feels less relevant to the wrestling world than it ever has before.
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AlexROH
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by AlexROH »

Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:37 am
AlexROH wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:43 am
Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:24 am ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega)(c) vs. Flip Gordon & Best Friends- 2.75/10
The titles are on the line here because apparently the Bucks decided that they wanted to operate under “the Bullet Club Rule,” which is just the Freebird Rule, and ROH management has decided to go along with it. I assure you that this would never have been done had Kenny Omega not been working this tour, and rather than do what people actually wanted to see and book Kenny in some interesting singles matches, Delirious just decided to stick him in a bunch of repetitive six-man tags so they could have these six-man tag titles defended against a bunch of teams that have done absolutely nothing to earn a shot at them, with the defenses not being announced in advance at all so that they sold a grand total of zero extra tickets. Good job there, Delirious. Friendly suggestion: maybe you’d be able to get a bit more oxygen going to your brain if ever took Bully Ray and Gedo’s cocks out of your mouth.
Speaking of not being able to breathe, whoever this ring announcer is, ROH should never use him again. He introduced this match as “a six-man tag team affair.” IT’S CALLED A “MATCH!” A F*CKING “MATCH.” What? Do you think calling it an “affair” makes it sound fancier or makes you sound smarter? If you do, then why don’t you, Mike Tenay, and Matt Striker go asphyxiate each other so that I never have to deal with this idiotic line of thinking ever again? (See. I told you I’d make a connection to not being able to breathe. Don’t ever doubt me.)
The story early on seemed to be that Best Friends were here to take care of business and weren’t doing to put up with any of The Elite’s bullsh*t antics, but then all of a sudden they started engaging in their own antics, totally upending the story they had been telling.
At that point the whole match just started to break down into antics. At one point all of the other members of Bullet Club ran out from the back, got into the ring, and laid down so that one of the Bucks could slam Gordon’s head into all ten of their boots at the same time. This all happened right in front of the referee, but apparently Bullet Club doesn’t give a sh*t if they get disqualified and lose the match, so why should I care either. The other “fans” in the building certainly don’t care because they were all chanting “TEN BOOTS!” They don’t care if their main event title match with Kenny Omega making one of this extremely rare appearances in the US ends in a disqualification; they’ll just be happy that they got to see something silly, because apparently that’s why they buy tickets to wrestling shows.
Making matters worse is the fact that any intelligent person would immediately have realized that the way Bullet Club had to cram themselves all into position to get their feet all together in the corner meant that any attempt to slam Gordon’s face into said booted feet would almost certainly involve Page or Cody getting their face stepped on first, and because there are so many points of contact the impact on Gordon’s head will actually be less than if it was just two boots, but we’ve got to do our silly spot because the H in ROH now apparently stands for “Ha-Ha.”
So Gordon’s head gets slammed into all ten boots and the referee… just stands there and shrugs instead of calling for a disqualification. You know… like how when a basketball player picks up the ball and just runs down the court instead of dribbling, the referee just shrugs instead of calling traveling. And people say that WWE is the promotion that insults the fans’ intelligence?
Now the referee finally orders the interlopers from Bullet Club to go to the back. Too little, too late, dumbass. That boot to the face spot is now the only thing that has happened for the past two minutes. And now they’re back to trying to have a wrestling match with drama. How do they expect me to care about this when they just spent the past few minutes making it into a total farce?
Then they went and had seven straight minutes of totally awesome wrestling, and that’s almost worse than if the match had just continued to suck because all this did was show me how amazing this match could have been if they hadn’t wasted most of it on pointless moronic comedy.
These seven minutes of awesome ended with a big sequence where Chuck Taylor hit the Awful Waffle on Kenny Omega but before the referee could make the three-count the rest of Bullet Club came back out to pull him out of the ring. You’d think that returning to ringside after being ejected would cause their pals to be disqualified, but you’d be wrong. You’d also think that putting your hands on the referee to impede his performance of his duties would cause a disqualification, but you’d be wrong again.
The fans are chanting “WELCOME BACK!” at these heels interfering in a match and screwing a popular babyface out of pinning a huge star and winning some titles because they’re not actually wrestling fans; they’re Bullet Club marks, and will cheer for anything involving Bullet Club. If a random stranger ran into the ring and started molesting children, these assholes would cheer it if the child molester had a Bullet Club shirt on.
Gordon did a big dive onto all of Bullet Club to take them out. Chuck and Trent then got a table and tried to chokeslam one of the Bucks off the stage and through it but the other Buck made the save. Then The Elite hit the two of them with three superkicks to send them through the table in a spot that made it absolutely impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. Flip Gordon was then given a brief moment to shine before being given a Meltzer Driver onto the floor, after which he was rolled into the ring and pinned.
This will go down as by far one of the worse main events in Ring of Honor history. The only others that come to mind are Cody vs. Suzuki from Death Before Dishonor XV last month, and before that you’d have to go all the way back to the early days of the promotion with sh*t like the gigantic scramble match from the One Year Anniversary Show or the atrocious main event of Night of the Butcher, where something (my guess would be Kevin Sullivan) possessed Gabe to think it would be a good idea to book Abdullah the Butcher at the ripe old age of sixty-one. While this was probably the best of those matches, it is also the most frustrating because of the glimpse of what this could have been if they had just put on a f*cking wrestling match instead of doing stupid bullsh*t for the LOLz.

This is definitely one of the bottom-tier shows in ROH history. Lethal vs. Hiromu keeps it away from the very bottom, but it’s definitely down there. ROH is lucky that they have been found by this new breed of wrestling… patrons (I won’t even call them “fans”) who don’t actually give a sh*t about wrestling, because otherwise they’d be totally f*cked.
Omg, one of the worst shows ever? It's funny to read (again) the complain about Omega's bookings. He do the same in NJPW, that's what he likes, doing trios matches and having fun and just going singles for big matches. Delirious has a lot of problems, but this isn't "his fault", it just how Kenny Omega's appareances work.

The review of the main event... Idk, if someone hate the BC shit, they'll hate the ME. You know what are you going to see, that's what they do bc people love it. If you don't like a type of match or a certain wrestler or tag team, don't watch it or don't waste your time with it. I don't like Cody's matches, but I don't write long reviews saying he is a disgrace to wrestling every week. Elite, Best Friends and Flip Gordon gave the match everybody was expecting, I understand that you didn't like it, just like I don't like PWG at all, but man, you are calling the worst ME ever to a match that every reviewer I've read has said it was a blast. BC is an amazing experience live, and that's why every time more and more people came to the shows.

Calling this one of the worst shows ROH shows in ROH history is a little too much, IMO. This wasn't TNA from 2012 or WCW from 2001, that was a fun B Show with two great matches and an awesome atmosphere, Maybe this isn't for you, maybe you don't see how ROH has evolved. I'm telling you that you have to like it, but if you hate this so much and are the only person that said this was the best show ever and the worst ME in company's history, I think you should quit watching ROH, which would be a shame bc I love reading your stuff.
I never said this was as bad as WCW in 2001 or TNA in 2012 (or 2013, or 2014, or 2015, or 2016). It wasn't that bad. But based on the rather high levels that ROH has set over the years, I do think this was one of the worst shows ROH has ever produced.
It was a complete and total house show with a disappointing main event. Aside from the second match on the card, every single match with a New Japan talent- the guys around whom the show was built- was disappointing, everything that happened with Adam Page seemed designed to make him look like a jobber, well over half of the time in the top three matches was spent on either comedy or stalling, and the only angles in the company right now are this Bully Ray vs. Jay Briscoe feud which didn't feature at all on this show, and The Addiction whining about not being given a title shot, which is literally the same thing they've been doing for sixteen of the last twenty-five months. I'd say that's pretty f*cking bad.

I'm fine with Omega doing trios matches. What I'm not fine with is him wasting them doing comedy. I was expecting [some comedy from the main event. What we got was 80% comedy. I was expecting Cabana to do some comedy, not every single moment he and Marty were in there to be comedy. Over the past six months, Marty Scurll has transformed from a believable person into a cartoon.
Believe it or not, I don't mind comedy in my wrestling. I loved Yano vs. Omega. But that's because everything they did made sense and flowed organically. Everything they did in that match was them trying to win a wrestling match. It's just that things they did happened to be funny.
What we got here (and in a lot of other matches) was guys doing things right in front of the referee that should have obviously been disqualifications, but they did them anyway just for the giggles, and the referee just let it go. Or guys just stopping doing their wrestling match to do comedy, like Best Friends hugging each other but then not letting Gordon in on it (which made Gordon look like a total geek, flopping around every time he missed getting in on the hug).
And the f*cking crowd just eats up anything, no matter how stupid, no matter if it should cause a DQ, no matter if it is completely antithetical to everything the promotion is supposed to stand for. You say that I don't see how ROH has "evolved" and you're right... but I desperately want to, because I don't understand how the promotion- or, perhaps, more specifically, it's paying customers- have come to this. How is it that a heel running in to interfere in a world title match PPV main event to screw over a company legend who had just been turned babyface by the fans in the same building cheering for him, elicits a huge cheer? How did we get from a place where people shat all over Xavier or Jerry Lynn due to the perception that they weren't good enough in the ring to a place where people cheer Cody, despite him putting on far worse matches than anything either of those two ever did?
It just doesn't compute to me that the promotion is being both booked and wrestled in the laziest manner it has ever been, and yet it seems to be drawing bigger crowds than before. And yet, despite selling all of these tickets, it feels less relevant to the wrestling world than it ever has before.
I understand your points, but, obvisuly, I do not agree with them. I think the same about Cody. he do thing well to go over as a heel, and his run could be great if people boo him, just like they did with Xavier. But, hey, they love him. He's on the BC, they are like the bucks, are "false heel". Do bad things, but people love them bc are cool. If ROH wanted to grow, thay had to evolve and make more of a TV program. They aren't that super-indy that once were, but now they aren't losing money and they are growing more and more. They are different, but everything is different now. You have lot of indies and NXT, it isn't just ROH anymore. They have contracts, TV and PPVs, everything works in another form.

Is the in-ring product worse? Sure it is. But the overall product in very good, IMO. Their TV is strong, they are doing cool PPV and their shows are super strong. They don't have super-high points with MOTYC contenders every single night, but their shows are always fun, strong top to bottom with matches between 3 and 3 and 1/2 stars and they give some 4 stars matches. Crowd are great and make the show easy to watch. For me, it's super entertaining right now to watch a ROH show. They haven't changed, for example. like TNA or WCW did (I'm not saying you said that), they have a television product that it's good. Maybe is "bad" for the old ROH Standars, but you can't live in the golden days. They were f'n awesome, but they aren't and shouldn't come back. That wouldn't work on US national TV. It was cool to be the super-indy company, but now they are number 2 in the US and they are making a lot of money and still, having one of the best products going today. I'd rather have ROH being like this that they being a PWG (cool matches but very very little indy) or a EVOLVE (fucking dead crowds and a product that it's the opposite to wrestling evolution).

"It it seems to be drawing bigger crowds than before. And yet, despite selling all of these tickets, it feels less relevant to the wrestling world than it ever has before".

This make zero sense. I will say it again. Not being "relevant" or don't having "buzz" on the internet isn't the end of the world. Twitter is a social media that have less active users than Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, They don't represent the audience at all, just a little group of them. Maybe nobody talks it on your timeline, but ROH has broken records this year for attendance and VOD/PPVs buys, have done the most lucrative tour of his entire history with what many of you called "NJPW B Team nobody was paying a dollar for" and have done shows in USA, Canada, Japan and UK. They have a strong long-term relationship with the second biggest company in the world and their fanbase is growing, despite you don't like them, how in hell can you tell me that they are less relevant to the wrestling world than it ever has before? Yeah, bc, it's better to have killer matches with Cary Silkin losing money every week that having weaker matches, and still a solid product, and being the second company in the US.
Big Red Machine
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

AlexROH wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:18 am I understand your points, but, obvisuly, I do not agree with them. I think the same about Cody. he do thing well to go over as a heel, and his run could be great if people boo him, just like they did with Xavier. But, hey, they love him. He's on the BC, they are like the bucks, are "false heel". Do bad things, but people love them bc are cool. If ROH wanted to grow, thay had to evolve and make more of a TV program. They aren't that super-indy that once were, but now they aren't losing money and they are growing more and more. They are different, but everything is different now. You have lot of indies and NXT, it isn't just ROH anymore. They have contracts, TV and PPVs, everything works in another form.
Is the in-ring product worse? Sure it is. But the overall product in very good, IMO. Their TV is strong, they are doing cool PPV and their shows are super strong. They don't have super-high points with MOTYC contenders every single night, but their shows are always fun, strong top to bottom with matches between 3 and 3 and 1/2 stars and they give some 4 stars matches. Crowd are great and make the show easy to watch. For me, it's super entertaining right now to watch a ROH show. They haven't changed, for example. like TNA or WCW did (I'm not saying you said that), they have a television product that it's good. Maybe is "bad" for the old ROH Standars, but you can't live in the golden days. They were f'n awesome, but they aren't and shouldn't come back. That wouldn't work on US national TV. It was cool to be the super-indy company, but now they are number 2 in the US and they are making a lot of money and still, having one of the best products going today. I'd rather have ROH being like this that they being a PWG (cool matches but very very little indy) or a EVOLVE (fucking dead crowds and a product that it's the opposite to wrestling evolution).
You and Dragon Saga and others keep making this argument, but not one person has ever explained why being on TV and having PPVs and contracts means that the product has to be this poorly-booked mess full of dirty finishes and comedy in every match and the rules being ignored whenever the wrestlers feel like ignoring them, and results of 80% of the matches being totally irrelevant, and guys who aren’t good enough to cut the ROH mustard like Cody, Bully Ray, Vinny Marseglia and Will Ferrara being all over the product. Just because WWE and TNA can’t figure out how to make it work doesn’t mean no one can. There was nothing about the old way of doing things that couldn’t have been easily adjusted for TV without losing the character of the product. Having killer matches and being a major wrestling promotion are no mutually exclusive.

I’ve said it a million times:
- Cut down the roster so that you’re not paying people who just take up space or aren’t good enough for ROH
- Focus on stories where the results of the matches are important so that the non-PPV /iPPV shows can be used to reinforce those stories (for example, if Cabana is turning on Dalton because he thinks Dalton’s non-serious attitude is holding him back, on the first taping you have them lose with Dalton getting pinned and then later have Colt say something to Dalton about it, then, on the loop between the tapings every match Colt has is either him winning a singles match or losing in a tag match because Dalton gets pinned, then, at the next TV tapings you can have them lose because Dalton gets pinned and Colt can turn on Dalton, as opposed to what Delirious did, which was put them over on the majority of the shows leading up to the turn, including having Dalton destroy a dude in thirty seconds immediately before the turn, plus have Dalton pin the world champion) so that all you need to inform your audience about the results of those shows is a quick comment by the announcers explaining what happened and why it is relevant.
- Rather than trying to cram three or four matches plus a talking segment into each one hour TV show, shoot for two long matches and maybe one very short one, plus a bunch of promos to either follow up on things that have happened before or set up matches for next week. This will have several benefits, including the fact that you can do most of it backstage, which means the you can spend more time per taping on matches, helping to stretch the tapings out so you can get at least five weeks of TV in each taping, reducing the number of tapings (thus saving money) while increasing the quality of the matches and the TV product as a whole, and the fact that this will let the wrestlers all cut their own promos to let us know what the story is in their own words, as opposed to hearing it secondhand from the announcers, where it loses its emotion.

- Focusing on clean finishes will vastly differentiate them from every other wrestling product that we’ve seen on TV for the past twenty years.
This way they would save money, put on a better product, and make their non-televised shows feel like an actual part of the story, something else we haven’t seen done by a televised wrestling promotion in many years.

The whole “false heel” dynamic is a completely self-inflicted wound because there was absolutely no reason to turn them heel in the first place! Everyone knew that the Bucks would get cheered no matter what they did, so why would you ever turn them heel? So you could do yet another big heel stable with Adam Cole as the champion, but this time with an otherwise stale act from a different company? (And make no mistake about it: at that point, Bullet Club was stale everywhere. The Bucks & Kenny Omega weren’t stale, but Bullet Club as an entity was. That’s why the Bucks and Omega came up with the idea of The Elite in the first place).

You say that they haven’t changed like TNA or WCW, but I see them making all of TNA’s mistakes all over again.
- An announce team seemingly designed to emulate everything that people hate about WWE’s team
- Very poor booking of their titles
- Completely and totally abandoning any attempt to tell a real story on the undercard
- Very little mobility in the card (see: Rush, Lio and Dijak, Donovan), even when they do try to push someone (see: Page, Adam)
- Totally abandoning the things that made the promotion what it was and what made it unique, essentially giving up the advantages they had over WWE (and TNA) to become WWE-Lite
- Starting to rely on gimmick matches to draw rather than building up stories well
- WWE cast-offs coming in to fill prominent roles in the company even though they aren’t good enough in the ring to fill that spot, which comes at the expense of home-grown talent.

Yes, most of the time the in-ring action on the non-televised shows ranges from decent to great (with the occasional outlier in either direction). The problem is that almost nothing that happens on them matters to the overall storylines in any way, the way the cards are booked often makes watching more than one show between taping sets feel redundant, and yes, the level of the in-ring product is not close to what it used to be and yet they are still trying to charge me the same amount of money to see the shows. Furthermore, I think that for any product that is not the #1 in the business that is going to come along and make the general claim that “we have the best wrestling in the world,” you really do need to be head and shoulders above the in-ring action of the bigger companies, and that goes doubly so for a promotion like ROH which has made its reputation off of workrate.

EVOLVE crowds aren’t dead. They’re just different than most other wrestling crowds. They’re much more like the old Japanese crowds before the Bucks and Naito came along and changed the dynamic over there. Do you know which promotion doesn’t have the “false heel” problem? EVOLVE. Because Gabe figured out that the solution to that problem is to cut down on cheating so that when it happens, it actually means something, and to keep almost all of your characters (aside from a major heel like Ethan Page was) from straying more than a step over the moral event horizon, so that if people want to cheer for someone like Catchpoint, a viewer, from a kayfabe point of view can understand how someone could be willing to excuse their dickish behavior and cheer for them, rather than having guys doing absolutely despicable things that getting cheered for it anyway like happens in other promotions.
AlexROH wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:18 am
"It it seems to be drawing bigger crowds than before. And yet, despite selling all of these tickets, it feels less relevant to the wrestling world than it ever has before".

This make zero sense. I will say it again. Not being "relevant" or don't having "buzz" on the internet isn't the end of the world. Twitter is a social media that have less active users than Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, They don't represent the audience at all, just a little group of them. Maybe nobody talks it on your timeline, but ROH has broken records this year for attendance and VOD/PPVs buys, have done the most lucrative tour of his entire history with what many of you called "NJPW B Team nobody was paying a dollar for" and have done shows in USA, Canada, Japan and UK. They have a strong long-term relationship with the second biggest company in the world and their fanbase is growing, despite you don't like them, how in hell can you tell me that they are less relevant to the wrestling world than it ever has before? Yeah, bc, it's better to have killer matches with Cary Silkin losing money every week that having weaker matches, and still a solid product, and being the second company in the US.
Yes, ROH has broken their own attendance records this year, but what were the draws for their big houses?
- SCOH was drawn pretty much exclusively by the Hardys vs. Bucks match, which ROH’s booking did absolutely nothing to help (and I’d argue that putting the belts on the Hardys at Manhattan Mayhem just to do a switch back hurt the belts, and also hurt the feud, as the SCOH match became their third match in a month rather than their first. And, once Delirious knew that match was secure, he went about his business doing absolutely nothing with the Young Bucks for the first three months of the year, not bothering to build up any challengers for the tag titles whatsoever, while also doing nothing to build up any other challengers for the TV Title or the Six-Man Tag Team Titles).
- The NJPW shows were drawn by New Japan guys- and Suzuki, Tanahashi, Omega, Naito, Hiromu, and KUSHIDA in particular (and, you could argue, Cole’s last matches, but it’s not like ROH actually built the shows up that way for obvious reasons so maybe that shouldn’t even count, as nothing ROH did affected it).
- The UK shows were drawn by the combination of New Japan guys and the rarity of ROH going to the UK
That doesn’t leave us with too many shows left, a chunk of which actually drew less than what ROH did last time in those towns (I’m almost certain February’s Texas shows drew less than ROH did in those same markets for SOTF last November, and the February cards not only had Cody, but also the Bucks on them, and several title matches, which was not the case with SOTF 2016. The fact of the matter is that if you took the Young Bucks and the New Japan guys away from ROH right now, the attendance would plummet, and ROH has done almost nothing to move anyone into a position to even come close to replacing that lost talent. They’re being propped up not by the booking, but by two dudes who are excellent at staying ahead of the curve in terms of how to cultivate popularity in wrestling, and by their association with another promotion, which will have very little incentive not to dump ROH if their own plans in the US start to take off- a decision that could easily be made before the end of next year.

I can tell you that they’re less relevant because nothing that they do seems to catch anyone’s attention. You don’t hear anyone talking about Jay Briscoe turning on Bully Ray or Cody as the ROH World Champion or whatever a guy like Jay Lethal or Christopher Daniels are doing. I can tell you that they’re less relevant because you’re seeing established indy stars publically slighting the company on their ways out the door, all pretty much saying that the booking is a problem. I can tell you that they’re less relevant because the indy guys with buzz who should be going to ROH are all going elsewhere, even after WWE has now made it clear that they’ll sign you even if you do go to ROH. A regional promotion like AAW should not have a better core of young wrestlers than ROH.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Mr. Mojo Risin »

Nope. 48 hours later still bitter and miserable that I had to miss the Chicago show.
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AlexROH
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by AlexROH »

Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:42 pm You and Dragon Saga and others keep making this argument, but not one person has ever explained why being on TV and having PPVs and contracts means that the product has to be this poorly-booked mess full of dirty finishes and comedy in every match and the rules being ignored whenever the wrestlers feel like ignoring them, and results of 80% of the matches being totally irrelevant, and guys who aren’t good enough to cut the ROH mustard like Cody, Bully Ray, Vinny Marseglia and Will Ferrara being all over the product. Just because WWE and TNA can’t figure out how to make it work doesn’t mean no one can. There was nothing about the old way of doing things that couldn’t have been easily adjusted for TV without losing the character of the product. Having killer matches and being a major wrestling promotion are no mutually exclusive.

I’ve said it a million times:
- Cut down the roster so that you’re not paying people who just take up space or aren’t good enough for ROH
- Focus on stories where the results of the matches are important so that the non-PPV /iPPV shows can be used to reinforce those stories (for example, if Cabana is turning on Dalton because he thinks Dalton’s non-serious attitude is holding him back, on the first taping you have them lose with Dalton getting pinned and then later have Colt say something to Dalton about it, then, on the loop between the tapings every match Colt has is either him winning a singles match or losing in a tag match because Dalton gets pinned, then, at the next TV tapings you can have them lose because Dalton gets pinned and Colt can turn on Dalton, as opposed to what Delirious did, which was put them over on the majority of the shows leading up to the turn, including having Dalton destroy a dude in thirty seconds immediately before the turn, plus have Dalton pin the world champion) so that all you need to inform your audience about the results of those shows is a quick comment by the announcers explaining what happened and why it is relevant.
- Rather than trying to cram three or four matches plus a talking segment into each one hour TV show, shoot for two long matches and maybe one very short one, plus a bunch of promos to either follow up on things that have happened before or set up matches for next week. This will have several benefits, including the fact that you can do most of it backstage, which means the you can spend more time per taping on matches, helping to stretch the tapings out so you can get at least five weeks of TV in each taping, reducing the number of tapings (thus saving money) while increasing the quality of the matches and the TV product as a whole, and the fact that this will let the wrestlers all cut their own promos to let us know what the story is in their own words, as opposed to hearing it secondhand from the announcers, where it loses its emotion.

- Focusing on clean finishes will vastly differentiate them from every other wrestling product that we’ve seen on TV for the past twenty years.
This way they would save money, put on a better product, and make their non-televised shows feel like an actual part of the story, something else we haven’t seen done by a televised wrestling promotion in many years.

The whole “false heel” dynamic is a completely self-inflicted wound because there was absolutely no reason to turn them heel in the first place! Everyone knew that the Bucks would get cheered no matter what they did, so why would you ever turn them heel? So you could do yet another big heel stable with Adam Cole as the champion, but this time with an otherwise stale act from a different company? (And make no mistake about it: at that point, Bullet Club was stale everywhere. The Bucks & Kenny Omega weren’t stale, but Bullet Club as an entity was. That’s why the Bucks and Omega came up with the idea of The Elite in the first place).

You say that they haven’t changed like TNA or WCW, but I see them making all of TNA’s mistakes all over again.
- An announce team seemingly designed to emulate everything that people hate about WWE’s team
- Very poor booking of their titles
- Completely and totally abandoning any attempt to tell a real story on the undercard
- Very little mobility in the card (see: Rush, Lio and Dijak, Donovan), even when they do try to push someone (see: Page, Adam)
- Totally abandoning the things that made the promotion what it was and what made it unique, essentially giving up the advantages they had over WWE (and TNA) to become WWE-Lite
- Starting to rely on gimmick matches to draw rather than building up stories well
- WWE cast-offs coming in to fill prominent roles in the company even though they aren’t good enough in the ring to fill that spot, which comes at the expense of home-grown talent.

Yes, most of the time the in-ring action on the non-televised shows ranges from decent to great (with the occasional outlier in either direction). The problem is that almost nothing that happens on them matters to the overall storylines in any way, the way the cards are booked often makes watching more than one show between taping sets feel redundant, and yes, the level of the in-ring product is not close to what it used to be and yet they are still trying to charge me the same amount of money to see the shows. Furthermore, I think that for any product that is not the #1 in the business that is going to come along and make the general claim that “we have the best wrestling in the world,” you really do need to be head and shoulders above the in-ring action of the bigger companies, and that goes doubly so for a promotion like ROH which has made its reputation off of workrate.

EVOLVE crowds aren’t dead. They’re just different than most other wrestling crowds. They’re much more like the old Japanese crowds before the Bucks and Naito came along and changed the dynamic over there. Do you know which promotion doesn’t have the “false heel” problem? EVOLVE. Because Gabe figured out that the solution to that problem is to cut down on cheating so that when it happens, it actually means something, and to keep almost all of your characters (aside from a major heel like Ethan Page was) from straying more than a step over the moral event horizon, so that if people want to cheer for someone like Catchpoint, a viewer, from a kayfabe point of view can understand how someone could be willing to excuse their dickish behavior and cheer for them, rather than having guys doing absolutely despicable things that getting cheered for it anyway like happens in other promotions.
- We start this conversation talking about the BC. The fuck finishes and interferences are part of their thing. Maybe I don't like it, but, again, people love this and pay to watch it. It makes sense that they want to do it.
- Yeah, I'm sure you can do it the old way and be as popular as of right now. Yes, sure, the super-indy model works a lot in the big scene. Yeah, that's why EVOLVE, AAW and PWG are so big and put on all these PPVs. Man, I love indy wrestling, but you cannot have big indy wrestling on television. ROH isn't an indy, they have people under contracts, it's normal that the younger guys don't want to sign with them bc they want to be free to wrestle whever they want, that's why they go to EVOLVE or other places.
- Again, if you don't like the false heel BC dinamic, stop watching this. It's what people like, it's the most over thing outiside WWE, they are bigger that the companies they wrestle for, and you are telling me that it would be cooler if they would act like you want and stop doing if shit? Argh.
- You still are comparing ROH and TNA, yeah, just because we have ONE wrestler, that is a real draw, as the World Champ. From a wrestling point I don't like Cody, but he is the best move for the economy of the company, and, surprise surprise, the important thing is making money, and not having the champion twitter wants to. That's how real world works, and that's why ROH isn't an super-dream-match indy.
- If you think EVOLVE crowds are the same that old japanese crowds... Well, believe what you want to, but that is false. I've been a fan of puroresu a long time and watched old stuff, EVOLVE's crowd are dead bc they have failed to create their own fanbase and they have failed as a company. I've talked about this in another thread long ago.
Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:42 pm Yes, ROH has broken their own attendance records this year, but what were the draws for their big houses?
- SCOH was drawn pretty much exclusively by the Hardys vs. Bucks match, which ROH’s booking did absolutely nothing to help (and I’d argue that putting the belts on the Hardys at Manhattan Mayhem just to do a switch back hurt the belts, and also hurt the feud, as the SCOH match became their third match in a month rather than their first. And, once Delirious knew that match was secure, he went about his business doing absolutely nothing with the Young Bucks for the first three months of the year, not bothering to build up any challengers for the tag titles whatsoever, while also doing nothing to build up any other challengers for the TV Title or the Six-Man Tag Team Titles).
- The NJPW shows were drawn by New Japan guys- and Suzuki, Tanahashi, Omega, Naito, Hiromu, and KUSHIDA in particular (and, you could argue, Cole’s last matches, but it’s not like ROH actually built the shows up that way for obvious reasons so maybe that shouldn’t even count, as nothing ROH did affected it).
- The UK shows were drawn by the combination of New Japan guys and the rarity of ROH going to the UK
That doesn’t leave us with too many shows left, a chunk of which actually drew less than what ROH did last time in those towns (I’m almost certain February’s Texas shows drew less than ROH did in those same markets for SOTF last November, and the February cards not only had Cody, but also the Bucks on them, and several title matches, which was not the case with SOTF 2016. The fact of the matter is that if you took the Young Bucks and the New Japan guys away from ROH right now, the attendance would plummet, and ROH has done almost nothing to move anyone into a position to even come close to replacing that lost talent. They’re being propped up not by the booking, but by two dudes who are excellent at staying ahead of the curve in terms of how to cultivate popularity in wrestling, and by their association with another promotion, which will have very little incentive not to dump ROH if their own plans in the US start to take off- a decision that could easily be made before the end of next year.

I can tell you that they’re less relevant because nothing that they do seems to catch anyone’s attention. You don’t hear anyone talking about Jay Briscoe turning on Bully Ray or Cody as the ROH World Champion or whatever a guy like Jay Lethal or Christopher Daniels are doing. I can tell you that they’re less relevant because you’re seeing established indy stars publically slighting the company on their ways out the door, all pretty much saying that the booking is a problem. I can tell you that they’re less relevant because the indy guys with buzz who should be going to ROH are all going elsewhere, even after WWE has now made it clear that they’ll sign you even if you do go to ROH. A regional promotion like AAW should not have a better core of young wrestlers than ROH.
- Ok, so yeah, ROH drew big houses bc of the Hardys and the Young Bucks and the Bullet Club, oh, surprise, surprise, that was the intention of ROH. It's like if you claim NJPW for doing records saying "Oh, WK just sold out bc of the double ME, not for the company as a whole". BC in ROH bc their wrestlers are under contract with ROH. Is a decission of ROH booking his shows with the BC as the central attaction. This is so stupid, is like blaming other companies for sell their shows "just bc they have 2-3 big main eventers draws".
- And again, don't reading comments on your forum or timeline doesn't mean that people aren't talking about that. I don't know how your audience grows if nobody is talking about your product.
- The young talent is a problem, but the young talent has always wrestle for indy promotions and, surprise again, ROH isn't an indy promotion. They have the f'n Bullet Club under contract!

I understand your points and I understand that you'd be a better booker and a better promoter for ROH. I know you would like the company to have another mindset, but hey, the thing is they've grown in the last 15 years and have stablished themselves as the number 2 promotion in the USA with a strong alliance with NJPW. That's how it works bc people love it. If you don't like it, go and watch the Golden Super-Indy Era or just stop watching ROH. I don't have a problem talking with you, but if I don't enjoy a promotion and see all problems in it, I'd quit it, just like I did with Impact, LU or most of PWG's stuff.

Was the golden era better? Yes. Is this are f'n bullshit? I don't think so. You don't have yo compare everything. I can enjoy both the old and the current product, if you can't, you should think if is really worth watching current ROH.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by The Dragon Saga »

For what it's worth, ROH has actually probably been the best wrestling TV show overall the past two months. The shows have been pretty well booked and done since the Carrbus taping.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by BurningHammer »

The thing is I don't really know if this ROH is better or worse than the previous one, to me it's just different but I still enjoy it and right now I really enjoy it. The fact is if ROH wants to grow they are doing exactly what they have to, they are keeping in trend with what is wanted as a whole in wrestling and honestly probably doing it better than anyone right now. If you are looking at ROH through the glassy eye of yester year then honestly I can see why anyone would dislike it, it's a very feeling and show now but I don't believe that's bad.

The ROH of old, to me anyway, developed in a void that people felt was desperately needed in wrestling, there really wasn't anything like it especially with the money behind it. Right now there are many promotions that have and still do what ROH set the standard of in the US and I don't believe ROH would be getting the eyes it does now if it kept being that. ROH is doing the same today it's feeling a void for a rather large group of fans that wants to see a mixture of real storylines but also something that points to us the Marks to say we love you and we are going push us this ironic, riddiculous take of wrestling to it's limits.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:42 pm You and Dragon Saga and others keep making this argument, but not one person has ever explained why being on TV and having PPVs and contracts means that the product has to be this poorly-booked mess full of dirty finishes and comedy in every match and the rules being ignored whenever the wrestlers feel like ignoring them, and results of 80% of the matches being totally irrelevant, and guys who aren’t good enough to cut the ROH mustard like Cody, Bully Ray, Vinny Marseglia and Will Ferrara being all over the product. Just because WWE and TNA can’t figure out how to make it work doesn’t mean no one can. There was nothing about the old way of doing things that couldn’t have been easily adjusted for TV without losing the character of the product. Having killer matches and being a major wrestling promotion are no mutually exclusive.

I’ve said it a million times:
- Cut down the roster so that you’re not paying people who just take up space or aren’t good enough for ROH
- Focus on stories where the results of the matches are important so that the non-PPV /iPPV shows can be used to reinforce those stories (for example, if Cabana is turning on Dalton because he thinks Dalton’s non-serious attitude is holding him back, on the first taping you have them lose with Dalton getting pinned and then later have Colt say something to Dalton about it, then, on the loop between the tapings every match Colt has is either him winning a singles match or losing in a tag match because Dalton gets pinned, then, at the next TV tapings you can have them lose because Dalton gets pinned and Colt can turn on Dalton, as opposed to what Delirious did, which was put them over on the majority of the shows leading up to the turn, including having Dalton destroy a dude in thirty seconds immediately before the turn, plus have Dalton pin the world champion) so that all you need to inform your audience about the results of those shows is a quick comment by the announcers explaining what happened and why it is relevant.
- Rather than trying to cram three or four matches plus a talking segment into each one hour TV show, shoot for two long matches and maybe one very short one, plus a bunch of promos to either follow up on things that have happened before or set up matches for next week. This will have several benefits, including the fact that you can do most of it backstage, which means the you can spend more time per taping on matches, helping to stretch the tapings out so you can get at least five weeks of TV in each taping, reducing the number of tapings (thus saving money) while increasing the quality of the matches and the TV product as a whole, and the fact that this will let the wrestlers all cut their own promos to let us know what the story is in their own words, as opposed to hearing it secondhand from the announcers, where it loses its emotion.

- Focusing on clean finishes will vastly differentiate them from every other wrestling product that we’ve seen on TV for the past twenty years.
This way they would save money, put on a better product, and make their non-televised shows feel like an actual part of the story, something else we haven’t seen done by a televised wrestling promotion in many years.

The whole “false heel” dynamic is a completely self-inflicted wound because there was absolutely no reason to turn them heel in the first place! Everyone knew that the Bucks would get cheered no matter what they did, so why would you ever turn them heel? So you could do yet another big heel stable with Adam Cole as the champion, but this time with an otherwise stale act from a different company? (And make no mistake about it: at that point, Bullet Club was stale everywhere. The Bucks & Kenny Omega weren’t stale, but Bullet Club as an entity was. That’s why the Bucks and Omega came up with the idea of The Elite in the first place).

You say that they haven’t changed like TNA or WCW, but I see them making all of TNA’s mistakes all over again.
- An announce team seemingly designed to emulate everything that people hate about WWE’s team
- Very poor booking of their titles
- Completely and totally abandoning any attempt to tell a real story on the undercard
- Very little mobility in the card (see: Rush, Lio and Dijak, Donovan), even when they do try to push someone (see: Page, Adam)
- Totally abandoning the things that made the promotion what it was and what made it unique, essentially giving up the advantages they had over WWE (and TNA) to become WWE-Lite
- Starting to rely on gimmick matches to draw rather than building up stories well
- WWE cast-offs coming in to fill prominent roles in the company even though they aren’t good enough in the ring to fill that spot, which comes at the expense of home-grown talent.

Yes, most of the time the in-ring action on the non-televised shows ranges from decent to great (with the occasional outlier in either direction). The problem is that almost nothing that happens on them matters to the overall storylines in any way, the way the cards are booked often makes watching more than one show between taping sets feel redundant, and yes, the level of the in-ring product is not close to what it used to be and yet they are still trying to charge me the same amount of money to see the shows. Furthermore, I think that for any product that is not the #1 in the business that is going to come along and make the general claim that “we have the best wrestling in the world,” you really do need to be head and shoulders above the in-ring action of the bigger companies, and that goes doubly so for a promotion like ROH which has made its reputation off of workrate.

EVOLVE crowds aren’t dead. They’re just different than most other wrestling crowds. They’re much more like the old Japanese crowds before the Bucks and Naito came along and changed the dynamic over there. Do you know which promotion doesn’t have the “false heel” problem? EVOLVE. Because Gabe figured out that the solution to that problem is to cut down on cheating so that when it happens, it actually means something, and to keep almost all of your characters (aside from a major heel like Ethan Page was) from straying more than a step over the moral event horizon, so that if people want to cheer for someone like Catchpoint, a viewer, from a kayfabe point of view can understand how someone could be willing to excuse their dickish behavior and cheer for them, rather than having guys doing absolutely despicable things that getting cheered for it anyway like happens in other promotions.
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am - We start this conversation talking about the BC. The fuck finishes and interferences are part of their thing. Maybe I don't like it, but, again, people love this and pay to watch it. It makes sense that they want to do it.
It’s not just a Bullet Club thing, though. It’s been happening since well before Bullet Club turned heel, and Bullet Club have been far from the only people doing it.
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
- Yeah, I'm sure you can do it the old way and be as popular as of right now. Yes, sure, the super-indy model works a lot in the big scene. Yeah, that's why EVOLVE, AAW and PWG are so big and put on all these PPVs. Man, I love indy wrestling, but you cannot have big indy wrestling on television. ROH isn't an indy, they have people under contracts, it's normal that the younger guys don't want to sign with them bc they want to be free to wrestle whever they want, that's why they go to EVOLVE or other places.
Again, you keep saying “that will never work on a big-time level” but you never once give an argument as to why. The only thing you seem to be saying that because smaller promotions like AAW, EVOLVE, and PWG have never drawn thousands of people, then their styles will not work to a TV audience, but the problem with that is that there are also many, many indies that use the same style that ROH has shifted towards and they’re not on TV, either. I’d venture to guess that if you put EVOLVE on TV, they would start drawing a lot more people (especially if you had ROH’s money behind them to increase production values).
EVOLVE/WWN has contracts, too. ROH has had them going all the way back to the original PPV deal in 2007. WWN contracts give guys more freedom because they realize that’s better for the talent’s development and keeps them happier.

To be clear: I’m not saying I want to see ROH putting shows from high school gyms on TV. What I want to see is the current ROH production budget put behind a competently-booked promotion with an emphasis on clean finishes (which means that non-clean finishes should be minimized- not eliminated- but if there is one, it needs to be followed up on), with the house shows booked in such a way that they support and embellish the story being told on TV, rather than either contradicting it, ignoring it, or just treading water within it. Please explain to me why that won’t work.
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
- Again, if you don't like the false heel BC dinamic, stop watching this. It's what people like, it's the most over thing outiside WWE, they are bigger that the companies they wrestle for, and you are telling me that it would be cooler if they would act like you want and stop doing if shit? Argh.
I disagree heavily with the assertion that the false heel Bullet Club dynamic is the most over thing outside of WWE. Bullet Club (and specifically Omega, Scurll, and the Bucks) is the most over thing in wrestling (even including WWE, IMO). Whether they’re booked as faces or heels is irrelevant to that. I’m not saying they’d be cooler as babyfaces, but I am saying that they would be just as cool, and it would make the product accessible to more people. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been watching ROH or WWE and someone else in the room has asked “why are people cheering when that guy just cheated? Isn’t that guy the bad guy?”
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
- You still are comparing ROH and TNA, yeah, just because we have ONE wrestler, that is a real draw, as the World Champ. From a wrestling point I don't like Cody, but he is the best move for the economy of the company, and, surprise surprise, the important thing is making money, and not having the champion twitter wants to. That's how real world works, and that's why ROH isn't an super-dream-match indy.
It’s not just because of Cody or Bully. It’s the fact that they have decided that the path to success is to abandon the thing that brought them their success in the first place in exchange for booking themselves like WWE-Lite. If you want to argue that Cody is a draw and have numbers to back it up I’ll believe you, but that doesn’t mean that he has to be world champion.
You also keep referring to ROH as “super dream-match indy” but I don’t think ROH has been one of those since some time around the end of 2003. Since that time they’ve always been a pretty storyline-focused promotion, no matter whether it was Gabe, Pearce, Delirous, or Cornette doing the booking. They used workrate as a selling point, yes, but they weren’t just randomly flying dudes in from all over the world to have dream matches and relying on that to draw. The problem now is that the stories suck and the workrate has gone down, so what is there to sell people on?
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
- If you think EVOLVE crowds are the same that old japanese crowds... Well, believe what you want to, but that is false. I've been a fan of puroresu a long time and watched old stuff, EVOLVE's crowd are dead bc they have failed to create their own fanbase and they have failed as a company. I've talked about this in another thread long ago.
Difference of opinion. Fair enough.
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
Big Red Machine wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:42 pm Yes, ROH has broken their own attendance records this year, but what were the draws for their big houses?
- SCOH was drawn pretty much exclusively by the Hardys vs. Bucks match, which ROH’s booking did absolutely nothing to help (and I’d argue that putting the belts on the Hardys at Manhattan Mayhem just to do a switch back hurt the belts, and also hurt the feud, as the SCOH match became their third match in a month rather than their first. And, once Delirious knew that match was secure, he went about his business doing absolutely nothing with the Young Bucks for the first three months of the year, not bothering to build up any challengers for the tag titles whatsoever, while also doing nothing to build up any other challengers for the TV Title or the Six-Man Tag Team Titles).
- The NJPW shows were drawn by New Japan guys- and Suzuki, Tanahashi, Omega, Naito, Hiromu, and KUSHIDA in particular (and, you could argue, Cole’s last matches, but it’s not like ROH actually built the shows up that way for obvious reasons so maybe that shouldn’t even count, as nothing ROH did affected it).
- The UK shows were drawn by the combination of New Japan guys and the rarity of ROH going to the UK
That doesn’t leave us with too many shows left, a chunk of which actually drew less than what ROH did last time in those towns (I’m almost certain February’s Texas shows drew less than ROH did in those same markets for SOTF last November, and the February cards not only had Cody, but also the Bucks on them, and several title matches, which was not the case with SOTF 2016. The fact of the matter is that if you took the Young Bucks and the New Japan guys away from ROH right now, the attendance would plummet, and ROH has done almost nothing to move anyone into a position to even come close to replacing that lost talent. They’re being propped up not by the booking, but by two dudes who are excellent at staying ahead of the curve in terms of how to cultivate popularity in wrestling, and by their association with another promotion, which will have very little incentive not to dump ROH if their own plans in the US start to take off- a decision that could easily be made before the end of next year.

I can tell you that they’re less relevant because nothing that they do seems to catch anyone’s attention. You don’t hear anyone talking about Jay Briscoe turning on Bully Ray or Cody as the ROH World Champion or whatever a guy like Jay Lethal or Christopher Daniels are doing. I can tell you that they’re less relevant because you’re seeing established indy stars publically slighting the company on their ways out the door, all pretty much saying that the booking is a problem. I can tell you that they’re less relevant because the indy guys with buzz who should be going to ROH are all going elsewhere, even after WWE has now made it clear that they’ll sign you even if you do go to ROH. A regional promotion like AAW should not have a better core of young wrestlers than ROH.
- Ok, so yeah, ROH drew big houses bc of the Hardys and the Young Bucks and the Bullet Club, oh, surprise, surprise, that was the intention of ROH. It's like if you claim NJPW for doing records saying "Oh, WK just sold out bc of the double ME, not for the company as a whole". BC in ROH bc their wrestlers are under contract with ROH. Is a decission of ROH booking his shows with the BC as the central attaction. This is so stupid, is like blaming other companies for sell their shows "just bc they have 2-3 big main eventers draws".
- And again, don't reading comments on your forum or timeline doesn't mean that people aren't talking about that. I don't know how your audience grows if nobody is talking about your product.
My point is that that the ROH booking team did nothing to get Bucks vs. Hardys over. Find me an ROH storyline that has noticeably increased the houses. ROH has been drawing big houses not because of the strength of the stories being told but because the talent involved has gotten themselves over, without the help of ROH’s booking, If Bullet Club decided to sign elsewhere next time their contracts are up, ROH would be sunk.
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
- The young talent is a problem, but the young talent has always wrestle for indy promotions and, surprise again, ROH isn't an indy promotion. They have the f'n Bullet Club under contract!
Right. They’re not the bottom level promotion where people break in anymore, and they’re not even the next level above that where they see you doing well in the place they broke in and they take a chance on you. But there comes a point when talented young wrestlers reach a point in their careers where they are ready to start working for a promotion the size of Ring of Honor but either they avoid ROH, or they come in for a year or two and then leave, unhappy. Pretty much everyone who shows up in EVOLVE or PWG looks like they’re MILES ahead of most of the dorks who get brought in for the Top Prospect Tournament. That is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be happening. Guys like Rush, Dijak, and Cedric, should not be leaving in total frustration.
AlexROH wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:01 am
I understand your points and I understand that you'd be a better booker and a better promoter for ROH. I know you would like the company to have another mindset, but hey, the thing is they've grown in the last 15 years and have stablished themselves as the number 2 promotion in the USA with a strong alliance with NJPW. That's how it works bc people love it. If you don't like it, go and watch the Golden Super-Indy Era or just stop watching ROH. I don't have a problem talking with you, but if I don't enjoy a promotion and see all problems in it, I'd quit it, just like I did with Impact, LU or most of PWG's stuff.

Was the golden era better? Yes. Is this are f'n bullshit? I don't think so. You don't have yo compare everything. I can enjoy both the old and the current product, if you can't, you should think if is really worth watching current ROH.
I realize I don’t have to watch it, but it’s a product I’ve been following closely for a decade now and it’s a hard habit to break. I guess my main problem is that I don’t understand how we got to this change in fanbase that not only accepts the sort of bullsh*t the promotion was specifically founded on not doing, but even cheers it. When TNA went down the tubes, only the only people who stayed on were the Kool-Aid drinking die-hards who believed that everything TNA did was wonderful and everything WWE did was evil and everything that ever happened in ROH was small-time, but with ROH the crowds are growing, not shrinking, despite the much worse in-ring product and violation of principles, and yet the people at the shows don’t come across as the same type of blind zealots you’d get in TNA. If anyone has any insights into this, they would be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by Big Red Machine on Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
Big Red Machine
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

The Dragon Saga wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:37 am For what it's worth, ROH has actually probably been the best wrestling TV show overall the past two months. The shows have been pretty well booked and done since the Carrbus taping.
I'll even agree with this, though I've been quite fond of NXT, too, and I think that, for the few weeks of Ultima Lucha, LU has been better. I just find that to be a function of being the best of a mediocre bunch rather than being actively great like the TV show was from 2013-2015.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

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BurningHammer wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 5:19 am The thing is I don't really know if this ROH is better or worse than the previous one, to me it's just different but I still enjoy it and right now I really enjoy it. The fact is if ROH wants to grow they are doing exactly what they have to, they are keeping in trend with what is wanted as a whole in wrestling and honestly probably doing it better than anyone right now. If you are looking at ROH through the glassy eye of yester year then honestly I can see why anyone would dislike it, it's a very feeling and show now but I don't believe that's bad.

The ROH of old, to me anyway, developed in a void that people felt was desperately needed in wrestling, there really wasn't anything like it especially with the money behind it. Right now there are many promotions that have and still do what ROH set the standard of in the US and I don't believe ROH would be getting the eyes it does now if it kept being that. ROH is doing the same today it's feeling a void for a rather large group of fans that wants to see a mixture of real storylines but also something that points to us the Marks to say we love you and we are going push us this ironic, riddiculous take of wrestling to it's limits.
That combination of serious with goofy "ironic" stuff is exactly what WWE is to me. You're right that there are many people doing what the ROH of old used to do, but none of those people are anywhere near the scale that ROH is. I think that void still exists on the televised level, and I don't understand why ROH would shift away from that to become more like WWE and TNA, trying to corner their marketplace instead of filling their own niche.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by BurningHammer »

Big Red Machine wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:06 am
BurningHammer wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 5:19 am The thing is I don't really know if this ROH is better or worse than the previous one, to me it's just different but I still enjoy it and right now I really enjoy it. The fact is if ROH wants to grow they are doing exactly what they have to, they are keeping in trend with what is wanted as a whole in wrestling and honestly probably doing it better than anyone right now. If you are looking at ROH through the glassy eye of yester year then honestly I can see why anyone would dislike it, it's a very feeling and show now but I don't believe that's bad.

The ROH of old, to me anyway, developed in a void that people felt was desperately needed in wrestling, there really wasn't anything like it especially with the money behind it. Right now there are many promotions that have and still do what ROH set the standard of in the US and I don't believe ROH would be getting the eyes it does now if it kept being that. ROH is doing the same today it's feeling a void for a rather large group of fans that wants to see a mixture of real storylines but also something that points to us the Marks to say we love you and we are going push us this ironic, riddiculous take of wrestling to it's limits.
That combination of serious with goofy "ironic" stuff is exactly what WWE is to me. You're right that there are many people doing what the ROH of old used to do, but none of those people are anywhere near the scale that ROH is. I think that void still exists on the televised level, and I don't understand why ROH would shift away from that to become more like WWE and TNA, trying to corner their marketplace instead of filling their own niche.
I think what the WWE are doing right now is trying to capture what ROH/Bullet Club etc have done well, to me WWE right now is becoming like the worst of WCW through the years. ROH has had a lot of growing pains in this period and got a lot wrong but from what I am seeing they are starting to get a lot things right, from an image of a charachter to how people looking coming out matches all the way down the card. The holes aren't becoming obvious so much, well to me anyway

I think it's more that the a wider audience will want a product that they can sit through easily, especially on TV than say the ROH of old, which although I loved dam could it be grueling to get through a show just from it's intensity. I can always remember that the seriousness of ROH turned many away or the long matches just became too much. I do miss some aspects of the old ROH for sure, seeing a 60 minute classic multiple times never got old and seeing guys all the way from the bottom of the card to the top grow and become people I really wanted to see was great. In some ways these things are returning in small patches and maybe there should be alot more of it. Right now I think for getting a bigger audience in all area's, young, old, male, female ROH is probably going about it the right way.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

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BurningHammer wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:47 pm
Big Red Machine wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:06 am
BurningHammer wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 5:19 am The thing is I don't really know if this ROH is better or worse than the previous one, to me it's just different but I still enjoy it and right now I really enjoy it. The fact is if ROH wants to grow they are doing exactly what they have to, they are keeping in trend with what is wanted as a whole in wrestling and honestly probably doing it better than anyone right now. If you are looking at ROH through the glassy eye of yester year then honestly I can see why anyone would dislike it, it's a very feeling and show now but I don't believe that's bad.

The ROH of old, to me anyway, developed in a void that people felt was desperately needed in wrestling, there really wasn't anything like it especially with the money behind it. Right now there are many promotions that have and still do what ROH set the standard of in the US and I don't believe ROH would be getting the eyes it does now if it kept being that. ROH is doing the same today it's feeling a void for a rather large group of fans that wants to see a mixture of real storylines but also something that points to us the Marks to say we love you and we are going push us this ironic, riddiculous take of wrestling to it's limits.
That combination of serious with goofy "ironic" stuff is exactly what WWE is to me. You're right that there are many people doing what the ROH of old used to do, but none of those people are anywhere near the scale that ROH is. I think that void still exists on the televised level, and I don't understand why ROH would shift away from that to become more like WWE and TNA, trying to corner their marketplace instead of filling their own niche.
I think what the WWE are doing right now is trying to capture what ROH/Bullet Club etc have done well, to me WWE right now is becoming like the worst of WCW through the years. ROH has had a lot of growing pains in this period and got a lot wrong but from what I am seeing they are starting to get a lot things right, from an image of a charachter to how people looking coming out matches all the way down the card. The holes aren't becoming obvious so much, well to me anyway

I think it's more that the a wider audience will want a product that they can sit through easily, especially on TV than say the ROH of old, which although I loved dam could it be grueling to get through a show just from it's intensity. I can always remember that the seriousness of ROH turned many away or the long matches just became too much. I do miss some aspects of the old ROH for sure, seeing a 60 minute classic multiple times never got old and seeing guys all the way from the bottom of the card to the top grow and become people I really wanted to see was great. In some ways these things are returning in small patches and maybe there should be alot more of it. Right now I think for getting a bigger audience in all area's, young, old, male, female ROH is probably going about it the right way.
I think the 60 minute show will help abate the problem of things being too long because you would only have two long matches per show, rather than five or six long matches in a show that runs three and a half hours. ROH is currently definitely doing everything right in terms of marketing (Dave had some extremely interesting comments on this in this week's Observer). It's just the actual product- and especially the storytelling- that is suffering.
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