Global Wars 2017 Thread

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Wilson
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Wilson »

famicommander wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 4:11 am You couldn't pay me to watch any more matches involving Sheamus, the Miz, and Dolph Ziggler. I don't care about yours, Meltzer's, or anybody else's star ratings.
A little hostile maybe? Sheamus, Miz, and Ziggler all have more strengths than weaknesses and have strung together enough evidence that they can work pretty good matches, especially Sheamus and Ziggler. Ziggler's match with Bryan was a fascinating blend of 2004-2008 ROH with an early 90s WWF in-ring style--it blew my mind back in 2010, and I thought it would lead to a big break for both of them. While I guess I'm not exactly for Ziggler coming to ROH any time soon, there was definitely a time and place for him to be considered one of the most promising stars in wrestling.

Also, those names are qualitatively similar to Cody in almost every meaningful way. I'm not sure why he would get preferential treatment over talent that were integral to his generation in the WWE.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by kovs27 »

I'm 50/50 on Ziggler. Part of me thinks if he got out of WWE, the fresh air could reinvigorate his match quality. The other part of me thinks that boat has sailed and he missed his chance when his last contract was up. He had some buzz about him and I think people would have been more likely to spend money to see him on an indy show than they are now.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

Wilson wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 6:00 am
famicommander wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 4:11 am You couldn't pay me to watch any more matches involving Sheamus, the Miz, and Dolph Ziggler. I don't care about yours, Meltzer's, or anybody else's star ratings.
A little hostile maybe? Sheamus, Miz, and Ziggler all have more strengths than weaknesses and have strung together enough evidence that they can work pretty good matches, especially Sheamus and Ziggler. Ziggler's match with Bryan was a fascinating blend of 2004-2008 ROH with an early 90s WWF in-ring style--it blew my mind back in 2010, and I thought it would lead to a big break for both of them. While I guess I'm not exactly for Ziggler coming to ROH any time soon, there was definitely a time and place for him to be considered one of the most promising stars in wrestling.

Also, those names are qualitatively similar to Cody in almost every meaningful way. I'm not sure why he would get preferential treatment over talent that were integral to his generation in the WWE.
Because of his last name.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by famicommander »

Sheamus and Ziggler are worse than Cody at everything, and I don't consider Cody that great to begin with. Miz is awful in the ring but once every five or six months he cuts an epic promo.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Mr. Mojo Risin »

Miz and Maryse were fucking hilarious and dead on in their imitations of Cena and Nikki Bella. Miz is decent in the ring.

I like Ziggler. His stock is completely worthless now and he shouldn't have re-signed with the WWE. I think he would flourish in NJPW.

I like Cody as a promo guy and that's about it. I liked his feud with Lethal, but I ascribe that more to the latter. Cody is not even close to being in the upper echelon of former ROH World Champions at the moment, and I would be hard pressed to even put him in the middle of the pack at the moment.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by famicommander »

Miz decent in the ring?

He can't even execute a basic drop kick. If I were going to pick one guy in all of WWE that illustrates why the in ring product is inferior to what we see in LU/ROH/NJPW, it'd be the Miz.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by supersonic »

famicommander wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:09 am Miz decent in the ring?

He can't even execute a basic drop kick. If I were going to pick one guy in all of WWE that illustrates why the in ring product is inferior to what we see in LU/ROH/NJPW, it'd be the Miz.
Drama is more important than technique.

Better example is the current WWE Champion.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by famicommander »

I don't buy into the drama in Miz's matches at all. As soon as the bell rings, the boredom sets in.

Jinder Mahal is next level bad, I had actively blocked him out of my mind.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Wilson »

All the names mentioned so far (other than Mahal) have become competent workers. Of course, ring skills sharpen when working with a midcard populated by America's best independent talent.

Back to the original point, bringing in guys who've oversaturated in screen time isn't the most appealing offer, even if they are more talented than the direction they're afforded by the WWE.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by BurningHammer »

supersonic wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:01 am
famicommander wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:09 am Miz decent in the ring?

He can't even execute a basic drop kick. If I were going to pick one guy in all of WWE that illustrates why the in ring product is inferior to what we see in LU/ROH/NJPW, it'd be the Miz.
Drama is more important than technique.

Better example is the current WWE Champion.
I would say that's something that's really been lost within the WWE right now, especially at main event level is that combination of both. I guess the last time that it really occured was with Daniel Bryan, and whatever I thought of the likes of the Rock, Steve Austin etc in periods of time there matches can still draw me to this day, where as I can't see a Mahal match ever doing that for me.

Even though I did introduce his name to the conversation, I am not necessarily demanding Ziggler, I just get a feeling that there is something in him similar to that of Jamie Noble that could really surprise a few and maybe create a catalyst for him and ROH.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by AlexROH »

I think we should move this topic to Random Thoughts Thread or the NEW TALENT one. This thread is for the GW shows.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by AlexROH »

Just watched Global Wars: Buffalo. Really cool house show! Crowd was electric all night. No AWESOME matches, but a ton of very strong ones.

- Coast 2 Coast vs The Dawgs ⭐⭐3/4 Fun opener. I think The Dawgs are my newest guilty pleasure. I've always hated Will, but this heel/comic character with Titus is hilarious.

- Page vs KUSHIDA ⭐⭐⭐ Average match. Some cool things, but it was too short and too basic.

- Kaz vs Lethal ⭐⭐⭐1/2 I really liked this one! Lethal is having a strong series of solid matches with the Silas feud and now the Hiromu/White/Kaz matches at GW tours. He's in great shape and makes every match feel important.

- War Machine & Mark vs Suzuki-Gun ⭐⭐⭐3/4 I was really hyped for this one and it delivered. Chaotic brawl with tons of action. Suzuki didn't do so much, but the exchanges between KES and War Machine were way better than the ones they had in their tag match.

- Daniels vs Takahashi ⭐⭐⭐1/4 Eh. This could have been great. Had some good moments, but they didn't want to tore the house down on the very first night of the tour. If you love Daryl (is there any person that hates him?) you'll laught with some parts.

- Cody/Marty vs HASHI/Yano ⭐⭐3/4+ Yano is always funny, but this could have been better with less time. On the other hand, I understand that they gave them time so people in Buffalo could watch Cody, Marty and Yano more than 5 minutes.

- Martinez vs Ospreay ⭐⭐⭐3/4 IMO, this was MOTN. Ospreay worked hard to make Martinez look like a beast. Punishment is growing a lot and his matches with Goto, Naito, Ospreay, Flip and White are a good proof. He still need to learn a better psychology, but his matches are good. As I said, Ospreay made this match feel like an important one and Martinez victory felt like an important one. The last minutes were spotty (in a good way), so maybe some people don't like it as much as I did.

- The Elite vs The Kingdom ⭐⭐⭐1/2+ I don't think I need to say much about this match. Is your classic Elite trios 30 minute main event. Some exchanges at the beginning, The Kingdom being heels and doing their thing, some comedy with 10 boots, interferences and a cool final minutes. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying this bc the match sucked, I'm just saying bc, if someone doesn't like Elite matches or is looking for something different, maybe he wants to skip this. In conclussion, a fun main event with lots of MOVEZ.

I would recommend this show if your are a ROH or NJPW fan. It was an easy watch and it's really entertaining. You see a lot of talents with fresh matches. Chicago was the best show of the tour, but from the other three, I would say Buffalo was a strong one. Better wrestling and crowd than Columbus and maybe weaker than Pittsburgh.

Final rating: 7 - 7,25 / 10.
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

My thoughts on the Pittsburgh show:


ROH/NJPW Global Wars: Pittsburgh (10/13/2017)- Pittsburgh, PA

MARK BRISCOE vs. HIROMU TAKAHASHI- no rating.
Mark injured his elbow early on and the match was stopped.

BEST FRIENDS & THE ADDICTION SEGMENT- bad
These two teams were scheduled to wrestle each other but The Addiction came out in street clothes. Kaz cut a promo pointing out that the last time ROH was in this building, fans cheered him when they thought he had turned on Daniels and joined Bullet Club, which proves that the fans don’t care about important concepts like good wrestling and loyalty and they’re really just here to throw streamers and chant their chants… and he’s got a solid point there.
Because of this treatment, The Addiction decree that the fans don’t deserve to see them wrestle, and after a brief tease by Daniels that they might just wrestle in their street clothes, they just walk off and refuse to wrestle their scheduled match. Why are they allowed to do this?
Sensing an opportunity to get themselves on the card, The Dawgs come out to take The Addiction’s place, so not only are we getting a bait-and-switch, but it’s a bait-and-switch replacing a top team in the tag division with the very bottom non-jobber team in the company. Because that’s apparently what we do in ROH now.

BEST FRIENDS vs. THE DAWGS (Rhett Titus & Will Ferrara)- 4/10
When Best Friends hugged, the camera zoomed out like it was Okada doing his Rainmaker pose. The problem with this is that we could then only see an ant-sized Chuck & Trent hitting Ferrara with the double-elbow drop they always follow that hug up with.
The babyfaces got shined up, then the heels cut them off. The heels were going to cheat to win when Cheeseburger (who they have been feuding with) came out to prevent Ferrara from cheating. Cheeseburger then distracted Rhett Titus, allowing Best Friends to hit their moves and pin him. So Best Friends needed help from CHEESEBURGER to defeat a team that is barely above jobber level. This was what they gave us instead of the advertised Best Friends vs. The Addiction match. Hooray for Delirious booking!

JAY LETHAL vs. JAY WHITE- 8/10
Twenty minutes of solid, clean wrestling. This company needs to have more matches like this.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Motor City Machineguns(c) vs. The Young Bucks vs. The Kingdom (T.K. O’Ryan & Vinny Marseglia)- 7/10
Even though MCMG are the babyfaces and the other two teams are the heels, they had to be the heels whenever they were in there with the Bucks, because until literally the very last moment when one of the Bucks got rolled up by Sabin for the pin, it felt like every single thing in this match was designed to get the Young Bucks pops. The match was great, but it would have been better if they had just stuck to babyface/heel alignments that made sense with the overall product rather than as seen in a vacuum on this one show.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The Addiction came out and attacked the Motor City Machineguns. Best Friends came out to make the save. They bumped Kazarian around, then they and MCMG both pinballed Daniels around for a while before Best Friends gave him a big double-chokeslam. The point of this was to set up Best Friends picking up the tag title belt so we could get that brief little stare-down before they gave the champs their belts back to start the build to Final Battle, and it did that just fine… but it would have been a lot better if they had just chased The Addiction off rather than beaten them up because that way you’d still get your tag title tease, but The Addiction would also be able to escape with some actual heat.

BULLY RAY PROMO- he gives a speech in which he all but says that he has to retire, and tells the fans how much they meant to him. This was fine aside for two bits. One was Bully saying that most wrestlers don’t appreciate the fans as much as he does, which came across a little douchy to me. The other, and much worse one, was the announcers actually saying that “retirements in wrestling never last.” They said it for the purpose of following it up with essentially “but this one seems totally legit!” but it had the same problem to me as doing a worked shoot, where in your effort to put this one over as “real,” you damage everything else you’re doing (or in this case, any other retirement angle they ever do). It would have been better to not say anything at all.

DEONNA PURRAZZO, JENNY ROSE, & MADNY LEON vs. SUMIE SAKAI, FAYE JACKSON, & BRITT BAKER- 5.75/10
The announcers pushed this hard as the first Women of Honor match on iPPV and praised ROH for delivering what the fans had asked for… and then they gave us a random six-woman tag that went ten minutes.
Britt Baker did some of Adam Cole’s signature spots and the announcers made reference to them as Adam Cole tribute spots and some people in the crowd cheered, but I have to ask… WHY? Yes, she is Adam Cole’s legit girlfriend, but that has never been mentioned in kayfabe, so all you are doing is confusing people who don’t know indy insider news, and either way, doesn’t doing heelish spots to show admiration for an infamous heel make her a heel?
Mandy and Faye are so clearly (at least) a step below the others that it makes you wonder why they would be included in this match intended to showcase the division when all they did was make the match worse by eating up time with their presence (and then you remember exactly why Mandy is featured and you get annoyed). As I said above, this was a random, bland six-woman tag with no hook to make me want to see more of the Women of Honor, and getting people interested in the division should have been the entire point of having this match on the iPPV. If you’re just going to give me ten minutes of inconsequential wrestling, at least give me ten minutes of Deonna Purrazzo vs. Britt Baker so that the match will at least be good.

PROVING GROUND INSTANT REWARD SIX-MAN MAYHEM MATCH: ROH TV Champion Kenny King vs. KUSHIDA vs. Adam Page vs. Josh Woods vs. Punishment Martinez vs. Matt Taven- 6.75/10
I cannot help but look at the booking here and wonder why the hell this wasn’t just King vs. KUSHIDA for the TV Title in KUSHIDA’s rematch and then the other four guys in a Four Corner Survival? Why are we making KUSHIDA earn something that the champion has always been portrayed as inherently deserving, and throwing four other dudes in his way?
Anyway, they had their match, and my main takeaway from it is that someone seems to have taught KUSHIDA about flipping the bird and he has really taken a liking to it. This was your dive-heavy spotfest for the evening, but they did a good job at structuring hi some fun twists and turns with the stuff they did. They had some trouble on the finish, which was Kenny King hitting Woods with the Royal Flush. I’m not qualified to say who screwed it up, but they had enough trouble that when they went and did it again right afterwards, I wasn’t sure if they got it right the second time, either. Without that bit, this would have been a 7/10.

WAR MACHINE vs. KILLER ELITE SQUAD (Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr.)- 7/10
Okay… whatever War Machine are wearing on their heads needs to go. They look so goofy. What was wrong with just the Viking armor and scary facepaint? Why do they need these silly headdresses? Especially the one Rowe is wearing. It makes him look like a two-legged horse. Speaking of looking goofy, Archer needs to go back to his old facial hair. Now he looks less like a big cool scary badass, and more like a cross between the least flattering physical aspects of Silas Young and Brodie Lee.
Between how long they spent on the outside and the fact that Davey Boy Smith Jr. used a chair, ROH really should have just billed this as a Relaxed Rules Match. It would have fit in perfectly with everything the commentators had been saying about how these teams have been beating each other up all around the world for over two years, and it would have made the match feel a bit bigger.
This match was as hard-hitting and violent as you would expect from these two teams, but it was disappointingly short when you consider how much time they usually get against each other in Japan. War Machine pin K.E.S., setting up yet another of the seemingly-infinite number of matches these guys and the Guerrillas of Destiny will have against each other for the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Titles.
Ian Riccaboni seems to think that Minoru Suzuki has some sort of “master plan” to destroy Ring of Honor, though it seems to me that if anyone has a master plan to destroy ROH, it’s obviously Delirious and the Young Bucks.


MINORU SUZUKI vs. SILAS YOUNG (w/the Beer City Bruiser)- 7/10
Rather than shaking hands and following the Code of Honor, these two spit at each other. This was good as a clash of personalities, but I was very disappointed in this as a wrestling match. I greatly enjoyed the defiant, almost babyface-ish Suzuki standing strong and proud and defiant in the face of Silas’ efforts to mentally break him down, but I really hated the chairshots (one of which was right in front of the referee and Suzuki was not DQed for) and the ref bump and the interference. And not just because all of that stuff worked against the idea of Suzuki as the structural babyface (which the crowd was certainly reacting to him like as well), but because this is Ring of Honor and when you announce a big, exciting match-up (and especially a legendary Japanese wrestler’s only singles match on just his third American tour), I want to see an excellent professional wrestling match, not a TNA-style run-in bullsh*t-fest. I assume that the reason this was done was protect Silas in his loss, but if you don’t want to put either guy over clean then DON’T BOOK THE MATCH. And they really shouldn’t have booked this match because whatever protection this gave Silas did not save him from the real problem with his loss here, which is that yet again after he has won what should be an elevating feud for him, this kills his momentum dead.

ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, & Marty Scurll)(c) vs. CHAOS (Toru Yano, Will Ospreay, & YOSHI-HASHI)- 6/10
Apparently these belts can now be defended under Freedbird Rules by anyone in the entirety of Bullet Club because… um… throwing random six-mans together and saying they’re for the tag titles is easier than actually trying to book key players like Scurll and Cody in actual storylines. But if you’re going to be this lazy at least be reasonable about it and stick Scurll in Page’s spot in the Proving Ground Match so that at least one of the actual champions can be defending the belts. This would also prevent some redundancy in this tour’s cards because we got two thirds of this match as a tag match on last night’s show (Cody & Scurll vs. YOSHI-HASHI & Yano). To make matters worse, this wasn’t even advertised as a title match. Scurll just decided to make it one… so not only did we have a heel deciding to give the crowd a title match for no reason, but he’s offering up belts that no one in the match is the rightful champion of, and the ROH Board of Directors is totally okay with that. This is so dumb! But hey, it’s guaranteed to get the crowd to pop for the announcement, so Delirious wants to do it, because booking things that you know will get pops is a lot easier than booking storylines to create moments that will get pops with real emotion behind them.
We get the now painfully predictable spot where a babyface offers a Bullet Club member to 2 Sweet him even though it’s a dickish thing to do and it makes Bullet Club feel like babyfaces even though their cheating ways make them heels.
On commentary, Colt Cabana had some veiled criticisms of the obsessive focus of all of the booking being about Bullet Club, urging everyone not to forget that there are other excellent wrestlers in the match. Also, Toru Yano is in the match.
After the aforementioned 2 Sweet spot, Scurll and Ospreay had a nice little sequence that was interrupted by comedy based around Marty’s stupid arm-flapping. Marty then wanted to tag in Cody so he wasted a lot of time milking the crowd before making the tag. Upon being tagged in, Cody predictably started to stall. He wanted Ospreay to tag Yano in, which is more evidence that Cody has made it his personal mission to make it as hard as possible for me to enjoy any ROH match he is in.
Cody wanted Yano to kiss his ring because Cody is an idiot. Doesn’t he know the sort of ridiculous and disgusting things Yano will likely do when allowed to put his mouth on Cody’s hand? Also, shouldn’t the referee have made Cody take the ring off before the match started? It’s basically a brass knuckle. That was Damien Sandow’s entire heel gimmick in TNA last year.
Personally, I was hoping Yano would eat the ring so I never had to see it again, but eating the ring would also make Yano very sick and he’d have to retire forever so I’d never have to see him again either. Instead, he simply just refused to kiss Cody’s stupid ring gimmick. Imagine that. They did some “comedy” that eventually resulted in Yano accidentally kissing the ring. I would have called that bit clever except that the referee should have made Cody take the ring off already, so it’s just them once again rubbing in my face that they’re not here to have a professional wrestling match but rather to just do comedy spots.
Anyway, YOSHI-HASHI gets tagged in and he wants Kenny Omega so Omega gets tagged in and hey, look: it’s something that makes me believe that these two guys don’t like each other and want to win this wrestling match against each other!
Ospreay got tagged in and a bunch of nothing happened, leading to a reset with Ospreay and Omega facing off. Scurll wants a tag and Omega spends a while milking it before instead flipping Marty off. What a dick. Then Omega charges at Ospreay and immediately eats a drop toehold and winds up looking like a total clown. YOSHI-HASHI gets tagged in and we’re back to serious wrestling until Cody tries to get involved and it’s back to the clown-show again until he has been disposed of. Basically, it seems that whenever it’s not Omega vs. YOSHI-HASHI, it’s just comedy crap.
Scurll hit YOSHI-HASHI in the back with some sort of foreign object. We couldn’t see what because the camera was focused on Omega pulling the referee towards him so he wouldn’t see the weapon shot… and that’s perfectly fine. The camera not catching exactly what weapon was used in what was supposed to be a covert weapons shot makes it feel organic and natural and real. All that we really need to know is that Scurll hit YOSHI-HASHI with some sort of foreign object and YOSHI-HASHI’s upper arm is now injured.
Omega tags Cody in and even Cody is now being serious. Scurll gets tagged in and he is… half way between serious and clown, which is better than what he has been so far this match. YOSHI-HASHI was a great babyface in peril for a while and Bullet Club beat him down and but he made a hot tag to Ospreay and Ospreay did flying babyface things… and then Scurll took forever to do his stupid chicken dance so Ospreay hit him with a Pele Kick before he could lock the hold in and Ospreay tagged in Yano… who immediately ran over to take off a turnbuckle pad because he is a sick man with a very rare mental illness that causes him to obsessively do this.
Scurll kicked Yano in the knee, and with Yano temporarily out of the way we got a really cool action sequence with all five other guys. Then Yano, a babyface, manipulated the referee so he wouldn’t see him kick two heels in the groin… then he immediately ran and got a tool from under the ring to help him cut the turnbuckle pad off due to his rare mental illness.
Stupid Yano Tricks happen, then Stupid Bullet Club Tricks with their idiotic “N Boots!” spot. They even call for “TEN BOOTS!” and their stablemates run into the ring and participate in a spot where they make physical contact with an opposing wrestler for the purposes of hurting him and they don’t give a sh*t that the referee will almost certainly see them and disqualify them because they care about popping the crowd instead of winning. At least this time someone (Ospreay) made sure the referee was distracted and Yano also reversed the move (sending Scurll into a turnbuckle he had previous exposed to pay that off), but their matches would be SOOOOO much better if they just wouldn’t do this dumb sh*t in the first place.
The ref gets distracted by Ospreay diving onto all of Bullet Club aside from Scurll on the outside, which lets Yano- again, a babyface- hit Scurll in the nuts and then roll him up for a nearfall that some marks in the crowd actually bit on even though this match is three guys who aren’t even the champions defending the titles against New Japan’s leftovers in a match that wasn’t even a title match until right before it started. Then Yano ran into an exposed turnbuckle when he tried to give Marty a Stinger Splash and Marty locked him in the crossface chickenwing and made him tap out. This was a good match when they weren’t trying to put on a clown show, which makes it all the more frustrating that they chose to spend two thirds of it doing a clown show instead of a wrestling match.

This was a disappointing show from ROH. It was quite solid in the ring, but that exacerbated the problem because it was so easy to see how just a few changes could have made this so much better. This has definitely dampened my excitement for my next review, which will be ROH Elite, but the main event of that show- Omega & the Young Bucks vs. Kenny King, Jay Lethal, & Dalton Castle- reminds me a lot of ROH’s main event at last year’s fall show in this building, which was also a Bullet Club trio (including the Bucks) taking on three top singles babyfaces (including both Lethal and Castle) and that match was bonkers so hopefully this one will be, too.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Ian Riccaboni referred to Chuck Taylor as “one of the best-kept secrets on the independent scene.”
Yes. Chuck Taylor has been flying under the radar until 2017.

2. Ian Riccaboni referred tony Mandy Leon’s running knee to the face in the corner as “something she learned in STARDOM,” which I guess means that the ROH Dojo doesn’t teach basic striking maneuvers.
Big Red Machine
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Re: Global Wars 2017 Thread

Post by Big Red Machine »

ROH/NJPW Global Wars: Buffalo (10/12/2017)- Buffalo, NY


COAST 2 COAST vs. THE DAWGS- 5/10
A nice, clean, win for the heel team that allows the underdog up-and-comer babyfaces to look strong in defeat. Why can’t we get this more often?

KUSHIDA vs. ADAM PAGE- 7.5/10
They told a great story with KUSHIDA working Page’s arm, and had what was probably my favorite spot of the year in ROH when KUSHIDA managed to counter Page’s Shooting Star Press off the apron into a Kimura.

JAY LETHAL vs. FRANKIE KAZARIAN- 6.25/10
They tried hard but I just didn’t find too much to get into here. Kaz took some really crappy-looking bumps for Lethal’s cutter and the Lethal Injection, and Kazarian’s Springboard Cutter is so hokey it take me out of the match. They didn’t have too much of a coherent story, either. The match wasn’t bad or anything, but it totally failed to get me into it, either.

MARK BRISCOE & WAR MACHINE vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki & the Killer Elite Squad)- 7.25/10
The babyfaces offered the handshake but Suzuki-Gun responded to it by kicking them so we started off with the big wild brawl everyone was expecting this to break down into at some point anyway. They brawled on the outside for WAY too long without being counted out. Suzuki hit Rowe with a chair right in front of the referee and wasn’t disqualified. If you’re going to do this, I would rather they started brawling before getting into the ring so that the match technically hasn’t started yet.
They had a pretty great brawl that eventually turned into your standard tag team match except that things never quite truly settled down, which made for a great atmosphere. Rowe was the babyface in peril and got his arm worked over. They actually had me biting on Mark Briscoe pinning Suzuki at one point, but it wound up being Mark who got pinned by Suzuki in the end.

HIROMU TAKAHASHI vs. CHRISTOPHER DANIELS- 6.5/10
They had an okay match for a while until Daniels started to work over Hiromu’s leg, and just when it looked like they were really about to start cranking it up with that story, they completely switched gears and Daniels hit Hiromu with Darryl (which wasn’t a DQ for some reason) which caused Hiromu to fire up and his big comeback. If you really want to do that spot then fine but at least wait until Daniels gets some good heat before you have Hiromu make his comeback! They had a good next few minutes of exchanging nearfalls, then went back to Darryl for the finish with Daniels grabbing it and throwing it at Hiromu to distract him and Hiromu caught Daniels and wrestled the last forty-five seconds or so while holding Darryl, which was kind of cool, but really should not have been allowed by the referee.

BULLET CLUB (Cody Rhodes & Marty Scurll) vs. CHAOS (Toru Yano & YOSHI-HASHI)- 5/10
No one touched each other for almost a minute and a half until Cody got Yano to kiss his ring while backing him up in the corner. Once again, the referee made no effort to get Cody to take the ring off even though it is essentially a brass knuckle. Why can they not do this stupid ring bullsh*t BEFORE THE MATCH when it would actually make sense?
The first attempted offensive maneuver of the match came ten seconds later when Yano tried to give Cody a low blow right in front of the referee. Scurll managed to be the one to stop him and held Yano’s arms behind his back so Cody could start punching him and f*cking finally something started to happen. Then Cody tagged right out to Scurll. This gave Yano an opening to do his usual Stupid Yano Tricks which killed off another thirty seconds or so, then he ran and tagged himself out, at which point YOSHI-HASHI instantly became my favorite wrestler in the match by simply being the first guy to get the tag and immediately try to attack his opponent.
Stuff happened for a bit. Scurll put on his plague-doctor mask he uses for his entrance and Yano became very scary so Scrull chased him around the ring until Cody punched him. Bullet Club then beat Yano up for a while. He made a hot tag to YOSHI-HASHI. More stuff happened. Yano got back in and managed to give both members of Bullet Club nut-shots behind the referee’s back… and then rather than try to capitalize on this advantage, he goes to take the cover off of a turnbuckle. Cody got slingshotted into the exposed turnbuckle and Yano actually had the ROH World Champion pinned but Scurll pulled the referee out of the ring, which wasn’t a DQ for no adequately explained reason.
Yano tried to hit Cody with a turnbuckle pad but the referee stopped him, despite the fact that Yano had previously hit Scurll with it right in front of him and he did nothing about it. This allowed Cody to grab Yano and hit him with the Cross Rhodes for the win.

WILL OSPREAY vs. PUNISHMENT MARTINEZ- 9/10
This f*cking match right here!
This was like… a less extreme version of a CHIKARA guy trying to fight Deucalion. Martinez was this big, intimidating, soulless monster that it would be nigh-impossible for our hero to surmount. If Ospreay was to have any chance, he’d have to use his speed and agility and he seemed to be doing that pretty successfully early on until Martinez cut him off with a big punch when he went for a Space Flying Tiger Drop… and then Martinez went to the top rope and hit Ospreay with his big flying spinning kick and it almost felt unfair that Martinez, the big powerful monster, could not only do the same high-flying stuff that Ospreay could, but that he hit even harder when he did it.
They went with that story of the hero facing the insurmountable challenge seemingly-possessed monster and just ran with it, with Ospreay being a wonderful “never say die” babyface and Martinez showing vulnerability at all the right times to make you think this could be the chance Ospreay needed to really hit something big and put him away, and then always perfectly switching back over into soulless monster mode and using his power to slam Ospreay down even harder than before. AMAZING!

ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega) vs. The Kingdom- 8.25/10
Before this match, Matt Jackson cut a promo saying that all of Bullet Club could now defend the six-man tag team titles under Freebird Rules. Whatever. The belts don’t mean sh*t anyway and I doubt anyone thought The Kingdom had a shot at winning this match, either, so it really doesn’t affect things other than being one more instance of guys getting a title shot they did nothing to earn and Bullet Club acting like total babyfaces by offering to put the belts on the line just to give the fans a “bigger” match.
They started off with nine minutes of GREAT action, then ground all of that to a halt and spent over four minutes to do their stupid “X boots” spot. At least they bothered to make sure the referee was distracted when Cody, Scurll, and Page got involved this time. Was that really so hard?
Then they nearly sent me into a rage when they went to do a spot with simultaneous suplexes and the others got in the ring to help, but thankfully Tod Sinclair put a stop to it and ejected them from ringside. They argued it so other refs came out, and while Cody, Page, and Scurll argued with them on the outside, each member of The Kingdom hit a member of The Elite with a low blow, and that’s how they cut them off.
We then got another eight minutes or so of great wrestling until we got a ref bump and Vinny Marseglia got is axe out from under the ring and O’Ryan and Taven got a marker and drew a line on Omega’s arm and held it out, because they wanted me to believe that Vinny Marseglia was going to cut Kenny Omega’s arm off. Really.
He moved as slow as humanly possible in order to allow the rest of Bullet Club to come out and make the save, setting up for a reversal of the previous triple groin attack, then some superkicks and an attempt at an assisted One-Winged Angel that was really just a regular One-Winged Angel because their timing was off, and that was the finish. This was basically an excellent wrestling match with two interruptions for stupid crap, one of the (supposedly) comedic nature, then a shorter one of the “this is so over the top that no one believes it so why are you wasting my time with it” nature.
And for the record, even in this match, Marseglia did nothing that was in any way interesting or impressive. I have yet to find the match that could not be improved by replacing Vinny Marseglia with any random mid-card schmoe from any medium-sized indy around the country.


A very good show from ROH. While some of the matches (particularly Lethal vs. Kaz, Daniels vs. Hiromu and the Suzuki-Gun six-man) didn’t quite live up to my expectations, most of the show was at least enjoyable, and even the bad stuff never really got offensive or boring the way that it often can in ROH. Throw in that amazing Ospreay vs. Martinez match and an excellent main event, and you’ve got a pretty damn good show.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Ian Riccaboni claims that Rhett Titus “has had success with a number of different partners” in ROH.
No he hasn’t. He’s had success with exactly one partner, which was Kenny King. He was part of a couple of other short-lived teams with the likes of Charlie Haas, BJ Whitmer, and Cliff Compton and occasionally wound up getting, like one title shot each with them, but that’s not a very high bar for “success.”
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