Official 16th Anniversary PPV Thread

[kovs27]

Mark Briscoe is busted open. 3rd match with blood tonight

[ActionJeffson]

This crowd is deaaaaaad after the Omega appearance

[kovs27]

This crowd is deaaaaaad after the Omega appearance

It's a shame. MCMG look fantastic tonight.

[monster mafia]

vegas crowd sucks so bad...always.

[ActionJeffson]

Why do they keep doing PPVs there? That crowd sucks. At least they picked up during the main but ugh. Amazing match though.

[TYFDK]

Why do they keep doing PPVs there? That crowd sucks. At least they picked up during the main but ugh. Amazing match though.

Some kind of deal with Sam's Town.

[ActionJeffson]

Post show promo with Marty coming out to let Dalton know hes coming for his title. Bully Ray came out as Dalton was going to speak and made the match official for Supercard of Honor on April 4th. Marty Scurll for Dalton Castle for the title.

Dalton: “Do I like that? You bet your balls I do.”

Bully also announced that Kenny Omega will be at the TV tapings tomorrow for the episodes leading up to Supercard of Honor.

[alexsmellzzz]

Went to the show tonight. The Omega reveal was the biggest pop of the night. But both Scurll vs Punishment and the 6 man with the Bucks were really really good. Marty vs Punishment had an insane first few minutes. There was a clothesline that Punishment hit Marty with that was so loud, idk if the cameras caught it but yeah, watch that match. So much blood tonight. Castle/Lethal was also really good, too. There was some really cool reversals by Lethal for the bangarang. Gotta be Castle's best match as champ.

Think I'll go to the tv tapings tomorrow. Omega appearance should make it worth it, right?

[WebConn]

vegas crowd sucks so bad...always.

I attend the Vegas shows live. They are loud, they are wild and they are lit. Does it not come off on Tv that way?

[famicommander]

So cool that Daniels gets to be the first Grand Slam Champion.

I don't think anybody else is close except Lethal (who needs one or both of the tag belts) and Taven (who needs the world title).

Of course there's Eddie Edwards and Roddy, but they ain't here.

[AlexROH]

Great show! Couldn't watch it live bc I was in bed with some stomach ache, but I've just seen the replay. Strong show, top to bottom. The 7 match card worked great and every match had enough time. Not as good as last year's Anniversary, IMO, but a great show, nothing bad and some awesome matches.

I was really happy to see Martinez getting a big pop, the guy is working hard and his match with Scurll was a crazy 11-minute sprint. Titles matches were all between good and fantastic. The TV match was fine, Kenny and Silas really work well together. The Aries segment was a pretty good surprise, if he wins the title at SCOH, maybe we'll see more of him in ROH. Some people said that the tag title match was bad. IMO, it was great, tired crowd, but good effort by boths teams. Six Men and World Title were brillant. Specially the main event, with that old-school ROH ME feel. I'm loving Dalton's reign, hope he defeats Marty at SCOH.

The weakest point of the night was the Cody-Taven match. They had a more enjoyable match in Nashville for ROH TV. The post-match segment was cool. It's great to see that they will be doing some segments between Cody and Omega in today's TV tapings.

Hiromu vs Flip ***1/2
Martinez vs Scurll ***3/4
Silas vs King ***1/2+
SoCal vs Hung Bucks ****
Cody vs Taven ***
Briscoes vs MCMG ***1/2
Dalton vs Lethal ****1/4

Final rating: 8/10.

[DXvsNWO1994]

I was involved in a group review of the PPV on Voices of Wrestling, which should be out soon. Unfortunately, I was one of the people who has massive problems with the Honor Club stream last night. I missed the first half-hour of the show and the stream kept starting/stopping the rest of the night.

Anyway, here are my quick star ratings:

ROH 16th Anniversary Show
Las Vegas, Nevada 3/9/18

Pre-Show

1.) Women Of Honor Title Tournament - First-Round - Sumie Sakai vs. Hana Kimura (with Kagetsu): **1/4

2.) Women Of Honor Title Tournament - Quarterfinals - Brandi Rhodes vs. Tenille Dashwood: **1/4

PPV

1.) Flip Gordon vs. Hiromu Takahashi: ***1/2

2.) Punishment Martinez vs. "The Villain" Marty Scurll: ****

3.) ROH World TV Title - Kenny King vs. Silas Young: ***1/4

4.) ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles - Las Vegas Street Fight - The Bullet Club (The Young Bucks & "The Hangman" Adam Page) vs. SoCal Uncensored (The Addiction & Scorpio Sky): ***3/4

5.) Cody vs. Matt Taven: **1/2

6.) ROH World Tag Team Titles - The Motor City Machine Guns vs. The Briscoes: ***

7.) ROH World Title - Dalton Castle vs. Jay Lethal: ****1/2

Overall: 8.0/10

A wildly inconsistent show in terms of match quality, but the positives (including the surprise appearances by Austin Aries & Kenny Omega) made up for the glaring negatives.

[Wilson]

Again, another ROH PPV that has as much lead-in hype, and follow-through, as an NXT Takeover.

(Somewhat about) Hiromu vs. Flip: I'm curious how many people here actively like Flip Gordon. I've been trying not be petty about a talent that is relatively young--which shows in their narrative work and in their undeveloped personal perspective--but it's hard to give him and his matches the benefit of the doubt. The stripper camo shorts. The solemn(?) military pastiche. The flipz and corkscrewz. The Teddy Hart face. It's hard to be attached to him as a babyface.

Punishment vs. Marty: I'm back and forth on Punishment all the time. I wish he worked matches slower. I wish he treated his strikes and throws with more weight. Otherwise this was a surprisingly good exhibition.

Kenny King vs. Silas: I think I liked this more than other people that I've read from, though I can admit that a few minutes should have been shaved off. It's really discouraging to see the secondary singles title in the undercard. (Like, I'm not sure how this company sees themselves making stars without having star-making performances in matches that matter.)

Hung Bucks vs. SoCal Uncensored dot com: The Young Bucks work so damn hard all the time that sometimes I wish there characters (and real life personalities) weren't so trollish so I can like them more! It's been weird seeing Page become this stock character in the trio that is more limited to spots than his partners. Maybe this title change can lead to him not being in such clear contrast to the abilities of the Bucks? Or maybe this will be the excuse for people to officially stop caring about him. And SCU were good here, too. The heat segment in which they stole the opposing team's taunts worked worked very well. More, congrats to Scorpio Sky earning an ROH title and a position at the LA New Japan in the same week. I guess it pays to work in Reseda?

Cody vs. Taven: Didn't work. Why do this match when Cody is playing his most antagonistic role since becoming an indie star next month? I'm really skeptical of the communication of those between the ROH office and in the Being the Elite cast.

MCMG vs. The Briscoes: Sigh. Both teams look desperate for a change. I just don't know what you can do with Motor City any more.

Dalton vs. Lethal: In the short conversation for best World Title match on PPV the company has had since being bought in 2011. While Lethal looked as pro as he could be, Dalton took me by absolute surprise in his role as an underdog. To get a sense of how he would play as a World Title holder, I looked at his match in German Wrestling Federation about a month ago. That match, against Tarkan Aslan, fell very short of expectations for a twenty-minute main event match. The last ten minutes of Dalton's match against Lethal proved an ability to sell ring work and story payoffs to an extent that I didn't even know he had in him. As far as I've seen, he doesn't even have a match that could challenge his work in this defense. While I don't know if there are other people that can pull this sort of performance out of him like Lethal can, I definitely want to see him suddenly elevate the main event scene as well as himself.

[Big Red Machine]

ROH 16th Anniversary Show (3/9/2018)- Las Vegas, NV

BULLY RAY WASTES TIME- This is a PPV, which means you’ve only got a three-hour window in which to fit in all of your matches, entrances, video packages, and any sort of other pre-match or post-match stuff you have planned. If you want to have Bully Ray come out to fluff the crowd so that they’re all primed and ready when it’s time for the action to start, you do it BEFORE YOU GO ON THE AIR. I’m no expert in the field of pornography, but my understanding is that the scene starts with the dude delivering a pizza to the sorority house, not with the fluffer getting the dude’s dick ready on the doorstep.

FLIP GORDON vs. HIROMU TAKAHASHI- 4.25/10
I laughed at Hiromu making fun of Flip’s pointless flippiness. I had hoped that we were done with this stupid Darryl sh*t but apparently not. Poor Colt Cabana- yes, COLT CABANA, THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS COMEDY WRESTLER- even felt compelled to try to explain why this all wasn’t completely idiotic, saying that “I like to think that Hiromu got him with his fist” to explain why either 1) there was no DQ for use of a clearly loaded foreign object, or 2) Flip Gordon just took a bump after getting hit with a STUFFED ANIMAL. Please remember this spot (and the fans booing when Sinclair tried to get the foreign object away from the heel) later in the night when they want you to be concerned about how badly the Briscoes are beating up MCMG.
They also felt the need to do a SPOT- and I do mean SPOT in big letters- where Hiromu hit a Canadian Destroyer, and Flip had to do a delayed-sell of it just so he could give Hiromu a superkick first and we could do a double-down. Say what you will about WWE’s style of wrestling, but at least this sh*t doesn’t happen. Of course this double-down led to them trading forearms on their way to their feet. More stuff then happened, before Hiromu hit the Time Bomb for the win. The match was just spots and flips.

ROH WORLD TITLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Punishment Martinez vs. Marty Scurll- 5.25/10
This match was mostly just stuff happening. It all happened in an order that mostly made sense and there was a bit of a story with Marty’s attempts to cheat (which both started off the match and eventually brought him victory), but even that was hurt by Martinez being the one to bring out the table, which itself led to one of those frustrating situations where they were on the outside forever without getting counted out.

ROH TV TITLE MATCH: Kenny King(c) vs. Silas Young- 6/10
The graphic for this match still has Silas holding the belt. It’s been WEEKS since Kenny won the title back. There is no excuse for not having made a new graphic. The match was good, with Kenny being a good babyface, but I was hoping for more from a title match. I also hated the ref bump and visual pinfall for Silas. It’s RING OF HONOR! Can we please get a match without bullsh*t in it?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Yeah, so this is going to be the most newsworhty thing coming out of tonight’s show. Austin Aries came out from backstage, holding not just a microphone, but all four of his other belts. Yes, including the TNA World Heavyweight Title. I really liked the fact that they didn’t play any sort of music for him and just let him kind of stroll out there and let people notice him on their own. It felt pretty cool.
Aries says that the only belt he hasn’t won in ROH is the TV Title… which isn’t actually true, even among active championships because he hasn’t been a World Six-Man Tag Team Champion, either (never mind held the retired ROH Pure Championship).

LAS VEGAS STREET FIGHT FOR THE ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLES: Bullet Club (Adam Page & the Young Bucks)(c) vs. SoCal Uncensored- 8.25/10
This was an awesome, action-packed match with lots of weapons, some creative spots, and nice little callbacks to other matches such as the Kaz vs. Page Strap Match from last year and the Ladder War between the Bucks, Addiction, and MCMG. The only real problem I had with it was that I found it ridiclous that none of the other Bullet Club members in the building came out to help the Bucks and Page once Shane Taylor made it four-on-three.
The most annoying thing, however, were the idiot fans who supposedly love the Young Bucks so much but revealed that they don’t actually care about the Young Bucks and only care about chanting things. Thus, when Kaz and Sky were holding one of the Bucks down so Daniels could punch him and Daniels was mockingly doing crotch chops and shouting “SUCK IT!” between each one, the fans chanted it with him.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Now Vinny Marseglia and TK O’Ryan of The Kingdom are attacking Bullet Club. Who comes out to make the save? Is it Cody Rhodes, a member of Bullet Club currently involved in an internal power struggle in which the Bucks have not yet taken a side so he has incentive to help them, and who also has a match against The Kingdom’s leader Matt Taven scheduled for tonight? Or maybe one of the other members of Bullet Club in the building? OF COURSE NOT! It’s f*cking Bully Ray. The announcers are trying to tell us that Bully is somehow overstepping his bounds or something by stopping this post-match attack with physical violence, but his official title is “enforcer,” so what else is he supposed to do?

MATT TAVEN vs. CODY RHODES (w/Brandi Rhodes & Bury the Bear)- 6.75/10
Taven worked over Cody’s back and everything was fine until someone decided that they needed to have a ref bump. This was done for two reasons. The first was so they could play off of a heat spot they did earlier in this feud where The Kingdom held Cody up so Taven could kick him in the nuts, but this time clever Cody wore a cup. The second reason was so the interfering Kingdom members could be chased off. By members of Bullet Club? Of course not! That’d be silly. It’s not like Marty Scurll is just sitting around doing nothing in the locker room, right?
No. Instead they were chased off by BULLY RAY. The best possible explanation for this is that it is going to build to a feud between Bully Ray and The Kingdom, which sounds terrible, but at least it’s better than doing it just so Bully can get a pop. The problem is that just not doing it at all would be even better, because a feud between a has-been ECW nostalgia act and a no-talent loser nobody like Vinny Marseglia is what your local C-Level indy is for. This is not something that a company the size of Ring of Honor should be doing.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Cody took his stupid ring back from Taven, so now Cody’s matches are going to become even more insufferable again. Cody, Brandi, and the bear celebrated their win with a bit of posing, and watching the bear pose was hilarious.
The bear pushed Cody down, then revealed himself to be Kenny Omega and laid Cody out with a V-Trigger. Brandi started to slap him… and then things got WEIRD.
She stopped slapping Kenny, then grabbed him by the face and made out with him. After she broke the kiss Kenny acted disgusted but Brandi shouted “you liked it! You fraud!” and said something about telling Ibushi. I assume this was meant to play off of Cody’s comment calling Ibushi “Omega’s rat” and the…. “rumors” isn’t the right word so much as “theories” because as far as I have heard, no one who would have any way of knowing has never advanced this… that the Golden Lovers are shoot lovers as well.
Even if that does turn out to be shoot true, I don’t think that’s the intended storyline simply because any sort of delving into someone’s personal life is a very un-NJPW thing to do. And even if it does turn out to be intended for that to be part of the storyline, Brandi’s attempt to expose Kenny here seems odd. I guess her plan is to tell Ibushi that Kenny liked getting kissed by a female and thus Kota would think that Kenny was lying about loving him because it would mean that he’s not gay… but has Brandi never heard of a bisexual before?
Like I said, this got weird.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Motor City Machine Guns(c) vs. The Briscoes- 7.25/10
I am in no way trying to suggest that this was a bad match because it wasn’t; it was great. The angle going in was great and the match was great and these teams brought the intensity and the hatred that you’d want to see in a match like this. But this match-up occupies such a legendary place in ROH history that I quite honestly would rather they not book it if it isn’t able to deliver (whether due to the wrestlers themselves or, more likely, the time it was given) to the level that made it legendary. It’s just another thing that makes today’s ROH feel like a watered-down version of the exemplary product of years past.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Dalton Castle(c) (w/the Boys) vs. Jay Lethal- 8.5/10
Now THIS is what I expect from an ROH World Title match! A long, intense, and (relatively) clean battle between two top athletes, with no comedy bullsh*t, either. Yes, the Bobby Cruise bump was totally pointless and yes, they were on the outside for way too long without getting counted out in the build-up top that bump, but the rest of this match was fantastic. Lethal worked the knee while Dalton worked Jay’s head and neck, including one CRAZY spot late in the match that I don’t want to spoil, but will say it was enough to make Colt Cabana make reference to Gabe’s old signature terrible commentary call of “DANGEROOOOOOOUUUUUUS!”
Marty Scurll came out to confront the winner afterwards.

Despite large chunks of it being disappointing, the two best matches on this show were enough to at least earn it a spot in the “good” category. The time-management on this show was much better than usual, and it always felt like I was watching a big show, despite them running the PPV building that always draws the smallest crowd of any of their PPV buildings. That, combined with the major surprise of Austin Aries’ return, definitely makes this show worth watching, though I really wish they would cut down on the ref bumps and other similar bullsh*t (only the top two matches didn’t feature anything like that).

[Big Red Machine]

So cool that Daniels gets to be the first Grand Slam Champion.

I don't think anybody else is close except Lethal (who needs one or both of the tag belts) and Taven (who needs the world title).

Of course there's Eddie Edwards and Roddy, but they ain't here.

Ditto for AJ

[famicommander]

I forgot about Jay Briscoe. He has the World, Tag, and Six Man titles so he just needs the TV Title to complete both the Grand Slam and Triple Crown.