BRM Reviews the 7/16/2016 ROH (worst goodbye ever)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 7/16/2016 ROH (worst goodbye ever)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jul 18th, '16, 15:43

JAY WHITE vs. KAMAITACHI (w/Christopher Daniels)- 6.75/10
Good first showing on TV for both guys. White won clean, despite Daniels’ interference, which seems like a big waste of the quest for his first win, especially as he tries to overcome the cheating shenanigans of the Addiction. After the match, Kazarian came out and he and Daniels and Kamaitachi beat Jay White down. So they lost clean then beat the babyface down… just like every other Addiction match since Sabin broke up with them back in February. Can we please let our tag champs and their new buddy look like credible threats? Please?
MCMG came out to make the save- something else we’ve seen a bunch of times already (and if it has only been once or twice, it sure as hell feels like a lot more). Sabin cut a good promo and challenged the Addiction to a six-man tag team match right here, right now. The Addiction don’t seem to want it, but Nigel asks the fans what they want and they say they do so he makes it official. Why is it that sometimes they need the wrestlers’ consent to book them in a second match and sometimes they don’t?
THE ADDICTION vs. THE MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS & JAY WHITE- 5.75/10
A short match, but the important takeaway here is that Jay White pinned Christopher Daniels. Okay… so they want to put White over very strong, and I guess that’s good, but I’d prefer if it didn’t come at the expense of the ROH World Tag Team Champions unless it is going to directly lead to him winning the tag titles.

ADAM COLE PROMO- fine. He wants the world title. He is now just trying t confuse me about whether or not he is going to interfere in next week’s Lethal vs. O’Reilly ROH World Title match.

KEITH LEE & SHANE TAYLOR STUFF- good.
They show a recap of them costing War Machine the tag titles at Road to Best in the World 2016: Columbus, then had them squash some jobbers. Then War Machine came out to brawl with the men who cost them the tag titles. Lee and Taylor came out on top after a big dive to the outside by Lee. This did a great job of catching those who didn’t see the Columbus show up on the big news and set the tone for this new feud.

KYLE O’REILLY & JAY LETHAL PROMOS TO BUILD UP NEXT WEEK’S TITLE MATCH- I don’t like this style where they chop the two promos up and splice them together. I’d rather one guy speak and then the other guy speak.

BJ WHITMER & KEVIN SULLIVAN PROMO- dumb
Sullivan has a white X on his beard and a black X on his forehead. Apparently, in 2013, when Whitmer broke his neck, Kevin Sullivan came to him and told him that he and Corino were supposed to be “heirs to a legacy of evil” passed down to them from Sullivan, and passed down to him from King Curtis Iaukea. Whitmer said that he was upset that Corino had known this all along but had never told him. He also said he considered Corino rejecting evil to be “a slap in the face…” and at that moment he made it his mission to destroy Steve Corino.
A few problems here:
1. This sh*t started WAY before that! Corino was just randomly saying terrible things about Whitmer on commentary going back to at least early 2013 (Whitmer only broke his neck in August), and probably going all the way back to Whitmer’s return to ROH in early 2012.
2. Corino’s original rejection of evil happened at the beginning of 2011. He slid back into it for the SCUM angle, but then never really turned babyface until early 2014, AFTER Whitmer returned from his broken neck.
3. Not necessarily a contradiction, but if you’ll recall, “when I was out with a broken neck, XYZ came to me and said…” was exactly how Delirious had Whitmer explain the formation of the Decade, too. And, at that time, he claimed that Jimmy Jacobs was the only person who came to visit him. This was also pretty much what Matt Taven said to explain his heel turn and joining the Kingdom in 2014, and I’m pretty sure it’s been used at least one other time, too. In other words, this explanation is a go-to from the Delirious playbook, and that fact alone is frustrating because it feels like Delirious always uses this sort of off-screen BS to set up a turn (Adam Page’s babyface turn against Whitmer at the beginning of the year was similar, as was his decision to join Bullet Club this spring), and every time he does it, it makes it feel even lamer and more phony.

We’re a minute and a half into this and the fans are already chanting “BORING!” because they’re right. This is boring. Boring and stupid. Who gives a f*ck about Kevin Sullivan and some stupid secret cabal “legacy of evil?” Why can’t this just be exactly what it was at first: Corino and Whitmer were two guys who hated each other and that’s it?

Sullivan says that Corino can go home to his family and pretend not to be evil, but until he accepts that he is really evil, “chaos is going to reign over Ring of Honor.” So now we’re back to the same angle we were doing in 2011 where Corino is trying to not be evil anymore but someone is trying to knock him off the wagon.

K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid. This is a perfect example of why that adage exists. Delirious has just taken a perfectly fine blood-feud that has been brewing for three years and replaced it with overcomplicated crap that completely ruins it by creating continuity issues, bogging it down with stupid mystical bullsh*t that no one can possibly relate to, and extending the feud out long past the point where anyone cares anymore.

RODERICK STRONG vs. DALTON CASTLE- 6.5/10
This might sound bitter, but I don’t care. Roderick Strong deserved SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS! Roderick Strong has been with ROH for the past twelve years, and in a promotion built around work-rate, he has been one of the best in-ring performers in this company for a majority of that time. He has delivered some of ROH’s most memorable matches. He is a former world champion, tag team champion and multiple time TV champion. And his final match with the company... went twelve minutes, was barely acknowledged even on the episode of TV it was on, and against a midcarder he has no history with. It was in a place ROH has almost no history, at a show when everyone going in knew they wouldn’t draw well (the TV tapings after the PPVs never draw well). Roderick Strong’s last ROH match took place in front of 400 fans. He got almost no pop, there were barely any streamers and no “THANK YOU RODDY!” chants. He didn’t even get to enter second like the bigger star would. There were, of course, “FAN UP!” chants because these stupid marks love their goofy Dalton Castle comedy bullsh*t instead of the things that made ROH the powerhouse it is. If Dalton Castle’s Boys getting bigger pops than Roderick Strong isn’t a perfect metaphor for everything wrong with ROH right now than I don’t know what is.

Roderick Strong deserved 25 minutes and an opponent he either has history (Jay Lethal) with or who he would have a killer match with (Kyle O’Reilly, ACH… even Jay White), in an ROH hotbed where 1000 screaming, appreciative fans would shower him streamers and chants of thanks. Roddy deserved the same thing that CM Punk and Samoa Joe and Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness and Kevin Steen and even Colt Cabana got. There was no reason why ROH couldn’t have brought Roddy back to for last weekend’s show in Baltimore and gave him the send-off deserved.

I guess this was a good show from ROH, but the main event angered me enough that I can’t say I enjoyed it.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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