BRM Reviews the 7/23/2016 ROH

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 7/23/2016 ROH

Post by Big Red Machine » Jul 28th, '16, 17:10

There is a grown-ass man in the front row who not only brought a replica belt with him, but it’s not even an ROH belt. It’s an old version of the TNA X-Division Title.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jay Lethal(c) (w/Taeler Hendrix) vs. Kyle O’Reilly- no rating. Frustrating segment.
So… Kyle came out for the match, but instead of Lethal coming out, Adam Cole came out instead and reminded us all of his vow that Kyle would never be ROH World Champion. He says that Kyle won’t even be wrestling in tonight’s match… and then the Young Bucks came out of the crowd and gave Kyle a double superkick. Of course the fans popped for this heinous assault screwing them out of the big title match that had been advertised for weeks prior to the taping and that they had all just been so excited for. What a bunch of idiots.
Despite all of the people in the company who hate Bullet Club, no one comes out to help Kyle. Not the Briscoes, not the Motor City Machine Guns, not Kyle’s tag team partner Bobby Fish, not the House of Truth, not Colt Cabana, not Nigel McGuinness. No one. Not even any additional referees!
Cole works over Kyle’s arm with a chair, then he wraps the arm in another chair and hits that with the first chair.
Now that it’s too late, Bobby Fish runs out with a chair of his own to chase off the Bullet Club.

As we go to commercial, we see the Bucks in the celebrating in the crowd, and even 2-Sweet-ing fans. You know, because they’re not even trying to be heels.

After a short commercial, Kevin Kelly talked about how heinous Bullet Club’s actions were and actually apologized that they wouldn’t be able to deliver the advertised world title match tonight, which was exactly what he should have done. He also said that Nigel is working to get some “stand-by matches” put together… and while I appreciate this little detail, shouldn’t there have been some stand-by matches already scheduled in case Lethal vs. Kyle ended quicker than everyone expected? (I’m pretty sure that’s what the JCP/WCW always had when the world title was being defended at a Clash of Champions.)

KYLE O’REILLY, BOBBY FISH, & THE DOCTOR BACKSTAGE- the doctor “advises” Kyle not to wrestle. So does Bobby Fish. Kyle says he won’t give up this opportunity and wants the doctor to just tape his shoulder up and let him wrestle.

KEVIN KELLY & NIGEL MCGUINNESS- Nigel says he is tired of Bullet Club doing things like this and vows that there will be consequences this time. Well maybe if you hadn’t been such a pussy the first time this happened and were more worried about protecting your employees and your company’s ability to deliver advertised matches to fans than you were about selling merch, this wouldn’t have happened at all!

OH COME ON! So not only do I get screwed out of the Kyle O’Reilly vs. Jay Lethal ROH World Title match, but now I have to suffer through TIM HUGHES? F*CK THIS SH*T!

“BRUTAL” BOB EVANS & “TOUGH” TIM HUGHES vs. WAR MACHINE- squash
If it wasn’t War Machine or Lee & Taylor that came out to face these guys, I might just turned the show off. I was still worried that War Machine would give them too much, as they did in their match against another jobber team at Aftershock Tour: Baltimore, but fortunately this was just a squash.

KEITH LEE & SHANE TAYLOR COME OUT TO BRAWL WITH WAR MACHINE- we get a short brawl that War Machine seems to have won after a big dive by Hanson onto all three guys on the outside. That was very short and disappointing. When these two teams brawl, no one should win (maybe Lee and Taylor on occasion) and it should take the entire locker room to break them up.

BRISCOES PROMO- loud.
Apparently they’re facing the Young Bucks next week. They claimed it was the first time that the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Champions would face the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions in ROH. While this is probably true for a straight tag team match, I’m certain they faced off in six-mans last year when it was The Kingdom vs. Bullet Club.

WILL FERRARA vs. CHEESEBURGER- no rating. Bad segment.
The match was quickly interrupted by The Cabinet’s music playing. Who are these losers that the Cabinet bring with them that they are allowed backstage? One of their f*cking dorks even got into the ring and no one did anything.
We’re only a few weeks into this gimmick, but it is already pretty clear to me that this gimmick is nothing but a big giant cock-up, as they have completely missed the opportunities to actually have them say anything clever and are instead content to just have dorks shout the “make wrestling great again” catchphrase while Caprice, Rhett, and Kenny cut promos that go nowhere and say nothing. I feel safe in making this judgment because a large chunk of Delirious’ booking has been this same shallow repeating something over and over again with no attempt to add any depth to it, or even to provide real evidence of it. We saw it in the disasters that were both the ACH & Sydal team and the break-up of the ACH & Sydal team, we saw it in the Briscoes-War Machine storyline (and I’m being generous by even calling that a storyline), we saw it in the Roddy/Fish/Ishii TV Title mess, and any time they’ve tried to push something via article on the website (and I think we would have seen it in the Silas Young vs. Dalton Castle feud, too, if it wasn’t for Silas’ promo skills).
And this gimmick is just so BAD, too. To do a parody of a political campaign/movement like this by just copying slogan and not playing off of it in any way other than that is just such a… lazy-ass “sports entertainment” pathetic attempt at publicity and/or cheap heat, and it’s a very un-ROH thing to do. Like WWE’s “Make Darren Young Great Again” angle, if you took out the Trump slogan, the angle would be the exact same… and that’s not a good thing (and doubly so when WWE just made the same mistake with the same slogan). When you do something like this (and especially in a product trying to present itself as an alternative), it needs to have some modicum of cleverness to it. It needs to have some level of actual satire involved rather than just stealing a slogan. ECW’s Network had that. The RTC had that. CZW’s Campaign for a Better Combat Zone was probably the best version of this you’ll ever see. This… this is three losers with a podium, and one of them calls the others the “Secretary of Shoulders” and the “Chairman of Championships.” This is just f*cking dumb.

Caprice says that Cheeseburger and Ferrara shouldn’t be pro wrestlers because they look too small. The Cabinet is the THIRD ACT IN THE COMPANY DOING THIS SAME ANGLE RIGHT NOW (the other two are Silas Young and Matt Taven). Even for a booker who has relied on a ridiculously small playbook of angles, that’s pathetic.
Caprice declares this match cancelled. The Cabinet gets into the ring and Rhett and Kenny cut a promo saying that Cheeseburger and Ferrara look like fans instead of wrestlers, so they should by a ticket and sit in the crowd or else they will beat them up. This ended in a poorly scripted set-up for Ferrara to say that they don’t have a bear or an ox or an elephant on their side, but they do have Moose. Then Moose’s music played because he’s friends with these guys apparently.

BULLET CLUB PROMO- well… most of the Bullet Club. I guess Adam Page isn’t important enough to hang out with the cool kids because he’s just their resident jobber. The Bucks cut a dull promo to build up their match with the Briscoes next week. It was just like every other promo they cut to hype up a match, which actually made this match feel less important. Compare this to the Briscoes’ promo, which did make next week’s match feel bigger.

THE CABINET vs. WILL FERRARA, CHEESEBURGER, & MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 1.75/10
As soon as we got back from commercial to start this match, Nigel heard that something was happening in the back so he had to go deal with it. It turns out that Kyle O’Reilly wants his title shot tonight and is “refusing to take no for an answer.” He also said he would “have the final word on this situation” once this match is over. All that statement did is make me want this match to end as quickly as possible.
This was a boring match that saw Cheeseburger and/or Caprice (it looked like Caprice’s fault to my untrained eye) botch a big spot during the finishing sequence.

Kevin Kelly’s message from Nigel is that the world title match will be happening after this commercial break.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jay Lethal(c) vs. Kyle O’Reilly- 8.25/10
You’d think that Bobby Fish would be at ringside to watch Kyle’s back after what happened earlier, but he’s nowhere to be found. Neither is Taeler Hendrix, who is usually at ringside for Lethal’s matches. Hmmm… angle alert.
Before the match, Jay Lethal inexplicably turned babyface telling Kyle that he respects him and they don’t have to do this when Kyle isn’t at 100%. Kyle said he wants to do it now anywhere because apparently that’s what a man does.
Nigel says that he has ejected Bullet Club from the building and instructed security to not let them back in. Yeah. Because security has been so effective at stopping Bullet Club in the past.
Kyle and Lethal did a beautiful job of building the match around Kyle’s injured shoulder, but I thought that the referee stoppage finish they were pushing on commentary would have been a MUCH better finish. Yeah, Kyle’s arm was injured and it wasn’t fair, but he still did get pinned cleanly. A referee stoppage (especially with Kyle being very upset about it) would have allowed Kyle to save face in even better because he can say (and the announcers can say, and we fans can say) that Kyle didn’t actually lose in the normal way because he didn’t run out of energy or get knocked out or succumb to the pain.
Lethal being unhappy about this really feels out of character. It’s like Bullet Club attacking him at Global Wars magically flipped a switch in his head that made him into an honorable, respectful goody-two-shoes.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Cole and the Bucks attack Kyle AGAIN. Referees just stand there and yell at them impotently. Security finally shows up, and Kevin Kelly declares that if Bullet Club attack the security guards, they will be suspended for six months. Of course, this wasn’t really an issue, because security just stood there on the floor all on one side of the ring and made no move whatsoever to get in the ring and help Kyle. Instead they just watched while the Bucks gave Kyle an Indytaker onto a steel chair.
Bobby Fish and Jay Lethal come out, way too late to make the save. No Briscoes, no Cabana, no MCMG. Not even Lethal’s f*cking House of Truth bodyguard Joey Diesel Daddiego.
For about the fifth time since they showed up at Global Wars a mere month and a half before this was taped (and I haven’t even seen three of the shows), Kevin Kelly declares that “BULLET CLUB HAS GONE TOO FAR!” Nigel McGuinness decides he has finally had enough of this and declares that because Cole is so intent on ensuring that Kyle O’Reilly never becomes ROH World Champion again, Nigel has decided that as long as he is matchmaker, Adam Cole will never have another shot at the ROH World Title.
While I am glad that there are finally some sort of consequences and I think is certainly a punishment that will make Adam Cole regret his actions, I don’t like this. ROH was founded on competition. It’s supposed to be a meritocracy. If Adam Cole picks up enough wins then he deserves a title shot, and standing in his way is contrary to the principles that ROH was founded on. This very issue turned Kevin Steen into a babyface in 2012 even though he wasn’t supposed to be one, and all but turned Davey Richards, the guy intended to be the babyface face of the company, into a de facto heel- a situation that was only alleviated by having Davey demand that Steen get a title shot.
And that is how they will probably get out of this, too: By doing an angle where Cole does something to Lethal that is so heinous that Lethal will demand that Nigel give him a title shot, so Nigel will do so. A consequence of this will be that whether they push it as such or not, this match will be Cole’s only chance to win the title… so of course he’s going to win it, robbing the match of any suspense and reducing excitement going into it… and this is on a show where every match announced so far except one either has a winner that seems clear and obvious going in, or will be totally irrelevant to any ROH storylines (looking at you, Roppongi Vice & Toru Yano vs. Bullet Club B-Team).

The other major problem I have with this is this whole “that’s it! I’m finally fed up and it’s time to punish Bullet Club!” thing in general. Over the past few months, Nigel McGuinness has been made to look like some unfortunate combination of being lazy, weak-willed, and selfish. Bullet Club has been the most obvious part of it, but it has been a lot of little moments, too. BJ Whitmer or Cedric Alexander buying their way in and out of matches, jackasses like The Cabinet coming out and running their mouths in the middle of matches with their little lackeys actually getting into the ring… Nigel McGuinness, the guy put in charge of booking ROH because he could be trusted to uphold the principles on which the company was built, should not be letting people get away with this sort of stupid little crap.
Now enter Bullet Club, assaulting people left and right, doing things that others have been suspended or fired for, doing horrible, terrible really, truly illegal even in the world of pro wrestling things not seen in ROH since the Homicide-Cabana feud a decade ago… and Nigel doesn’t do sh*t for over a month.
So now this happens, and Nigel McGuinness punishes Adam Cole. Fine. What about the f*cking Young Bucks? They’re just as guilty. Hell… they’re even MORE guilty because they were the ones who actually delivered the crippling maneuver. And they seem to be getting off perfectly free. There were finally consequences for Bullet Club’s actions, yes… but only to one member of the group… and all it took for Nigel to find his balls was one ruined PPV main event world title match, attacks on Tod Sinclair, Kevin Kelly, Steve Corino, Taeler Hendrix, the Young Bucks’ father, Jay Lethal, Colt Cabana, the Motor City Machine Guns, a million security guys, the crippling of Kyle O’Reilly, and the attempted murders of Chris Sabin and Colt Cabana. But hey… now Adam Cole can’t get a world title shot. Good job Nigel. You sure showed them.

A very frustrating episode of ROH, but at least it had an awesome match. Also, why is The Cabinet even in the company?

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly claims that Kyle O’Reilly has had “an unprecedented record of success against Jay Lethal.” I checked up on that, and they are actually 8-8-1 against each other, with a couple of matches that were won by an outside party. If we limit it to just singles matches, Lethal is actually 3-0-1 against Kyle with two more multi-man match that Lethal also won, not pinning Kyle. Kyle has made Lethal tap three times, but all of those were in tag matches. So at best they’re even. I f*cking hate it when Kevin Kelly says sh*t like this that can’t be backed up. All you need to do is point out that Kyle has made Lethal tap three times in the past two years and Lethal has never pinned Kyle without outside interference. Is that really so hard? It’s just like this “Lethal is so obviously the greatest ROH World Champion ever” bullsh*t, or the “there’s no one he hasn’t beaten” crap. The basic facts are good enough to get the angle over, but Kevin Kelly can’t help himself and he’s got to throw in this ridiculous superlative which makes the things he is saying clearly untrue.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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