BRM Reviews the 10/15/2016 ROH

[Big Red Machine]

BULLET CLUB PROMO- frustrating
Kevin Kelly is getting all melodramatic about how the competitors in the Ladder War “will never be the same” after what they went through… and now here come the Young Bucks cutting a promo in which they seem exactly the same. And, come to think of it, Jay Briscoe has been through three of them and hasn’t changed much… so maybe we could cut down on the hyperbole and not destroy our credibility?
The Bucks said they were the best tag team ever and Cole said they would win all the belts “and have all the control and all the power.”
Power? What more power do they want? The first day in ROH basically told them they were immune from punishment because they sell a lot of merch, so what more power do they need? Why can’t it just be about winning championships instead of this stupid nWo/TNA “power” bullsh*t?

IAN RICCABONI’S ROH UPDATE- this right here. This is how simple it is to make the results of non-televised shows important to the storylines without requiring fans to watch anything more than the weekly TV show (and it will hopefully entice them to check out some of those events on DVD or VOD).

JAY LETHAL PROMO- meh

WAR MACHINE vs. KEITH LEE & SHANE TAYLOR- 6.5/10
The match was very good and all and the finish was crazy, but it never once felt important to the feud or even that the outcome would matter. The babyfaces won cleanly, then Lee and Taylor attacked with a chair… again (they even showed us clips of the last chair attack at the beginning of this match).
Corino said this was Lee & Taylors “first defeat in ROH” which is certainly not true considering that they didn’t win their #1 contendership match at the PPV. I also remember them getting DQed against ANX at some point over the Road to Best in the World triple-shot. Both of those are certainly defeats.

CAPRICE COLEMAN PROMO- F*CKING HORRENDOUS!
He starts off by saying that “we have been winning state after state, delegate after delegate.”
WHAT THE F*CK IS HE EVEN TALKING ABOUT?!
Look… if you want to have heels that lie all the time then fine. I think it’s stupid and cartoony but fine. You can do that. That’s basically what they’ve turned Christopher Daniels into with all of this “there’s a conspiracy against us” bullsh*t. But you never hear Daniels say that he and Kaz should have won a match they really lost because they scored more touchdowns than their opponents. That’s what Caprice is doing right here. He is just talking non-sense, saying words that make no sense whatsoever in this context. Ring of Honor doesn’t have a f*cking primary election so why is this goofball acting like it does? And is Ring of Honor even wasting their own TV time airing this sh*t?

He ended this promo by saying that “the Ring of Honor Six-Man Tag Team Championships have been up for election for a long time.” At this point I screamed at the top of my lungs and almost shut the show off. I then resolved to fast forward through every Cabinet segment and every Sullivan/Corino/Whitmer segment from now on but had second thoughts as my doing so would be unfair to Impact who I have judged harshly for atrocious segments in the past and forced myself to sit through them, so I shouldn’t do that here either. So once again I must suffer it’s all TNA’s fault!




Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino respond to Caprice’s absolute and total non-sense by simply saying “well… he sure seems confident” as if Caprice’s words made perfect sense. This, too, just kills their credibility and makes the show very hard to watch. If someone on WWE TV spouts absolute non-sense, Michael Cole will say “I have no idea what he’s talking about!” So yes, ROH announcing is much worse than WWE’s right now.

TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Jason Kincaid, Leon St. Giovanni, & Shaheem Ali vs. The Cabinet- 6/10
Because Kevin Kelly is an idiot he has to make up some backstage element to all of this that no fan could have possibly known about or cared about. In this case, he emphasizes to us that “a bond was formed during the top prospect tournament” between these three guys and they “stayed in contact” and thus it makes perfect sense for them to be a team. I love how Kevin feels compelled to come up with an explanation for why these three guys have been put in a team together but doesn’t feel the need to come up with an explanation for why one of the “teams” in our trios tournament was even entered into the tournament at all despite the fact that they have never once teamed together and have a grand total of ZERO wins between them in any other situation!

Kevin tells us they have been “competing together.” Really? Well then why haven’t I seen it? You have all of these non-televised events, so why not use them? I’d much rather see these three have a triple threat match that ends with them all shaking hands and becoming friends and then have having them all team together on the next weekend’s shows instead of a million Addiction singles matches with f*ck finishes and a bunch of other matches where the babyface always goes over but none of it means anything.

The match itself was a fine trios match. Ali really impressed me here. I’d like to see him given the chance to prove himself in some singles matches.
You know, if you want these belts to feel important then maybe you shouldn’t have their tournament playing second-fiddle to a random rematch of a clean match from a few weeks ago.


JAY LETHAL vs. SILAS YOUNG- 6.25/10
The bell rang with a mere ten minutes of air-time left in the show. Steve Corino plugged the match at this is a rematch of, which took place at Reloaded Tour 2016: Lockport. (Steve said it was “a classic” which is a flat-out falsehood. It wasn’t even close.) Earlier in the show they also plugged the Honor Rumbel from that show and the resultant title shot Silas will be getting this coming weekend in Florida. After the end of that Honor Rumble, Silas demanded that Jay Lethal shake his hand, just like he had done when Lethal defeated him earlier in the night… and when Jay went to do so Silas snubbed him just to be a dick. So why the hell would Jay shake Silas’ hand at the beginning of this match?
The announcers then talked about how important a win for Silas right here would be because he would then have momentum going into his world title match. Adam Cole came out to do commentary, also to put over Silas’ world title shot (as well as Lethal getting a title shot in the UK). Of course, the finish involved Cole threatening to interfere so Kyle O’Reilly came out to attack Cole, and in his attacking Cole he distracted Silas, allowing Lethal to pin Silas. So Silas loses going into his title shot and our babyface Lethal couldn’t win clean. Wouldn’t it have made SOOOO much more sense to do this the other way around with Kyle’s distraction costing Lethal the match to not only give Silas the win but also push the idea that Kyle could cost Cole the title in a similar manner next weekend?
(Actually it would have been better to not book this match at all and give Silas a strong clean win going into his title shot, but unfortunately we’re stuck with Delirious as our booker).
After the match we got a schmoz that would have made a lot more sense if they were building to a four-way. I have no idea how anyone could possibly think that a two-second stare-down between Cole and Silas and then having Cole get laid out by O’Reilly is better build to Silas’ title shot than giving him a f*cking win. Also, why is Lethal angry at Silas here?

Another frustrating episode of ROH. Delirious would be a lock for Worst Booker of the Year if it weren’t for TNA’s horrific undercard and Smackdown’s need to go out of their way to suck.