BRM Reviews the 11/5/2016 ROH

[Big Red Machine]

MICHAEL ELGIN vs. TORU YANO- DUD!
How about instead of building this up as a rematch and telling everyone that Elgin somehow lost to this comedy loser, we don’t tell people that and instead just have Elgin squash the little sh*t and never book him again. Kevin Kelly tried to make this into such a big deal, saying that those two points cost Elgin a spot in the G1 Finals… which is technically true, but it affected him no worse than any other of his losses did. He also said that “Elgin has been focused on those two points and getting even for that ever since.” You know… when people are focused on something in wrestling, they usually at least cut a promo about it. And this actually makes Elgin look kind of obsessive and crazy. Blaming not winning a tournament on one loss to one guy and then obsessing over it and being focused on revenge is the sort of thing that heel turns are made of.
Anyway, they did comedy. Yano got the turnbuckle pad off and hit Elgin with it and I screamed “IT’S A F*CKING PAD!” at the top of my lungs. The pad is there to protect you from the dangerous metal underneath. It’s f*cking SOFT. To make this all even worse, he did it right in front of the referee who didn’t all for a DQ.
More stuff happened, and then Elgin cut a different turnbuckle pad off and hit Yano with it. He went for the Buckle Bomb into the exposed turnbuckle but Yano reversed it with a catapult, sending Elgin headfirst into the exposed metal… and now, after finally having put Elgin into the exposed turnbuckle like he had been trying to do all match… Yano went for a low blow right in front of the referee. WHY? What is the purpose of that? Does he want to win the match? If all he wanted was to get DQ, why didn’t he just punch the referee the moment the match started?
Anyway, the referee stopped him and we got more standard Yano spots to set up a low blow into a small package for a nearfall before Elgin got the win. There was some story here with them building things around the exposed turnbuckle, but the associated stupidity completely counteracted what little that helped the match. THEY WASTED THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES OF THIS SHOW ON A F*CKING TORU YANO MATCH. And they wonder why the product has no buzz.

BOBBY FISH PROMO/FISH VS. PAGE VIDEO PACKAGE- didn’t like it. He kept calling Page “unproven” which seems a little silly after he beat Jay Briscoe in a No Disqualifications Match back at Death Before Dishonor XIV, and is also the sort of wording that basically buries Page as not being ready to be a big player in the company unless he wins.

PROVING GROUND MATCH: ROH TV Champion Bobby Fish vs. Dragon Lee- 6.75/10
Very good for the time it got. The story here was that Fish’s ribs were cracked from last week and they got in his way and resulted in him losing. For once the announcers actually did a great job of setting up this story. They are now pushing that Fish has just one week to recover before Page gets his title shot next week.

MATT TAVEN PROMO- meh. He claims that his new Kingdom is going to end the Bullet Club. I highly doubt it.

ROH SIX-MAN WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Bullet Club (Adam Cole & the Young Bucks) vs. The New Kingdom (Matt Taven, Vinny Marseglia, and O’TK Ryan)- 7.5/10
The New Kingdom has two idiots dressed up in medieval regalia and saying “HEAR YE! HEAR YE!” You know. Because people have reacted so f*cking well to the Cabinet’s entrance.
So after nine months of building this sh*t up, Taven’s “New Kingdom” is himself, one guy who ROH has occasionally used as a jobber in the Northeast, and a guy no one has ever heard of before. Yeah. That was sure worth it. But it’s okay. They totally have a shot because according to Kevin Kelly they’re “blue-chippers.” Oh really? Then why the f*ck haven’t I even heard of one of them before and why has the other one only won one of his seven matches in ROH? Everyone is a “blue-chipper” to Kevin Kelly no matter how bland or mediocre (see: Ferrara, Will).
Well… to say something nice about them, their entrance is good (except for the goofballs bowing down on stage. It’s not an actual f*cking kingdom so you don’t need to pretend he has actual subjects you stupid lizard motherf*cker).
The announcers kept hammering home that this version of the Kingdom was “built in [Taven’s] image,” which was completely unnecessary because we’ve heard Taven say he was going to rebuild the Kingdom using that exact same phrase on commentary all year. This was time in which they should have been letting me know what moves to look for from the new guys… or at least something about them to make them not come across as Matt Taven’s stooges.

All of that being said… the match was a lot better than I expected. While O’Ryan and Marseglia both still feel very bland, they managed to make it feel like a very big moment when Cole and Taven finally got in there against each other (despite my expectations). Bullet Club losing definitely feels big here, and with some good pushing the New Kingdom could maybe feel like a force, but I need to see more from the other two to be able to gauge their abilities better. I will say, however, that the fact that the New Kingdom didn’t work ANY of the SIX house shows between the time this was taped and the time it aired it does make me a little wary.

Even in the middle of this theoretically important tournament match, the Bucks still have this stupid kissing Adam Cole schtik. Can we please take something seriously?

Anyway, a fine episode of ROH. I’d recommend just starting it at the beginning of the Proving Ground match.



STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly tries to talk Matt Taven up by telling us that the last time we saw him in an ROH ring he “blew out his knee in the first minute, but then fought for ten more minutes.”
First of all, the match only went three minutes, which I vividly remember because everyone was so pissed off it was so short. The other thing I remember about that match was that Taven actually didn’t fight on at all. The guy who fought on through an injury in that match was Taven’s tag team partner Mike Bennett, who came into the match with broken ribs and still took all of War Machine’s moves specifically because Taven couldn’t. Kevin Kelly is like Matt Striker: he just can’t help himself but oversell everything, and he winds up lying through his teeth and killing his credibility by doing so. Striker is just so smug about it that you want to beat him into unconsciousness whereas Kelly only makes you want to slap him the face.

2. Kevin Kelly (about Matt Taven)- “when his former partner left the territory.”
To be fair to Kevin, Steve Corino says this a lot, too, but they both need to stop right away. It’s not a f*cking “territory.” It’s a national wrestling promotion that has run events in seventeen different states this year (as well as Canada, Japan, and soon to be the UK), with TV that reaches many more. Mike Bennett isn’t here anymore because he couldn’t come to terms with them on a new contract, not because he moved out of Georgia or wherever.

3. Steve Corino- “In the first version of the Kingdom you were always left wondering: Who was the leader?”
No. No you weren’t. It was always Adam Cole.