BRM Reviews ROH Winter Warriors Tour: Duluth

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Winter Warriors Tour: Duluth (1/23/2016)- Duluth, GA

Ian Riccaboni and Mr. Wrestling III are on commentary.

DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys) vs. COREY HOLLIS (w/Trina Michaels)- 6.5/10
Not just one but BOTH of Dalton’s Boys have facial hair, which should disqualify them from being considered “boys.”
Mr. Wrestling III said that Trina Michaels told him that she “sees money” in Corey Hollis. Trina is a woman of many talents, but apparently gauging the potential of pro wrestlers is not one of them.
The match was better than I was expecting, mostly because they were actually given the time to go out there and tell a story.

AJ STYLES FAREWELL SPEECH- short but nice.

SEGMENT TO SET UP THE MAIN EVENT- Jay Lethal comes out and he cuts a short promo on AJ, who seems to just take this disrespect on the chin. Lethal complains about having to defend the ROH World Title in this dump of a town. Roddy comes out and says pretty much the same thing, and then also disrespects AJ.
Then Bullet Club comes out. Their graphic says Amber Gallows is with them but she isn’t. They remind everyone that they kicked AJ out of their group two weeks ago in Japan. Gallows said that all of the champions in ROH were “pussies” for not wanting to defend their titles tonight. This brought out War Machine, who had not only never said that they didn’t want to defend their titles, but also aren’t the type to take kindly to being called “pussies.” They start a brawl, which is eventually broken up. AJ seems to have disappeared.

P-DOG & THE GET-ALONG-GANG SHOW UP- Thankfully, before P-Dog can start trying to rap, AJ Styles comes out and hits him with the Styles Clash.

THE ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS vs. CHEESEBURGER & MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 7/10
Cheeseburger gave Moose his Cheeseburger hat to wear for his entrance. I guess neither of them has seen that Goldberg-Goldust wig segment. The match itself actually went a lot better than I expected it to. They stuck to the obvious story of Burger as the babyface in peril, with a little bit of a side-story which was that when both members of ANX were working together they could overcome Moose. It made for a nice, interesting variation on the usual in this setting.

MARK BRISCOE vs. CEDRIC ALEXANDER (w/Veda Scott)- 4.5/10
Ian Riccaboni let us know that going into this match, Mark Briscoe has been victorious in every single one-on-one match he has been in for the past six months. This being ROH commentary I felt the need to double-check to make sure that was actually true and it turns out that it is! Wow. That seems like something that should have been mentioned at some point during this streak. Also, it seems like something that could (or probably already should have) led to something like Mark getting a title shot, perhaps at the ROH TV Title which the announcers keep telling us it has been his dream to win (though we’ve never once heard Mark say that). You’d think that if Mark wanted that belt so much he would have gone Nigel and pointed this out said “can I please have a title shot” and Nigel would have been like “well blimey Mark! You’re right. Roderick Strong is doing this “Roddy vs. The World” open challenge gimmick where he defends the belt against anyone who wants a title shot, so I’ll make sure you get the next one!” Well… apparently that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe that’s where this singles winning streak is headed. That does seem logical, right?
Or, you know, Mark could just lose here in a completely pointless match. And not a good one, either. This was one of those matches that managed to simultaneously feel like nothing happened and also like the match was dragging.

Scarlett Bordeaux informs us that Nigel McGuinness has decreed that due to the earlier segment, tonight’s main event will now have all of the titles on the line.

MATT SYDAL, ALEX SHELLEY, & ACH vs. MICHAEL ELGIN & reDRagon- 8.5/10
Why has no one been talking about this match?! This was AWESOME!

SIX MAN MAYHEM: Frankie Kazarian vs. Adam Page vs. Will Ferrara vs. Silas Young vs. Caprice Coleman vs. Jay Briscoe- 7/10
At one point BJ Whitmer left the commentary table to attack Adam Page. Didn’t Steve Corino get suspended for this?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Jay Briscoe cuts a promo putting over Will Ferrara, telling him that his time was coming soon (I’m watching this in August and Ferrara has done absolutely nothing since then. Just like he has done for the past year). BJ Whitmer then decided to cut a promo trying to recruit the Briscoes into the Decade. Jay responded by flipping Whitmer off. Then Adam Page attacked Whitmer. Whitmer tried to bail, but Steve Corino came out from the back and tossed him back into the ring for Page to deal with. Isn’t Corino supposed to be suspended? If he isn’t, why was he doing commentary earlier as “Mr. Wrestling III” instead of as himself?
A fan brought a sign that read “someone please hit Whitmer with my sign” so they did that.

ADAM COLE vs. STEVIE RICHARDS- 6.5/10
Huh. They forgot to list this match on the back of the DVD. Mark Briscoe is now on commentary with Ian.
Both guys were wearing red tights with a gold design on the back, black kneepads, and black boots to go along with their long brown hair. I think this was intended as a rib on anyone watching. The match felt like it took a big wrong turn when they didn’t follow up on the story of Cole working the knee and just did random stuff until the finish. Cole snubbed Stevie on the post-match handshake.

ALL ROH TITLES ARE ON THE LINE: War Machine(c), Roderick Strong(c), & Jay Lethal(c) (w/Taeler Hendrix) vs. Bullet Club (w/Amber Gallows)- 7.5/10
Lethal is the world champion, Roddy is the TV champ and War Machine are the tag champs. Whoever gets the pin gets the belt of the person they pinned (and I guess Anderson & Gallows are automatically tag champs together and the Bucks are automatically tag champs together).
Mr. Wrestling III is back on commentary (dammit). Pretty much the first thing he does is tell us all that Anderson and Gallows are going to WWE, just to remind us that they’re not going to be winning tonight. He even proceeded to hammer this fact into the ground as the match progressed, just in case I had forgotten and maybe thought they had a chance to win. And of course he didn’t even say “WWE.” He said something like “a place where we don’t even want to…” and then trailed off, which made him sound completely moronic.

Bullet Club are theoretically babyfaces, as they always have been in ROH. Despite this, they were the first ones to cheat (a Jackson poked heel Jay Lethal in the eye). Soon after this, FOR NO REASON AT ALL, the theoretically babyface Jackson brother slid to the outside and superkicked the heel Jay Lethal’s valet. And if you thought this was intended to turn Lethal babyface then guess again because he responded to this not by going after the man who assaulted his valet, but by going after Amber Gallows, who had not only done nothing wrong, but it’s not like she’s even the Bucks’ valet. She’s out here because she is (again, theoretically babyface last time I checked) Doc Gallows’ wife. This is SOOOOO stupid. And after all of that crap they expect me to feel sorry for one of the Young Bucks as the babyface in peril. Sorry, guys. Not happening.

Also, why are we completely wasting any possible impact that a spot like this could have in the future when a storyline really needs it? (Oh. Yeah. Because the Young Bucks are involved. They did the same thing with Truth Martini at Road to Final Battle 2015. And also with Kevin Kelly last month at the TV tapings).
And of course the crowd pops for this because wrestling crowds in 2016 are only here to see random sh*t and not watch stories develop in the ring. And if you don’t believe me, just wait until the end of the year when people are chanting for an NXT jobber any time a referee counts a number.

From there the match became the wild bunch of spots you’d expect. Most of it was Young Bucks stuff, and the problem is that I’ve seen this same bunch of stuff so many times before in ROH main events recently. Even at the time this wasn’t new, as the Bucks had just main evented the shows the previous weekend in matches even less consequential than this one, including one match that was also an eight-man tag and which War Machine was on the opposite side of. In fact, of ROH’s last seven shows, random, meaningless Young Bucks tag team spotfests had been the main the main event of five of them (including facing War Machine in the aforementioned one and facing off against Lethal in two of the others). In fact, the two match-ups this match made me wish we had been able to get the most were Lethal vs. Anderson and War Machine vs. Anderson & Gallows. The other big strik against this match was that, despite the stipulations, none of the pinfalls (and there really weren’t many) ever felt important.

This was an entertaining show from ROH and there was some great action on it from the usual suspects, but as far as storylines go it was 100% filler, which is okay every once in a while, but at this point seven out of the last ten shows have felt that way, and the only thing that stopped it from being eight is that they split Survival of the Fittest up into two nights (the only things that mattered in any way to any storylines on the first match were the SOTF qualifiers). Pick it up if you want (especially for the six-man tag), but it’s not something that you in any way NEED to see.

BONUS MATCH: “The Bullet Babe” Amber Gallows vs. Veda Scott- 5.75/10
Amber is billed as being from “Heaven.” That doesn’t seem to jive with her Bullet Club persona. The match was mostly fine, although there were one or two spots that didn’t go as smoothly as I’m sure these two would have liked. Taeler Hendrix came out to ringside to watch the match, which resulted in nothing but the camera occasionally cutting to her, even when there was action going on in the ring.

AMBER GALLOWS PROMO- not good at all.

VEDA SCOTT CONFRONTS AMBER GALLOWS- Veda doesn’t like that Amber cheated, mostly because Veda didn’t think of it first. Veda then sucks up to Amber a bit, and they decide to form an alliance.