BRM Reviews the 1/28/2017 ROH

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING VIDEO- we got clips from the ROH World Title match at the Tokyo Dome interspersed with Cole cutting a promo. Unfortunately in this promo, Cole referred to that match as taking place “on the biggest stage in either of our careers,” which completely buries ROH. Look… I’m not trying to argue that was what Cole said wasn’t true. All I’m saying is that just because it’s true doesn’t mean that you should say it. Saying this made ROH look like a minor league compared to New Japan. We already have the problem of the New Japan top guys almost always going over the ROH guys. This doesn’t help.

WILL FERRARA & CHEESEBURGER vs. COAST TO COAST vs. THE TEMPURA BOYZ- 4.5/10
Only FerraraBurgers got their entrance shown, but the moment Bobby Cruise said that this was a three-way, I immediately knew who they would be facing out of a simple lack of faith in Delirious’ creativity. We saw this match two months ago on the show in Ft. Lauderdale and didn’t matter whatsoever, so why should I think it will mean anything now. It feels like none of these teams will go anywhere in ROH simply because it feels like no one is given the chance for any upward mobility.
Who is the last guy to come into the company and wind up above the level where he was at? There is Dalton Castle but he’s over because of his gimmick, not because of the booking, and the booking often feels like it is giving him wins because he is a babyface rather than because they are really trying to push him. Silas has been elevated a bit, except they’re never willing to give him a real win over a big name- even in a spot when they’re trying to build him for a title shot they still had him lose to Jay Lethal in Lockport even thought Jay was going to beat the ROH World Champion later that night in a match where the whole story was that Jay was at a disadvantage because he had wrestled for so long already.
ACH, Moose, Dijak, and Sydal, have all basically been at the same level they were brought in at. Page’s rise only feels like it happened because New Japan wanted it, and even then ROH has been booking him like sh*t. Jay White has been given a lot of wins but they haven’t done anything to make him feel like more than a typical micarder.
The point is that when I see guys like Coast To Coast or Will Ferrara, I should be wondering if they are going to be stars in a few years, but because of the way the company has been booked, instead I just get annoyed that they’re wasting TV time with filler matches.
And do you want to know what doesn’t help that at all? When Kevin Kelly spends the whole time talking about the f*cking Young Bucks. He says that many teams are “hot on their trail,” especially the Hardys. Then the Young Bucks came out, and after a commercial break, they were on commentary. After that quick establishing shot of them sitting there at the announcers’ table with Kevin Kelly, we cut back to the match for a few seconds, then cut back to commentary for TEN WHOLE SECONDS of the Young Bucks and Kevin Kelly just sitting there and talking. Meanwhile THERE’S A F*CKING WRESTLING MATCH GOING ON IN THE RING!
In his discussion with the Young Bucks, Kevin uses THE EXACT SAME VERBIAGE when talking about how teams are “hot on their trail.” Dude. You’re a professional television announcer. CHANGE IT UP. The Bucks put this match over a being “great” in a way that you know that they’re really not, and they suggest that whoever wins this match between three jobber teams should become the #1 contenders. Kevin Kelly replies to this by saying, “Looks like we have a deal.”
A few things here:
1. Doesn’t this title match to be approved by ROH management?
2. The Bucks are clearly just trying to set themselves up with unworthy challenger whom they can easily defeat. This is patently obvious to everyone other than Kevin Kelly. He is the f*cking babyface announcer, and here is getting duped by the most obvious heel ploy there is.
Anyway, now that this is apparently a #1 contendership match, I’m sure you won’t be shocked to hear that Kevin Kelly went right back to ignoring it so he could talk about the Hardys vs. The Bucks.

These guys did a lot of stuff in the short time they got. The Tempura Boyz won to earn the title shot. Look… if you’re going to do this stupid gimmick with a pointless title defense against jobbers, you might as well do it with the jobber people actually give a sh*t about (i.e. Cheeseburger).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
The Bucks come out to the ring to give the Tempura Boyz the news. They have a second set of titles with them that they did not identify but specified would not be on the line. The Tempura Boyz celebrate but get Superkicked. The way this was done made it feel like they turned around just so they could turn back around and get superkicked. On commentary, Kevin Kelly responded to this by saying “why am I not surprised” in a mildly disapproving tone. You know… because that’s definitely how a babyface announcer should react when heels cheapshot two guys who just got done wrestling a match.

THE YOUNG BUCKS BRING OUT ADAM COLE TO CUT A PROMO- okay.
To be honest, this makes me even more annoyed about this whole thing. There is a well-established tradition in ROH that the first show with a new ROH World Champion starts off with that champion being interviewed. If you want Cole and the Bucks to come out, just start the show that way. Don’t waste time with a pointless match that will lead to an even more pointless title match. They just wasted OVER TEN MINUTES OF A ONE-HOUR SHOW. If you want to do Bucks vs. Tempura Boyz then just book it as a non-title match or an open challenge or something.
Cole’s promo was pretty good. He ran down the people in title contention right now, which he listed as Castle (who pinned him during Champions vs. All-Stars), Fish (who won SOTF), Lethal, and Briscoe (who face off in tonight’s Decade of Excellence Tournament Semi-final) and said he could beat them all. Kevin Kelly was quick to point out that Cole neglected to mention the man the winner of the Briscoe-Lethal match will face in tournament finals: Christopher Daniels. That fees like it is really telegraphing the finish of the tournament, but in this case I’m almost relieved because Daniels is by far the right choice to get this title shot.

JUICE ROBINSON VIDEO PACKAGE- this short clip of him hitting some moves in Japan was more work than they have put into building up Lio Rush, Jonathan Gresham, and Donovan Dijak combined.

ROH TV TITLE MATCH: Marty Scurll(c) vs. Juice Robinson- 6.5/10
Alex Shelley is on commentary.
Aren’t ROH and New Japan supposed to be working together? Because a guy headed to a title shot in New Japan doing a job in ROH doesn’t seem to benefit New Japan very much. And, to be honest, this didn’t even benefit ROH, either. It was a random title match with no hype between one star and one nobody where everyone knew the outcome the moment the match was announced.
The match was fine, but I thought Marty should have been more dominant (especially considering the promo he was about to cut). Also, what the hell was the point of that spot where babyface Juice Robinson tried to use the ropes for illegal leverage?

MARTY SCURLL PROMO- GREAT!
He says that he has been disappointed with the level of competition here in ROH. Considering that his opponents have gotten in at least as much offense as he has (if not more), I’ll have to disagree. I know he’s a heel, but for something like this I’d rather not compromise his integrity quite yet- especially if he is a guy you want to make into a star. He definitely should have been more dominant here.
Anyway, Marty makes an open challenge. The fans in Atlanta are all chanting for Cody… who is a heel. Instead, they got Chris Sabin plus all of MCMG’s young protégés, whose ranks have now expanded to also include Jonathan Gresham. This is WAY too many people. They really should have kept it to just Jay White (which would have made twice as much sense because he had already been teaming with them against The Addiction and Kamaitachi and helping their feud against the Bucks. Speaking of which, with all of the house shows ROH ran, how did we not get a three-way trios match out of this?)

We get a run-down of the cards for next weekend’s shows in Texas. On the one hand I like this, as it will hopefully help sell more tickets in Texas. On the other hand, it annoys me that this wasn’t done sooner, to sell more tickets, and that something similar wasn’t done for the shows the weekend after that. Also, I got quite annoyed at the Bucks vs. Briscoes title match, which is apparently now a 2-out-of-3 Falls Gimmick match. So let me get this straight: The Bucks beat the Brsicoes cleanly at Final Battle to retain their titles. Since then, the Briscoes have won a grand total of ZERO matches as a team (and I don’t think Mark has even won a singles match, either), and yet for some reason they are now being given another title shot but with a bunch of stips? COME ON! You might as well just call the show “ROH Impact.”

KEVIN KELLY INTERIEWS THE ENTIRE MCMG TEAM- didn’t like it.
There are too many guys here. Jay White can barely get his face on camera, and Gresham is constantly being blocked by Kevin Kelly and Sabin. Only Sabin got to talk, which makes the young guys all look like they’re just MCMG’s lackeys. He also kept calling Scurll “Martin Skull.” I guess he was trying to be funny but it came off really stupid.
Sabin said that they want to fight each other next week for a title shot. He used the “iron sharpens iron” line that WWE was putting in every video package last month, which makes ROH look second-rate.

LETHAL & BRISCOE SPLICED PROMO- terrible. Literally all they both said was “My return to the world championship. The Decade of Excellence continues tonight.” Not only was it annoying to hear one guy say a few words and then the other guy repeat those few words back and forth, but giving them the exact same verbiage made the whole thing look completely staged. This wasn’t two guys telling us why they wanted to win a wrestling match; it was two guys reading from the script the company gave them. This was made even worse by the fact that they really didn’t say anything. Plus, we get much better promos from each guy building to this match both last week and in inset promos as they came down to the ring. It was essentially a waste of time that could have been used to show us more of the match.

DECADE OF EXCELLENCE TOURNAMENT SEMI-FINAL MATCH: Jay Lethal vs. Jay Briscoe- 6/10
Kazarian was on commentary for this match. Right before we went to a commercial break, Adam Cole came out to watch. When we came back from the commercial, Cole was also doing commentary. You know… the same exact thing that happened in the opener.
Briscoe went to shout at Cole at one point. Where couldn’t hear what he said too clearly, but Kazarian was nice enough to translate for us, saying “I believe he called you a ‘little bitch.” Now, if you’ve been forced to listen to the atrocious commentary that Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino have been providing ROH at any point in the past few years, you’ve doubtlessly heard them scream and yell and make a huge deal out of wrestlers supposedly getting fined for using foul language, even on PPV or house shows where there are no FCC restrictions. As stupid as this is because it never leads to anything and makes the company look lame, it was even more frustrating because in 99% of cases, we listen at home could never in hear the word in question. Well this time Frankie Kazarian said “bitch” loudly and clearly INTO THE MICROPHONE ON BROADCAST TELEVISION… AND KEVIN KELLY DIDN’T SAY A F*CKING THING! Just when I thought there was no possible way for ROH commentary to annoy me any more than it already does, they found a way.
The whole point of Cole coming out on commentary was so he could bicker with Kaz and say Daniels was a non-factor, which, again, basically telegraphs the outcome of the tournament… which makes the outcome of this semi-final match feel completely meaningless.
You know what else makes this match not feel important? When Kevin Kelly stops paying attention to the match in order to ask Adam Cole his “thoughts on the fans in both San Antonio and Dallas.” WHAT KIND OF STUPID F*CKING QUESTION IS THIS?! This is Kevin Kelly, the world’s least cool wrestling announcer, who is constantly admonishing wrestlers for any little insult they throw, and who usually responds to someone insulting the fans with an outraged “you can’t say that about our fans! They pay their hard-earned money to see Ring of Honor live, and without them we wouldn’t be here!” or some equally clichéd variant thereof… asked the top heel in the company “what do you think about the fans?” WHAT DID HE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?!
As for the match itself… the first two thirds or so were all Briscoe. They bonked heads in the beginning and Briscoe came out the better for it, then he spent the rest of the time working over Lethal’s head, including an early Jay-Driller. When we went to our second commercial break, Briscoe had Lethal securely locked in a headlock. When we got back from commercial, everything was equal again and no mention was made of it. It was just so weird not having anyone even mention this, never mind tell or show us what happened to turn things around. This is the type of problem that would be solved by inserting backstage promos or video packages into the show and then showing more of each match to stretch each taping out into an extra episode. Or, you know, DON’T WASTE TIME WITH POINTLESS MATCHES IN THE BEGINNING!


A frustrating show from ROH. It kind of just hit me today, but this is now the third or fourth or possibly even fifth episode of new TV since Final Battle… and with the exception of the Decade of Excellence Tournament it doesn’t feel like there is ANYTHING going on in this company. They’re not building up challengers for the Bucks, the New Kingdom and Scurll are basically defending their belts against random people who haven’t done anything to earn these shows (meanwhile there is no talk of Fish getting his rematch, or Ospreay, or of Mark Briscoe getting a title shot for pinning Fish at Champions vs. All-Stars), and all of the talk of the world title shots due to Fish and Castle feels like it’s coming from Cole. This is not how you book a wrestling company.