ADAM PAGE vs. MATT SELLS- DUD!
Mark Briscoe will be doing color commentary with Kevin Kelly for this episode. Despite them telling us this less than a minute before, they felt the need to cut to the announcers’ table to show us these two guys sitting there MULTIPLE TIMES, IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS MATCH. To make matters worse, Kevin Kelly decided that because he and Mark were now the focus of the camera, he had to do the whole “hi, I’m Kevin Kelly and I’m joined by my good friend Mark Briscoe” spiel all over again, so not only is the camera ignoring the match, but even the f*cking getting paid to call the match are ignoring it. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING! This is the sort of sh*t that even the worst, sh*ttiest little indy promotion gets right, and the reason that they get it right is because in order to get it wrong you have to go so far out of your way to do something so counter-intuitive that it simply wouldn’t occur to most people. WHAT THE F*CK HAS THIS PROMOTION COME TO?!
Mark, of course, was sitting here calling the match as if Adam Page hadn’t tried to murder his brother last year.
Then it got even worse, as Kevin Kelly started to channel Mike Tenay, saying the following about Adam Page: “We saw him return last week after the decisions was rendered: a victory for the Young Bucks.” Repeat after me, Kevin: “He returned last week after the Young Bucks’ victory.” Why is it becoming so hard for Kevin Kelly to SPEAK LIKE A NORMAL F*CKING PERSON!
At this point it is really starting to feel like ROH is purposely doing all of the sh*t that TNA has spent the past decade doing wrong, and I am completely baffled as to how this was allowed to happen and why it hasn’t been changed. They do realize how close TNA has come to going out of business, right? And that the names “TNA” and “Impact” are used by wrestling fans as synonyms for “makes bad decisions?”
The reason I gave this match a DUD was because it was a frustrating waste of time. More on that in a moment.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- HATED IT!
Page picked up his noose and picked up Sells. Then the Bucks came out and hit Sells with a double superkick. Then Cole and Cody came out because they had to have their own entrance. Cody is supposed to be a heel, but since he is calling himself “The American Nightmare” he still felt it was necessary to put an American flag on his jacket. Can we please at least f*cking TRY to be heels?
Kevin Kelly posits that the Briscoes will be looking to win the tag titles from the Young Bucks, but notes that they will likely have to compete with an entire army of Bullet Club guys. Well then why doesn’t ROH management just book a cage match to keep out the interference?
Cody decides to turn heel on the crowd, but does so by calling them “a wretched hive of scum and villainy” which, of course, got a pop for the Star Wars reference. Well… at least he’s trying to be heel. Cody then calls out Jay Lethal. Cody says “they call him ‘the gatekeeper to Ring of Honor.’” I have no memory of anyone ever calling Jay Lethal this. Or anyone for that matter.
Lethal comes out but isn’t going to step in the ring when he’s outnumbered five to one. Cody eventually goads him into it and he gets beaten down. Bobby Fish comes out to make the save but he gets beaten down, too. Then Jay White, Lio Rush, and Alex Shelley came out to brawl away with Page and the Young Bucks, and when we get back from a commercial break Tod Sinclair shows up and orders tonight’s scheduled main event to start right now.
This segment is a perfect example of a lot of the issues with the ROH TV show:
1. The Page vs. Sells match was absolutely pointless. Squashing a jobber isn’t going to do sh*t for Adam Page at this point in his ROH career. It hasn’t even been six months since he beat Jay freakin’ Briscoe in a No DQs match on PPV. No one is going to be impressed by him beating some perennial loser who we have been given no reason to care about. If you’re using the squash to help tell a story (like showing us someone adopting a more vicious attitude by having them utterly destroying a jobber) then that’s fine, but that’s not what this was. This was just a pointless squash match. All it did was waste some TV time and cost ROH some extra money because now they’ve got to pay Matt Sells.
Well, actually, I guess it did technically do one other thing: It set up a guy for the Young Bucks to superkick, which brings me to….
2. The Young Bucks are supposed to be heels. You know that superkicking Sells will get a big babyface pop, so why would you do it? Same with letting Cody talk. He can try to be a heel all he wants, but the fact of the matter is that he is a hometown guy whose father was an all-time legend who spent a lot of time as a top babyface in this part of the country, and a whole lot of fans have an extra level of respect for him for the way he decided that he was sick and tired of the way WWE was treating him and decided to leave. He’s going to get cheered no matter what (even when he insulted the city the fans just started chanting “DUSTY!”) If you want him to explain why he is a heel now, do it in a backstage promo.
3. White, Rush, and Shelley coming out to make the save felt very inorganic. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad they finally did something with Bullet Club, seeing as how Sabin and Shelley kept saying they were looking for guys to help them counteract Bullet Club’s numbers advantage and yet they seem to be feuding with every group of people Bullet Club. The problem is that they’re a stable of six dudes and only three of them came out, despite both Lethal and Fish being down so they were basically purposely leaving half of their army behind and putting themselves at a numbers disadvantage even though the entire point of forming the army was to avoid having to be at a numbers disadvantage. This was made even worse when the three babyfaces immediately brawled away with the three members of Bullet Club who weren’t scheduled to wrestle the guys they came out here to save, and wouldn’t you know it this resulted in the scheduled match just taking place early. It felt completely forced.
4. Perhaps most importantly, what did this segment actually accomplish?
It let Cody cut a promo on Lethal? He could have done that backstage. The beatdown got some heat for Lethal’s feud with Cody? There should already be heat, as this is the first time they’ve been in the same place at the same time since Cody kicked Lethal in the nuts and cheated him out of a win at Final Battle. If you think it’s been too long since then and that the heat will have evaporated well whose fault it that? ROH had both of these guys in the building for the post-Final Battle TV tapings and chose not to try to further that angle along in any way. It let Bullet Club get some beats in on Cody and Fish? So what? We all know that won’t matter past the end of this match, so what we’ve gotten out of this segment is nothing. Absolutely nothing… and in the process we’ve both spend some unnecessary money and also wasted almost a quarter of our show.
ROH advertises themselves as “the best wrestling on the planet,” not “the best talking on the planet” so why are we wasting time with pointless talking and pointless squash matches? Just announce the match, then let them wrestle! This is Ring of Honor! Cole & Cody vs. Lethal & Fish would probably be pretty darn awesome if it had gotten twenty-three minutes instead of the mere thirteen it was given but instead we got the most mediocre “main event” match on the planet.
JAY LETHAL & BOBBY FISH vs. BULLET CLUB (Adam Cole & Cody Rhodes)- 7/10
Kevin Kelly offhandedly mentioned that Jay White and Lio Rush “have a tag title shot in their back pocket,” at which point I started screaming about the fact that they haven’t won a single match together as a team. Once I calmed down I made the conscious decisions to shut the sound off. I am noting this to once again point out my extreme frustration with this company’s booking and Kevin Kelly’s obnoxious mode of announcing. I should not be feeling this way about a product that I own or have scene literally every single show in their first fifteen years of existence.
Fish makes Cole tap to build up to Manhattan Mayhem IV. Cody and Lethal brawl away after the match.
Because our scheduled main event just took place, our new main event will be… The Rebellion vs. Dalton Castle & the Boys. Yeah. Because the Boys being in a main event is definitely better than two top babyaces against the two top singles heels in the company, going to a clean finish in which the heel world champion’s next challenger makes him tap out clean in the middle of the ring.
DALTON CASTLE PROMO- pointless. The Boys are in the main event. We get it.
KEVIN KELLY INTERVIEWS MARK BRISCOE- terrible.
Kevin Kelly notes Mark’s brother Jay is the in the finals of the Decade of Excellence Tournament next week and if he wins he’ll get a shot at the ROH World Title. Kevin Kelly now asks Mark “what’s going through your brother’s mind?” If you want to know what JAY is thinking, why aren’t you interviewing JAY?!
Mark responds by noting that every time Jay has lost the world title, he has gone crazy… which isn’t true. It only happened once. The last time he lost the world title he was completely normal.
KAZARIAN PROMO- Apparently they did the same dumb thing here, asking Kaz how Daniels is feeling about that match rather than asking Daniels. Kaz pushes that this is Daniels’ last chance to win the title because he’s getting so old.
MARK BRISCOE vs. SAL RINAURO- 1/10
Yet another completely pointless, short match whose outcome was never in doubt. Here’s a thought: You need something for Mark Briscoe to do while Jay is off being a singles main eventer? Mark pinned ROH TV Champion Bobby Fish (when Fish was still the champion) back at Glory By Honor XV: Champions vs. All-Stars. Meanwhile, you’ve got Marty Scurll on this set of tapings defending his title against Juice Robinson, a man who has done absolutely nothing to earn a shot at this title, which by the way, is a title the announcers are always telling us Mark says it is his dream to win (although I don’t think Mark himself has ever said this once, which is its own set of problems that I’m not going to go into right now lest I explode with rage). How about instead of brining in a guy was a jobber eight years ago to lose to Mark and having Scurll defend his title against a completely undeserving challenger whose entirely career has been spent being just one step above jobber level in both WWE developmental and New Japan, we give Marty Scurll a good, strong win against an ROH legend who has actually done something to earn the title shot? Is that really too much to ask?
BOBBY FISH VIDEO PACKAGE- meh
He says that the TV Title became a “world” title while was champion, but wasn’t Roddy the first guy to defend it overseas?
DALTON CASTLE PROMO- he wants to win the six man tag team titles with the Boys so they need to win tonight.
THE REBELLION vs. DALTON CASTLE & THE BOYS- 6.25/10
Silas Young & the Beer City Bruiser are on commentary. It’s been months now and they STILL haven’t found a third partner. Right before we went to a commercial Colt Cabana showed up with a six-pack of beer and apparently used it to bribe the Beer City Bruiser into giving him his seat at the commentary table. Like in the main event, they kept cutting away from the match to show us irrelevant sh*t: in this case the Beer City Bruiser sitting at ringside drinking his beer, including a f*cking close-up of the beer can.
The Rebellion win, which apparently earns them a title shot. This was a passable eight minute opener between two undercard teams that ROH put in the f*cking main event spot for absolutely no reason.
Hidden text.
An extremely frustrating episode of ROH. I am honestly considering giving up on the ROH TV show. Someone who has spent as much time and money on a promotion as I have on ROH should not be feeling this way, and certainly not so quickly after the excellent series of shows they put on to close out last year.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly claims that Cody “dominated” in his match at Wrestle Kingdom.
I guess having an even, competitive nine and a half minute match with someone is “dominating” them in Kevin Kelly’s mind. Then again, I shouldn’t really be surprised, seeing as how Kevin kept insisting to us that Lio Rush “took Jay Lethal to the limit” in a twenty minute match despite the fact that we had seen Lethal got a full hour with Roddy in the main event of one of the biggest shows of the year the previous year.
2. Kevin Kelly (about the Boys)- “they don’t speak and they don’t have names.”
Actually they do have names, which Silas Young revealed during his feud with Dalton Castle. By why let a little thing like continuity stop us from saying something completely irrelevant? (You know… other than the fact that that’s what a competent announcer would do.)