Dalton Castle and Ian Riccaboni are on commentary.
ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Kingdom(c) vs. The Rebellion- no rating, idiotic segment.
Rhett Titus hurt his leg early on so he tagged out to Caprice Coleman while TK O’Ryan tagged out to Vinny Marseglia. These two immediately proceeded to engage in comedy that started out almost acceptable but then devolved from there. IT’S A F*CKING TITLE MATCH! These are by far the two most annoying men in the company, and both should be fired immediately.
Thankfully they soon tagged out to the members of their respective teams who I actually want to see (Kenny King and Matt Taven) and then things got good… for about a minute before they each tagged back out to Rhett and O’Ryan respectively.
Rhett’s knee seemed fine for a bit but then totally collapsed. They played this up like it was a shoot (although if it was a shoot I would hope that Taven wouldn’t have been dumb enough to actually pull Rhett away from the ropes by the leg) with Rhett selling it really well. We went to a commercial break, and when we came back Rhett had been carried to the back and The Rebellion were now down three-on-two. They played the babyface role well and The Kingdom were good heels. They isolated Caprice and took Kenny out on the outside… but then Lio Rush came out and apparently he was just allowed to jump into this match to replace Rhett. How f*cking stupid is that?! If you’re allowed to do this then why don’t guys in stables do it in every tag team match when their guy is being worked over?
Lio has, of course, been feuding with The Rebellion in an angle where they have supposedly been trying to recruit him by beating up him and his friends, but we’re totally supposed to believe that he might join them because they tried to help him once recently, and everyone is just supposed to forget about them assaulting him and his buddies.
Apparently this is okay (though both announcers questioned it, so at least they’re not total morons) so Lio comes in and starts to run wild on the Kingdom. Then he tags Kenny King in and immediately turns on him. All this did was make Lio, a babyface going into a title shot on PPV in a story where he is the lovable underdog, look like an asshole.
So yeah. In order to get across the idea that Lio doesn’t want to join the Rebellion we:
1) Booked a title match in which we gave a title shot to a team that hasn’t even won two matches in a row, and their most recent win came against Dalton Castle and The Boys, so that devalues the titles (especially when there is a team in MCMG & Jay White who should be owed a title shot because they got screwed out of the belts when The Kingdom got themselves purposely DQed in a title match at Honor Reigns Supreme just a week before this was taped and they’re not getting a title shot- and still haven’t even had one announced as I sit here and type this seven weeks later).
2) Made our babyface look like an asshole for tricking the guys who were already down three-on-two into thinking he was going to help them before betraying them. (If Lio doesn’t want to join them why not have him JUST SAY SO IN A F*CKING PROMO, like a babyface would?).
3) And in order to make that sh*tty idea work we booked a segment that completely sh*ts on the rules of pro wrestling.
BREAKING NEWS!
I have just received an envelope in the mail from an anonymous source claiming that it contains a picture of Delirious without his mask on!:
Hidden text.
JAY WHITE PROMO- he points out that he has been in the company for eight months and is still undefeated, so what does he ask ROH management for? Is it a title shot of some kind? Of course not. He wants a rematch with a guy he went to a TV time limit draw with six months ago. Hooray for Delirious booking, where the results of the matches don’t matter and are barely mentioned until half a year later when he finally gets around to booking a return match, at which point everyone has already forgotten when happened (and yes, I can give you copious examples of this).
I’ve been begging for us to get some backstage promos to build up storylines, and now that I finally get one they find a way to make it stupid.
JAY BRISCOE PROMO- awesome
IT IS ANNOUNCED THAT DALTON CASTLE & THE BOYS WILL CHALLENGE FOR THE ROH SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLES AT THE 15th ANNIVERSARY SHOW- Yeah. These losers are getting a rematch for a title shot they got screwed out of… but it’s also one they never earned, so I really don’t give a crap. Then Dalton cut an absolutely WRETCHED promo where he was a total goofball, and not even in the usually Dalton Castle way. He just said random sh*t and wound up talking about getting Rabies and called The Kingdom both “dingleberries” and “fart-eaters.” Thankfully he was replaced on commentary by “Brutal” Bob Evans because it was time for the…
TOP PROSPECT TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: “Kingpin” Brian Malonis vs. Raphael King (w/Devyn Nicole)- 0.25/10
Both guys got to cut in-set promos before the match. Malonis’ was generic and EXTREMELY boring. King’s was actually good, which made me angry because I’ve heard that he is a regular member of P-Dawg’s Get-Along-Gang, which means that there are f*cking moron bookers out there who have been given the choice between letting this guy talk and letting P-Dawg talk and they chose P-Dawg.
Malonis is terrible. He’s a big fat dude (395 lbs, and very little of it appears to be muscle) with no charisma of any kind whatsoever (King blew him away in that department). You’d think that with the size difference between these two (Malonis made King look tiny and King weighs 244 lbs) they might try to build the match around that but no. They just traded punches in the beginning like there was no size difference at all, and the one time King tried to lift Malonis up (for a Rock Bottom) he had no problem. I had kind of assumed that King was supposed to be the babyface just because of the size difference and because he was the guy doing the dropkicks but apparently not because his wife made a point of interfering to slap Malonis in the face. Malonis did some big “I’m going to crush you with my weight” spots that didn’t look good at all, and won with a terrible senton. He didn’t even jump up. He just fell backwards! This result just goes to prove that ROH no longer has an eye for talent. What they have an eye for is money that you pay them by coming to their tryout camps as often as possible- especially if you’re one of Brutal Bob’s old-ass buddies.
Next week we’ll see War Machine vs. Whitmer & Martinez in a No Disqualifications Match in a feud that has been so irrelevant that I completely forgot it was happening.
THE BRISCOES, JAY LETHAL, & BOBBY FISH vs. BULLET CLUB (Adam Cole, Cody Rhodes, & the Young Bucks)- 7.5/10
Lots of action here, as you would expect. Fish and Lethal got into a fight and brawled to the back because they’re having a match on the PPV and apparently just the fact that it’s two of the best wrestlers in the company facing off against each other isn’t enough so we’ve got to do a stupid angle like this which hurts a TV main event. The Briscoes did their best to fight on despite the numbers disadvantage but Bullet Club won.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- terrible
Christopher Daniels got into the ring to have a face-off with Cole. Cole started a fight which ended with Daniels laying him out with the Angel’s Wings. Daniels then got a pair of scissors and some electric clippers and was going to shave Cole’s head, apparently just to be a dick. Cole fought back but Daniels laid him out with another Angel’s Wings, then went and got the barber’s tools again. That was kind of pointless.
Daniels shouts in Cole’s face that he is going to “shave your head and take your title.” Kazarian came out so now Cole is down two-on-one. Where the hell is the rest of Bullet Club?
Well… it turns out one of them was in the ring because when Daniels went to get the barber’s tools (again!) Kaz took off his jacket to reveal that he was wearing a Bullet Club shirt. Welcome to Russo of Honor.
Daniels yells at Kaz and demands to know why Kaz has left him to join Bullet Club. Then the Bucks came back and Superkicked Daniels while Cody and Page watched from the ramp. Then the NWO celebrated with their new midcarder. Cole cut a brief promo on Daniels.
I’m all for Kaz turning on Daniels (hell, I’ve been calling for it since they lost the tag titles last fall), but it should have happened AFTER the PPV, and it certainly shouldn’t have been to become YET ANOTHER member of Bullet Club. But apparently this had to happen, so we had to contrive this whole stupid set-up for it that, quite frankly, also makes no sense. Why would Daniels’ want to shave Cole’s head? Nothing had been built in this direction AT ALL, and because I doubt they’ll be having a match with Adam Cole’s hair on the line, nothing will come of it, either, so why do it?
Those were my original thoughts on this angle. Having seen how things played out at the PPV I will grant them that it did make sense in hindsight, but if I were booking this I definitely would not have done any of this. Not doing it not only avoids people having the initial negative reaction that I did but it also avoids any sort of overbooking at the PPV, plus all of the bad booking required to set this up (i.e. Daniels losing cleanly to Cole in a tag match right before the PPV). The less time you spend on convoluted storylines that ultimately don’t matter (which is what this whole thing was because it would have been just as easy to not do any of this and just have Daniels win without any overbooking at the PPV), the more time you have to showcase your wrestling, which is what ROH has been built on, and what it needs to be built on if it is going to succeed. Becoming WWE-lite did nothing for TNA, and it won’t do anything for ROH, either.
This was a terrible episode of ROH, even with the great main event. And that’s with me being nice because I could easily have given the first two matches DUDs if I wasn’t in such a nice mood. ROH got lucky that I didn’t vote it as the worst TV show last year, but now that I have forever given up on Impact, ROH is heading in that direction. They can’t rely on Raw being sh*t all year.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Dalton Castle “I like to watch some men lock up fisticuffs.”
I guess Dalton doesn’t know what “fisticuffs” means.
2. Ian Riccaboni (AFTER Lio Rush turned on The Rebellion)- “we don’t know the standing between Lio Rush and The Rebellion.”
Don’t know the standing? Are you mentally deficient? They’ve never been friends before and LIO RUSH JUST ATTACKED THEM! If you can’t use that information to puzzle out that they’re enemies then how the hell did you even get hired?