BRM Reviews the 8/27/2021 ROH (bad)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 8/27/2021 ROH (bad)

Post by Big Red Machine » Sep 8th, '21, 18:07

ANGELINA LOVE PROMO- good
I loved that she was proud to admit that her ego was gigantic. That’s some good heel stuff right there.

ROH WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Angelina Love vs. Max The Impaler (w/Amy Rose)- no rating, bad segment
Lenny Leonard joined Ian and Caprice on commentary for this match.
This whole angle feels like Max should be a babyface, except that they’ve got the completely despicable Amy Rose as their manager for some reason or another. Has Amy Rose ever done anything in ROH where she didn’t feel completely shoe-horned in?
I rated this as a segment because the wrestlers did a good job playing the roles they were booked to play, but the whole idea of this was total foolishness. Max pretty much squashed Angelina, but then decided to be a dummy and not break a sleeper hold in the ropes (even after the referee was a dummy and counted to four and then stopped counting to trying to pull them off instead of just calling for the bell, and then restarted the count at one after that). So basically, Angelina has advanced to the finals cleanly even though she clearly was not better wrestler because her opponent is an idiot. This has that horrible smell of “well, this way Max doesn’t have to do a job in the tournament” on it, to which I say, if you didn’t want Max to have to do a job, either have them win it or don’t book them in the tournament in the first place. But even if you HAD to do some sort of finish like this, why not let Angelina look smart by having her bait Max out of the ring and then do something dastardly on the outside so she can win by count-out? At least that way Angelina looks shrewd instead of looking like a loser, and Max merely looks inexperienced instead of looking like an idiot!

ALLYSIN KAY PROMO- good
She kept it concise, setting the stage for us as “lariat vs. lariat,” so that we know what to watch out for.

TRISH ADORA PROMO- fine

ROH WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Allysin Kay vs. Trish Adora- 6/10
Chelsea Green replaced Caprice on commentary for this match. Instead of the promised “lariat vs. lariat,” we got these two working over each other’s arms to try to neutralize the opponent’s lariat. Adora won, which I like. I think that in ROH’s position, you need your women’s division to feel like it’s mostly new blood, and Kay has been on TV in TNA for far too long to feel fresh.

ELI ISOM PROMO- meh
I always hate it when someone pulls some sort of big emotional thing (in this case a promise he made to his family) out of their ass and gets all emotional about it. If you want this sort of thing to feel genuine, it can’t only be mentioned for the first time right before the big match.

DRAGON LEE PROMO- okay

ROH WORLD TV TITLE MATCH: Dragon Lee(c) vs. Eli Isom- 5.75/10
Dalton Castle, Ian Riccaboni, and Caprice Coleman were your commentary team for this match. You can add Isom to the list of people who have gone out and gotten themselves an entrance mask.
Maybe this would have worked for me with a crowd, but once you overdo the “fighting spirit out of a German Suplex” spot, everything you do to me that leans in that direction (like kicking out at one) feels like you’re trying to do things to earn snowflakes rather than trying to win a match. Isom is good, but he’s still an undercard guy, and this felt like him trying to have a main eventers match by taking main-vent shortcuts when he’s an undercard jamoke. To me, if you don’t get to do that kind of fighting spirit spot unless we’ve seen you able to go out there and be the babyface who fights back through twenty minutes of punishment, and we’ve never seen Isom do that. Those fighting spirit spots are for guys on making the big just, and Isom is not even close to being there yet.
You can say that I’m being unfair, and I’m open to that idea, but contemporary art is evaluated within the zeitgeist of the time, and within my own- lacking a better term- “personal zeitgeist,” the well from which these two were drawing water has been pretty thoroughly poisoned.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Dragon Lee was a total babyface. They seem to be building towards a turn with him. Isom was very disappointed with his loss.


A bad episode of ROH. We march towards our next big weekend with a completely unspectacular women’s tournament and what feels like a mostly directionless male side of the roster.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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