BRM Reviews ROH Road to Best in the World 2017

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews ROH Road to Best in the World 2017

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 20th, '21, 23:47

ROH Road to Best in the World 2017 (6/3/2017)- Chicago, IL


Ian Riccaboni, Colt Cabana, and Alex Shelley were on commentary.

OPENING SEGMENT- TERRIBLE!
Caprice Coleman came out doing dumb comedy. We got a short promo from Lethal saying he would knock Caprice out, and then said he’d do the same to Silas Young at Best in the World.
Caprice continued being a clown while cutting a promo in which he asked Lethal “what storyline are you in?” and said that ROH “has done nothing with” Lethal since he lost the belt. Having now rubbed in our faces that this is all fake, they want us to care about a match.
This was part of a pitch to get Lethal to The Rebellion, which he promptly turned down, because he’s not a clown. Caprice finally cut a decent promo on Lethal, but no one cared at this point. Caprice was a clown, and Colt’s commentary was amplifying the goofiness to the point that it was unbearable.

JAY LETHAL vs. CAPRICE COLEMAN- 6.75/10
Lethal won clean in a very good opener. We know Lethal is great, but Caprice also looked great here, which just got me annoyed at how his talent was being wasted.

BULLY RAY PROMO- terrible
Ah yes, the Bully Ray Special. Bully had been in ROH for a few months at this point, and what he would do before every match was say something to the effect of “these people don’t want to see a wrestling match. They want to see a street fight.” And the fans, being stupid sheep, all cheered along because “WEAPONS! YAY!” The fact that this f*cker had to make sure that every match he was in a was a weapons match, even if he was second on the card against a good worker, should have been a sign to any halfway-decent booker that he wasn’t working out in the company known for its technical wrestling, but when you’re a lizard-brained moron, you bring him back for years until he forces his own firing by bring a fan backstage to intimidate him when the fan said something he didn’t like to his heel girlfriend.

STREET FIGHT: Bully Ray vs. Matt Taven (w/Vinny Marseglia)- -3/10 (yup, negative… and for a match that didn’t have any botches, too)
Bully turns around to encourage the fans to chant for a weapons match… at which point Taven charges in and hits him in the back of the head with his staff he had been carrying around. I laughed my ass off at that.
Taven hit Bully with stuff until Bully made his comeback. I guess this stopped being a Street Fight at some point, because not only did Marseglia not just run in, but when he did try to get involved, it was by hopping up onto the apron to distract the referee and allow Taven to punch Bully in the nuts.
Taven got Bully’s chain and choked him with it. Referee Paul Turner tried to stop him… but it’s a no DQs match. If Turner thinks Bully is in danger of suffering a serious injury, he should call for the bell and declare Tavent to be the winner via referee’s stoppage. We then had Taven distracting the referee while Vinny choked Bully on the ropes. Vinny is willing to be dishonorable and interfere, why didn’t he just run in the moment the bell rang? This is so dumb! Colt even pointed that out on commentary.
Taven and Vinny choked Bully so much I was worried this had become a 2019 Taichi match. Bully kicked out of Just The Tip (of course). Taven then dumped him to the outside so that Vinny could punch him… while Taven needlessly distracted the referee.
The match had already gone on too long by the time Bully started to make his comeback. During said comeback, they did a spot where THE REFEREE HAPPILY HELPED BULLY HOLD TAVEN’S LEGS OPEN TO SET UP FOR THE WHAZZUP. THIS SHOULD NEVER, EVER HAPPEN. Imagine a referee running a pick in a basketball game. That referee would never work again. That’s what this was.
Vinny, of course, chose this moment to climb up onto the top rope, so that Bully could make him like an ineffectual goof by throwing him off the top rope into Taven’s nuts to hit the WHAZZUP. Bully went to get a table, but got cut off… just so he could get one more spot in where he made both heels look stupid before he put Taven through a table and pinned him with one of the lightest covers I’ve ever seen. An up-and-coming home-grown star was jobbed out to an old, fat piece of sh*t who couldn’t work the style the company is known for if his livelihood depended on it… which it should have, but somehow didn’t.
Watching this match almost three and a half years after it happened still raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels.

VINNY MARSEGLIA PROMO- snore
Some was sweeping the ring up after Taven was put through a table. Taven attacked that poor member of the staff. Taven left, at which point Vinny cut a boring cheap-heat promo that was clearly done only for the sake of allowing Colt Cabana to leap to his home town’s defense. Here’s an idea: instead of wasting time on your show setting a match up in a way that feels painfully orchestrated, why not just announce a match for local hero Colt Cabana in advance where it might help you sell some tickets? This show drew 950. Ten years before this, with no TV at all, and just a fledgling PPV deal, they drew 1,200 to this same building for Man Up.
Anyway, Colt and Vinny traded barbs until Colt headed to the ring (fortunately he was wearing his gear to do commentary, even though he hadn’t been booked in any sort of match) to start…

VINNY MARSEGLIA vs. COLT CABANA- 2/10
Tod Sinclair’s shoe counts as a foreign object, so Vinny should have been DQed for hitting Colt with it. Colt won a short match that wasn’t good.

DALTON CASTLE & THE BOYS vs. THE REBELLION (Kenny King, Rhett Titus, & Shane Taylor)- 6.25/10
We got a fine little backstage promo from Dalton Castle to build up to the World Six-Man Tag Team Title match at Best in the World. After the annoying comedy early on, this got pretty decent. Eventually Jay Briscoe came out and attacked a Boy, then brawled away with Dalton. Kenny King’s reaction tot his was pretty funny. The remaining Boy got destroyed by all three opponents and pinned by Taylor. You’d think that this trios beating the guys who are about to win the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles at the end of the month was done to set them up for a title shot, but that’s because you’re making the mistake of assuming that the person booking this isn’t lazy and/or incompetent.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Jonathan Gresham and Chris Sabin of Search & Destroy came out to brawl with The Rebellion in advance of their “losing stable must disband” match at Best in the World.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Young Bucks(c) vs. Will Ferrara & Cheeseburger- 7.25/10
This match was set up by Ferrara and Burger cutting a promo answering an open challenge the Bucks had put out at some earlier point in time. These titles matches where everyone knows the guys making the challenge aren’t going to win and haven’t actually done anything to earn a title shot wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world (especially with the open challenge format) if they weren’t being booked all the time, and pretty much every title in the company other than the world title.
The Bucks were in full “cool heel” mode here, which usually isn’t good, but they made work without killing the babyfaces on this night in ways they often didn’t on others. This was the best Cheeseburger match that I can remember, the second-best Will Ferrara match (down only to his singles match with Roderick Strong at ROH Road to Best in the World 2015: Oklahoma City).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
The Bucks showed their opponents respect by shaking their hands, which felt horribly out of character. They left, then Will Ferrara turned on Cheeseburger for accidentally hitting him right before the finish, stating off one of the longest and most boring and most pointless feuds in ROH history. In what was actually an amazing glimpse of things to come, this segment went on unnecessary long. We couldn’t just have Ferrara attack Cheeseburger. We had to have Ferrara attack him, then have Burger get back up and glare at him, and then have Ferrara punt him in the nuts.

ADDICTION PROMO- terrible
Both guys cut over the top cartoonish promos for both singles matches at the PPV (Kaz v. Page, Daniels vs. Cody) and for tonight’s tag team match. Daniels’ promo in particular, name-dropping the town at the end of the short backstage promo (not show to the live audience) had a very territorial “when I come to your town” feeling.

THE ADDICTION vs. BULLET CLUB (Adam Page & Cody Rhodes)- 6.75/10
The match started with two minutes of stalling for the by former Space Clown. I had forgotten that he used to do that. Maybe turning him heel in AEW isn’t going to be the best idea, either. Then again, maybe this time he’ll have a booker who has enough of a spine to tell him to knock that sh*t off, but I’m not convinced that Tony Khan is that guy yet.
I liked the choice for Daniels to be the babyface in peril and Kaz be the one to get the hot tag, as Daniels was a champion defending his title at Best in the World, so it made sense to make him look a little vulnerable against Cody, while Kaz was the babyface out for revenge against Page, to he’s the guy to make look like he can take out the heels when he gets his hands on them. For those same reasons, though, I didn’t like Page getting pinned, as the draw of the PPV match is Kaz getting revenge on Page. I think Kaz pinning Page dirty would have been a better finish. Maybe after a shot with that belt full of thumbtacks that Page tried to use tonight.

ADDICTION PROMO- decent
Much better build for the PPV than what we got earlier.

This show felt like a trap was set for me three years ago where Delirious shoved pretty much everything that had driven me nuts about ROH in this time period onto one show, and knowing my completionist drive to see everything, thought I would watch it, have an aneurysm, and die. This was so much of what I hated about the Bucks, Bully Ray, the Rebellion, Colt Cabana’s commentary, Cody, and the booking at the time, all squeezed into one two-hour show. Well… three and a half years later, I fell into the trap… but I survived, and the Young Bucks vs. f*cking Cheeseburger and Will Ferrara in a bullsh*t title match even managed to give me something I can look back on and remember with some amount of fondness while doing it, so take that, Lizard-Brain! And, deep down inside, I have to admit that I do feel that my ROH experience is a little more complete for having seen Will Ferrara turning on Cheeseburger. Their feud sucked, but at least now I have seen every part of it and can say with complete and total fairness how much it sucked.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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