BRM Reviews ROH Field of Honor 2016 (Great, despite Delirious' best efforts)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews ROH Field of Honor 2016 (Great, despite Delirious' best efforts)

Post by Big Red Machine » Feb 1st, '22, 18:41

ROH Field of Honor 2016 (8/27/2016)- Brooklyn, NY

KUSHIDA vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Boys)- 6.75/10
We’re not even done with the entrances for the first match and I cannot tell you how happy I am that this is one of the last times I will ever have to hear Steve Corino call a Ring of Honor show.
As soon as the action started, they cut to a shot of video-board over the outfield fence showing the action. We absolutely had to cut to this shot, which was showing us the exact same thing as the hard-cam, except that it was both very far away, and grainy because… um… I guess they were worried that someone would somehow miss the fact that they were in a baseball stadium, even with Steve Corino having literally just flat out told us that they were in one.
Dalton Castle is floundering so badly that he is now on his second go-through of the NEW JAPAN guys. He’s been in the company for a year and a half, and has had just one feud and one built-up title shot. Other than that it has been months and months and months of random singles matches that have no meaning whatsoever in which he does the same comedy spots all over again. The match was pretty great, aside from their one foray into those same stupid comedy spots. I’m amazed that so many people aren’t sick and tired of this crap by now.

ROH TV TITLE MATCH: Bobby Fish(c) vs. EVIL- 6.25/10
Kevin Kelly notes that at last year’s Field of Honor show, EVIL (F.K.A. Takaaki Watanabe) won a gauntlet match for a shot at the ROH TV Title. I was hoping that Kevin would actually remember that Watanabe got that title shot on ROH TV and was cheated out of the match by then-champion Jay Lethal, which would be a logical reason for why he would receive this title shot. Instead Kevin just portrayed this as a sort of “look how far he has come in one year” sort of artsy bookending or parallelism or whatever type of thing, because that’s what storytelling in ROH has become nowadays: It’s “art” but with no substance, which is like icing without a cake to support it: it’s just a mess.
EVIL hit Fish with a chair right in front of the referee TWICE but it didn’t result in a DQ for absolutely no reason other than “a DQ in a title match would be disappointing.” Well if that’s the case than the wrestlers shouldn’t be doing weapons shots right in front of the referee! Even the f*cking announcers were burying this, and they usually do their best to excuse this crap. This was all made even more ridiculous by the fact that the very next spot was EVIL rolling Fish in the ring and choking him… and he broke the choke when the referee’s count hit four. You know… because otherwise he would have been disqualified. Geez. They finished strong, but not strong enough to make up for the poor beginning.

IWGP INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Michael Elgin(c) vs. Donovan Dijak (w/Prince Nana)- 7.5/10
Corino and Kelly (specially Corino) talk about how great these two wrestlers are… and then they immediately distract themselves with a (Corino-initiated, of course) conversation about some nickname or something for New Japan referee Tiger Hattori that I’m sure was too inside for 99.9% of fans (I certainly had no idea what they were talking about, and I spend all day on wrestling-related websites).
The story of this match was two big, strong dudes using their strength to try to put the other guy down, both by using power moves and throwing extremely hard strikes.

SILAS YOUNG & BEER CITY BRUISER T-SHIRT COMMERCIAL- terrible. There was completely pointless comedy, which led to these two coming across like goofy cartoon villains.

GAUNTLET MATCH FOR THE A SHOT AT THE ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: Shaheem Ali & Leon St. Giovanni vs. CHAOS (Toru Yano & Gedo) vs. Will Ferrara & Cheeseburger vs. The Cabinet (Kenny King & Rhett Titus) vs. War Machine vs. the Briscoes- DUD!
Yano immediately starts doing his usual crap. Kevin Kelly is perfectly happy to see this man cheating. LSG & Shaheem Ali were eliminated via Yano low blow and roll-up. Burger Ferrara got an advantage on CHAOS, at which point Yano and Gedo went to walk out… and instead of just letting their opponents get counted out, Ferrara and Burger went to go bring them back, and thus walked into a trap. Burger was eventually able to make a hot tag to Ferrara, who got in one nearfall before more Yano cheating did them in.
The Cabinet quickly beat CHAOS, which led to them facing War Machine in what was our first match-up between people above the undercard, almost fifteen minutes into this match. At one point the camera cut away from the ring to show us the skyline of Coney Island, because apparently some idiot working for ROH thought that would make us happier than staying with the f*cking wrestling match.
War Machine got the win at about the twenty-minute mark. Of those twenty minutes, only the previous ninety seconds had been in any way entertaining. Then the Briscoes came out, so business was really about to pick up. They did a long entrance routine, but then finally these two top teams in ROH started to trade blows… and some f*cking asshole made the call to CUT A SHOT OF THE VIDEO FEED ON THE SCOREBOARD. In other words, they decided it was best to show us the same shot we’d be seeing if they had stuck with the hard-cam, except smaller and grainier. What sort of diseased mind would even think that anyone would want that? F*ck you.
They quickly spilled to the outside and fought there forever without being counted out. Mark and Rowe got back into the ring, but on the outside again shortly after. Then Jay and Hanson got back into the ring, so I guess we just don’t care about tags. They went back to the outside quickly as well. Eventually Hanson and Mark got into the ring to do spots, then they went to the outside, so Jay and Rowe could fight in the ring. Eventually some spots happened and we got a nearfall or two before the Briscoes won. This went twenty-nine minutes, about maybe a grand total of four of it was entertaining.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Addiction(c) vs. the Briscoes- 1.5/10
The Addition ran in right after the match ended to attack the Briscoes, and Paul Turner rang the bell to start the match, as if they were just the next team in the gauntlet. Was ROH really not going to give whoever won the gauntlet any sort of chance to rest? Why even book a title match if you’re going to purposely be putting the challengers at such a disadvantage? Why not book a gauntlet for a title match at some other show and find someone else for the Addiction to wrestle? Why would ROH do this?
And if you absolutely must do this stupid f*cking thing, why not have War Machine be the final team instead the Briscoes? The whole idea of the Global Wars 2016 match was that War Machine finally got the monkey off their backs and were able to beat the Briscoes, and the story of the title change the next night was that the Addiction were only able to beat War Machine because War Machine were worn down by their match against the Briscoes the previous night, so instead of just having War Machine go right back to losing to the Briscoes and using the Briscoes as your pointless non-sacrifice (because the whole point of doing the gauntlet first is to give them an out) to the Addiction just so you can advertise a title match on this show even though everyone knows the titles aren’t changing hands in this stupid scenario you’ve cooked up, why not give War Machine the win, have them lose the Addiction again because they were worn down by the Briscoes, and use that to build up to a title match where War Machine will be sufficiently rested (and maybe do it in a cage so PBK can’t interfere, and the Addiction can’t grab the title belts to use as weapons)?
Because that would require Delirious to put more than three minutes worth of thought into the booking of the tag titles, and he clearly isn’t willing to do that.

So the Addiction just beat the Briscoes down a bunch, with Jay as Ricky Morton. At one point Daniels went for a Lionsault, and in the middle of it, they randomly cut to a shot of Kaz posing on the outside, then went back to the ring to show us Daniels landing on Jay. If you’re going to edit out a botch try not to make it so f*cking obvious.
Eventually we got a hot tag and the Briscoes hit a Jay-Driller followed by a Froggy-Bow for a false finish, as Kaz pulled the referee out of the ring (which wasn’t a DQ). The Young Bucks came out while Kaz was arguing with the referee on the outside. Bullet Club has been feuding with the Briscoes lately, including ADAM PAGE TRYING TO MURDER JAY BRISCOE VIA HANGING… so of course the Bucks try to attack Kazarian. And it’s ROH in 2016, so of course they miss and hit the referee, and of course the crowd goes crazy because this is the promotion built around clean finishes, but these people have decided that ref bumps are fun and cool. These fans would have loved 1999 WCW.
The Briscoes came to the outside, but instead of going after the Bucks, they all teamed up to give Kazarian a goofy quadruple superkick. Everyone other than Jay got into the ring because I guess they wanted to beat Kaz up in the ring instead of on the outside. This all happened just so that Daniels could take Jay out from behind, then jump up onto the apron and shove Mark into one of the Bucks and be able to duck down so he couldn’t be seen afterwards, leaving the Bucks only Mark to blame, and they start an argument and then a fight. And in case you’re wondering, that let to… well… pretty much nothing. The Briscoes were already feuding with Bullet Club and would continue to do so in New Japan and ROH. The Addiction wound up defending their titles in a three-way Ladder War against MCMG and the Bucks at the next PPV, but the Bucks were also already feuding with MCMG and had done an angle on TV where they got screwed out of a tag title match against the Addiction (which, coincidentally) aired the weekend of this show), so absolutely none of this was necessary to get to that point.
Anyway, the Bucks and Briscoes start fighting. Jay is the last one left standing, but Daniels attacks him from behind, then Addiction hit Celebrity rehab and go for the pin, and there’s a new referee right there to count the pin. This was to be the worst match these two teams have ever had to together, and pretty much all of it was due to Delirious’ sh*t booking. It must be so nice to live a life where you can get paid to do something so many people dream of, completely suck at it for years at a time, and have none of your bosses care.

Steve Corino pointed out that the Addiction have just pinned the IWGP Tag Team Champions. I know what you’re thinking, and no, that never went anywhere, either. The Bucks and the Briscoes had a stare-down after the match, as if this was their first altercation and they hadn’t been feuding for months.

ACH, LIO RUSH, & THE MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS vs. BULLET CLUB (Adam Page, Yujiro Takahashi, & the Young Bucks)- 8/10
Bullet Club won cleanly in an all-action eight-man tag, with all of the high flying and athletic stuff you’d expect with this crowd.

KATSUYORI SHIBATA vs. KYLE O’REILLY- 8.25/10
Bobby Fish joined the commentary team for this match, and was excellent. They actually put some effort into setting up Shibata’s big no-sell spot in this match, so between that and Bobby Fish’s commentary, it actually worked for me instead of feeling like stupid bullsh*t designed to get snowflakes from Meltzer. They even went back to the situation later to show Kyle making progress, while Steve Corino talked about Shibata’s “eyes were different” the second time and he “didn’t have it.” (I could have done without that second no-selling sequence where they just kept getting up after taking German suplexes, though. That was way too much of desperate ploy for star ratings than something that felt organic to the match).
This was an excellent, hard-hitting match, with a shocking finish, which was Kyle O’Reilly going over cleanly! They did a great job using the no-selling to show progression. That being said, this only went thirteen and a half minutes, and thus wound up feeling relatively disappointing for what was for many (myself included) a first-time-ever dream match.

FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH FOR THE ROH WORLD TITLE: Adam Cole(c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay Tetsuya Naito vs. Jay Lethal- 8/10
Good four-way action, and they did a good job of building up the Cole vs. Lethal match-up. Cole pinned Lethal, but it was part of a sequence that involved Naito hitting Lethal with the belt, s that protects Lethal a bit, and moves him into a feud with Naito.

This was a GREAT show from ROH, despite the almost forty minutes of absolute sh*t in the middle. It’s actually pretty amazing that this show turned out to be as enjoyable as it was given the hurdles of the booking, the terrible gauntlet match, and Steve Corino and Kevin Kelly clearly not giving a sh*t on commentary and just making their stupid little jokes. ROH’s problems were so glaring, even back then. Shows like this are almost sad to watch at this point, because things easily could have been corrected at this point, but weren’t.


BONUS FOOTAGE:
ADAM COLE PROMO ABOUT THE MAIN EVENT- AWESOME!
Why the hell didn’t they just stick this at the beginning of the DVD? Why hide it in the bonus features section?



BONUS MATCH: Taeler Hendrix vs. Deonna Purrazzo- 4/10
Did we really need a close-up of one of the lights by the entrance set-up (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY!) instead of actually watching Deonna walk through the curtain?
Okay… this “Women of Honor” name needs to go. It’s cumbersome to say and never sounds good (e.g. “here in the Women of Honor,” “this Women of Honor match” every other thing they say). As a result of that, it often causes the announcers, in their quest to find something that sounds better, to say things that sound worse, such Ian Riccaboni’s talk of a “Women of Honor movement,” which simultaneously annoyed me with how pretentious it sounded and made me laugh at how delusional they seem to be about this thing, completely unaware of how much of a failure it is… and the reason for that is almost totally due to their desire to make the “Women of Honor” a thing.
Stick “women’s division” matches with storylines on the regular shows just like you would for the men and people will get into it, just like they do for the men. But in their attempt to make “Women of Honor” its own thing they have instead made it feel like it’s not really part of the main product. They tape them either during the pre-show or essentially as dark matches at the TV tapings to be thrown up on YouTube later, and as a result of that they become bathroom breaks for the live crowd, and overall storylines become impossible to follow because the matches are essentially hidden away, being released with no background and little fanfare every Wednesday on YouTube, or, like this one, shoved in the bonus features section of the DVD. At best, the women get two completely isolated TV shows a year- so if you miss that episode, you’re totally lost- and those have always been positioned in places where people are tuning in hoping to see fallout from the latest PPV, which essentially turns the Women of Honor shows- which feel like they’re in a world all their own- into a disappointment.
Oh, right, the match. It was… fine, for the (relatively short) time it got, aside from the poor execution of the finish on Taeler’s part which I’ll get into when I discuss the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- awful
Deonna is upset that Taeler pulled her tights on the finish. The problem with that is that, unbeknownst to poor Deonna, Taeler basically botched that aspect of the finish, so it looked to us viewers that she was complaining about nothing. Shoves were exchanged, then Taeler escalated things with an absolutely atrocious-looking headbutt. She went to get a chair, which she of course had to lick even though we totally aren’t supposed to be focused on their sex appeal, then she went to do… something to Deonna. We never got any explanation of what it was other than it was something she had previously done to Mandy Leon, and speaking of both inappropriate sex appeal and Mandy Leon, guess who came out to make the save.
Mandy… has very little charisma. That’s the only way I can say it. Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s what it is, so I had very little interest in her playing the big babyface heroine, especially because I never saw Taeler’s initial assault on Mandy due to the isolation of the Women of Honor product I described above, so I had no emotional investment in this, either.
Then there was the decision to have Mandy make this save dressed… well… I would say “head to toe” but more realistically it was “shoulders to midriff” and then “waist to upper thigh” in Brooklyn Cyclones gear. The result of this, especially when combined with her lack of charisma, made Mandy come off as… um… I’m really trying to find an accurate way to phrase this other than “tits and ass in a logo” but I’m struggling to come up with anything. She looked like a baseball version of the home team’s cheerleader, but with her usual trashier make-up. Watch the interview afterwards and compare her to Deonna, who is wearing actual ring gear with her own elegant little logo in the corner, and displaying actual emotion, as compared to Mandy, wearing the aforementioned “Sexy Brooklyn Cyclones” Halloween costume and looking in the camera in a poor facsimile of a sultry manner. Deonna looks like an actual wrestler who might someday be destined have do many tours of Stardom in Japan. Mandy looks like the girl who is dating the booker. (Oh, yeah, Mandy and Taeler had a short brawl, then Deonna jumped in so Taeler ran).
WOMEN OF HONOR INTERVIEW- Mandy’s voice is SOOOOOO annoying, as were the words she said. She came off so self-absorbed and catty that you’d think she was a heel. Deonna, for her part, was a (mostly) gracious babyface, but offered to return the favor if Mandy ever needed it. Mandy stumbled over some lines about Taeler having “issued” a tag team match (this was not re-shot), and asking Deonna to be her partner. They plugged the date of the show, which was September 17th in Lockport, NY, which, like this match, is on the bonus section of that DVD instead of on the main card, and was completely cut out of the VOD for no reason other than to keep it separate.
On a positive note, though, these sorts of backstage interviews/interactions are something sorely missing from the overall ROH product, so it was nice to actually see one.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly misspoke and said that it was Dalton Castle getting the IC Title shot tonight instead of Donovan Dijak. Okay. Fine. It happens to everyone. The problem was that Steve Corino then tried to make an argument that Dalton did, in fact deserve an IC Title shot- or was at least close to getting one- because of his match with Okada at last weekend’s PPV. You know… the match that Dalton lost cleanly. In the world of Steve Corino, losing gets you title shots. I’m so glad he’s gone now.
Look… there are a lot of ways to put a guy over in defeat without being ridiculous about it, and this completely crossed that line. Not only did it bury the IC Title, but Steve then talking about how Donovan Dijak, who is challenging for that title tonight, as well as the TV Title at the next PPV, has earned these title shots by winning matches, totally buries the idea that wins and losses matter.

2. Steve Corino says that Elgin “is on such a winning streak that he doesn’t want to take any days off.”
If we count both ROH and New Japan, Elgin’s streak currently stands at… one. Which, by definition, isn’t even a streak. He won his match at last weekend’s TV tapings, but lost the night before that ON PPV, and also lost his previous two matches in New Japan, which were on the final two days of the G1. All of these were matches that Corino himself called. Why is it so hard for ROH announcers to say anything that is factually correct?
By the way, the reason Corino got to this statement was that that he was trying to explain why Elgin’s head is bandaged up, and he claimed that Elgin was getting busted open in every match, which I once again don’t remember happening in ANY of the aforementioned matches. Why can’t Steve just tell the f*cking truth and say that Elgin was wrestling for someone else last night and got busted open? Why does he have to invent this grandiose and completely exposable lie when it’s so much easier and so much better to just tell the truth?
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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