BRM Reviews the 5/17/2019 ROH (400th Episode)

[Big Red Machine]

This was also the 400th episode so between segments they’d throw Tweets up on the screen from both fans and employees. This... didn’t do it for me. Showing random people’s Tweets does not appeal to my sense of nostalgia, especially when compared to some sort of “greatest moments” video or some similar count-down type of this. The Tweets seemed to be in response to a question along the lines of “what is your favorite ROH Wrestling moment, but one of the Tweets they showed was someone saying Daniels winning the ROH World Title, which happened on PPV, not (and there was no “Road Rage” edition replay, either), so clearly there needs to be some better vetting.


ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Villain Enterprises(c) vs. Jay Lethal, Jeff Cobb, & Rush- 7.5/10
On paper this is a cool match, but why is this random trio getting a title shot, especially when Shinobi Shadow Squad have been racking up wins? This sort of booking makes the belts feel like cheap props rather than an actual championship belts. And two shows from now Cobb is going to get another shot at these same champions with yet another pair of random partners. Action-wise the match was very exciting, but outcome was never in doubt (especially with both Cobb and Rush having “never been pinned/submitted” streaks as well, making it obvious that Lethal was taking the pin), and the pointlessness of the titles made the action feel empty.
Kenny King wandered out to ringside to do the same exact fake blindness stuff on commentary that he does on pretty much every show, and of course we had to cut away from the championship match to watch him standing at the commentary desk and doing nothing.

FLIP GORDON INJURY RECOVERY VIDEO PACKAGE- excellent!
(Although, even though for me this is very much the pot calling the kettle black, someone needs to tell Flip to slow down when he speaks.)

KENNY KING ATTACKS JAY LETHAL AFTER THE MATCH- good
This happened during the commercial break so we only saw it in replay form, which was a good touch. As Lethal was heading up the ramp, Kenny ran at him and attacked him from behind and choked him with his walking stick, revealing to the world what everyone already knew, which was that he was lying about being blind.
I assume the idea behind him attacking Lethal even though he has a world title shot due to him and Lethal is no longer the champion is that Kenny had spent so much time scouting Lethal and due to having him pinned in their previous title match but Lethal’s foot was under the rope Kenny was confident he could beat Lethal that he is now angry at Lethal for losing the title and thus making Kenny’s road to the title harder (in his own mind anyway). This is a good way to keep both men away from the title matches that are due to them for a while.
That being said, with the benefit of some... hindsight? Kind of? Is that the right word to refer to something that was taped after this but aired before it? Whatever. I’m talking about the first three nights of this year’s War of the Worlds Tour and Master of the Craft, during which Kenny was still doing his blind shtick on commentary and no one questioned him about it. I think all of the continuity problems that created could have easily been avoided by just having management use this as an excuse to suspend Kenny for those three shows rather than having everyone suddenly act as if this hadn’t happened yet.
Remember that there are presumably people who went to these TV tapings live, then watched the War of the Worlds Tour live on Honor Club. Yes, running both TV tapings and HonorClub shows will inevitably create some issues, which is why I don’t begrudge commentators for talking about things that haven’t happened yet in the past tense if they will have happened after the tapings air, but the commentators are not heard by the live crowd, whereas this attack was most definitely meant to be seen by the live crowd in Pittsburgh. I also think it’s ideal to minimize or avoid these sorts of issues whenever possible, and this one was certainly easy to avoid but the bookers chose not to... and not for any real gain, either, as having Kenny on commentary for those HonorClub shows didn’t serve an real purpose (he was on TV while blind enough times to get the angle over before this attack).


RECAP OF THE SOLDIERS OF SAVAGERY ATTACKING LIFEBLOOD- The short of this is that it appeared that they showed up to help Bully Ray but he seemed confused by their presence. Both he and Shane Taylor asked the other “are these your guys?” and both said no.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Matt Taven(c) (w/T.K. O’Ryan) vs. Flip Gordon- 7.5/10
O’Ryan is out here with Taven but not Marseglia because only T.K. has a manager’s license in Pennsylvania. Flip’s injured knee was the focus of the story. Things were going great until F*CKING IDIOTIC FINISH. Flip was on the top rope ready to do his finisher win the title when Vinny Marseglia, who was apparently hiding under the ring the whole time, released his balloons, which distracted Flip, allowing Taven to hit the Climax and get the win.
1. Why did no one check under the ring for Marseglia before the match? This is far from the first time he has done this, and we were specifically told he is forbidden from being out here because he’s not licensed.
2. If Marseglia is UNDERNEATH THE RING, how did he know when would be a good time to release the balloons? Or where he would need to be to ensure that Flip saw them?
3. Why was Flip distracted by f*cking balloons?! IT’S AN ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH! JUST HIT YOUR F*CKING MOVE! The idea here is clearly to “protect” Flip in defeat, but even though he technically didn’t lose cleanly here, it doesn’t really protect him because he still looks like an idiot for being distracted by F*CKING BALLOONS!

And from a wider perspective:
1. This is now Taven’s third title defense that we have seen, and in all three he has needed interference or a distraction in order to win. On commentary the announcers tried to drive home the point that he’s a worthy champion because he won the belt on his own... but if he constantly needs help to keep the title, is he really a worthy champion? There are some situations where the “we knows he’s good enough to win on his own but he cheats anyway” set-up can work, but the current situation with Matt Taven is not one of them. If you want that set-up to work you need to have someone who is near-universally regarded as being a top-level in-ring talent (both in kayfabe and out of it), or who has at the very least had a strong CLEAN run at the top of the company already. If ROH wanted to turn Jay Lethal heel like this, they could do it. It does not work with a guy like Matt Taven who has been a cheating heel almost his entire ROH career. If Matt Taven cheats to win 99% of his matches but one of the rare clean wins happens to be for the world title (which, in this case, was in a f*cking three-way ladder match rather than a classical wrestling match), then immediately goes back to needing to cheat to win, his title victory is essentially a statistical fluke and he is not a worthy champion.

2. When they announced back in the beginning of the year that they were going to give referees “more power to enforce the rules” and were going to require licensing for people to be at ringside which ROH could decide to revoke if they felt it necessary, I was overjoyed. “FINALLY!” I exclaimed. “Now there will be consequences for people who cheat and if some miscarriage of justice occurs, management will take the necessary steps to ensure that same thing doesn’t happen a second time!”
What a fool I was for thinking things would actually change.
We were specifically told here that Marseglia was not allowed at ringside because he didn’t have the proper licensing. He managed to still be at ringside and affect the outcome of the match (and in a rather predictable manner, based on his past behavior, too), and Sinclair clearly saw what happened, but he didn’t restart the match, Flip hasn’t been awarded another title shot at a later date (he’s in a Defy or Deny match with two other guys who also get screwed in title shots, so expect a rant on that during my review of State of the Art: Portland, or anything similar. Marseglia violating these new rules is not being treated any differently than the fact that he affected the outcome of a world title match. The licensing rule has now been exposed to not be a tool to progress stories but rather as just another gimmick for a “HA! WE SWERVED YOU!” finish. They did a gimmick that basically said “Vinny Marseglia is barred from ringside,” then had Maresglia show up at ringside and affect the outcome of the match and nothing came of it. The gimmick is now dead.


This was a very good show in the ring from ROH that somehow managed to still leave a bad taste in my mouth at the end. I don’t know whether Delirious is actually running things now or Bully Ray or Joey Matthews or whoever, but at this point I’m not seeing any real difference from the past few years. It’s good action brought down by bad booking.

[NWK2000]

This was also the 400th episode so between segments they’d throw Tweets up on the screen from both fans and employees. This... didn’t do it for me. Showing random people’s Tweets does not appeal to my sense of nostalgia, especially when compared to some sort of “greatest moments” video or some similar count-down type of this. The Tweets seemed to be in response to a question along the lines of “what is your favorite ROH Wrestling moment, but one of the Tweets they showed was someone saying Daniels winning the ROH World Title, which happened on PPV, not (and there was no “Road Rage” edition replay, either), so clearly there needs to be some better vetting.

But BRM, if they actually showed clips, how would they create demand for their money laundering scheme streamng service Honorclub?

[Big Red Machine]

This was also the 400th episode so between segments they’d throw Tweets up on the screen from both fans and employees. This... didn’t do it for me. Showing random people’s Tweets does not appeal to my sense of nostalgia, especially when compared to some sort of “greatest moments” video or some similar count-down type of this. The Tweets seemed to be in response to a question along the lines of “what is your favorite ROH Wrestling moment, but one of the Tweets they showed was someone saying Daniels winning the ROH World Title, which happened on PPV, not (and there was no “Road Rage” edition replay, either), so clearly there needs to be some better vetting.

But BRM, if they actually showed clips, how would they create demand for their money laundering scheme streamng service Honorclub?

Because the clips would all be things available on HonorClub (to my knowledge, the entire TV archives are available).