BRM Reviews the 6/4/2016 ROH (great)

[Big Red Machine]

MATT SYDAL vs. OKADA (w/Gedo)- 7.5/10
This match was great. They’re talking Will Ospreay up quite a bit, and hinting at a match between Ospreay and Sydal. That should be pretty freakin’ awesome.

ADAM COLE & THE YOUNG BUCKS PROMO- they told us they were going to interfere in the main event. Oh great. More interference in the main event.

SILAS YOUNG PROMO- great!
And he managed to plug the ROH coloring book in a completely believable way for Silas Young.

COLT CABANA vs. ADAM PAGE- 4/10
This felt like it never got out of second gear, and it was nowhere near as intense as it needed to be.
They kept talking up that Cabana had the title won at Global Wars before Bullet Club interfered. Okay. I’ll buy that. But if that’s the case, then why haven’t they scheduled a rematch for him, yet? That seems like the sort of thing Nigel should be doing.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- lame
The Guerrillas of Destiny jump Cabana from behind. Page gets the noose. No one comes out to help Colt. They are going to hang him, but Kevin Kelly exclaims that we can’t show this sort of thing so we have to go to a commercial. Not only was this repetitive (we just did this with Sabin in Detroit) but the fact that no one came out to help Colt shows that the babyfaces are still too stupid to work together (or, rather, that the booker is too lazy to come up with an explanation for why no one is saving anyone). The other big problem with this is the whole “this is too horrific for us to show on TV” aspect of it. Quite simply, things work best when we can see them. This will not be an effective heat-getting segment if we can’t see the dastardly action.

ANX “MAKE WRESTLING GREAT AGAIN” PROMO- fine.

Oh. Apparently Cabana got saved by… someone. We were never told who. Nigel says he’ll fine Bullet Club for this.

BJ WHITMER PROMO- he cuts a promo on Corino. Corino shows up to try to fight but gets held back by security. Then Whitmer says he wants to fight, but when Corino gets into the ring Whitmer runs away. This was completely pointless. It gave us no new information, and did nothing to make us anticipate this match (they haven’t touched each other for years at this point. Another non-brawl won’t make us want to see the match any more than we already do). This was all time that could have gone to the main event or some sort of useful promo.
Speaking of useful promos…

ACH PROMO- good promo on Silas.

DONOVAN DIJAK (w/Prince Nana) vs. JAY LETHAL (w/Taeler Hendrix)- 7.75/10
They specifically point out that this match is non-title because “Dijak hasn’t earned” a title match yet. But Matt Jackson earned the title shot he got back in January? Or Vinny Marseglia at the end of April? Or Cheeseburger at SCOH?
And now that we’ve established that winning the Top Prospect is enough to earn a world title shot, shouldn’t Dijak be owned one because he never used the shot he got for winning last year’s Top Prospect Tournament? (And looking in hindsight, if your plans for Dijak last year were to have Truth fire him because he kept losing and you had Lethal lose the TV Title to Roddy while not being able to have a rematch, why the hell wouldn’t you have Dijak use his Top Prospect Tournament title shot against Roddy to try to bring the title back to the House of Truth and fail? That would tie up the loose end of the unused title shot, it would be not just another loss for Dijak but also a higher-profile one and one that Truth would have an extra reason to be mad about, and it would give something resembling closure to the Roddy vs. House of Truth feud).
This match was GREAT. I probably would have given it an 8/10 if it had a clean finish. Instead, we got a f*cking Bullet Club run in- although the Bullet Club in question was just Kenny Omega and Matt Jackson. More on that later). A superkick meant for Lethal accidentally hit Dijak (the ref was distracted by Taeler and Nana arguing), allowing Lethal to hit Lethal Injection for the win. This all sounds like it should be fine. Lethal is a heel so it’s okay for him to benefit from this and it keeps Dijak strong as a babyface, right? Well… the problem with that is that the way this match was both framed and put together, it was Lethal who felt like the babyface (despite Dijak feeling like the babyface in the rest of this feud), so him winning by interference felt wrong.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- the Guerrillas of Destiny come out and attack Lethal, but the Briscoes come out to make the save. Briscoe and Lethal then had a stare-down over the belt. In one way, this was an effective segment. It put over the Bullet Club vs. Lethal, Lethal vs. Briscoe, and the Bullet Club vs. Briscoes (and specifically Briscoes vs. Guerrillas of Destiny, which will be the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Title match at Dominion). Each of these things got a moment where it was the thing in the spotlight, which is a great way to do this, but the problem is that Delirious’ way of doing this leaves a bunch of obvious questions unanswered unless you assume that the wrestlers themselves all went into this with the intention of building up matches rather than a real storyline motivation.
Why did the Bullet Club do their run-in in two phases? And why weren’t Page and Cole part of either one? Why didn’t anyone else with beef with Bullet Club (MCMG, Cabana) come out to save Lethal? Or how about Joey Diesel Daddiego for that matter? The reason for this seems to be that “those aren’t the matches we’re having at the next PPV” which isn’t a valid kayfabe reason.

One problem I’m having with the portrayal of the Bullet Club is that Adam Cole often feels like a very transparent stand-in for Kenny Omega. It was Cole and the Bucks who cut the earlier promo saying they would interfere in the main event, but it was Omega and Matt who did the run-in (Nick was injured), which makes it feel like it was supposed to be Omega in Cole’s place but they decided to tape this promo at a later date when they didn’t have access to Omega.
A big part of this problem is the way they divide Bullet Club up. If Omega and The Bucks weren’t calling themselves by a different name then having the Bucks and Cole cut promos without the other members wouldn’t feel like Cole is a stand-in for Omega. Another way they could alleviate this problem is to let Page and the Guerrillas of Destiny at least stand there while the Bucks and Cole cut their promos (having more than three guys there would also make them seem just a teeny bit less like an nWo rip-off, which is really something they need to not come across as. They definitely need to take that “4 Life” bit out of their music). And have them all run in together instead of letting certain groups do their own run-ins.

Despite my issues with it, this was a pretty great show from ROH. One big change is that they finally seem to have a real direction again, something the TV has been missing since the Anniversary Show (if not all the way back to Final Battle). Hopefully it continues to improve.