BRM Reviews the 12/16/2015 ROH

[Big Red Machine]

Kevin Kelly and Nigel McGuinness are on commentary.

ADAM COLE vs. COREY HOLLIS- 4.25/10
They let Hollis look good in defeat, but the outcome was never in doubt, and I’m not so sure that letting Hollis get so much offense in on Cole was a good idea going into Final Battle.

ADAM COLE PROMO- he assures us he allows keeps his promises, then promises us that he will “end Kyle O‘Reilly in Ring of Honor once and for all.” He’s been saying this a lot recently, and it makes me wonder if Kyle has secretly signed with WWE or TNA or Gabe or someone like that.

They officially announce the triple threat tag team #1 contendership match between the Bucks, Briscoes, and ANX.

There is a woman in the front row wearing a “Katie Vick” t-shirt.

WAR MACHINE vs. THE WASHINGTON BULLETS- squash.
This was the second straight match where we had the opponent introduced as “already in the ring.”

DALTON CASTLE vs. MIKE POSEY (w/his entourage)- DUD!
Posey was introduced as “Mike Posey” he was doing his P-Dog gimmick instead, which is terrible and embarrassing. They actually let him talk, which was… well… you remember all of those John Cena raps from back in 2002-2004? This was like that, exact those were good and this not.
Kevin and Nigel wonder if Castle can win without the Boys on his side… or if he can even remain stable. I’m almost certain this has been the first time they have actually asked that question, and he lost the Boys almost three months ago. Also, if this was the angle you wanted to do, why did you have him beat Adam Page at night 2 of SOTF or get two wins on the ROH/PCW shows?
This was technically a squash, but I’m giving it a DUD because if the angle is “can Castle win without the Boys?” the why would you have him win? I get that you want to put him over somehow because you want people to know that when he gets in there with Silas at Final Battle, he will kick Silas’ ass, but if that’s what you want to do, why not also play up the “is he mentally stable without the Boys?” part of it and have him destroy someone and get DQed for either not breaking in the corner or for excessive punishment? And if you’re going to do that, why not do it in such a way that it actually helps your storylines? For example, you could have Cedric Alexander be the guy Castle goes nuts on, and this could play into Cedric’s angle where he is suing ROH for being an “unsafe working environment.” Or you could have Castle completely obliterate someone, have that guy beat out for a month or two, and then have that guy want to get revenge on Castle early next year, which would then be Castle’s new direction after Final Battle. If you wanted to, you could even do it with a local Southeast-based guy who you wouldn’t be using at Final Battle weekend anyway, and you could do the return match during one of ROH’s four upcoming shows in the Southeast over the next month and a half. Maybe you could even try to develop an actual story out of it to give a new guy a chance to deliver in an actual storyline as opposed to just random matches on random shows where we all know he’ll always lose?
F*cking Delirious booking.

Anyway… after this match, we got a…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Castle cut a promo saying he didn’t want to wait until Final Battle to beat Silas Young up, so he called Silas out. Silas’ music played but it was the Boys who came out. This distracted Castle, allowing Silas to sneak up behind him and hit Misery. Then the Boys raised Silas’ hands. This was a good segment to build up the match at Final Battle, but doing what they did here made the match before it completely pointless because they could have just saved time and done the segment without doing the match first. In fact, that would have been much better because now that we know that Castle can win without them, the Boys choosing to side with Silas doesn’t mean anywhere near as much.
All of that being said, if the match at Final Battle isn’t going to be the blow-off, ending with the Boys siding with Silas, then having the Boys show their allegiance to Silas here instead of having that be the finish of the PPV match seems like a big waste.
Kevin Kelly also reminded us that the Boys helped Silas out in his match last week, but he completely failed to sell the fact that there is a big difference between the Boys helping Silas in a random match against reDRagon and the Boys coming out here deliberately to lay a trap for their former… um… employer?... Dalton Castle. The emotional punch of this case is MUCH bigger in terms of both establishing their allegiance to Silas and establishing their repudiation of Castle.

KEVIN KELLY INTERVIEWS JERRY LYNN- sh*t.
They claim this man is Jerry Lynn, but he has short hair and we all know that Jerry Lynn has long hair. Oh. Wow. Holy crap that actually is Jerry Lynn. It’s an Edge-like transformation. Apparently Jerry had surgery recently and wanted to thank everyone who supported him.
Kevin Kelly asks Jerry Lynn who he thinks will win the ROH World Title match at Final Battle, which brings out Jay Lethal. Lethal is a dick to Jerry, so Jerry calls him out on this. Jerry says he thinks Lethal’s overconfidence will cost him the world title at Final Battle. This angers Lethal, who decides he now wants to beat Jerry up.
So… faced with the threat of physical violence, what did former ROH World Champion and well-respected wrestling veteran Jerry Lynn do? He told Lethal that he is friends with his parents, and that Jay’s parents would be very disappointed in him if he beat Jerry up. Yes. Really.
Even worse, this apparently cowed heel ROH World Champion Jay Lethal enough that he only decided to cut an angry promo on Lynn instead of kicking his ass.
I completely understand that their options for building up the world title match were limited by the fact that AJ Styles had to be in Japan, but was this really the best thing they could come up with? This made Lynn look stupid, made Lethal look stupid, and Lethal running out and interrupting an old guy and then feeling slighted and wanting to fight seems exactly like the segment he did with Stevie Richards at Reloaded Tour: Atlanta. Now that I think about it, Lethal running out and interrupting someone for a perceived slight was also how they started the Lethal vs. Alberto feud. It feels like Delirious is just recycling the same ideas over and over again. I get that everything has been done before, but doing the same thing with the same guys THREE TIMES in one year (with no larger narrative purpose to it)? That’s too much, IMO.

MOOSE-ELGIN VIDEO PACKAGE- fine.

ROPPONGI VICE vs. MATT SYDAL & ACH- 7/10
Kevin Kelly told us that he talked with Sydal earlier today and Sydal said that after their Best of Five series, he and ACH are “stronger than ever” as a team, and that now Sydal “knows that he can count on ACH when the chips are down.” Since when was this even a problem? We never even saw one bit of dissension between them or any sort of sign that ACH was hesitant to help Sydal in any way! And how the hell did wrestling a series of singles matches against each other resolve this problem?! At this point, I have seen literally every single show ROH has put out this year, and the only consequence of this best of five series seems to have been that ACH qualified for Survival of the Fittest and Sydal didn’t.

Alex Shelley has joined Kevin and Nigel on commentary. Nigel asked an extremely stupid question: is Shelley here to team with Sabin or fight him. Well OBVIOUSLY HE’S HERE TO FIGHT HIM! If he wanted to team with him, he wouldn’t have screwed his friends out of the tag titles! Shelley responded to this question by being pointlessly cryptic. To make this all even stupider, they then told us that Shelley would be teaming with ACH and Sydal to face Daniels, Kaz, and Sabin at Final Battle. So either they are all being idiots, or they are trying to get us to buy the PPV by telling us that there might be a Russo Swerve. WHAT THE F*CK?!
All of that aside, the match was fantastic for the time it was given, but I think it would have been more effective to do something like have Sabin attack ACH and Sydal after the match and have Shelley come out to make the save, then have Nigel book the six man for Final Battle based off of that.

This was not a good show from ROH. In some ways, it was what it had to be, seeing as how they had a bunch of guys in Japan (at least six, and I might be forgetting someone), but it really felt like there was stuff they could have done to build heat for Final Battle a lot better.