ROH Survival of the Fittest 2015: Night 1
ROH Survival of the Fittest 2015: Night 1 (11/13/2015)- Milwaukee, WI
FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Christopher Daniels vs. Hanson vs. Kenny King vs. Mark Briscoe- 7/10
A good, action-packed opener. Mark Briscoe got a HUGE pop.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Cedric Alexander vs. Roderick Strong- 8/10
Huge pop for Roddy as well. The fans f*cking love him in Milwaukee. The match was awesome. Just two guys trying to kick the sh*t out of each other until one of them can’t kick out anymore. It was one of those matches that got you to bite on one or two moves that weren’t even finishers.
Awesomeness of the match aside, I am completely baffled by the booking here. Roddy needs a challenger for Final Battle. Cedric needs something to do at Final Battle, and giving him a big-stage title shot would go a long way towards validating his heel turn which, so far, only seems to have been done to give Moose a feud and create a reason for Veda Scott to be on TV. It hasn’t really done anything for Cedric as he has lost most of his matches since turning heel. Giving Cedric a win here would set up a TV Title match for Final Battle which would solve all of the above problems. (If I was going to fantasy book this a bit more, I’d say give Roddy the clean win, but do some spot in the match that allows Veda to twist the rules to get Cedric a rematch. In the rematch, I’d have Cedric cheat to win the title... only for Nigel to come out and out-lawyer Veda to get the match restarted, and Roddy would go on to win cleanly and retain the title).
THREE-WAY SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Dalton Castle vs. Silas Young (w/the Beer City Bruiser) vs. Adam Page (w/BJ Whitmer)- 6.5/10
Silas Young cut a GREAT heel promo before the match in which he claimed the Boys were in Milwaukee tonight and Silas asked them if they wanted to come to the show, but they said they didn’t because they didn’t want to see Dalton Castle because he makes them â€"a little phobic.†This is about the meanest, nastiest, most hurtful thing Silas could have possibly said to Castle, and Castle reacted like it. Unfortunately, they didn’t really carry that through to the story of that match, because aside from the first few minutes, it just felt like a normal three-way rather than Castle zeroing in on Silas and trying to hurt him. Silas and the Bruiser did attack Castle after the match.
ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Kingdom(c) (w/Maria Kanellis) vs. reDRagon- 7.75/10
In addition to Maria being at ringside, Adam Cole has come out to replace BJ Whitmer on commentary. The commentary booth was nowhere that was visible from ringside, so as a result of this, Kevin Kelly had to tell us that Cole had gotten up to probably go interfere in the match, which killed the surprise of Cole interfering as well as everything they did in the next minute or so before Cole managed to show up.
They also did one other spot which I really didn’t like, which saw reDRagon about to win but Maria pulled the ref out of the ring before he could make the three count. What was the point of this spot? You don’t need it to protect reDRagon and give them an excuse for a rematch because you already have Cole interfering for the finish. All this did was create a situation where a DQ should have been called for but wasn’t (which always makes the promotion look bad), and set up a spot where we teased Maria getting bumped… except she had already gotten bumped in this match so that didn’t really matter. Oh. And Bennett had to go and save his wife, which made him seem like a babyface even though he’s supposed to be a heel. This was just a REALLY bad spot.
The crowd had been great up until this match, but in my book they stopped being great the moment they started chanting that they wanted â€"shots.†This is a reference to comment Matt Taven made in Milwaukee OVER A YEAR AND A HALF AGO. And to make matters even sillier, Taven’s comment was that if he won his world title match later that night, he would buy everyone shots. As you probably know, Taven did not win that match… so why the hell the do the fans keep bringing it up (they do so practically every time ROH comes to Milwaukee)?
After the match, Bennett and Maria went to the back while Taven and Fish brawled on the outside and Cole and O’Reilly started to brawl in the ring. Referees and security poured out from the back to break up the Cole vs. O’Reilly brawl… and in doing so, they all ran right past the Taven vs. Fish brawl and not one of them tried to break that brawl up.
KEVIN KELLY INTRODUCES HIS NEW COMMENTARY PARTNER- Kevin Kelly tells us that Whitmer got hurt at ringside during Adam Page’s match, so he won’t be returning to commentary tonight. This got a big pop from the crowd, as expected. Kevin Kelly then introduced his new partner: Mr. Wrestling III. For those who don’t know, Corino used to wrestle as Mr. Wrestling III. He also cut a promo, making it quite obvious who he was, which just raises the question of why he is being allowed to do this is if he is suspended.
FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Frankie Kazarian vs. Raymond Rowe vs. Rhett Titus vs. Jay Briscoe- 6.5/10
A little slower than everything else we’ve seen tonight. Rhett also botched a move or two but on the whole this was pretty good.
ADAM COLE PROMO- he vows that not only will Kyle O’Reilly never be ROH World Champion, but that Kyle will never hold any title in ROH ever again.
THREE-WAY SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Adam Cole vs. Michael Elgin vs. Moose (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 7/10
The story of the first half of this match was the Moose and Elgin wanted to fight each other but Cole was annoying little pest who kept getting in the way. After Moose and Elgin realized that Cole would keep bothering them, they started focusing on him, too, and it became a normal three-way. The finish saw Kyle O’Reilly come out to try to get at Cole, but despite being held back by security, his presence distracted Cole for long enough to allow Moose time to recover enough to avoid the Panama Destroyer, which led to Elgin hitting the spinning backfist, buckle-bombing Cole into Moose, then hitting Cole with an Elgin Bomb for the pin.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH AND MATCH 5 IN THEIR BEST OF 5 SERIES: ACH vs. Matt Sydal- 8.25/10
The booking of this best of five series has been much-criticized by myself and others. It feels like it came out of nowhere, the supposed reasons behind it feel like they have completely been pulled out of the booker’s ass, and there is virtually nothing on the line (and for the first four matches, there literally was nothing on the line)… and yet, with all of that going against them, these two wrestlers have done an utterly amazing job of making this series FEEL important.
They had a match that was very similar to their others in this series. It had a lot of good technical wrestling from Sydal, some good selling from ACH (although he really could have done better in this match), and some fantastic nearfalls.
BULLET CLUB (AJ Styles & the Young Bucks) vs. THE HOUSE OF TRUTH (w/Truth Martini & Taeler Hendrix)- 6.75/10
Nowhere near what we’re used to seeing from AJ and the Bucks as a trio, and a large part of that was that aside from Jay Lethal, no one on the other side felt like they were in the Bullet Club’s league. Dijak did a decent job of holding his own, but certainly didn’t look impressive at all, and Diesel/Daddiego/whatever didn’t look like he belonged anywhere near a main event, much less one involving AJ Styles, the Young Bucks, and Jay Lethal. I would have given this a 7/10 if not for that stupid spot where Truth Martini just accepted taking a triple superkick, making sure to take off his glasses first, despite the fact that he was right near the ropes and could have easily escaped.
This was a great show from ROH, aside from the disappointing main event.
The one advantage to doing Survival of the Fittest over two shows instead of one is that all of the qualifiers have the opportunity to really deliver, and this show did that. That being said, I still think it would be better to do SOTF as a one-night show, for no other reason than I think they’d make a huge chunk of money by running it as an iPPV, and the concept of a one-night tournament is easy enough that you don’t even need to do any angles for it on TV. All you’d need to do is plug the tournament.
Another reason it would be better to do SOTF as a one-night show is, in truth, the entire reason the tournament was conceived: Gabe was looking for an excuse to save a few bucks by booking fewer wrestlers than usual on a show. This means you just have six singles qualifiers. While ROH certainly isn’t in the dire financial straits it was in back then, booking six singles qualifiers is both simple and also doesn’t get you stuck with the sort of booking we got tonight which was, well…
I said back when the two Four Corner Survival qualifiers with the bunch of random tag teams in them were all announced that time would tell if they were good booking or just plain lazy. Well… the card for Final Battle is mostly out and I can confirm that they were just lazy. The Castle vs. Silas vs. Page three-way feels the same.
All of that being said, it was still, like almost every other ROH show this year, a great night full of in-ring action, so for that alone, it is a very enjoyable watch.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. BJ Whitmer asked if Cedric beating ROH TV Champion Roderick Strong would earn him a title shot. This, on its own, is a stupid question, although with the way Delirious has booked Jay Lethal’s title reign, I’ll cut BJ some slack.
I won’t however, cut any slack for Kevin Kelly, who responded to Whitmer’s question by saying â€"this is not, technically, a non-title match.â€
What do you mean it’s not a non-title match? Is the title on the line? No? THEN IT’S A NON-TITLE MATCH!
FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Christopher Daniels vs. Hanson vs. Kenny King vs. Mark Briscoe- 7/10
A good, action-packed opener. Mark Briscoe got a HUGE pop.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Cedric Alexander vs. Roderick Strong- 8/10
Huge pop for Roddy as well. The fans f*cking love him in Milwaukee. The match was awesome. Just two guys trying to kick the sh*t out of each other until one of them can’t kick out anymore. It was one of those matches that got you to bite on one or two moves that weren’t even finishers.
Awesomeness of the match aside, I am completely baffled by the booking here. Roddy needs a challenger for Final Battle. Cedric needs something to do at Final Battle, and giving him a big-stage title shot would go a long way towards validating his heel turn which, so far, only seems to have been done to give Moose a feud and create a reason for Veda Scott to be on TV. It hasn’t really done anything for Cedric as he has lost most of his matches since turning heel. Giving Cedric a win here would set up a TV Title match for Final Battle which would solve all of the above problems. (If I was going to fantasy book this a bit more, I’d say give Roddy the clean win, but do some spot in the match that allows Veda to twist the rules to get Cedric a rematch. In the rematch, I’d have Cedric cheat to win the title... only for Nigel to come out and out-lawyer Veda to get the match restarted, and Roddy would go on to win cleanly and retain the title).
THREE-WAY SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Dalton Castle vs. Silas Young (w/the Beer City Bruiser) vs. Adam Page (w/BJ Whitmer)- 6.5/10
Silas Young cut a GREAT heel promo before the match in which he claimed the Boys were in Milwaukee tonight and Silas asked them if they wanted to come to the show, but they said they didn’t because they didn’t want to see Dalton Castle because he makes them â€"a little phobic.†This is about the meanest, nastiest, most hurtful thing Silas could have possibly said to Castle, and Castle reacted like it. Unfortunately, they didn’t really carry that through to the story of that match, because aside from the first few minutes, it just felt like a normal three-way rather than Castle zeroing in on Silas and trying to hurt him. Silas and the Bruiser did attack Castle after the match.
ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Kingdom(c) (w/Maria Kanellis) vs. reDRagon- 7.75/10
In addition to Maria being at ringside, Adam Cole has come out to replace BJ Whitmer on commentary. The commentary booth was nowhere that was visible from ringside, so as a result of this, Kevin Kelly had to tell us that Cole had gotten up to probably go interfere in the match, which killed the surprise of Cole interfering as well as everything they did in the next minute or so before Cole managed to show up.
They also did one other spot which I really didn’t like, which saw reDRagon about to win but Maria pulled the ref out of the ring before he could make the three count. What was the point of this spot? You don’t need it to protect reDRagon and give them an excuse for a rematch because you already have Cole interfering for the finish. All this did was create a situation where a DQ should have been called for but wasn’t (which always makes the promotion look bad), and set up a spot where we teased Maria getting bumped… except she had already gotten bumped in this match so that didn’t really matter. Oh. And Bennett had to go and save his wife, which made him seem like a babyface even though he’s supposed to be a heel. This was just a REALLY bad spot.
The crowd had been great up until this match, but in my book they stopped being great the moment they started chanting that they wanted â€"shots.†This is a reference to comment Matt Taven made in Milwaukee OVER A YEAR AND A HALF AGO. And to make matters even sillier, Taven’s comment was that if he won his world title match later that night, he would buy everyone shots. As you probably know, Taven did not win that match… so why the hell the do the fans keep bringing it up (they do so practically every time ROH comes to Milwaukee)?
After the match, Bennett and Maria went to the back while Taven and Fish brawled on the outside and Cole and O’Reilly started to brawl in the ring. Referees and security poured out from the back to break up the Cole vs. O’Reilly brawl… and in doing so, they all ran right past the Taven vs. Fish brawl and not one of them tried to break that brawl up.
KEVIN KELLY INTRODUCES HIS NEW COMMENTARY PARTNER- Kevin Kelly tells us that Whitmer got hurt at ringside during Adam Page’s match, so he won’t be returning to commentary tonight. This got a big pop from the crowd, as expected. Kevin Kelly then introduced his new partner: Mr. Wrestling III. For those who don’t know, Corino used to wrestle as Mr. Wrestling III. He also cut a promo, making it quite obvious who he was, which just raises the question of why he is being allowed to do this is if he is suspended.
FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Frankie Kazarian vs. Raymond Rowe vs. Rhett Titus vs. Jay Briscoe- 6.5/10
A little slower than everything else we’ve seen tonight. Rhett also botched a move or two but on the whole this was pretty good.
ADAM COLE PROMO- he vows that not only will Kyle O’Reilly never be ROH World Champion, but that Kyle will never hold any title in ROH ever again.
THREE-WAY SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH: Adam Cole vs. Michael Elgin vs. Moose (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 7/10
The story of the first half of this match was the Moose and Elgin wanted to fight each other but Cole was annoying little pest who kept getting in the way. After Moose and Elgin realized that Cole would keep bothering them, they started focusing on him, too, and it became a normal three-way. The finish saw Kyle O’Reilly come out to try to get at Cole, but despite being held back by security, his presence distracted Cole for long enough to allow Moose time to recover enough to avoid the Panama Destroyer, which led to Elgin hitting the spinning backfist, buckle-bombing Cole into Moose, then hitting Cole with an Elgin Bomb for the pin.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST QUALIFYING MATCH AND MATCH 5 IN THEIR BEST OF 5 SERIES: ACH vs. Matt Sydal- 8.25/10
The booking of this best of five series has been much-criticized by myself and others. It feels like it came out of nowhere, the supposed reasons behind it feel like they have completely been pulled out of the booker’s ass, and there is virtually nothing on the line (and for the first four matches, there literally was nothing on the line)… and yet, with all of that going against them, these two wrestlers have done an utterly amazing job of making this series FEEL important.
They had a match that was very similar to their others in this series. It had a lot of good technical wrestling from Sydal, some good selling from ACH (although he really could have done better in this match), and some fantastic nearfalls.
BULLET CLUB (AJ Styles & the Young Bucks) vs. THE HOUSE OF TRUTH (w/Truth Martini & Taeler Hendrix)- 6.75/10
Nowhere near what we’re used to seeing from AJ and the Bucks as a trio, and a large part of that was that aside from Jay Lethal, no one on the other side felt like they were in the Bullet Club’s league. Dijak did a decent job of holding his own, but certainly didn’t look impressive at all, and Diesel/Daddiego/whatever didn’t look like he belonged anywhere near a main event, much less one involving AJ Styles, the Young Bucks, and Jay Lethal. I would have given this a 7/10 if not for that stupid spot where Truth Martini just accepted taking a triple superkick, making sure to take off his glasses first, despite the fact that he was right near the ropes and could have easily escaped.
This was a great show from ROH, aside from the disappointing main event.
The one advantage to doing Survival of the Fittest over two shows instead of one is that all of the qualifiers have the opportunity to really deliver, and this show did that. That being said, I still think it would be better to do SOTF as a one-night show, for no other reason than I think they’d make a huge chunk of money by running it as an iPPV, and the concept of a one-night tournament is easy enough that you don’t even need to do any angles for it on TV. All you’d need to do is plug the tournament.
Another reason it would be better to do SOTF as a one-night show is, in truth, the entire reason the tournament was conceived: Gabe was looking for an excuse to save a few bucks by booking fewer wrestlers than usual on a show. This means you just have six singles qualifiers. While ROH certainly isn’t in the dire financial straits it was in back then, booking six singles qualifiers is both simple and also doesn’t get you stuck with the sort of booking we got tonight which was, well…
I said back when the two Four Corner Survival qualifiers with the bunch of random tag teams in them were all announced that time would tell if they were good booking or just plain lazy. Well… the card for Final Battle is mostly out and I can confirm that they were just lazy. The Castle vs. Silas vs. Page three-way feels the same.
All of that being said, it was still, like almost every other ROH show this year, a great night full of in-ring action, so for that alone, it is a very enjoyable watch.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. BJ Whitmer asked if Cedric beating ROH TV Champion Roderick Strong would earn him a title shot. This, on its own, is a stupid question, although with the way Delirious has booked Jay Lethal’s title reign, I’ll cut BJ some slack.
I won’t however, cut any slack for Kevin Kelly, who responded to Whitmer’s question by saying â€"this is not, technically, a non-title match.â€
What do you mean it’s not a non-title match? Is the title on the line? No? THEN IT’S A NON-TITLE MATCH!