ROH Survival of the Fittest 2015: Night 2
ROH Survival of the Fittest 2015: Night 2 (11/14/2015)- Hopkins, MN
The show opens with Kevin Kelly and Mr. Wrestling III just casually saying â€"it’s going to be five in the finals†and then moving on without telling us who is out of the match or why. It was extremely frustrating. It would have been much better to just open the show with an official announcement- or if you don’t want to open the show with the fans all booing, just have them f*cking TELL US WHAT HAPPENED in a quick and concise manner and then move on.
Kevin Kelly talks about those â€"mysterious envelopes†that Prince Nana has been handing out, reminding us that Will Ferrara recently received one. If only they had bothered to point things like this out to us for stories that actually involve upper-card wrestlers and wrestlers who people give a sh*t about, such as whatever the issues were between Sydal and ACH, so that when they decide to pay off the angle, it doesn’t feel like something that Delirious just pulled out of his lizard ass.
CEDRIC ALEXANDER vs. WILL FERRARA- 6.5/10
Steve Corino- I mean â€"Mr. Wrestling III†brings up the point that this is the second weekend in a row where someone has wrestled Cedric Alexander on the first night and had to miss the second night due to a concussion, so it’s possible that this is a work, but I don’t think so.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- he says that while the fans here in Hopkins might be too stupid to figure it out, he knows for a fact that Mr. Wrestling III is really Steve Corino, so he demands that Steve remove his mask so that he can be fired for violating his suspension from commentary. This would have made for a decent heel promo… but then BJ added one little touch that made it perfect. He wants this to happen so that he can take Steve’s job on commentary. One of the running gags of the Kevin Kelly & Steve Corino commentary team has been the Corino is paranoid about someone else taking his spot as color commentator… and that running gag is actually being used in a real angle because BJ Whitmer knows exactly how to push Steve Corino’s buttons. I LOVE IT!
Whitmer then got thrown out of the arena for… um… I’m not really sure.
ADAM PAGE vs. DALTON CASTLE- 6.5/10
Castle has now made a â€"Fan Up!†t-shirt. He had better not be selling those or else the Briscoes will sue. I’m really loving his Jurassic Park-inspired tights, though. What I’m not liking about Castle is the fact that the loss of the Boys doesn’t seem to have affected him at all. He needs to find ways to show this during his matches.
The match was solid, though the finish felt kind of lame. Whitmer came back out, tailed by many referees, to try to get at Mr. Wrestling III. This distracted Page, which allowed Castle to hit his finisher and win. I understand what they’re going for (this is the second or third straight match where Whitmer’s presence has in some way contributed to Page losing), but it still didn’t feel like a good end to such a technical match.
Major props to Kevin Kelly for his complete and total smugness directed at BJ Whitmer. He dared Whitmer to prove that Mr. Wrestling III was Corino by unmasking him… and then pointed out that to do so would require putting his hands on an announcer, and thus would get him indefinitely suspended.
MARK BRISCOE vs. FRANKIE KAZARIAN- 6.75/10
They have been making jokes on commentary for a few months about a policy in ROH that you can get fined for bad language or rude gestures. During this match, Kevin Kelly told us that he had gotten word that BJ Whitmer might get fined for his actions earlier. This occurred no less than ten seconds after a spot where Kaz shoved the referee. It was never once brought up that maybe Kaz should get fined for such a thing. People need to stop shoving the ref if it’s not going to be a DQ.
WAR MACHINE & MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway) vs. THE KINGDOM (w/Maria Kanellis)- 7.5/10
The Kingdom, who are usually color-coordinated, were all wearing different colors tonight. I’m not sur why I noticed this, but I did.
They had a great, action-packed six-man (aside from the part where they were, as Mr. Wrestling III put it, â€"on the outside for a count of eighty-fiveâ€). Moose is definitely improving. The finish didn’t seem to make much sense, though. If War Machine are challenging The Kingdom for the titles at Final Battle, why have the Kingdom beat them? It’s not like ROH has a problem with having a challenger pin a champion to build up a title match at Final Battle because last night they had AJ pin ROH World Champion Jay Lethal when he easily could have pinned Joey Diesel Daddiego instead! The accidental spear from Moose certainly contributed to it, but if you want to go in a Moose vs. War Machine direction after Final Battle, you could just save that spot for a match that happens… well… AFTER Final Battle (and you could make it mean more by making it the actual finish instead of having Rowe take forty-seven other moves first), and if you’re not going in that direction, then why do it at all?
CHEESEBURGER vs. JOEY DIESEL DADDIEGO (w/the House of Truth)- 2/10
Daddiego, who they had wrestling the MAIN EVENT LAST NIGHT, needed interference in order to beat a one-armed Cheeseburger. WHY?! If you want to push the idea that Brutal Bob and his student who is so unimportant I don’t even remember his name did this terrible thing to Cheeseburger by breaking his hand, why not have the fact that he only has one hand actually cause Cheeseburger to lose a match?
THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. THE ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS- 6.5/10
Spotty but fun. In an attempt to try to build some heat for the match, Kevin Kelly said that ANX has not forgiven the Bucks for injuring Rhett Titus’ knee back in December 2011, which led to the first feud between these teams. This took place ALMOST FOUR YEARS AGO, so the fact that ANX haven’t let them go made them look like dorks. ANX were clearly set up to be the babyfaces here, with the Bucks jumping them before the bell and them getting screwed out of a victory because the referee was down when they hit their finish, but it was the Bucks who eventually picked up the win. You’d think this would lead to a rematch at some point, but we got no such match in Nashville, we’re not getting it in Florida, and nothing has been announced for Final Battle. In fact, the entire incident has not been mentioned… which makes you wonder what the point of it was.
AJ STYLES vs. MATT SYDAL- 7.5/10
Despite the high rating, I was disappointed with this, but I assume they were limited by AJ’s injuries because they only went about twelve minutes and AJ didn’t take that many bumps.
reDRagon vs. JAY LETHAL & DONOVAN DIJAK (w/the House of Truth)- 6.75/10
The match was very enjoyable and had some new double-team combinations from both sides. I just wish they would book Dijak better.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST MATCH: Christopher Daniels vs. Silas Young vs. ACH vs. Jay Briscoe vs. Michael Elgin- 8.5/10
They did a tower of doom spot where Daniels wound up powerbombing Elgin and Briscoe off the apron through a table, and instead of disqualify Daniels, the referee just threw his hands up in the air and declared that this match would now be under tornado rules, which makes no sense at all. Making it no DQs would have been stupid, but at least there would have been some logic to it. This was made even more ridiculous by the fact that just a minute or two earlier, the referee had been so concerned with making sure that everyone knew who was legal that he had Scarlett announce it right there in the middle of the match. To put the cherry on top of this silliness, the fact that this became a tornado match didn’t play into any of the falls in any way, which just makes you wonder the point of it was.
ACH had Daniels pinned but Kazarian came out to distract the ref. Sydal came out to deal with Kaz, and while the attention of both the official referee and the other referee who came out to stop this brawl was focused on Kaz and Sydal, Daniels kicked ACH in the nuts and hit him with the BME for the pin. I understand that they did this to set up for Final Battle (or at least I assume that’s why they did it here), but coming right after the stupid â€"this is now a tornado match†thing, I couldn’t help but think â€"oh great, more overbooking.â€
The two stories running through this match were â€"ring general†Christopher Daniels’ various devious strategies, and the intense but respectful competition between Elgin and Briscoe, which eventually solidified in a GREAT final ten minutes or so where both guys just refused to stay down no matter how hard they were hit, slammed, or thrown. I can see some people finding the finish a bit over the top, but I really liked it.
If have one criticism of this part of the match, it is on the shoulders of the announcers and booker. At the beginning of this match, Mr. Wrestling III mentioned that in addition to his over two-year long unpinned streak, Jay Briscoe has actually not been pinned since he lost the world title to Jay Lethal, either. This was the first I had ever heard of this fact. It was mentioned here, mentioned one other time later in the match, and no place else ever. This would have been a great thing to push going into this match, as it would have made the final two feel even more epic, and could have been used to set Briscoe up as a great red herring winner, as him winning could have led to a story of him seeking redemption against the only man to pin him in over two and a half years.
MICHAEL ELGIN POST-MATCH PROMO #1- Elgin gave the standard â€"main events like this are why ROH is totally the best and I super-totally respect you, my opponent, for battling with me†speech, which felt both very forced and also completely unnecessary (actually, being unnecessary was a big contributing factor to it feeling so forced).
MICHAEL ELGIN POST-MATCH PROMO #2- GREAT! He cut a great promo talking about his own journey over the past year as well as that of Jay Lethal, and announced that he wanted his title shot in Japan (he didn’t specify if this would be at the Tokyo Dome or at the ROH shows in Japan in February).
A great show from ROH. Survival of the Fittest is almost always a one match show, so any time we get more than that, I’m happy with it. There was obviously some questionable, booking, but those were ultimately minor points. Definitely recommend to buy, especially if you’re a fan of Michael Elgin or Jay Briscoe.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly suggests that an opponent might have legal grounds to sue Cedric Alexander for giving him a concussion during a match.
IT’S A F*CKING COMBAT SPOT! That’s just something that’s going to happen. I’d hope that every kayfabe contract absolves the opponent and the promotion of responsibility for any injuries that occur as a result of legal maneuvers during the course of a match, or else the company is at a HUGE risk.
2. Kevin Kelly said that â€"AJ Styles will get the final opportunity to challenge Jay Lethal for the ROH World Title this calendar year†and therefore, whoever wins Survival of the Fittest would have to wait until 2016 to get his title shot. Why? There are two other shows between and now Final Battle, Lethal has been announced for both of them, but has not yet been signed to a match? Why couldn’t someone win SOTF tonight and ask to cash in at either the Nashville tapings or at Road to Final Battle 2015: Ft. Lauderdale?
This is one of those things that there is absolutely no reason for Kevin Kelly to say, and saying it makes him and the company look silly… so why even say it?
The show opens with Kevin Kelly and Mr. Wrestling III just casually saying â€"it’s going to be five in the finals†and then moving on without telling us who is out of the match or why. It was extremely frustrating. It would have been much better to just open the show with an official announcement- or if you don’t want to open the show with the fans all booing, just have them f*cking TELL US WHAT HAPPENED in a quick and concise manner and then move on.
Kevin Kelly talks about those â€"mysterious envelopes†that Prince Nana has been handing out, reminding us that Will Ferrara recently received one. If only they had bothered to point things like this out to us for stories that actually involve upper-card wrestlers and wrestlers who people give a sh*t about, such as whatever the issues were between Sydal and ACH, so that when they decide to pay off the angle, it doesn’t feel like something that Delirious just pulled out of his lizard ass.
CEDRIC ALEXANDER vs. WILL FERRARA- 6.5/10
Steve Corino- I mean â€"Mr. Wrestling III†brings up the point that this is the second weekend in a row where someone has wrestled Cedric Alexander on the first night and had to miss the second night due to a concussion, so it’s possible that this is a work, but I don’t think so.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- he says that while the fans here in Hopkins might be too stupid to figure it out, he knows for a fact that Mr. Wrestling III is really Steve Corino, so he demands that Steve remove his mask so that he can be fired for violating his suspension from commentary. This would have made for a decent heel promo… but then BJ added one little touch that made it perfect. He wants this to happen so that he can take Steve’s job on commentary. One of the running gags of the Kevin Kelly & Steve Corino commentary team has been the Corino is paranoid about someone else taking his spot as color commentator… and that running gag is actually being used in a real angle because BJ Whitmer knows exactly how to push Steve Corino’s buttons. I LOVE IT!
Whitmer then got thrown out of the arena for… um… I’m not really sure.
ADAM PAGE vs. DALTON CASTLE- 6.5/10
Castle has now made a â€"Fan Up!†t-shirt. He had better not be selling those or else the Briscoes will sue. I’m really loving his Jurassic Park-inspired tights, though. What I’m not liking about Castle is the fact that the loss of the Boys doesn’t seem to have affected him at all. He needs to find ways to show this during his matches.
The match was solid, though the finish felt kind of lame. Whitmer came back out, tailed by many referees, to try to get at Mr. Wrestling III. This distracted Page, which allowed Castle to hit his finisher and win. I understand what they’re going for (this is the second or third straight match where Whitmer’s presence has in some way contributed to Page losing), but it still didn’t feel like a good end to such a technical match.
Major props to Kevin Kelly for his complete and total smugness directed at BJ Whitmer. He dared Whitmer to prove that Mr. Wrestling III was Corino by unmasking him… and then pointed out that to do so would require putting his hands on an announcer, and thus would get him indefinitely suspended.
MARK BRISCOE vs. FRANKIE KAZARIAN- 6.75/10
They have been making jokes on commentary for a few months about a policy in ROH that you can get fined for bad language or rude gestures. During this match, Kevin Kelly told us that he had gotten word that BJ Whitmer might get fined for his actions earlier. This occurred no less than ten seconds after a spot where Kaz shoved the referee. It was never once brought up that maybe Kaz should get fined for such a thing. People need to stop shoving the ref if it’s not going to be a DQ.
WAR MACHINE & MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway) vs. THE KINGDOM (w/Maria Kanellis)- 7.5/10
The Kingdom, who are usually color-coordinated, were all wearing different colors tonight. I’m not sur why I noticed this, but I did.
They had a great, action-packed six-man (aside from the part where they were, as Mr. Wrestling III put it, â€"on the outside for a count of eighty-fiveâ€). Moose is definitely improving. The finish didn’t seem to make much sense, though. If War Machine are challenging The Kingdom for the titles at Final Battle, why have the Kingdom beat them? It’s not like ROH has a problem with having a challenger pin a champion to build up a title match at Final Battle because last night they had AJ pin ROH World Champion Jay Lethal when he easily could have pinned Joey Diesel Daddiego instead! The accidental spear from Moose certainly contributed to it, but if you want to go in a Moose vs. War Machine direction after Final Battle, you could just save that spot for a match that happens… well… AFTER Final Battle (and you could make it mean more by making it the actual finish instead of having Rowe take forty-seven other moves first), and if you’re not going in that direction, then why do it at all?
CHEESEBURGER vs. JOEY DIESEL DADDIEGO (w/the House of Truth)- 2/10
Daddiego, who they had wrestling the MAIN EVENT LAST NIGHT, needed interference in order to beat a one-armed Cheeseburger. WHY?! If you want to push the idea that Brutal Bob and his student who is so unimportant I don’t even remember his name did this terrible thing to Cheeseburger by breaking his hand, why not have the fact that he only has one hand actually cause Cheeseburger to lose a match?
THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. THE ALL-NIGHT EXPRESS- 6.5/10
Spotty but fun. In an attempt to try to build some heat for the match, Kevin Kelly said that ANX has not forgiven the Bucks for injuring Rhett Titus’ knee back in December 2011, which led to the first feud between these teams. This took place ALMOST FOUR YEARS AGO, so the fact that ANX haven’t let them go made them look like dorks. ANX were clearly set up to be the babyfaces here, with the Bucks jumping them before the bell and them getting screwed out of a victory because the referee was down when they hit their finish, but it was the Bucks who eventually picked up the win. You’d think this would lead to a rematch at some point, but we got no such match in Nashville, we’re not getting it in Florida, and nothing has been announced for Final Battle. In fact, the entire incident has not been mentioned… which makes you wonder what the point of it was.
AJ STYLES vs. MATT SYDAL- 7.5/10
Despite the high rating, I was disappointed with this, but I assume they were limited by AJ’s injuries because they only went about twelve minutes and AJ didn’t take that many bumps.
reDRagon vs. JAY LETHAL & DONOVAN DIJAK (w/the House of Truth)- 6.75/10
The match was very enjoyable and had some new double-team combinations from both sides. I just wish they would book Dijak better.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST MATCH: Christopher Daniels vs. Silas Young vs. ACH vs. Jay Briscoe vs. Michael Elgin- 8.5/10
They did a tower of doom spot where Daniels wound up powerbombing Elgin and Briscoe off the apron through a table, and instead of disqualify Daniels, the referee just threw his hands up in the air and declared that this match would now be under tornado rules, which makes no sense at all. Making it no DQs would have been stupid, but at least there would have been some logic to it. This was made even more ridiculous by the fact that just a minute or two earlier, the referee had been so concerned with making sure that everyone knew who was legal that he had Scarlett announce it right there in the middle of the match. To put the cherry on top of this silliness, the fact that this became a tornado match didn’t play into any of the falls in any way, which just makes you wonder the point of it was.
ACH had Daniels pinned but Kazarian came out to distract the ref. Sydal came out to deal with Kaz, and while the attention of both the official referee and the other referee who came out to stop this brawl was focused on Kaz and Sydal, Daniels kicked ACH in the nuts and hit him with the BME for the pin. I understand that they did this to set up for Final Battle (or at least I assume that’s why they did it here), but coming right after the stupid â€"this is now a tornado match†thing, I couldn’t help but think â€"oh great, more overbooking.â€
The two stories running through this match were â€"ring general†Christopher Daniels’ various devious strategies, and the intense but respectful competition between Elgin and Briscoe, which eventually solidified in a GREAT final ten minutes or so where both guys just refused to stay down no matter how hard they were hit, slammed, or thrown. I can see some people finding the finish a bit over the top, but I really liked it.
If have one criticism of this part of the match, it is on the shoulders of the announcers and booker. At the beginning of this match, Mr. Wrestling III mentioned that in addition to his over two-year long unpinned streak, Jay Briscoe has actually not been pinned since he lost the world title to Jay Lethal, either. This was the first I had ever heard of this fact. It was mentioned here, mentioned one other time later in the match, and no place else ever. This would have been a great thing to push going into this match, as it would have made the final two feel even more epic, and could have been used to set Briscoe up as a great red herring winner, as him winning could have led to a story of him seeking redemption against the only man to pin him in over two and a half years.
MICHAEL ELGIN POST-MATCH PROMO #1- Elgin gave the standard â€"main events like this are why ROH is totally the best and I super-totally respect you, my opponent, for battling with me†speech, which felt both very forced and also completely unnecessary (actually, being unnecessary was a big contributing factor to it feeling so forced).
MICHAEL ELGIN POST-MATCH PROMO #2- GREAT! He cut a great promo talking about his own journey over the past year as well as that of Jay Lethal, and announced that he wanted his title shot in Japan (he didn’t specify if this would be at the Tokyo Dome or at the ROH shows in Japan in February).
A great show from ROH. Survival of the Fittest is almost always a one match show, so any time we get more than that, I’m happy with it. There was obviously some questionable, booking, but those were ultimately minor points. Definitely recommend to buy, especially if you’re a fan of Michael Elgin or Jay Briscoe.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly suggests that an opponent might have legal grounds to sue Cedric Alexander for giving him a concussion during a match.
IT’S A F*CKING COMBAT SPOT! That’s just something that’s going to happen. I’d hope that every kayfabe contract absolves the opponent and the promotion of responsibility for any injuries that occur as a result of legal maneuvers during the course of a match, or else the company is at a HUGE risk.
2. Kevin Kelly said that â€"AJ Styles will get the final opportunity to challenge Jay Lethal for the ROH World Title this calendar year†and therefore, whoever wins Survival of the Fittest would have to wait until 2016 to get his title shot. Why? There are two other shows between and now Final Battle, Lethal has been announced for both of them, but has not yet been signed to a match? Why couldn’t someone win SOTF tonight and ask to cash in at either the Nashville tapings or at Road to Final Battle 2015: Ft. Lauderdale?
This is one of those things that there is absolutely no reason for Kevin Kelly to say, and saying it makes him and the company look silly… so why even say it?