ROH All-Star Extravaganza V
ROH All-Star Extravaganza V (8/3/2013)- Toronto, ON
BONUS TOURNAMENT MATCHES FROM THE TV SHOW:
OPENING SEGMENT- Nigel tells us that tonight will be the start of the most important tournament in ROH history. They should have made it more clear that this segment was from the Providence TV tapings from 7/27, otherwise a lot of people will likely have the reaction that I did, which was â€"The tournament started at last week’s TV tapings. Otherwise how could you have a second round match tonight? Why are they making Nigel look like an idiot?†I was also very unhappy about what appeared to be cuts to commercial for the TV show on what was supposed to be a big DVD show. My thought was that they were going to air most of this show as a â€"Road Rage†episode of the TV show, so they just taped the entire thing like it was the TV show, and not getting to see the entire match on a DVD I paid for would really have pissed me off.
While the very aggravating scenario I described above did not happen, it was clear that there were some major production discrepancies between what we got here and we will presumably get on TV, as Kevin Kelly called for a replay and would talk about it, but all we saw was the two guys down in the ring.
Nigel then has both Cary Silkin and Joe Koff talk about how great the ROH World Title is. I was actually expecting Koff to get booed by the fans, but they were very respectful of a man who has had an unfortunately adversarial relationship with the ROH fanbase.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Sonjay Dutt vs. Jay Lethal- 7.25/10
Great match. If he keeps putting on efforts like this, I’d love to see Sonjay back in ROH (and the fact that they let him appear on ROH TV doesn’t bode well for his future in TNA).
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: ACH vs. â€"Machine Gun†Karl Anderson- 6.25/10
As you might expect, ACH did a lot of flips. Also as you might expect, Karl Anderson did not. The match was good, but nothing more.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Mark Briscoe vs. Adam Cole- 6.5/10
The story of the match was that Cole at one point decided to focus his offense on Mark’s head, to go after the kayfabe concussion Mark suffered at the tapings in June (I’m not sure when they started talking about Mark’s concussion on the TV show, but it will probably wind up having happened about 5-7 weeks before this airs). Cole used some superkicks and got the win with the Jay Driller… which either telegraphs Cole as the winner of the tournament, and was done to set up a match with Jay when Jay comes back (as if some sort of justification was needed other than the fact that Jay was the champ and he never got beaten for the belt), or it is Cole doing a heelish thing for no real reason (all of Cole’s heelishness has been in the course of doing things to win matches. Yes a Jay Driller to a guy with a concussion will help you win, but this is a slow heel turn, so having Cole doing something dastardly heelish like putting Mark down with his injured brother’s finisher is too much for this point in the angle, especially when Cole’s superkicks would have done a perfectly fine job of working over Mark’s head instead). Either way… not such a good booking decision.
THE ALL STAR EXTRAVAGANZA SHOW ITSELF:
ADAM PAGE vs. KUSHIDA- 6/10
A good opener. KUSHIDA is good and Page continues to impress. Hopefully this program he is starting with Silas Young will lead to him being given a bigger presence on the roster.
During this match, on commentary, Nigel said that ROH would love to have Shelley back and to bring in the Time Splitters as a tag team, but that there were â€"visa issues and political situations†in the way. With so much of an exchange of talent between the two companies (Davey spent a whole bunch of time in New Japan last year, and ROH has gotten Anderson, Ishimori, the Hooligans, and now KUSHIDA this year), I can’t imagine that there is that much of a political issue unless Shelley has some major personal beef with someone ROH, I assume that we would have heard about it by now. Furthermore, I think Nigel is smart enough to not bring up the topic of Shelley coming over if it wasn’t at least in the works. Complete speculation on my part, of course… but it could mean good news in the future, so YAY!
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Tomasso Ciampa vs. Silas Young- 5.75/10
Ciampa tried to rip Silas’ porno-stache off of his face. The fans enjoyed this and chanted â€"TRIM YOUR MUSTACHE!†at Silas. The match was decent, but nothing too special. The crowd was very into Ciampa.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: BJ Whimter vs. Michael Bennett (w/Maria Kanellis)- 4.5/10
Bennett and Maria tried to cheat by having Maria leave one of her shoes on the apron for Bennett to use, then running around the other side of the ring to distract the ref, but Nigel caught it and ejected Maria from ringside (physically).
As you all probably know by now, this is the match where the bad piledriver on the apron put BJ in the hospital for a few days. The news now is that BJ is okay and wil make a full recovery decently quickly, so I don’t feel horrible about talking about a small positive here: Do you know how wrestling announcers will always say â€"this guy is so injured right now that the ref might have to stop the match†to try to sell how injured the guy is… but, of course, the ref never stops the match and the guy fights back, completely killing the credibility of the statement? Well I’m not sure if this just a coincidence or if they went back and edited it in (and if they did, it was a genius idea), but Kevin Kelly says exactly that in the usual tone of voice… and right afterwards Sinclair calls for the bell, and motions for some guys at ringside to come check on BJ. With any luck at least something will come out of this and it will inject some credibility back into a standard, clichéd announcing comment.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Matt Taven (w/Truth Martini & the Hoopla Hotties)- 6.25/10
Before the match started, Nigel said that Scarlett could not be out here at ringside because she didn’t have license to be out here. After the House of Truth interfered in the Taven vs. Steen match at the last show, Nigel is doing whatever he can to preemptively prevent any cheating. GREAT!
What wasn’t great, though, was the way that Nigel said this: He told Scarlett that if she didn’t want to go backstage, she had to sit next to him and watch the match… and if she didn’t, he would carry her backstage â€"slapping you ass all the way there.†In other words, the boss just told the hot employee that â€"the only way you can get what you want (to be at ringside for this match) is if you sit next me… and if you don’t I will manhandle you and slap your ass.†Sexual harassment, much? And it’s even worse coming from the guy is supposed to be enforcing honor.
So after claiming that she had a license for had forgotten to bring it with her, Scarlett sits down next to Nigel, and I figured that they would at least put her on commentary for this match, but all she did was occasionally complain about how unfair it all was, plead to Nigel to allow her to actually manage Taven for this match, and imply to Nigel that she will give him sexual favors if he lets her do so.
The reason that Selezyia was allowed to stay at ringside was that she has a bodyguard license, and is Truth Martini’s bodyguard. A 134 pound woman, no matter how jacked she is (and Selezyia looks quite jacked) serving as the bodyguard for a manager who already has a much larger male wrestler (a champion, no less) in his stable, is not the sort of thing we would have ever seen in the Cornette Era. In fact, the very idea would have likely sent Corny into a rage… which is why it is so hilarious that, out of all of the examples in wrestling history, Kevin Kelly chose to compare Truth having Selezyia as a bodyguard to Jim Cornette having Big Bubba Rogers as a bodyguard.
The crowd was solidly behind Roddy here. They started a small â€"Taven swallows!†chant, but that quickly died down. I guess they looked at the ringside area and realized that Taven probably wasn’t the one doing the swallowing. Anyway, these two had a solid match. Truth hit Roddy with the Book of Truth, so Nigel got up and confronted Truth, which wound up leading to Taven accidentally kicking Truth in the face, so it looks like they are really building something up between Truth and Nigel here.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Michael Elgin vs. Paul London- 7.5/10
Great match! London definitely still has it, and he’d be even better if he was working a full ROH schedule.
THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. ADRENALINE RUSH vs. CAPRICE COLEMAN & CEDRIC ALEXANDER- 6.5/10
A bit less of a crazy spotfest than I was expecting. I was quite surprised that the Bucks lost in their return.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Kevin Steen vs. Brian Kendrick-5.75/10
Brian Kendrick has facial hair. This is WAY too weird. Speaking of weird, there were a few very awkward moments in here. Chief among them was when Kendrick hit Steen with a low blow, which Steen completely no-sold for some reason, then hit Kendrick with a chokeslam. A very disappointing match. I’d be fine not seeing Kendrick again.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT SECOND ROUND MATCH: Jay Lethal vs. Adam Cole- 8/10
Awesome match.
PAUL LONDON PROMO- all he really did here was put Elgin over. The promo itself was fine, but the filmed this as London was leaving the building and put it on the DVD here. So did Paul London not think the main event would be worth staying around to see?
The good news is that London did say â€"see you down the road,†which means that he is looking to wrestle again in ROH in the future.
ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Forever Hooligans(c) vs. The American Wolves- 7.5/10
There was a lot of great action in here, but I had a lot of problems getting into this match because they kept switching who the heels were. First the Hooligans were heels, using the ropes for submissions and stuff like that. Then the Wolves became the heels, cutting off the hot tag by pulling the guy down off of the apron and stuff like that, and Davey especially was very antagonistic towards the crowd… then the Hooligans became the heels again with the Wolves getting spots that felt like they were the ones making the babyface comeback… then the Wolves became the heels again as Davey made a big production of going up to the top rope so he could hit the double stomp on the apron like he did to London at Border Wars 2013, acting like he wanted to do the move specifically to seriously injure his opponent… then the Hooligans became the heels again for the finish. It was just weird.
Overall, a good show from ROH, but I was expecting a lot more from it. I actually didn’t like a lot of the booking of the first round of the tournament, so I did a fantasy booking of the tournament in the fantasy booking segment during which I explain why I thought some of the matches ROH did were mistakes.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. He’s probably been saying this since Ciampa returned from his injury and it never registered to me how dumb it was until now, but when Ciampa pulled down his kneepad to go for the running knee strike, Kevin Kelly said that he had exposed â€"the bare bone of the knee.†When someone says that the bare bone is exposed, I think Joe Theismann. Just say he is removing his kneepad to hit the other guy directly with his knee. Don’t say it is something that it obviously isn’t.
2. Kevin Kelly couldn’t think of the word â€"punish†so instead he said â€"reward them with the hand,†which both sounds awkward and makes it seem like the form of negative reinforcement Kevin Kelly thinks is effective on children is hitting them.
BONUS TOURNAMENT MATCHES FROM THE TV SHOW:
OPENING SEGMENT- Nigel tells us that tonight will be the start of the most important tournament in ROH history. They should have made it more clear that this segment was from the Providence TV tapings from 7/27, otherwise a lot of people will likely have the reaction that I did, which was â€"The tournament started at last week’s TV tapings. Otherwise how could you have a second round match tonight? Why are they making Nigel look like an idiot?†I was also very unhappy about what appeared to be cuts to commercial for the TV show on what was supposed to be a big DVD show. My thought was that they were going to air most of this show as a â€"Road Rage†episode of the TV show, so they just taped the entire thing like it was the TV show, and not getting to see the entire match on a DVD I paid for would really have pissed me off.
While the very aggravating scenario I described above did not happen, it was clear that there were some major production discrepancies between what we got here and we will presumably get on TV, as Kevin Kelly called for a replay and would talk about it, but all we saw was the two guys down in the ring.
Nigel then has both Cary Silkin and Joe Koff talk about how great the ROH World Title is. I was actually expecting Koff to get booed by the fans, but they were very respectful of a man who has had an unfortunately adversarial relationship with the ROH fanbase.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Sonjay Dutt vs. Jay Lethal- 7.25/10
Great match. If he keeps putting on efforts like this, I’d love to see Sonjay back in ROH (and the fact that they let him appear on ROH TV doesn’t bode well for his future in TNA).
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: ACH vs. â€"Machine Gun†Karl Anderson- 6.25/10
As you might expect, ACH did a lot of flips. Also as you might expect, Karl Anderson did not. The match was good, but nothing more.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Mark Briscoe vs. Adam Cole- 6.5/10
The story of the match was that Cole at one point decided to focus his offense on Mark’s head, to go after the kayfabe concussion Mark suffered at the tapings in June (I’m not sure when they started talking about Mark’s concussion on the TV show, but it will probably wind up having happened about 5-7 weeks before this airs). Cole used some superkicks and got the win with the Jay Driller… which either telegraphs Cole as the winner of the tournament, and was done to set up a match with Jay when Jay comes back (as if some sort of justification was needed other than the fact that Jay was the champ and he never got beaten for the belt), or it is Cole doing a heelish thing for no real reason (all of Cole’s heelishness has been in the course of doing things to win matches. Yes a Jay Driller to a guy with a concussion will help you win, but this is a slow heel turn, so having Cole doing something dastardly heelish like putting Mark down with his injured brother’s finisher is too much for this point in the angle, especially when Cole’s superkicks would have done a perfectly fine job of working over Mark’s head instead). Either way… not such a good booking decision.
THE ALL STAR EXTRAVAGANZA SHOW ITSELF:
ADAM PAGE vs. KUSHIDA- 6/10
A good opener. KUSHIDA is good and Page continues to impress. Hopefully this program he is starting with Silas Young will lead to him being given a bigger presence on the roster.
During this match, on commentary, Nigel said that ROH would love to have Shelley back and to bring in the Time Splitters as a tag team, but that there were â€"visa issues and political situations†in the way. With so much of an exchange of talent between the two companies (Davey spent a whole bunch of time in New Japan last year, and ROH has gotten Anderson, Ishimori, the Hooligans, and now KUSHIDA this year), I can’t imagine that there is that much of a political issue unless Shelley has some major personal beef with someone ROH, I assume that we would have heard about it by now. Furthermore, I think Nigel is smart enough to not bring up the topic of Shelley coming over if it wasn’t at least in the works. Complete speculation on my part, of course… but it could mean good news in the future, so YAY!
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Tomasso Ciampa vs. Silas Young- 5.75/10
Ciampa tried to rip Silas’ porno-stache off of his face. The fans enjoyed this and chanted â€"TRIM YOUR MUSTACHE!†at Silas. The match was decent, but nothing too special. The crowd was very into Ciampa.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: BJ Whimter vs. Michael Bennett (w/Maria Kanellis)- 4.5/10
Bennett and Maria tried to cheat by having Maria leave one of her shoes on the apron for Bennett to use, then running around the other side of the ring to distract the ref, but Nigel caught it and ejected Maria from ringside (physically).
As you all probably know by now, this is the match where the bad piledriver on the apron put BJ in the hospital for a few days. The news now is that BJ is okay and wil make a full recovery decently quickly, so I don’t feel horrible about talking about a small positive here: Do you know how wrestling announcers will always say â€"this guy is so injured right now that the ref might have to stop the match†to try to sell how injured the guy is… but, of course, the ref never stops the match and the guy fights back, completely killing the credibility of the statement? Well I’m not sure if this just a coincidence or if they went back and edited it in (and if they did, it was a genius idea), but Kevin Kelly says exactly that in the usual tone of voice… and right afterwards Sinclair calls for the bell, and motions for some guys at ringside to come check on BJ. With any luck at least something will come out of this and it will inject some credibility back into a standard, clichéd announcing comment.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Matt Taven (w/Truth Martini & the Hoopla Hotties)- 6.25/10
Before the match started, Nigel said that Scarlett could not be out here at ringside because she didn’t have license to be out here. After the House of Truth interfered in the Taven vs. Steen match at the last show, Nigel is doing whatever he can to preemptively prevent any cheating. GREAT!
What wasn’t great, though, was the way that Nigel said this: He told Scarlett that if she didn’t want to go backstage, she had to sit next to him and watch the match… and if she didn’t, he would carry her backstage â€"slapping you ass all the way there.†In other words, the boss just told the hot employee that â€"the only way you can get what you want (to be at ringside for this match) is if you sit next me… and if you don’t I will manhandle you and slap your ass.†Sexual harassment, much? And it’s even worse coming from the guy is supposed to be enforcing honor.
So after claiming that she had a license for had forgotten to bring it with her, Scarlett sits down next to Nigel, and I figured that they would at least put her on commentary for this match, but all she did was occasionally complain about how unfair it all was, plead to Nigel to allow her to actually manage Taven for this match, and imply to Nigel that she will give him sexual favors if he lets her do so.
The reason that Selezyia was allowed to stay at ringside was that she has a bodyguard license, and is Truth Martini’s bodyguard. A 134 pound woman, no matter how jacked she is (and Selezyia looks quite jacked) serving as the bodyguard for a manager who already has a much larger male wrestler (a champion, no less) in his stable, is not the sort of thing we would have ever seen in the Cornette Era. In fact, the very idea would have likely sent Corny into a rage… which is why it is so hilarious that, out of all of the examples in wrestling history, Kevin Kelly chose to compare Truth having Selezyia as a bodyguard to Jim Cornette having Big Bubba Rogers as a bodyguard.
The crowd was solidly behind Roddy here. They started a small â€"Taven swallows!†chant, but that quickly died down. I guess they looked at the ringside area and realized that Taven probably wasn’t the one doing the swallowing. Anyway, these two had a solid match. Truth hit Roddy with the Book of Truth, so Nigel got up and confronted Truth, which wound up leading to Taven accidentally kicking Truth in the face, so it looks like they are really building something up between Truth and Nigel here.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Michael Elgin vs. Paul London- 7.5/10
Great match! London definitely still has it, and he’d be even better if he was working a full ROH schedule.
THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. ADRENALINE RUSH vs. CAPRICE COLEMAN & CEDRIC ALEXANDER- 6.5/10
A bit less of a crazy spotfest than I was expecting. I was quite surprised that the Bucks lost in their return.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Kevin Steen vs. Brian Kendrick-5.75/10
Brian Kendrick has facial hair. This is WAY too weird. Speaking of weird, there were a few very awkward moments in here. Chief among them was when Kendrick hit Steen with a low blow, which Steen completely no-sold for some reason, then hit Kendrick with a chokeslam. A very disappointing match. I’d be fine not seeing Kendrick again.
ROH WORLD TITLE TOURNAMENT SECOND ROUND MATCH: Jay Lethal vs. Adam Cole- 8/10
Awesome match.
PAUL LONDON PROMO- all he really did here was put Elgin over. The promo itself was fine, but the filmed this as London was leaving the building and put it on the DVD here. So did Paul London not think the main event would be worth staying around to see?
The good news is that London did say â€"see you down the road,†which means that he is looking to wrestle again in ROH in the future.
ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Forever Hooligans(c) vs. The American Wolves- 7.5/10
There was a lot of great action in here, but I had a lot of problems getting into this match because they kept switching who the heels were. First the Hooligans were heels, using the ropes for submissions and stuff like that. Then the Wolves became the heels, cutting off the hot tag by pulling the guy down off of the apron and stuff like that, and Davey especially was very antagonistic towards the crowd… then the Hooligans became the heels again with the Wolves getting spots that felt like they were the ones making the babyface comeback… then the Wolves became the heels again as Davey made a big production of going up to the top rope so he could hit the double stomp on the apron like he did to London at Border Wars 2013, acting like he wanted to do the move specifically to seriously injure his opponent… then the Hooligans became the heels again for the finish. It was just weird.
Overall, a good show from ROH, but I was expecting a lot more from it. I actually didn’t like a lot of the booking of the first round of the tournament, so I did a fantasy booking of the tournament in the fantasy booking segment during which I explain why I thought some of the matches ROH did were mistakes.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. He’s probably been saying this since Ciampa returned from his injury and it never registered to me how dumb it was until now, but when Ciampa pulled down his kneepad to go for the running knee strike, Kevin Kelly said that he had exposed â€"the bare bone of the knee.†When someone says that the bare bone is exposed, I think Joe Theismann. Just say he is removing his kneepad to hit the other guy directly with his knee. Don’t say it is something that it obviously isn’t.
2. Kevin Kelly couldn’t think of the word â€"punish†so instead he said â€"reward them with the hand,†which both sounds awkward and makes it seem like the form of negative reinforcement Kevin Kelly thinks is effective on children is hitting them.