ROH Glory By Honor XII
ROH Glory By Honor XII (10/26/2013)- Chicago, IL
MARK BRISCOE vs. SILAS YOUNG- 5.25/10
Mark got in most of the offense, which wasn’t particularly good because then there wasn’t much heat. Silas wins via illegal leverage on the ropes. Mark jumps him afterwards but Silas hits Mark with a low blow, steals referee Tod Sinclair’s belt right off of his pants, and whips Mark with it.
JIMMY JACOBS TRIAL SERIES MATCH #4: Jimmy Jacobs vs. Adam Page- 6.5/10
For some idiotic reason, Jacobs is still being billed as â€"the Zombie Princess.â€
Page doesn’t shake Jimmy’s hand, and the announcers inform us that this is because a lot of people in the locker room don’t trust Jimmy after everything he has done (namely, trying to help destroy the company). If you are going to have someone not shake Jimmy’s hand because of this, don’t make it a guy who wasn’t even in the company when Jacobs was doing these things!
Anyway, these two had a very good match. I really hope ROH finds something for Page to do soon, but until then, I am fine with him just consistently having good undercard matches.
KEVIN STEEN vs. MICHAEL BENNETT (w/Maria Kanellis)- 6.5/10
Apparently repeatedly ramming someone’s groin into the ringspost is not a DQ. It also made me care a lot less when Bennett hit Steen with a low blow to set up the finish. I also really disliked Steen kicking out of Bennett’s piledriver. This is a feud about whose piledriver is better, and this is just the first match… so why would you immediately establish that Bennett’s piledriver isn’t enough to put Steen down? And to make matters worse, Steen did go down later to a low blow and horrendously bad looking piledriver.
After the match Bennett set up to piledrive Steen on the apron, but Lisa Varon (Victoria/Tara) came out and attacked Maria, causing Bennett to have to go save his fiancée instead of cripple Steen. We then wound up with a big four person pull-apart (well… three people, really. Security tried to restrain Steen, Bennett, and Lisa while Maria just tired to get away from Lisa). The babyfaces wound up winning the brawl and Lisa Varon gave Maria a Widow’s Peak.
TOMMASO CIAMPA vs. JESSE SORENSEN- 5.75/10
Sorensen was competent, but nowhere close to impressive.
ADRENALINE RUSH (Tadarius Thomas & ACH) vs. OUTLAW INC. (Eddie Kingston & Homicide)- 5.25/10
Surprisingly short. It didn’t flow well, either. After the match, Outlaw Inc. wanted to cut a promo. Apparently Sinclair Broadcasting won’t let Homicide talk because, according to Kingston, â€"he cusses a lot.†Kingston then announces that he and Cide will not break ACH & Tadarius’ fingers because they are the future of ROH, which was just completely out of character for Kingston. They then cut a promo saying that reDRagon were ducking them.
PAUL LONDON vs. RODERICK STRONG-8.25/10
AWESOME match. Roddy just destroyed London’s back here. Tons of cool backbreaker spots and backbreaker counters.
2 HOUR TIME LIMIT EIGHT MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAMMATCH: Champions (Adam Cole, reDRagon, & Matt Taven)(w/Truth Martini & the Hoopla Hotties) vs. All-Stars (Michael Elgin, Jay Lethal, Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander)- 8.5/10
It had previously been announced that if any of the All-Stars eliminated Adam Cole from the match, that person would get a shot at the ROH World Title sometime down the road. Why the same logic doesn’t apply to pinning the TV Champion, I’m not sure. They did make good use of that stip a few times, though.
Some parts of the match were marred by blatant interference where all three refs just sat on their asses and did nothing, and Lucha tag rules seemed to randomly go into effect at times, most notably after Lethal and Casey Ray went through the table. The follow-up to that really annoyed me, too. Why not just count Jay out? That makes a lot more sense than randomly applying Lucha rules and then having Nigel come out on commentary and say that Jay may or may not have a concussion and we all know how bad Second Impact Syndrome… so they are still trying to decide whether or not let Lethal continue. WHAT? If you think he might have a concussion, DON’T LET HIM WRESTLE!
Anyway, the story of this match is that MICHAEL ELGIN IS A F*CKING BEAST! He fights back from being down four-on-one to win the match, finishing it off by pinning the ROH World Champion clean in the middle of the ring to earn a title shot. GREAT build for Final Battle 2013.
After the match, as both men were being tended to by medical personnel (okay, really it was just the referees and Nigel), Jay Briscoe hopped the guardrail carrying a mysterious sack. He and Elgin got into a shoving match, and Jay hit Elgin with the back, knocking him out. He then knocked Cole out and declared himself to be the real ROH World Champion, revealing the contents of his mystery bag: his own title belt.
Production-wise, having the commentary for TV on this DVD really bothered me just because I couldn’t help but roll my eyes every time Kevin Kelly would mentioned something happening â€"next week†that was going to happen later tonight. They should have just done what they did for those â€"Road Rage†shows from 2012 (you know… where they would give away most of the big matches from the iPPV for free just a few weeks afterward, because someone thought that was a good idea for some reason) where they just admitted that everything you see for the next few weeks is matches that happened at an ROH live event a few weeks ago instead of pretending it is happening live on TV as we speak.
A decent undercard and two awesome main events with a hot angle afterwards combine for an awesome show from ROH.
MARK BRISCOE vs. SILAS YOUNG- 5.25/10
Mark got in most of the offense, which wasn’t particularly good because then there wasn’t much heat. Silas wins via illegal leverage on the ropes. Mark jumps him afterwards but Silas hits Mark with a low blow, steals referee Tod Sinclair’s belt right off of his pants, and whips Mark with it.
JIMMY JACOBS TRIAL SERIES MATCH #4: Jimmy Jacobs vs. Adam Page- 6.5/10
For some idiotic reason, Jacobs is still being billed as â€"the Zombie Princess.â€
Page doesn’t shake Jimmy’s hand, and the announcers inform us that this is because a lot of people in the locker room don’t trust Jimmy after everything he has done (namely, trying to help destroy the company). If you are going to have someone not shake Jimmy’s hand because of this, don’t make it a guy who wasn’t even in the company when Jacobs was doing these things!
Anyway, these two had a very good match. I really hope ROH finds something for Page to do soon, but until then, I am fine with him just consistently having good undercard matches.
KEVIN STEEN vs. MICHAEL BENNETT (w/Maria Kanellis)- 6.5/10
Apparently repeatedly ramming someone’s groin into the ringspost is not a DQ. It also made me care a lot less when Bennett hit Steen with a low blow to set up the finish. I also really disliked Steen kicking out of Bennett’s piledriver. This is a feud about whose piledriver is better, and this is just the first match… so why would you immediately establish that Bennett’s piledriver isn’t enough to put Steen down? And to make matters worse, Steen did go down later to a low blow and horrendously bad looking piledriver.
After the match Bennett set up to piledrive Steen on the apron, but Lisa Varon (Victoria/Tara) came out and attacked Maria, causing Bennett to have to go save his fiancée instead of cripple Steen. We then wound up with a big four person pull-apart (well… three people, really. Security tried to restrain Steen, Bennett, and Lisa while Maria just tired to get away from Lisa). The babyfaces wound up winning the brawl and Lisa Varon gave Maria a Widow’s Peak.
TOMMASO CIAMPA vs. JESSE SORENSEN- 5.75/10
Sorensen was competent, but nowhere close to impressive.
ADRENALINE RUSH (Tadarius Thomas & ACH) vs. OUTLAW INC. (Eddie Kingston & Homicide)- 5.25/10
Surprisingly short. It didn’t flow well, either. After the match, Outlaw Inc. wanted to cut a promo. Apparently Sinclair Broadcasting won’t let Homicide talk because, according to Kingston, â€"he cusses a lot.†Kingston then announces that he and Cide will not break ACH & Tadarius’ fingers because they are the future of ROH, which was just completely out of character for Kingston. They then cut a promo saying that reDRagon were ducking them.
PAUL LONDON vs. RODERICK STRONG-8.25/10
AWESOME match. Roddy just destroyed London’s back here. Tons of cool backbreaker spots and backbreaker counters.
2 HOUR TIME LIMIT EIGHT MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAMMATCH: Champions (Adam Cole, reDRagon, & Matt Taven)(w/Truth Martini & the Hoopla Hotties) vs. All-Stars (Michael Elgin, Jay Lethal, Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander)- 8.5/10
It had previously been announced that if any of the All-Stars eliminated Adam Cole from the match, that person would get a shot at the ROH World Title sometime down the road. Why the same logic doesn’t apply to pinning the TV Champion, I’m not sure. They did make good use of that stip a few times, though.
Some parts of the match were marred by blatant interference where all three refs just sat on their asses and did nothing, and Lucha tag rules seemed to randomly go into effect at times, most notably after Lethal and Casey Ray went through the table. The follow-up to that really annoyed me, too. Why not just count Jay out? That makes a lot more sense than randomly applying Lucha rules and then having Nigel come out on commentary and say that Jay may or may not have a concussion and we all know how bad Second Impact Syndrome… so they are still trying to decide whether or not let Lethal continue. WHAT? If you think he might have a concussion, DON’T LET HIM WRESTLE!
Anyway, the story of this match is that MICHAEL ELGIN IS A F*CKING BEAST! He fights back from being down four-on-one to win the match, finishing it off by pinning the ROH World Champion clean in the middle of the ring to earn a title shot. GREAT build for Final Battle 2013.
After the match, as both men were being tended to by medical personnel (okay, really it was just the referees and Nigel), Jay Briscoe hopped the guardrail carrying a mysterious sack. He and Elgin got into a shoving match, and Jay hit Elgin with the back, knocking him out. He then knocked Cole out and declared himself to be the real ROH World Champion, revealing the contents of his mystery bag: his own title belt.
Production-wise, having the commentary for TV on this DVD really bothered me just because I couldn’t help but roll my eyes every time Kevin Kelly would mentioned something happening â€"next week†that was going to happen later tonight. They should have just done what they did for those â€"Road Rage†shows from 2012 (you know… where they would give away most of the big matches from the iPPV for free just a few weeks afterward, because someone thought that was a good idea for some reason) where they just admitted that everything you see for the next few weeks is matches that happened at an ROH live event a few weeks ago instead of pretending it is happening live on TV as we speak.
A decent undercard and two awesome main events with a hot angle afterwards combine for an awesome show from ROH.