BRM Reviews ROH Global Wars Tour 2018: Day 4 (Second half AWESOME. First half... not so much)

[Big Red Machine]

ROH/NJPW Global Wars Tour 2018: Day 4 (11/11/2018)- Toronto, ON


WINNER QUALIFIES FOR FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL WOMEN OF HONOR TITLE MATCH AT FINAL BATTLE: Karen Q vs. Kaitlin Diemond- 3.5/10
Kelly Klein joined Colt & Ian on commentary for this match, and she sounded WAY too nice for her bully heel persona. Also, bringing up Kaitlin’s immigration problems was a mistake when she is currently in a match to qualify for a match that will take place in the US. Kind of gives away the result, doesn’t it?
Sumie Sakai came out to watch the match from ringside to scout her eventual challenger. She didn’t get to do much scouting, though, as the match was over in about five minutes, and she wasn’t out there for the whole thing. Both women looked competent and Diemond did not come across as generic the way most of the women ROH brings in to job do, so that’s a good mark for her. I’d definitely like to see her brought back the next time ROH goes to a country they are able to book her in.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- not good
Karen Q gave Diemond a disrespectful kick to the back after the match. The camera then cut to Sumie Sakai, who was sitting there and looking board as hell. She got into the ring for no real reason, but this set up for Karen trying to punch her. Sumie ducked it at kicked Karen’s ass, making her look like a total clown. Kelly Klein then came down to the ring and attacked Sumie from behind. She and Karen had a brief argument, but then started double-teaming Sumie. Madison Rayne ran out to make the save. Poor Ian, who had just told us that we would see the final qualifier in two weeks on ROH TV and was very careful not to spoil the result, was then forced to spoil the result and explain why Madison was out here. Is there any communication between the announcers and the booker in this company?
This turned into the predictable pull-apart that had to be broken up by security. This wasn’t bad so much as it was just painfully forced. I would have greatly preferred them to give those extra few minutes for this match to better establish Karen Q as a threat. This is a four-way title match pitting the champion against three challengers who won a qualifier. It doesn’t need an angle going into it.

ADAM PAGE vs. CHUCK TAYLOR- 6.75/10
Rhett Titus came out to do his once-per-show appearance where he shows up, poses and does commentary, and like on every show I am forced to ask why Rhett is being paid to show up at all if he isn’t wrestling. This time, Rhett was carrying a goaltender’s stick.
Page and Taylor had a match that only reached the point of being “very good,” but had the flashes of greatness in there that make me wonder what these guys could do with twenty minutes instead of just eleven.
THE KINGDOM (Vinny Marseglia & T.K. O’Ryan) vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Tetsuya Naito & BUSHI)- DUD!
BUSHI and Marseglia start things off… and we immediately go to the single laziest spot in wrestling “go for the mask.” It doesn’t show respect to Lucha Libre to do this spot out of the blue. It does nothing but cheapens the spot.
And no, it doesn’t make me angry that someone is doing this to BUSHI because BUSHI (and the rest of LIJ) have been acting like heels all tour. If anything, I’d even say this mask pulling was vaguely justified because of what BUSHI did to Taven on night two. The problem, though, is that this was not booked to be some kind of babyface act of just retribution on Marseglia’s part. It was a heel spot to get heat to start off the match (even though it was BUSHI who snubbed Marseglia on the Code of Honor handshake), and feels in no way connected to what happened just three nights ago.
Anyway, BUSHI quickly gets the advantage and starts CHOKING MARSEGLIA WITH HIS SHIRT… and the announcers (well, just Colt and Ian, really) decided that the best thing to do in this situation would be to make jokes. He is maliciously constricting his opponents’ airways and could end his life if this keeps up. LOL.
And the most frustrating part is that all of this could have been used to play into some sort of no respect heel vs. heel feud for the six-man tag titles between The Kingdom and LIJ, but there is zero indication that this was the plan, as no such thing was talked up (I don’t think the Taven/BUSHI stuff was even mentioned), and the announcers treated various forms of disrespect and cheating with amusement rather than intensity or outrage. LIJ cheated all match and got cheered even though they have been cheating all tour and BUSHI attacked Taven after Taven showed him nothing but respect and BUSHI snubbed Marseglia on the handshake, but The Kingdom were the heels here because Delirious just books for the pop of the moment. The only reason BUSHI did what he did to Taven was because Taven was in his home market, so Delirious wanted him to be the babyface for that one show, even though he is a heel on every other show. You can’t book like that if you’re trying to tell stories because you then inherently create issues like the ones here tonight. Consistency is paramount: consistency of character, consistency of morality, and consistency of internal logic.

The announcers tried to talk T.K. O’Ryan up by telling us that he reminds them of “a young Barry Windham” and “a young Adam Cole.” A tip for any wrestling announcer out there: if you want to come across as not being full of sh*t, GIVE EXAMPLES. Because if you tell me that these three guys remind you of each other, and the only commonalities I can see between them are hair-length and gender, you come across as an idiot. If those are the only criteria you’re looking for to make a comparison than you might as well say that Aksana reminds you of a young Manami Toyota.

As for the match itself… it SUCKED. Aside from the aforementioned “everyone is just being a heel” ridiculousness (which continued throughout the match), they spent the match trying to build up to The Kingdom hitting their stupidly-named finisher, and when they did finally hit it on Naito, not one person bought it as a nearfalls because everyone knew these jokers weren’t getting a pin on Naito. They had a lot of timing issues (the most glaring of which was their first attempt to hit Land of a Thousand Horses, during which Marseglia got BUSHI up and O’Ryan bent over in front of them… and instead of grabbing Vinny to hit the move, he just stood there, bent over, until Naito could come in and dropkick him in the head), and the execution of the moves… UCH.
Marseglia tried to do some kind of Shiranui on the outside using the apron, but couldn’t get up to go over (or Naito couldn’t get him up… I’m not a worker so I don’t know who is at fault here), so it looked like sh*t. We were then treated to first Marseglia on the outside and then O’Ryan in the ring throwing punches at Naito that were so painfully clearly not connecting. O’Ryan in particular seemed to be purposely trying to leave enough room for the Holy Ghost in between them. It was embarrassing to watch.
There was also a big spot towards the finish where Marseglia hit a Scorpion Death Drop on BUSHI in which it was clear BUSHI’s head came nowhere close to the ground. And these were not the only problems. Quite frankly, this match made me wonder how O’Ryan and Marseglia had jobs afterwards.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Taven came out and The Kingdom attacked LIJ after the match. Christopher Daniels came out to make the save, leading into…

MATT TAVEN vs. CHRISTOPHER DANIELS- 6/10
The announcers keep insisting that Daniels is “looking for an excuse to get back into the good graces of Joe Koff and Ring of Honor executives,” which makes his save of Naito here make sense, but it doesn’t explain why Kaz and Scorpio were able to get new contracts when Daniels wasn’t. The stated reason was that they had the titles, but if ROH management wants them gone then wouldn’t it make sense to not resign them until after the post-Final Battle TV tapings and then only if they still have the titles? (And, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, to make them embark on a strenuous schedule of title defenses in the hopes that they’ll lose?)
We cut away from actual in-ring action to show Dalton Castle & his Boys walking across the stage. Then we cut away from the match for a full ten seconds to show Dalton arriving at the broadcast position. Then back to the ring for a second or two, then ten more of Dalton talking to the announcers. Then back to the ring for three seconds, then back to the announcers for twice that amount of time to show us Dalton Castle putting on Ian Riccaboni’s headset. Then back to the ring for three seconds… and then back to the announcers for two, for no other purpose than to piss me off. In the past forty-five seconds we have spent three times as much time watching Dalton Castle do NOTHING than we have spent watching the wrestling match!
And do you know what the most annoying part of this is? NONE OF IT WAS NECESSARY! We heard Ian say that Dalton was approaching, and we heard him say “we only have three headsets.” Then we heard Dalton tell Ian that he wants to spend some time in Ian’s shoes, and after that point we started to hear Dalton calling the match while not hearing Ian at all. IT DOESN’T TAKE A F*CKING ROCKET SCIENTIST TO FIGURE OUT WHAT HAPPENED! But we had to cut away from the wrestling- you know, the thing that’s on the marquee- to visually establish all of this, just in case some moron was too dumb to put two and two together and thought this might be a plot hole… and meanwhile, all of the actual plot holes in all of the angles are completely ignored! I mean, it takes a special kind of mind to think that fans require f*cking visual evidence that Ian gave Dalton his headset but don’t need an explanation for why it’s okay for Marseglia to try to murder people with an axe but not okay for Bully to hit Flip with a Kendo stick. Or how Bully can retain his position as “enforcer” (and not just get outright fired) after insulting the boss and threatening to simultaneously get the biggest show in history shut down and MURDER AN EMPLOYEE. Or how Silas Young can get a world title shot without doing jack sh*t, but Matt Taven can’t get one after getting a visual pinfall on the champion in an ROH World Title match. Or why Jay Lethal has seemingly had nothing to say about Matt Taven running around with a fake world title belt and attacking him from behind. Need I go on?
Also, while we’re at it, this whole thing has made me wonder why ROH even has a three-person booth? We’ve got at least three different third commentators every show (they have a rotating woman for the women’s matches, Rhett does at least one, and then Caprice often does most of the others, and that’s when we don’t have someone drop by to do guest commentary), so why even have Caprice as the “designated” third person, especially when you’ve only got three headsets and thus have to swap him (or occasionally one of the others) out all of the time? Why is this company paying Rhett and Caprice to come to these shows and NOT wrestle? Ditto with Sumie some of the time, when she either does commentary or just sits and watches. It feels like this third announcer position and the Dojo jobs are just Delirious getting his pals paychecks. And this is coming from someone who likes both Rhett and Caprice, and has no problem with Sumie as a trainer or as a wrestler (but she shouldn’t be champion). Use people to their strengths! Put Rhett in the ring, make Caprice and Cabana the commentary team, and teach Ian how to be a producer or something. That way you can have an open third spot for when someone needs it for an angle (maybe use Madison Rayne as your designated woman on commentary when she’s not wrestling), and stop paying people to show up and not doing anything productive!
They would, of course, cut to Dalton on commentary at least once a minute for the remainder of the match, though after two or three minutes they finally figured out to do only do it during double-downs. Before I get to the match itself, I want to address Dalton’s commentary. Quite frankly, it stunk.
The first thing I’m going to talk about really isn’t even Dalton’s fault (though he did open his mouth and say it), which is his claim that “ever since I’ve come back I’ve had one thing on my mind: the Ring of Honor World Championship.” The problem is that we haven’t really seen any evidence of that. Has he even mentioned the title since coming back? This is more on Delirious than Dalton, but it just shows how not supporting your stories with the necessary details makes everyone look worse.
The major problem that I had with Dalton’s commentary, though, is that his tone was all wrong. He was completely relaxed. It was as if the show just two nights ago, where Taven assaulted the Boys and used them to both force Dalton to accept a match that Dalton apparently didn’t want (or at least a stipulation to that match that Dalton didn’t want) as well as to lure Dalton into a trap so T.K. O’Ryan could attack him. But Dalton was acting all normal, talking about how Taven’s attitude has changed and he has become more selfish and wants things he didn’t earn, blah blah blah. Dalton should be FURIOUS at Taven and swearing to get his revenge at Final Battle, not talking about some incident from years ago where they were at a restaurant together and Dalton ordered a soup then went to the bathroom and when he came back Taven had eaten Dalton’s soup. The only time Dalton’s one felt appropriate was after the match when he said “I want Matt Taven to pay for the pain that he’s been causing me, so if taking that title away is going to make him SUFFER, you bet your balls I’m gonna do it.”

Also… one lesson that ROH commentary has consistently failed to learn is that just because something is real does not mean that saying it will make a storyline better/feel more real. I don’t care if Taven and Dalton did used to be travelling partners or not. Dalton Castle is Dalton Castle. I want to be able to pretend that he only travels with his Boys, and does so in a garish, green sports car, to which he has affixed peacock feathers to the spoiler and has them hanging from the rearview mirror. Sometimes telling the truth makes things less “real” by intruding on the fantastical nature of the personalities involved.
The match was fine for the time it got, (though we missed a good chunk of it due to the issues described above. The finish saw Daniels hit Angel’s Wings but be too weak to follow up. The Kingdom then came out to distract him and try to interfere. Daniels took them out with the “Real ROH World Title” that O’Ryan tried to slide to Taven, but when referee Todd Sinclair took it away from Daniels and went to put it away, Taven kicked Daniels low and then hit the Climax for the pin. Meanwhile, Dalton Castle just stood at the commentary station and did nothing.
Instead of doing this, I think it would have been interesting to have Daniels get a visual pinfall on Taven with The Kingdom causing the distraction, then have Dalton & the Boys brawl away with O’Ryan & Marseglia, leaving Daniels and Taven alone in the ring and Taven to then win without cheating. I think this opens up some interesting possibilities for Daniels and Taven, where Daniels would have a vested interest in insisting that Taven’s title is the legitimate title and that by pinning Taven he has earned a shot at it, and Taven would be forced to either admit his own hypocrisy or support Daniels’ claim to a shot at his own title (though Taven really should be welcoming any “challengers” he can get so he doesn’t have to keep coercing people into accepting title shots like he did with Dalton). Alternatively, if Daniels really is leaving at the end of the year, there is no reason for him to not just put Taven over cleanly.

THE BRISCOES vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Sanada & EVIL)- 6.5/10
A disappointing match, both in terms of the lack of action and the lack of time (you can’t have your announcers call something a ‘dream match” and then only give it fourteen minutes). The Briscoes won after a chairshot and a J-Driller.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
After the match, EVIL accosted Paul Turner, and the fans were all chanting “HIT THE REF!” If you are someone who is coming to a wrestling show to see ref bumps, do us all a favor and stay home and watch 1998-2001 WWF and WCW TV on the WWE Network. EVIL would eventually lay Mark & Jay out with the chair. I guess this builds to a rematch, but at this point I have no faith that it won’t just be forgotten and never mentioned again.
On commentary, Ian Riccaboni is talking about how he’d like to see a rematch because he thinks that “if this match had taken place in a different city, on a different, under different circumstances” then maybe the outcome would have been different. No, Ian. You want to see a rematch but where everyone plays by the rules! This isn’t some science experiment where we are curious what could happen if we change the variables; it’s a sporting contest, and we want to know who the better team is!
Caprice Coleman then followed up on Ian’s stupidity to tell us that he thinks The Briscoes won because this match took place “on Ring of Honor’s home turf” and that “if this match had been in Japan, things might have been a little different. Am I the only one that saw Sanada get hit with a chair?! Why are we booking these heel finishes if the announcers are just going to ignore them? It feels like there is zero communication of any kind between the booker and the announcers. They seem to have no idea where he is going, and he seems to have no idea that they don’t know what to push, because this has been going on for most of a year now and nothing has been done to rectify it.

FLIP GORDON vs. JONATHAN GRESHAM- 6.5/10
Silas Young replaced Caprice Coleman on commentary for this match. That’s FOUR OUT OF SIX matches with a guest commentator so far. Silas said that he was able to put his pride aside and reconcile with Bully Ray because wrestling is about making money and feeding his family. He then buried Colt for focusing too much on his pride. Colt responded that he saw nothing wrong with taking pride in his work. Ian Riccaboni then felt the need to say that “Joe Koff has a lot of pride, banning the Singapore cane.” I am continually flabbergasted by Ian’s ability to keep surprising me with how awful he can be.
Ian then disgustedly asks Silas “how could you sit by and let him do that, Silas?” Yes, the very same Ian Riccaboni who had absolutely no comment about Mark Briscoe hitting Sanada with a STEEL CHAIR, is completely appalled that Silas Young- who he already knows doesn’t like Flip Gordon- would stand by and watch Bully Ray hit Flip with a Kendo Stick. Silas responded to this by pointing out that Ian is completely overreaction, saying “he’s not the first guy in the pro wrestling business to get hit with a Singapore cane,” before going on to point out the big flaw in this angle:
“How, because Flip is one of these fan favorites… we’re supposed to feel sorry for him?” It’s PRO WRESTLING! People get hit with Singapore canes all the time and no one makes a federal case out of it. But when it happens in this one instance, Ian is reacting like Bully cooked Flip alive with a flamethrower.
Ian tried to respond to Silas by saying that what Bully did was so terrible because they “had to edit it for television.” For what? Welts? At most some welts and blood? Give me a f*cking break! CHIKARA bills itself as completely family-friendly, and even they don’t edit for blood, but ROH thought it was too graphic when a guy got hit with a stick?! This company- and especially the announcers and the TV show- often comes off like it’s stuck back in the 1970s, and you cannot be the cool, modern promotion of the future if you come off like a lame, squeamish, old-fashioned territorial wrestling show.
This match was short because the story of the match was that Flip hurt his knee very early on a dive and Gresham went right to work on it. Flip sold very well (I LOVED the spot where he went for his springboard spear and managed to hit it with just the one leg pushing off but it was clearly weaker than usual, to the point where he almost didn’t make it to Lethal). Flip managed to get the win, which I normally wouldn’t have a problem with, but the way the way the announcers (particularly Silas and Colt) were pushing the extent of Flip’s injury made Gresham seem almost incompetent for not being able to put Flip away. It very much felt like Gresham lost to a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
The announcers (Silas in particular) also kept driving home this idea that Gresham was too worried about being nice and not going after the injured knee, but that clearly wasn’t the case. If that was what the story of this match was supposed to be then the wrestlers failed to execute it properly, and either way, the announcers should not have been calling something that clearly wasn’t there.

FLIP GORDON PROMO- fine
He challenged Bully Ray to an I Quit Match at Final Battle.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: SoCal Uncensored(c) (w/Christopher Daniels) vs. Super Smash Brothers- 7.75/10
Can someone please explain to me why this is a title match? SSB have had one appearance in ROH all year… and they lost. In fact, they have lost their previous EIGHT matches in ROH. It has been OVER NINE YEARS since SSB have won a match in ROH… and that match was against JOBBERS. Including dark matches, these guys have an ROH record of 5-12, with JUST ONE WIN COMING AGAINST NON-JOBBERS (over Steen & Generico at Death Before Dishonor VII: Night 2).
There is absolutely ZERO reason for this to be a title match, and what’s worse is that it’s a match in which we all know the belts aren’t going to change hands, either. This sort of thing doesn’t make the titles more prestigious; it devalues them by lowering the threshold for getting a title shot from “did you do something to earn it?” to “hey, has anyone else booked you on the eleventh yet?”
And really… Matt Taven gets a visual pinfall on the ROH World Champion during an ROH World Title match and management apparently doesn’t even think of giving him a title shot, but the Super Job Brothers can get one even though their last victory in ROH came during the Bryan Danielson/Nigel McGuinness farewell tour?! This is the sort of thing that drives me nuts because it betrays an underlying philosophy of the booking that they don’t have to have things makes sense because they think we’ll just accept whatever they tell us as the truth. If they say “it’s a big title match!” then they think that’s all we’ll think. There was zero reason to make this a title match (are you really going to tell me that SSB in a title match everyone knows they’ll lose is going to sell any tickets that having a world title match with real build behind it, plus KUSHIDA & Sabin vs. Young Bucks, Briscoes vs. Sanada & EVIL, and also having Naito on the card wouldn’t?), and all making this a title match does is hurt the product, but they did it anyway.
(And the idea I suggested above where ROH management would make them defend the titles on every show in the hopes that they would lose them doesn’t work because- as I pointed out above- SCU have already gotten new contracts out of this. And even if they could somehow just terminate the contracts if SCU no longer have the belts, 1) why didn’t they do that when they first decided they didn’t want SCU around anymore? And 2) WHY DIDN’T THE ANNOUNCERS MENTION THIS IDEA AT ALL. You don’t get credit for your story making sense if you keep a lynchpin detail to yourself!)
Ian apparently said that between the SSB’s performance against the Bucks and in their “other independent dates” they impressed ROH management enough to be given a title shot. Well I checked their indy dates this year. They’re 2-5 going back through March (not counting their loss to the Bucks). Why are these losers getting a title shot? I harp on this because ROH’s modus operandi on most shows nowadays is just to throw random matches down, slap a generic name on it that either contains the word “honor” or is a synonym for “we’re the best” and call it a card. And if that’s what 80% of your product is going to be, then how am I supposed to care about the random Jonathan Gresham vs. Trent Beretta match at Excellently Creating State of the Art Honor: Saskatoon next week- or, even, say, Young Bucks vs. Sabin & KUSHIDA in tonight’s semi-main event- when you make it clear that there are no rewards for winning or consequences for losing?
All of that being said, the match itself was GREAT and the crowd was really into it. It was yet another match in the 12-14 minute range, and I’d prefer my title matches to be longer than that, but given what is still to come, I’m fine with the time being saved. The only problem I had watching it was that I really couldn’t get into the nearfalls (which they did keep to a minimum, so that worked for me) because I knew there was no way in hell that SSB were winning. If this was a non-title match I could have at least bought that they might win this one to set up a title shot the next time ROH comes to Canada, by which time maybe SSB’s visa-issues will have been cleared up.

JUICE ROBINSON vs. TRENT BERETTA- 8/10
Juice did this crazy attempt a running cannonball with Trent against the barricade but Trent moved and Juice slammed into the barricade and rolled over the top of it into the crowd and it made this sickeningly loud noise… and Ian Riccaboni chose to call this moment not by talking about the risk Juice had taken or the damage that had surely been done to Juice’s back or expressing any concern for Juice himself or any fans he may have inadvertently kicked, but instead by saying, “Fans, you can’t take the Juice home!” Colt’s response wasn’t much better, but at least with Colt’s bit of laughter and then saying “into the crowd!” feels like the way that Scott Colton legitimately reacted to this (with some of the inflection on the “into the crowd!” being him starting to snap back into character). Ian’s response was the thing that Ian Riccaboni the professional wrestling announcer thought was the best thing to say at this moment to help the match. It’s sh*t like this that makes me really, truly believe that Delirious either doesn’t listen to the commentary, or he does, and either thinks it’s good, or knows that it sucks and doesn’t care, and none of those are good situations for ROH.
After that spot, ROH Senior Referee Todd Sinclair just gave up on enforcing the twenty-count on the floor. Trent took advantage of this to lean Juice over one guardrail, then climb onto another, jump across the aisle, and hit Juice with a double stomp. When they finally got back in the ring, Trent continued to work over Juice’s back. Juice would eventually get some offense of his own in, and began targeting Trent’s midsection. Trent would later adjust and start working over Juice’s head, including a big Tornado DDT and an excellent Piledriver on the apron. These guys used those element and has an awesome match. There was so much in here that was so well done. It was nothing innovative or crazy (well… the Piledriver on the apron was crazy), but it was a well-executed emotional struggle between two men who badly wanted to win. After the match, the winner cut a promo saying he was coming after Cody’s IWGP United States Title.
Because I’ve spent so much time burying the commentary tonight, let me say that aside from one comment that annoyed me that I put in the Stupid Announcer Quotes section below, I thought Caprice Coleman was fantastic in this match and wish more color commentators could be like he was here.

THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. CHRIS SABIN & KUSHIDA- 8.75/10
All of the awesomeness you’d expect when you see this match-up on the line-up card.

JAY LETHAL PROMO- not good.
The promo dragged and Jay felt like he was rambling way too much.

KENNY KING PROMO- awesome!

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jay Lethal(c) vs. Kenny King- 8.5/10
Kenny jumped the bell on Lethal, nailing him with the Shotgun Knees while Bobby Cruise was finishing up Lethal’s introduction. This was an excellent world championship encounter between a cocky but focused heel challenger and a fiery babyface champion. I could have done without the overbooking, but after seeing this match, if they use it to set up another title match between these two, that’s more than okay with me.
And I really should add that the commentary here was pretty great. Caprice was once again excellent, and this might have been Ian’s best call in ROH (though whatever that ridiculous mouthful of crap he says when Lethal goes for his dive sequence needs to end immediately). Colt… could have been better.

This was a show that left me with very mixed feelings. The last half of the show was fantastic and is the sort of thing I really want to see more of, while the first half (Page vs. Taylor aside) was a display of most of the things I despise about the current product. When they stuck with basic clean pro wrestling, or simple, consistent babyface vs. heel booking, things were very good, but any time things got murky (often as a result of the booker overthinking things, like setting up a heel vs. heel match, or trying to force clichéd build to a PPV instead of letting the wrestling speak for itself), the problems began to emerge. The ROH product isn’t so much bad right now as it is disappointing, and most of that is on the booker. While we do have the odd match that disappoints due to quality (for example, I would have expected Briscoes vs. LIJ to be a lot better for the time it got), most of the time ROH is wrestlers putting on great performances but being let down by the booking, either not giving them time to reach that next level in their matches or squandering their efforts with pointless overbooking and bad storylines that make it harder to get invested in the match.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Ian Riccaboni claimed that “Shane Taylor has been killing it so far over in the UK.”
As of the moment Ian uttered these words, Taylor’s record on his UK excursion was 1-4. And the worst part is that you know that Ian didn’t even bother to check what Taylor’s record was before opening his mouth.

2. There was a spot when Daniels, BUSHI, and Naito, each standing in a separate corner, each whipped a member of The Kingdom into the center of the ring so that they all collided. Ian Riccaboni referred to this as “triangulation.”
Triangulation is not three things coming together in the center from a point! It is a method of determining the location of a point by drawing triangles between it and other points whose destination is known. Ian Riccaboni constantly misuses words, and it really annoys me. The only difference between Ian and Matt Striker is that Ian is like a country bumpkin who genuinely thinks he is using the words correctly, whereas Striker is a douchebag college student sitting in a café trying to bullsh*t you into thinking he’s some sort of ivory tower intellectual by purposely using words that he doesn’t know what they mean and trying to ascribe meaning to them while sounder authoritative and hoping no one call shim on his bullsh*t.

3. During the Juice vs. Beretta match, Caprice Coleman talked about the “wear and tear” on their bodies from this “long tour.”
Four shows in five nights might be a lot for ROH, but these are both New Japan regulars. This year’s Destruction Tour, for example, was fourteen shows in nineteen nights.