BRM Reviews the 3/5/2021 ROH

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 3/5/2021 ROH

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 12th, '21, 12:24

KENNY KING & RUSH PROMO AFTER LAST WEEK’S WORLD TITLE MATCH- bad
This started off with Kenny explaining his actions. Basically, he said everything was a set-up to swerve Shane Taylor. The problem with that is that all Kenny’s little act did was increase the chances that Taylor would recover enough to avoid the chairshot from Kenny if his reaction time was good enough. If Kenny hadn’t made a big stink out of getting involved, Rush would just have hit the injured Taylor with the chair right away and that would have been it.
Rush cut his usual promo. Bestia Del Ring got to talk. He said “discipline and humiliation. These are La Faccion Ingobernable.” That was it.

DALTON CASTLE VS. JOSH WOODS VIDEO PACKAGE- GREAT!
I’m really liking the way they portray Woods. He’s got this great “aw, shucks!” quality to him. Woods is ranked #1 in the Pure Division and wants to get some more momentum going into the title match with Jonathan Gresham he is looking for. Dalton wants to erase his recent loss to Woods, which is motivated by a desire to turn his career around because is in not winning as much as someone with his talent should and is in a slump and feels like he needs to win to justify his job. He pretty much said that he would quit if he lost this match.


PURE RULES MATCH: Dalton Castle vs. Josh Woods- 6/10
Woods controlled most of the match, and only really got into trouble when Dalton caught him with a suplex on the floor. They built the story around Woods’ Gorilla Lock, which Castle tapped out to last time. Josh locked it in twice, forcing Dalton to expend a rope break to survive each time. They later repeated the spot that was the finish of their previous match, with Woods countering Bangarang into the Gorilla Lock but this time Dalton sat down on him and got a nearfall. Upon having his plan foiled, Dalton took the next available opportunity to fake a back injury, and both the announcers and Woods fell for it, resulting in Woods getting rolled up for the pin.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Silas Young showed and used Woods’ losses in big matches (to Gresham in the Pure Title tournament, in the #1 contendership match at Final Battle) and now losing by trickery tonight to pitch to Woods that even though he is “a technical beast” he still needs Silas around to teach him about professional wrestling.

FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH FOR A SHOT AT THE ROH WORLD TITLE AT THE ROH 19TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW: EC III vs. Matt Taven vs. Jay Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal- 6.75/10
I thought only the top three wrestlers in a division’s rankings can challenge for the title. It’d be nice if they told us what would happen if the winner of this match isn’t in the top three when the Anniversary Show comes around.
Briscoe in particular feels like he’s in this match because of hi legacy rather than any recent accomplishments, as I don’t remember him winning many matches recently (and in his two biggest recent singles matches he lost to EC III by DQ and lost cleanly to Shane Taylor).
We got inset promos (well… they started as insets, anyway) from all four guys during their entrances. EC III was predictably full of non-sense designed to sound deep. Lethal was very good, but on for a little too long. Taven was not quite as good as Lethal, and also went a little too long. Jay Brisoce’s was good. He framed himself vs. Rush as a dream match.

Jay Briscoe refused to shake EC III’s hand, which drew him a rebuke from Jay Lethal. Briscoe went after EC III the moment the bell rang.
Maria Kanellis-Bennett was on commentary for this match and took the first available opportunity to point out that her husband ended EC III’s undefeated streak in TNA. I love it! I wondered why they had her on commentary, but they actually made great use of the fact that she and EC III were in TNA at the same time get over the fact that EC III has changed so much. Between that, Riccaboni outright saying that EC III was TNA’s world champion, and Maria’s comment about the end of the undefeated streak, they did a good job of making ROH and TNA feel like the same universe. There is certainly an argument to be made that doing so makes ROH feel a little smaller because they are admitting that another company (and not even on of the big dogs) is on their level, but there is also a nice honesty to it.
The action here was very good, but not quite main-event level. They gave a lot of focus to EC III vs. Briscoe, with EC III snapping and showing emotion for the first time. Those two brawled away, at which point Vita VonStarr showed up to distract Taven, which I HATED. We’ve had f*ck finishes in big matches for three straight weeks now, including four of the last five matches that were either title matches or #1 contendership match.
I also didn’t like Lethal taking advantage of said distraction to win, as it seems to run counter to everything he preaches. That being said, it’s entirely possible that this is the beginning of a story about him becoming willing to resort to shadier measures for what he feels is the greater good of the company, leading to a split in The Foundation.



Another mixed show from ROH. We’ll see where this goes, but I’m once again losing faith.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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