Cero Reviews ROH Final Battle 2021: End Of An Era

[cero2k]

ROH Final Battle 2021 - End Of An Era
December 11, 2021
Baltimore, Maryland

Rey Horus vs. Dragon Lee - 8/10
Great opener, and arguably one of the best matches of the night, at least in terms of action. Story going in was that Lee was on a losing streak, losing the TV and Tag Titles, but the one man that he's been always able to defeat was Horus, and so we had the drama of can Horus finally win, or will Lee break the bad streak.

The match saw Lee start really dominant, he cut off Horus early on with a tope suicida that caught Horus by surprise, but later on, Lee would lose control of the match as it went on. Horus would have a strong second half of the match, getting some near falls with a avalanche cazadora driver and a Twisting splash countered into a DDT. Eventually, Lee won with an Incinerator.

Eddie Edwards Message - Throughout the show, we're having ROH alumni send videos saying what ROH meant for them. This was the first with Eddie.

ROH World Television Championship Four Corner Survival Match
Dalton Castle (c) w/Dak Draper vs. Silas Young vs. Rhett Titus vs. Joe Hendry - 6.5/10
Draper joined commentary for the match. Castle had his big entrance, but I've said it before and I wanna say it again. His entrance now looks soooo cheap with those dudes wearing undershirts, even when Fish and KOR came out as fake boyz, it looked better.

Anyway, the match was mostly people coming in and out and taking turns. For some reason that I may have missed, Castle seemed more occupied with hyping the crowd (which granted were kinda dead), than defending his title, especially with the teases we had with Young and Titus early on. Another thing that was supposed to be a thing was that Hendry and Castle had a past together, and now we didn't know if they were still together or not, which would eventually get resolved at the end when Hendry hit Castle with the belt after a terribly looking ref bump, only for Draper to run down and take out Hendry. The way it played out, Hendry looked like the heel against Castle. Titus won at the end with his dropkick on Silas.

Good for Titus, but I really don't care much for him winning titles. It was more about giving The Foundation titles.

Hangman Adam Page Message - Good, talked about ROH allowing him to travel and learn.

ROH Pure Championship Match
Josh Woods (c) vs. Brian Johnson - 7.5/10
This was great, but I think it was mostly because I dislike Johnson so much that I enjoyed seeing Woods beating him up and kicking out so much of whatever Johnson threw at Wood. The story was mostly that Pure wrestling triumphs over cheating, but part of it was that Johnson was just not prepared for a Pure rules match and didn't take care of his rope breaks early on. Woods won with a front sleeper while on the top rope.

Jimmy Jacobs Message - He talked about the guys in the locker room and how they wanted to change the industry, and did so and now they're in bigger places.

Fight Without Honor Match
Shane Taylor vs. Kenny King - 6.5/10
They tried to have something memorable that would leave a mark in the highlight reel of ROH, but I thought this ended up being underwhelming, sloppy, and somewhat dangerous at times. These guys were just not on the same track, on many occasions, they were mistimed, we saw King wait about a minute standing there as Taylor set up the shittiest ladder bridge ever, it was about a foot from the mat, and then it built to a 'plancha' where King landed on his feet and then fell on Taylor. People shat on Snoop Dogg's splash on AEW, well, this was pretty much the same.

The other notable spot that looked terrible was the big built to Taylor and King exchanging strikes on a ladder bridge between the rail and the ring. The ladder was too short, Taylor didn't trust the bridge, and once he was on, he couldn't keep his balance, he had to call referees over to hold it and then King himself had to hold him from falling. At that point you'd hope the get off and set the bridge up better, but nah, they went for the package piledriver, Taylor's side of the ladder flipped and instead of a short distance piledriver, they went all the way to the floor and thank the gods that it was a package piledriver, and not any other type of move.

Post-match - The rest of STP and some more POC that I didn't recognize came out and celebrated together with King and Taylor.

CM Punk Message - Gave credit to ROH and said that if not for the promotion, wrestling wouldn't be what it is today.

ROH Women's World Championship Match
Rok-C (c) vs. Willow - 7/10
I really liked this match, I love the work and both women have tons of charisma, crowd definitely got into Willow. The only thing lacking would be the level of experience, since it took them a bit to get in the same page, but after a couple of minutes, they did, and the match picked up. I have seen a couple of Rok-C matches, but this was only my second Willow match, and I was able to see a lot more of her work and I really liked it, I got a bit of Colt Cabana vibes from some of her work. Rok-C retained after dodging a Babe Bomb and hitting a Code Rok.

Post-match - Deonna Purrazzo, current AAA Reina de Reinas champ, and future (hopefully) Impact Knockouts Champion, came out to a good reaction. She challenged Rok-C to a winner takes all match, likely to take place after Hard To Kill since she implied making it a 3-titles-on-the-line match. Rok-C immediately and enthusiastically accepted.

I can totally see Deonna taking the title, meaning that ROH may want her as the champ on April and the potential that Rok-C may be Impact bound, which would be great.

Adam Cole Message - Thanked ROH for allowing him to become the wrestler he is today.

Rocky Romero & VLNCE UNLTD (Brody King, Homicide & Tony Deppen) (w/Chris Dickinson) vs. Team Foundation (EC3, Eli Isom, Taylor Rust & Tracy Williams) - 7/10
More than anything, this was fun. This was the ROH nostalgia match, with everyone doing moves from ROH alumni. We saw Isom hit Generico's, King did some Samoa Joe stuff, Homicide did Homicide, and so on. The match itself was a bit of a clusterfuck with everyone jumping in and out, but it was a fun clusterfuck, what people have started calling 'Party matches'. At one point, Dickinson set up a chair bed outside where Rust powerbombed Romero through, it looked painful. Finish saw Isom survive a Cop Killah, but fell to a big Brody King lariat and Gonzo Bomb.

Post-match - Team Foundation stayed behind. ECIII cut one of his 'narrative' promos, talking about being fired again because of the wigs up top. Suddenly, we saw the former Wesley Blake and some dude that no one has been able to recognize on my timeline. ECIII released the kraken, sorry, the Titan, and out came Adam Scherr, former Braun Strowman, and they all demolished Isom and Rust. They carried them to the back, implying that they're going to try and recruit them, or maybe they're just Scherr's food.

I thought Scherr looked fantastic, I think he can easily overcome the Strowman stink with a good story and good people work with. Blake idk, never saw much with him, but he IS a good tag guy, it's just a matter of pairing him up with someone he can have chemistry with.

Young Bucks Message - Of course they got to do a message, the team that ROH wouldn't pay to bring in because they were east coast, until they became more famous than ROH itself. Anyway, they talked about their time in ROH.

ROH World Tag Team Championship Match
The OGK (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett) (w/Maria Kanellis-Bennett) (c) vs. The Briscoes (Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe) - 9/10
This was my favorite match of the night. This served many masters, whether you like to soak yourself in nostalgia because you can't accept that you're an adult now, or whether you're here for the workrate, whether you're a fan of either team, and even the story told inside the ring. This was one of the best Briscoe matches I've seen in the last 5 or so years, and one of the best Kingdom matches overall.

Match was mostly back and forth, some control switching early on, but once things escalated, they were just going all out. Many of the spots in this match felt more violent than the Fight Without Honor, particularly some of the stuff the Kingdom were doing on the apron and that Doomsday Device to the floor. The ending sequence was also crazy, with both teams just kicking out of everything, Taven himself kicked out of a Jay Driller, a Doomsday Device, and it took a second Driller and the Froggy Bow for the win. Bennet had already survived a Jay Driller and Mark had survived a Hail Mary at this point.

One weird thing about this match was that Cary Silkin joined commentary at the start. He's weird to begin with, but he sounded like he was saying goodbye to this whole thing, and then he just left the table mid match to go back to the timekeepers table.

Post-match - Briscoes said that this may be the end of ROH, but it's not the end of The Briscoes, and they challenged any team to come after them. The lights went out and out came FTR. They got into a brawl until The Briscoes were pulled out of the ring. FTR looked badass here, the way things ended, they looked dominant.

I wasn't surprised that FTR showed up, it actually became predictable once the lights went out. There are many teams that could have shown up, but it just kinda felt like it was going to be FTR for me. So far, two AAA champions challenging ROH champions. Maybe we get Vikingo vs Gresham at the end tonight.

Bryan Danielson Message - Kinda expected that they saved Dragon for last. Talked about being in the first ROH show and thanking them for where he was now.

Gresham vs Lethal Package - Good, kuddos to them for coming up with this out of nowhere. A lot of footage was from their Pure Rules match, but modified to work for the world title.

Vacant ROH World Championship Match
Jay Lethal vs. Jonathan Gresham - 9/10
If this is the final show of Ring of Honor ever, this is the match you go out with. This match and men are the epitome of what Ring of Honor was always supposed to be. This was a zero shenanigans, all out contest between two ring generals.

Match was built around Gresham going for Lethal's arm, taking it away and hindering his ability to hit the Lethal Injection. Lethal worked Gresham's head, working towards that Injection, but as the match went on, Gresham kept bringing Lethal down, targeting the arm, hitting Bayonet after Bayonet, and at the end, Gresham locked in an Octopus Stretch and submitted Lethal to win the title.

At one point towards the end, the locker room spilled out to ringside to watch and cheer for the match. It was a cool sight, but I would've like to see them come out slowly, one by one, similar to how Impact did the Josh Alexander vs TJP 60-minute match, where it looks like curiosity grows backstage as people start to show up on the ramp and behind the stands; whereas this felt more like an organized "bring everyone out" spot. I have the vivid memory of guys like Joe coming out as incognito as possible to witness Punk v Cabana's final chapter match, and I think that would have been warranted for a match like this.

Post-match - Jordynne Grace and some others jumped in to celebrate with Gresham. For a minute there, I think Gresham got lightheaded after the emotion of winning the title. Silkin did the traditional 'giving' of the title, they hugged, and before we could hear from the new champion, the show ended.

We got a video that said where one chapter ends, another begins, teasing an April 2022 return, with ROH2.0.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
I have mixed reactions to this show being the 'end of an era' show. One one side, it did feel like ROH was signing off, commentary wouldn't stop reminding us that this was the end; on the other hand, we had a bunch of angles that surely will lead to something. Purrazzo and FTR can happen in AAA, Impact, or AEW, but the stuff with ECIII felt like a ROH thing. On that same vein, as a final show, some of the matches were not particularly must see, all love to Willow, but she doesn't really scream 'final' women's title challenger to me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the show for what it was and if it's the end, well, thank you ROH.