BRM Reviews the 3/16/2023 ROH (bad)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 3/16/2023 ROH (bad)

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 26th, '23, 18:09

PROVING GROUND MATCH: Claudio Castagnoli(ROH World Champion) vs. Willie Mack- 6/10
The time limit for these is now down to ten minutes, which makes me dislike the gimmick even more. Just lasting ten minutes with the champion is enough to earn a title shot? Really?
This was good for the time it got. Claudio won cleanly, and showed Willie Mack respect after the match.

DANTE MARTIN (w/Darius Martin) vs. MIKE BENNETT (w/Maria Kanellis-Bennett & Matt Taven)- 7/10
As some of you might remember, Mike Bennett had an excellent Pure Title match with Jonathan Gresham back at Best in the World 2021, which no one really expected because it was a totally different style for Bennett. This match was the first time since then that I’ve seen flashes of that Mike Bennett, and mixed in with the usual Mike Bennett stuff instead of being isolated in a Pure rules setting. Dante held up his end of the bargain as well, doing his usual athletic stuff. Dante won cleanly.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Matt Taven ran into the ring and attacked Dante from behind. Darius ran in and made the save.

BLAKE CHRISTIAN & METALIK vs. THE TRUSTBUSTERS (Ari Daivari & Slim J) (w/Mark Sterling)- 6/10
Babyfaces win clean.

SAMOA JOE VS. MARK BRISCOE VIDEO PACKAGE- very
When Ian framed this by saying that Joe’s famous ROH World Title reign was “jump-started” by his feud with the Briscoes- six months into the reign- my immediate reaction was skepticism, but when I thought about it, Ian was absolutely right. All Joe really had going for him before that point was the inevitable match against Christopher Daniels at Glory By Honor II right before that which they really didn’t build to that well. The Paul London match feels historically important nowadays because its aftermath established the tradition of giving significant wrestlers in the company the big send-off when they sign elsewhere, but the match itself really wasn’t that special, and London was the one heading into that match with momentum, not Joe.

MARK BRISCOE PROMO- bad
After that very good video package, we got cartoon Mark Briscoe cut a cartoonish promo on cartoon Mark Sterling and his guys. He says he’ll beat Tony Nese next week. This is not a version Mark Briscoe I want to see at all, never mind potentially see as the TV Champion.

EDDIE KINGSTON vs. JEEVES KAY- no rating, fine segment
The graphic claimed that Kay had Slim J at ringside with him, but Slim J was nowhere to be found. Oops.
Claudio Castagnoli came out and sat down in the front row to watch the match, so Kingston tossed Kay into the barricade, sending the barricade into Claudio and making him spill his coffee all over his shirt. At the second day of ROH on HDnet TV tapings, Claudio ran Brent Albright into the barricade when I was sitting in the spot Claudio is in right now spilling the bottle of Pepsi the fan next to me had smuggled into the ECW Arena, causing it to spill all over my shoes, so this is just him getting his just desserts.
Claudio jawed with Kingston, distracting him, and thus letting Kay take over by hitting a dive. Kay then hit a Frog Splash, but Kingston kicked out at one, hit a Backdrop Driver, then locked in a Dragon Sleeper for the win (that’s what Ian called it, and I also thought it looked a lot more like a Dragon Sleeper than the Stretch Plum Kingston has been doing in AEW). Eddie motioned that he wanted the belt, and found a Supercard of Honor 2023 sign to point at.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS THE TRUSTBUSTERS- bad
Sterling says that some of Blake Christian & Metalik’s tags weren’t legal, so he has “filed an injunction” to get the match thrown out, and thus his team of losers is still undefeated. He also framed Kay getting his ass kicked by Kingston as a win by claiming that Kay took Kingston to the limit and “gave him his best match in Ring of Honor history.”
Daivari interrupted Sterling, and I made the mistake of thinking things were going to stop being goofy, but I was wrong. Daivari made a challenge to Metalik, Christian, and a partner of their choice for a six-man tag, but the fact that he prefaced it by shouting about how his loss tonight was “bullsh*t,” takes his yelling and turns what shout have felt like legitimate anger and turns it into overdramatic cartoonish bluster.
I see segments like this, and I am completely baffled that Tony Khan claims to have been such a big fan of ROH that he not only bought the brand and library but also is putting a lot of his own time, money, and effort into keeping it running even though these is pretty much zero market demand for it… and yet he thinks that this is what people who have an affinity for ROH want to see? Yes, Larry Sweeney and Prince Nana did occasionally veer into this territory, but they always had credible wrestlers like Chris Hero and Jimmy Rave and Alex Shelley and Claudio Castagnoli standing behind them when they did so. People who were real threats rather than jobber clowns.

PROVING GROUND MATCH: Athena(ROH Women’s World Champion) vs. Hyan- 4.5/10
On her way to the ring, Athena found a young fan and offered him a high-five but then pulled back, and Ian Riccaboni found the most painfully robotic way he could have possibly described it, saying that Athena “deprived the young fan of that interaction.” SHE WENT OUT OF HER WAY TO TAUNT A CHILD! Where is your outrage, Ian?!
This was great for the short time it got. Athena won cleanly.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
Athena left the submission in after the bell. She eventually let go and got in the referee’s face, then went back to attack Hyan. She was apparently fined for attacking her opponent after the match last week, and yet here she is doing it again, so we now know that that’s not an effective deterrent. This irritates me because these post-match attacks feel like she’s just doing them to be a heel rather than because there is any real reason her character has. No extra rage or frustration she wants to let out, no animus towards the other wrestler or towards the promotion for booking her against someone she considers beneath her, or anything like that.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS BLAKE CHRISTIAN & METALIK- bad
They are accepting the Trustbusters’ challenge, and Christian has recruited A.R. Fox to be their partner. He managed to say this in a way that made me wish Metalik would have grabbed him and repeatedly rammed his head into a wall. He came off like someone desperately trying to sound cool to a group of children. Fox showed up, and then Christian proceeded to be even more annoying. AEW has so many polished promos under contract that they’re not doing anything with on TV. Why are they having guys talk in front of the camera who can’t do so without sounding like total goofs?
Speaking of things that don’t need to be here, Christian also suggested that they should go after the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles.

SILAS YOUNG vs. MARCUS KROSS- squash
Silas is another guy who I just don’t need to see anymore. Why am I still watching Silas instead of, say Angelico, or Scorpio Sky, or Lee Moriarty? Or giving ring time to Lee Johnston or Brian Pillman Jr. or Brock Anderson?
Ian claimed that Silas had “one of the great matches of all time at Supercard of Honor (in 2018),” which is just plain false. There is no way that anyone in their right mind would say that about his match against Kenny King that night. Even by the standards of a Last Man Standing match, it was pretty pedestrian, and had an extremely cheap finish.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
Silas began to cut a promo claiming to be synonymous with ROH and the best ROH TV Champion of all time. He was interrupted by Shane Taylor. Finally! Someone I actually want to see! Taylor says that he, not Silas, is the greatest ROH TV Champion of all time. I’m not sure how much I agree with that, but he’s certainly got a much better claim than Silas does. He challenges Silas to a match next week, and Silas accepts.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS ATHENA- She cut what was mostly a great promo calling out Yuka Sakazaki, except that I am completely baffled as to where this animus comes from. Athena at some point slammed Sakazaki’s knee with the ring steps, and now thinks Sakazaki is afraid of her, so she is offering Sakazaki a title shot. This is slightly odd behavior for a heel, but I think it fits the cockiness that has defined Athena’s heel character so far.

ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Embassy(c) (w/Prince Nana) vs. Dalton Castle & the Boys- 6/10
The Embassy retained. The ref seeing Nana interfere should have been a DQ but wasn’t.

POST-MATCH SEGEMNT- meh
The Embassy kept beating up Dalton and the Boys after the match. This felt it was done just so Blake Christian, A.R. Fox, and Metalik could come out and make the save by chasing the heels off rather than because the heels had an actual reason to do it.

MADISON RAYNE vs. TRISH ADORA- 4.75/10
Adora won cleanly.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS TOP FLIGHT- awesome
Dante did most of the talking, even though it’s Darius match against Matt Taven that they were building up, but Darius was quite good when he spoke, too.

CHRISTOPHER DANIELS & MATT SYDAL vs. THE OUTRUNNERS (Truth Magnum & Turbo Floyd)- squash
The Outrunners are total clowns. Ian claimed that they “put up a heck of an effort in Dayton against the Acclaimed.” They lost in less than a minute. Has Ian become possessed by Michael Cole or Tony Schiavone or some other announcer who famously murdered his own credibility?
The Outrunners got a brief advantage by jumping the bell, but this quickly turned into a squash.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- very good
Aussie Open came out to challenge Daniels & Sydal to a match next week. That “we run the world” catchphrase is idiotic. Also, can we please stop saying “new era of Ring of Honor?” It’s really irritating. Daniels accepted the challenge. My only issue here (aside from the catchphrase) is that this was clearly taped before they had any idea what they were doing with the tag titles… which is insane to me because “what are we doing with the tag titles” was very clearly the first question that needed to be answered when Tony sat down to book this out, and to not have come up with your answer to that question before you started taping your second day of TV (never mind your first) is criminally negligent.

PURE TITLE MATCH VIDEO PACKAGE- bad
It’s the battle of an uptight douche (YUTA) vs. a cartoon goof (Connors) who has done nothing to earn this title shot, and the basis of their feud is something that I don’t see how any fan could possibly care about: whether then NJPW LA Dojo is better at training than the Blackpool Combat Club. Ian Riccaboni compared it to a high school sports rivalry, which is a fair comparison, but it doesn’t get me any more invested in it because people who have no affiliation with either school tend not to care about someone else’s high school sports rivalry.

ROH PURE TITLE MATCH: Wheeler YUTA(c) vs. Clark Connors- 5.5/10
YUTA got Connors into rope-break trouble early on and worked his arm. Also, he cheated because he’s a heel now. YUTA won a match that was nowhere near what an ROH main event should be.

WHEELER YUTA PROMO- He demands an ROH Pure Title defense against Katsuyori Shibata. And I absolutely don’t care. Yeah, maybe the match will be great. Or maybe it will be like the vast majority of Shibata matches since he and Ishii had the f*cking abomination a decade ago and it will be full of guys standing- or even f*cking SITTING- and calmly taking turns letting the other guy hit them, which you would absolutely never do in a f*cking real fight.


This was a bad episode of ROH. There were too many squashes (three in less than two hours), the main event wasn’t even close to acceptable, and while there are a few things building from week to week, the only thing being built to that even vaguely interests me at the moment is the Kingdom vs. Top Flight, which is a midcard feud.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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