BRM Reviews the 1/23/2016 ROH

[Big Red Machine]

TOP PROSPECT TOURNAMENT FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Brian Fury vs. Shaheem Ali- 5.5/10
No offense to Brian Fury, but does anyone else find it a bit silly for a “seventeen year veteran” to be in a tournament to determine the “top prospect?” Prospects are supposed to be young up-and-comers.
Ali looked a lot more impressive than Fury. Fury gets a heel win, which both announcers dismiss as a “veteran move.” This is ROH. If you’re not going to win clean, then you don’t kayfabe deserve to be here. The announcers should not be putting someone over for using the referee as a human shield.

VEDA SCOTT PROMO- Cedric and Veda’s heel stuff got big cheers because this is Cedric’s home market. That looked silly on TV. That bit aside, Veda’s promo was great.

CHEESEBURGER vs. CEDRIC ALEXANDER (w/Veda Scott)- no rating, great segment.
Credit where it’s due: the fact that Cedric got rolled up by Gresham in his previous match did make all of Cheeseburgers roll-ups in this match feel like potential finishes. Cedric continued to beat Cheeseburger up after the match until Gresham made the save, which led to…

JONATHAN GRESHAM vs. CEDRIC ALEXANDER (w/Veda Scott)- no rating, good segment.
Gresham got the better of Cedric, so Veda ran in for the DQ. Cedric viciously beat Gresham down after the match, but he got cheers instead of boos from his hometown crowd.
I like that they are doing something with Gresham, but if you’re going to make him part of the roster, shouldn’t you be booking him on the Winter Warriors Tour shows?

WHO WILL CHALLENGE FOR THE ROH WORLD TITLE AT THE 14TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW?-
Nigel says that Kyle O’Reilly will be challenging for the title because Kyle was about to beat Lethal at All-Star Extravaganza VII but got screwed by Adam Cole. Good. It’s nice to see that getting followed up on.
Then he said that Cole beat Kyle at Final Battle, so Cole at Final Battle, and thus he deserves a title shot because he has a win over the #1 contender. This was not good because Cole cheated to win that match. It would have been so much better to name Kyle the #1 contender, then have Cole come out and point out all of his recent victories (and he does have many- he has only been pinned once since All-Star Extravaganza VII and his only other singles loss since then was a quick DQ against Dalton Castle), including his win over Kyle, which he says proves that he deserves to be the #1 contender instead of Kyle.
Kyle would then come out, looking for a fight with Cole, and while security would quickly separate them, Lethal would take this opportunity to get a cheap shot in on his presumptive challenger. Bobby Fish would then come out and help Kyle (which would help set up the tag match that is next week’s main event), and this would all end with Kyle declaring that he’ll fight both Cole and Lethal at the same time if he has to, so Nigel then makes the PPV main event a triple threat match.

Instead, they had Cole come out and say that because he beat Kyle at Final Battle, that means that Kyle can never challenge for the ROH World Title again… and Nigel didn’t do anything to try to correct him. Then Cole claimed that the list of people Lethal has defended the title against is impressive… and in a sense it is (Roddy twice, O’Reilly, and AJ Styles)… except that he has only had three title defenses in six and a half months! Michael Elgin had almost as many in less than half the time!
Then Nigel basically said the things I laid out above about Kyle wanting to fight both of them, except that instead of us hearing Kyle cut a fiery promo about it, we got Nigel flatly telling us that Kyle said some stuff.
Then, on cue, Kyle O’Reilly came out. It was nice of him to just wait there backstage instead of running out here to get revenge on his hated enemy. Then Kyle said he wanted to fight both guys, so Nigel booked reDRagon vs. Cole & Lethal for next week. This is a segment could have been SOOOOO much better than it was with just a few tweaks.

SILAS YOUNG PROMO- he says the Boys have one chance to come back to him or else they will be sorry.

MICHAEL ELGIN vs. JAY BRISCOE- 6.5/10
Mark Briscoe is out to do commentary in order to subtly build up Briscoes vs. War Machine and push the fact that War Machine has never beaten the Briscoes. Speaking of that fact: if War Machine got their Final Battle tag team title shot for beating the Kingdom before they became champions and Fish got his shot at the TV Title for similar reasons, why haven’t the Briscoes been granted a tag team title match for beating War Machine at Glory By Honor?
(And also, why has this ANX vs. War Machine tag title match not been pushed?)

Before the main event started, Stokely Hathaway and Moose came out and interrupted everyone so that Stokely could announce that Nigel had added Moose to this match. That’s random. Why not just announce this as the main event in the first place? (not that Stokely didn’t do a decent job of justifying things in his promo, but it just felt like Stokely’s promo, short as it was, was eating up time that could have gone to the main event (which only wound up getting eight minutes).

The announcers kept saying that Moose vs. Elgin at Final Battle was a #1 contendership match and that that title shot was the one that Elgin used in Japan… which makes no sense because Elgin cut that big promo about wanting a title shot in Japan after he won SOTF, but more importantly, if the Tokyo Dome match was because of Final Battle, does Elgin still have a title shot owed to him from SOTF?
ELGIN PROMO- bad.
He notes that he and Jay are now one and one in singles competition which is a fact that doesn’t really hold up. Maybe he meant in the past few months, which is kind of true, if we are counting this match, which was actually a triple threat and SOTF, in which they were the last two but it was actually a six-way. They have had many other matches against each other as singles wrestlers, but their only actually one-on—one match was the one in which Briscoe won the ROH World Title from Elgin.
Elgin claims that tonight, it took both Briscoe and Moose to beat him, which is a ridiculous notion because Briscoe won with a backslide. Between that statement and saying that having Mark at ringside gave Jay some sort of mental/emotional advantage, Elgin came off as REALLY whiny. He wound up challenging the Briscoes to face him and Tanahashi at the 14th Anniversary Show, which is fine. I’d much rather they do that than rush right to Briscoes vs. War Machine.

Not a good show by ROH, but they have finally started to build towards the next PPV, so at least there is that.

[cero2k]

TOP PROSPECT TOURNAMENT FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Brian Fury vs. Shaheem Ali- 5.5/10
No offense to Brian Fury, but does anyone else find it a bit silly for a “seventeen year veteran” to be in a tournament to determine the “top prospect?” Prospects are supposed to be young up-and-comers.
Ali looked a lot more impressive than Fury. Fury gets a heel win, which both announcers dismiss as a “veteran move.” This is ROH. If you’re not going to win clean, then you don’t kayfabe deserve to be here. The announcers should not be putting someone over for using the referee as a human shield.

I was also think the same thing, and if it weren't for Colby Corino in the tournament, I think this could be a cool story to tell, a dude that is trying to get into ROH by cheating. the TPT stipulation says that if you win, you get a contract regardless, so you could build up this guy as the guy that is cheating the system, and Nigel and some wrestlers hate that they have to give him a contract, but they must. You instantly have a new heel that can feud with some of the newer faces and build up to some honor 'veterans'

[Big Red Machine]

TOP PROSPECT TOURNAMENT FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Brian Fury vs. Shaheem Ali- 5.5/10
No offense to Brian Fury, but does anyone else find it a bit silly for a “seventeen year veteran” to be in a tournament to determine the “top prospect?” Prospects are supposed to be young up-and-comers.
Ali looked a lot more impressive than Fury. Fury gets a heel win, which both announcers dismiss as a “veteran move.” This is ROH. If you’re not going to win clean, then you don’t kayfabe deserve to be here. The announcers should not be putting someone over for using the referee as a human shield.

I was also think the same thing, and if it weren't for Colby Corino in the tournament, I think this could be a cool story to tell, a dude that is trying to get into ROH by cheating. the TPT stipulation says that if you win, you get a contract regardless, so you could build up this guy as the guy that is cheating the system, and Nigel and some wrestlers hate that they have to give him a contract, but they must. You instantly have a new heel that can feud with some of the newer faces and build up to some honor 'veterans'

That's a GREAT idea!

[NWK2000]

Nevermind Brian Fury is also the name of a Tekken character.

[Big Red Machine]

Nevermind Brian Fury is also the name of a Tekken character.

Hey. If they haven't made "Pepper Parks" or "Ashley Sixx" change their names, why would they change a cool name like "Brian Fury."
If Sting can be Sting even though there was already the other Sting, then why can't Brian Fury have the name of a Tekken character?