BRM Reviews the 3/26/2021 ROH

[Big Red Machine]

MIKE BENNETT vs. BEER CITY BRUISER-
Matt Taven was on commentary for this match.
BCB cut an inset promo before the match explaining his heel turn. He’s tired of not getting opportunities and so he will now do whatever it takes to win. Bruiser said that Brian Milonas must choose if he, too, is willing to do whatever it takes to win. Ian Riccaboni noted that Milonas did not come to ringside with BCB, even though he is licensed to do so.
Bennett also cut an inset promo, which was very good.
BCB jumped the bell on Bennett. They were having a decent match with Bruiser working over Bennett’s injured ankle. The commentators pushed very hard on the “it’s not cool to work on your friend’s injured body part to win a match” angle, which I always hate.
Eventually BCB went under the ring and got a beer bottle. He shattered it against the ringpost. Matt Taven saw this and ran out form the commentary table to make the save, despite Ian Riccaboni telling him this was not allowed. Todd Sinclair rang the bell and the match “thrown out.” Was Taven running down to the ring the reason for the DQ, BCB smashing the beer bottle, or both? If it’s one or the other, it should be a DQ, not a no-contest, and if it’s both, it should probably be a double-DQ rather than a no-contest, but that’s a nit-pick. The important thing is that they should announce exactly what it was and why (and specifically, the ring announcer should).
In any case, this was also a preemptive bell-ringing, as BCB had neither used the bottle on Bennett nor had Taven touched anyone. He hadn’t even made it to the end of the ramp, though I suppose if he wasn’t allowed at ringside (I guess he wasn’t licensed) then that wouldn’t be preemptive… but then shouldn’t it have been Bennett getting DQed and not a no-contest? Whatever. My big point here is that if ROH is going to go with “preemptive” DQs, that’s fine… so long as they are consistent with it, and I worry that they won’t be.

PURE RULES GAUNTLET MATCH: Dante Caballero vs. Will Ferrara vs. World Famous CB vs. Eric Martin vs. Wheeler YUTA vs. Fred Yehi- 6/10
Your rope-breaks and closed-fist warnings don’t carry over from opponent to opponent. This was twenty-six minutes of solid wrestling mostly involving people who I do not care about in any way, and didn’t do much of anything for anyone. Sure, Yehi won, but he was the final guy in, so it feels like had an advantage.
The real issue here- and it plays into a bigger issue ROH’s booking has been having, was that I didn’t care about the vast majority of the people in the match. Martin and Cabellero are ROH Dojo trainees with no established personalities. I’m fine with using them as fodder, and that’s how they were used here. Ferrara and Cheeseburger on the other hand…
Ferrara is like an undercard Baron Corbin. He’s passable in the ring, but no one cares about him and he never has interesting matches, and despite this, he keeps getting attention and time. With Cheeseburger, they’ve done a good job evolving him, but he needs to start being in actual stories with the main roster or else he won’t feel like part of the roster and all of the time spent on him is a waste of time.
ROH has two sets of guys. There is the main roster: Briscoes, Foundation, LFI, Brody King & Friends, Shane Taylor & SOS, Taven, Bennett, Righteous, BCB, Milonas, PJ Black, Dalton Castle, Silas Young, Josh Woods, Mexisquad, PCO, Flip Gordon (and, when travel restrictions lift, presumably Joe Hendry, Adam Brooks, Mark Haskins, and Slex), and then there is this undercard ecosystem with Ferrara, Cheeseburger, Eli Isom, Brian Johnson, Danhausen, LSG, and a bunch of these students, with Dak Draper, Fred Yehi, and Wheeler YUTA floating in between. And they guys on the undercard just don’t feel like they’re worth spending time on because it doesn’t feel like anything they do will be meaningful and they don’t interact with the main roster. ROH needs to just cut loose and stop giving these guys TV time to focus on the main roster (including Draper, Yehi, and YUTA). If you want to give me twenty-six minutes of pure wrestling then that’s great, but doing this stupid gauntlet is a lot less effective than just letting Yuta and Yehi go out there and tear the house down. Even the guy who loses will look a lot better going down after twenty-five minutes then however long YUTA was actually in the ring for here as the runner up.
And next week’s show is more of the same, LSG vs. Isom and f*cking Brian Johnson vs. Danhausen. This company has SOOOO much potential, but they don’t seem to be able to figure out the right formula to unlock it, which is frustrating because their mistakes seem to be pretty obvious.