ROH Reloaded Tour: Dearborn
ROH Reloaded Tour: Dearborn (9/11/2015)- Dearborn, MI
Kevin Kelly is doing commentary alone, but promises us that there is a reason that Corino isn’t here, and we’ll find out later. The reason, as it turns out, is that Corino had a booking in England. Well… that was underwhelming. Kelly does, however, say that this is probably for the best because of some incident between Corino and Whitmer at Reloaded Tour: Atlanta, so, you know… go buy the show and find out what happened.
BOBBY FISH vs. WILL FERRARA- 5.75/10
Fish got a decent match out of Ferrara. Ferrara worked Fish’s arm while Fish worked Ferrara’s leg. Ferrara sold his leg very well… until it was time for him to do some springboard moves, so he just stopped selling his leg for the rest of the match.
SAMSON WALKER vs. MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 6/10
They went a lot longer than I expected them to, and the match was good aside from one or two spots. You can definitely tell that Moose is trying some new thing to try to show more personality in the ring.
BJ Whitmer came out to do commentary, and at one point Kevin Kelly brought up the fact that Corino commentary (at Road to Best in the World 2015: Collinsville, I believe), had mentioned that his dislike for Whitmer stems from an incident between Whitmer and Corino’s sister Allison Danger ten years ago, and Kelly offered Whitmer the chance to respond. I had figured that Corino was referring to Whitmer shoving Danger into a Homicide (resulting in her eating a Gringo Killer and kayfabe injuring her neck) when Whitmer and Maff wanted to disband the Prophecy but Danger wouldn’t accept it so she went nuts and tried to use her control of their contracts to make their lives a living hell. Apparently I was wrong because Whitmer said that this involved Danger’s â€"personal life†and thus he didn’t want to comment on it, although he did mention that they briefly had a relationship.
Whitmer also noted that he hopes to be medically cleared to wrestle by the beginning of next year, which puts the nix on a potential Whitmer vs. Corino match at Final Battle (assuming this whole injury isn’t just a ruse, which is entirely possible).
KYLE O’REILLY vs. SILAS YOUNG- 8/10
Two great wrestlers putting on an awesome match even though they are third on the card. Now that’s the ROH I know and love. Another great undercard performance this year from Silas. If only he would perform at this level when ROH gives him his chances in the main event.
ADAM COLE vs. RODERICK STRONG- 8.25/10
Roddy definitely could have sold his leg better, but other than that, this was awesome. Unfortunately, the commentary felt very out of date, as they kept talking about how this match would have big implication for who would get the next world title shot, but I am almost certain that the #1 contendership four way (which features both of these guys) had already been announced earlier in the week. And considering that match you’d think that this would have gone to a draw but it didn’t.
Speaking of commentary, after this match Kevin Kelly got a text from Nigel. BJ was certain it was Nigel telling instructing Kevin to put BJ over for doing such a great job on commentary. Instead, it was Nigel telling Kevin to kick BJ off of commentary. This was quite the travesty of justice because I thought Whitmer was doing a really great job. He wound up being replaced by Stokely Hathaway, who was nowhere near as good.
JACOB SOMETHING vs. HAKEEM ZANE- 5.75/10
â€"Something†is not a placeholder because I missed the guy’s last name. That was what they called him. He is apparently a product of the ROH dojo, which makes it even more surprising that they let him wrestle on an ROH show with a stupid last name like that. The match was short, but great for the time it got. Both guys were very impressive.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- After the match, Adam Page jumped both guys and beat them up with one of Whitmer’s crutches. Page called out Jay Briscoe, so Jay showed up and quickly got the best of Page, resulting in Whitmer needing to pull Page out of the ring to save him from a Jay Driller. Jay told Page to â€"stop being a b*tch,†which resulted in the fans chanting â€"DON’T BE A B*TCH!†at Page. When Page still refused to fight, Jay decided to move on to his scheduled, opponent for tonight, Takaaki Watanabe, whom he made sure to point was not a b*tch.
JAY BRISCOE vs. TAKAAKI WATANABE- 6.75/10
Watanabe definitely stepped it up here. Page jumped Briscoe after the match and hit him with a crutch, then gave him the Right of Passage. Good build for their feud.
JAY BRISCOE & ROMANTIC TOUCH SEGMENT- RT came out to try to give Jay a box of rose petals. Jay did not want them and smacked the box away. This was weird.
BEST OF FIVE SERIES MATCH #1: Matt Sydal vs. ACH- 8.25/10
Kevin and Stokely keep talking about this â€"change†they’ve seen in ACH over the past few months. I’ve seen every ROH show this year aside from Reloaded Tour: Atlanta, and I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Maybe it would help if they actually gave some details instead of just saying he has â€"changed.†The commentary for this match was quite bad. It really feels like whatever issues ACH is having- or maybe it is ACH and Sydal having issues with each other. I’m not even sure. But either way, whatever issues there are that have led to this best of five series feel 100% like they are being pulled out of the announcers’ and booker’s collective asses.
So the commentary sucked and the angle is so flimsy it’s not even there, but you know what was awesome? The match itself. This was A LOT less friendly than you’d expect, and they did an awesome job with that. There were times towards the end when ACH could have sold his leg better (that seems to be a running theme tonight), but overall this match was multiple kinds of awesome. Definitely the Match of the Night so far.
DEFY OR DENY MATCH: ROH TV Champion Jay Lethal (w/Truth Martini & Taeler Hendrix) vs. Cedric Alexander vs. Mark Briscoe vs. Dalton Castle (w/the boys)- 7/10
A little bit disappointing. You’d think that these guys (especially Castle and Cedric) would really want to step it up when given a big spot like this, but they really didn’t. Mark and Castle wasting time with dumb antics in the beginning really annoyed me. I also didn’t like the booking here at all as I just don’t see what it does for anyone. None of the guys who lost looked strong at all, and shutting Castle and Cedric out of the TV Title picture seems like a big mistake (especially in Cedric’s case).
YOUNG BUCKS PROMO- they apologize to the fans, saying that there will be no Superkick Party because The Kingdom have no-showed. reDRagon come out and offer to face reDRagon tonight and said something about how Ring of Honor couldn’t sanction a match between these two teams for some reason so therefore they will have to have an unsanctioned match with no rules and apparently ROH management was okay with this because no one came out to stop it and they even sent a referee out. This was all very weird.
UNSANCTIONED MATCH: The Young Bucks vs. reDRagon- 7.75/10
Imagine these two teams just going nuts on each other for ten minutes.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- After the match, Taven and Bennett showed up and jumped everyone. Taven cut a promo saying they would win the tag titles. Adam Cole came out just for the purpose of walking out on the Kingdom. The Kingdom seemed totally fine with Cole leaving their group.
A pretty darn awesome show from ROH. Yes, there was some questionable booking, but the action more than makes up for it. I was also quite pleasantly surprised to see what appears to be a very important moment in the Cole babyface turn taking place on a non-TV or PPV show. Definitely a show you should go out and buy.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly- â€"Actually the crowd is wrong. He doesn’t have until five. If the referee reaches five, then he’ll be disqualified.â€
DUH! Thus he â€"has ‘til five†to break the hold (or else he gets DQed).
2. Kevin Kelly claimed that one of the criticisms of ACH was that â€"he couldn’t win the big one.†He then claimed that ACH proved those critics wrong and had â€"won the big one†multiple times.
Really? When the hell did he do that? He has won no titles, lost his only two real feuds, and lost big showcase matches against AJ Styles and Samoa Joe.
Kevin Kelly is doing commentary alone, but promises us that there is a reason that Corino isn’t here, and we’ll find out later. The reason, as it turns out, is that Corino had a booking in England. Well… that was underwhelming. Kelly does, however, say that this is probably for the best because of some incident between Corino and Whitmer at Reloaded Tour: Atlanta, so, you know… go buy the show and find out what happened.
BOBBY FISH vs. WILL FERRARA- 5.75/10
Fish got a decent match out of Ferrara. Ferrara worked Fish’s arm while Fish worked Ferrara’s leg. Ferrara sold his leg very well… until it was time for him to do some springboard moves, so he just stopped selling his leg for the rest of the match.
SAMSON WALKER vs. MOOSE (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 6/10
They went a lot longer than I expected them to, and the match was good aside from one or two spots. You can definitely tell that Moose is trying some new thing to try to show more personality in the ring.
BJ Whitmer came out to do commentary, and at one point Kevin Kelly brought up the fact that Corino commentary (at Road to Best in the World 2015: Collinsville, I believe), had mentioned that his dislike for Whitmer stems from an incident between Whitmer and Corino’s sister Allison Danger ten years ago, and Kelly offered Whitmer the chance to respond. I had figured that Corino was referring to Whitmer shoving Danger into a Homicide (resulting in her eating a Gringo Killer and kayfabe injuring her neck) when Whitmer and Maff wanted to disband the Prophecy but Danger wouldn’t accept it so she went nuts and tried to use her control of their contracts to make their lives a living hell. Apparently I was wrong because Whitmer said that this involved Danger’s â€"personal life†and thus he didn’t want to comment on it, although he did mention that they briefly had a relationship.
Whitmer also noted that he hopes to be medically cleared to wrestle by the beginning of next year, which puts the nix on a potential Whitmer vs. Corino match at Final Battle (assuming this whole injury isn’t just a ruse, which is entirely possible).
KYLE O’REILLY vs. SILAS YOUNG- 8/10
Two great wrestlers putting on an awesome match even though they are third on the card. Now that’s the ROH I know and love. Another great undercard performance this year from Silas. If only he would perform at this level when ROH gives him his chances in the main event.
ADAM COLE vs. RODERICK STRONG- 8.25/10
Roddy definitely could have sold his leg better, but other than that, this was awesome. Unfortunately, the commentary felt very out of date, as they kept talking about how this match would have big implication for who would get the next world title shot, but I am almost certain that the #1 contendership four way (which features both of these guys) had already been announced earlier in the week. And considering that match you’d think that this would have gone to a draw but it didn’t.
Speaking of commentary, after this match Kevin Kelly got a text from Nigel. BJ was certain it was Nigel telling instructing Kevin to put BJ over for doing such a great job on commentary. Instead, it was Nigel telling Kevin to kick BJ off of commentary. This was quite the travesty of justice because I thought Whitmer was doing a really great job. He wound up being replaced by Stokely Hathaway, who was nowhere near as good.
JACOB SOMETHING vs. HAKEEM ZANE- 5.75/10
â€"Something†is not a placeholder because I missed the guy’s last name. That was what they called him. He is apparently a product of the ROH dojo, which makes it even more surprising that they let him wrestle on an ROH show with a stupid last name like that. The match was short, but great for the time it got. Both guys were very impressive.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- After the match, Adam Page jumped both guys and beat them up with one of Whitmer’s crutches. Page called out Jay Briscoe, so Jay showed up and quickly got the best of Page, resulting in Whitmer needing to pull Page out of the ring to save him from a Jay Driller. Jay told Page to â€"stop being a b*tch,†which resulted in the fans chanting â€"DON’T BE A B*TCH!†at Page. When Page still refused to fight, Jay decided to move on to his scheduled, opponent for tonight, Takaaki Watanabe, whom he made sure to point was not a b*tch.
JAY BRISCOE vs. TAKAAKI WATANABE- 6.75/10
Watanabe definitely stepped it up here. Page jumped Briscoe after the match and hit him with a crutch, then gave him the Right of Passage. Good build for their feud.
JAY BRISCOE & ROMANTIC TOUCH SEGMENT- RT came out to try to give Jay a box of rose petals. Jay did not want them and smacked the box away. This was weird.
BEST OF FIVE SERIES MATCH #1: Matt Sydal vs. ACH- 8.25/10
Kevin and Stokely keep talking about this â€"change†they’ve seen in ACH over the past few months. I’ve seen every ROH show this year aside from Reloaded Tour: Atlanta, and I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Maybe it would help if they actually gave some details instead of just saying he has â€"changed.†The commentary for this match was quite bad. It really feels like whatever issues ACH is having- or maybe it is ACH and Sydal having issues with each other. I’m not even sure. But either way, whatever issues there are that have led to this best of five series feel 100% like they are being pulled out of the announcers’ and booker’s collective asses.
So the commentary sucked and the angle is so flimsy it’s not even there, but you know what was awesome? The match itself. This was A LOT less friendly than you’d expect, and they did an awesome job with that. There were times towards the end when ACH could have sold his leg better (that seems to be a running theme tonight), but overall this match was multiple kinds of awesome. Definitely the Match of the Night so far.
DEFY OR DENY MATCH: ROH TV Champion Jay Lethal (w/Truth Martini & Taeler Hendrix) vs. Cedric Alexander vs. Mark Briscoe vs. Dalton Castle (w/the boys)- 7/10
A little bit disappointing. You’d think that these guys (especially Castle and Cedric) would really want to step it up when given a big spot like this, but they really didn’t. Mark and Castle wasting time with dumb antics in the beginning really annoyed me. I also didn’t like the booking here at all as I just don’t see what it does for anyone. None of the guys who lost looked strong at all, and shutting Castle and Cedric out of the TV Title picture seems like a big mistake (especially in Cedric’s case).
YOUNG BUCKS PROMO- they apologize to the fans, saying that there will be no Superkick Party because The Kingdom have no-showed. reDRagon come out and offer to face reDRagon tonight and said something about how Ring of Honor couldn’t sanction a match between these two teams for some reason so therefore they will have to have an unsanctioned match with no rules and apparently ROH management was okay with this because no one came out to stop it and they even sent a referee out. This was all very weird.
UNSANCTIONED MATCH: The Young Bucks vs. reDRagon- 7.75/10
Imagine these two teams just going nuts on each other for ten minutes.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- After the match, Taven and Bennett showed up and jumped everyone. Taven cut a promo saying they would win the tag titles. Adam Cole came out just for the purpose of walking out on the Kingdom. The Kingdom seemed totally fine with Cole leaving their group.
A pretty darn awesome show from ROH. Yes, there was some questionable booking, but the action more than makes up for it. I was also quite pleasantly surprised to see what appears to be a very important moment in the Cole babyface turn taking place on a non-TV or PPV show. Definitely a show you should go out and buy.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Kevin Kelly- â€"Actually the crowd is wrong. He doesn’t have until five. If the referee reaches five, then he’ll be disqualified.â€
DUH! Thus he â€"has ‘til five†to break the hold (or else he gets DQed).
2. Kevin Kelly claimed that one of the criticisms of ACH was that â€"he couldn’t win the big one.†He then claimed that ACH proved those critics wrong and had â€"won the big one†multiple times.
Really? When the hell did he do that? He has won no titles, lost his only two real feuds, and lost big showcase matches against AJ Styles and Samoa Joe.