ROH Global Wars

ROH Global WarsROH Global Wars

By Big Red Machine
From May 10, 2014
Discussion

ROH Global Wars (5/10/2014)- Toronto, ON

ACH vs. MICHAEL BENNETT (w/Maria Kanellis)- 6/10
ACH worked over Bennett’s knee, which Maria told us was injured. Kevin Kelly found a way to connect this to comments Jimmy Jacobs had made about ACH on commentary during a recent show. I don’t know if this was something Delirious set up on purpose or if it was just something Kevin Kelly thought of on the spur of the moment, but props to whoever was responsible for that.
Bennett wound up spearing Maria on the apron (I mean the wrestling move! Get your mind out of the gutter!) by accident. That could go somewhere interesting. Or it could not matter at all. We’ll just have to wait and see.

MICHAEL ELGIN vs. TAKAAKI WATANABE- 5.25/10

THREE WAY TAG TEAM MATCH: The Briscoes vs. reDRagon vs. The Decade (w/Tadarius Thomas)- 6.25/10
The rules for this match were two guys in the ring at a time and you could tag anyone, regardless of which team he is on. Corino seems to have dropped his demonstrably false insistence that he had nothing to do with SCUM, which is a good thing. I hate when an announcer is reasonable most of the time but then insists on an obvious lie.
The match was good, but you could tell that there were holding back.

THE DECADE IS BARRED FROM RINGSIDE: Roderick Strong vs. Cedric Alexander- 7/10
A lot fewer backbreakers than I was expecting. The Decade come out and jump Cedric after the match. Tadarius Thomas seems to be a perfectly willing participant in this. Roddy puts Cedric through a bunch of chairs with a release vertical suplex type thing (like the way Cedric sets up for the Lumbar Check).

THREE WAY TAG TEAM MATCH FOR THE IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLES: Young Bucks(c) vs. Forever Hooligans vs. Time Splitters (Alex Shelley & KUSHIDA)- 7.75/10
Big pop for Alex Shelley’s return to ROH. Corino wonders who was Alex Koslov’s favorite wrestler growing up: Nikolai Volkoff or Ivan Koloff? That rocked. So did this match. GREAT Jr. heavyweight tag team action!


R.D. EVANS SEGMENT- SO MUCH FUN! (though Nigel not refuting some of R.D.’s claims about things ROH management supposedly promised him seemed strange).

JUSHIN “THUNDER” LIGER & HIROSHI TANAHASHI vs. SHINSUKE NAKAMURA & JADO- 6.75/10
Big pop for Nakamura. Huge pop for Tanahashi. Thunderous pop for Liger. Also, Jado was there.
On commentary, Nigel compares Tanahashi to some Japanese wrestler who used to work in Britain who I’ve never heard of. Kevin Kelly compared Tanahashi to John Cena. That’s two opposite ends of a spectrum for you.
The match was short, all things considered, but it did what it needed to and got an amazing reaction from the crowd. I was very surprised with who picked up the win.

FOUR CORNER SURVIVAL MATCH FOR THE ROH TV TITLE: Jay Lethal(c) (w/Truth Martini) vs. Matt Taven vs. Silas Young vs. Tommaso Ciampa- 6.75/10
Corino mentions that there are a bunch of ROH birthdays this week including “the guy we’re not allowed to mention.” I racked my brain trying to figure out who this could be. The fact that Corino is saying it made this substantially more difficult because you never know if he is being facetious or not. The best guess I could come up with was Colt Cabana.
They really need to come up with a name for Matt Taven’s lifting, spinning sit-out double-underhook facebuster because the word soup I just typed is way too long, and constantly calling it “his version of Angel’s Wings” sounds stupid. I also think that having some named signature moves would really help Taven (especially now that he isn’t calling his arm-trap headlock driver “the Climax” anymore).
The match was all action with a good storyline finish which Nigel’s commentary promised us would be followed up on. Silas really got the chance to shine here and left the building a lot more over than he came in.

AJ STYLES & KARL “MACHINE GUN” ANDERSON vs. KAZUCHIKA OKADA & GEDO- 6.75/10
Huge pops for Okada and AJ.

Michael Elgin joined Kevin and Corino on commentary to scout for his IWGP Heavyweight Title match next weekend, which led to the following exchange:
Kevin Kelly: You though it was gonna be Okada, but now it’s AJ Styles. How does that change things for you?”
Michael Elgin: You know… it really doesn’t change things.
Oh. Well then. So much for that topic of conversation.
Why are the Bullet Club doing the Wolf Pack/Kliq/Bret Hart hand signal? Could they really not come up with a different hand-signal? Maybe something bullet or gun themed? What about that thing Prince Devitt used to do where he mimed shooting the other guy in the head? That was cool. What was wrong with that?
Anyway, they had a match that, while certainly very good, was a lot less than I was expecting. Stay tuned: there will be more on this subject later.

After the match we get a stare-down between AJ and Elgin, then Okada got in on it as well, which only served to annoy me by reminding me that we aren’t getting the Elgin vs. Okada match I was so looking forward to.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Adam Cole(c) vs. Kevin Steen- 8.5/10
Cole got heat by wiping his nose on the Canadian flag, but I think this would have been a lot more effective if the way Cole got his hands on the flag in the first place wasn’t Steen crumpling it up like a used piece of paper and throwing it at him.
They started to brawl on the outside and Steen rammed Cole’s nuts into the ringposts. Why is this legal? Then, when Cole got some offense in, Kevin Kelly had the audacity to say that Adam Cole is a jerk. How can you possibly get on Cole’s case when Steen is the one cheating?! This isn't PWG, guys! There are rules here!
Steen continued to cheat, doing the ten punches with a closed fist in the corner (he must not listen to JR’s podcast, because if he did, I don’t think even Steen would be crazy enough to do that with JR in the building), and then bites Cole. If Steen starts off by cheating, why am I supposed to care when Cole does it later on in the match?
The good news, though, is that aside from this, the match was awesome. They told a great story and had some great nearfalls. The only thing I didn’t like was the finish, which I thought should have been by submission based on the story they had been telling.

Despite the awesome main event, this was a very disappointing show from ROH and New Japan. Especially New Japan. All three of their aces felt like they under-delivered big-time (I know that Tanahashi is hurt, but his performance didn’t get me any more excited for his match with Bennett at War of the Worlds), and their world champion, AJ Styles, had yet another underachieving match in his return to ROH (and his match with Okada at Wrestling Dontaku 2014 was disappointing, too). I had assumed that the point of New Japan booking their own guys against each other was so they wouldn’t have to “look weak” against ROH’s guys (a horribly stupid concept, too, when you consider how over the big three and the Bullet Club are) by giving them competitive matches, but I was hoping they would bring their standard awesomeness to their matches to show off in North America. Apparently not (aside from the main event, the ROH guys didn't do too much, either, but I got the feeling that there were all holding back so the New Japan guys could take spotlight... which they didn’t)

Based off of their performances here, I don’t think I will be buying War of the Worlds. The only matches I am in any way looking forward to are Cole vs. Liger, AJ vs. Elgin, and Steen vs. Nakamura, (and I am looking forward to those solely because I think Steen, Elgin, and Cole will drag fantastic matches out of the three New Japan guys) and I don’t think any of those outcomes are at all in doubt. With all of the hype that went into this show, it just plain needed to be a lot better than it was in order to get people who were on the fence (such as myself) to buy War of the Worlds.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. For no real reason, Steve Corino decides to inform the viewers that Jado and Gedo are “backstage powerbrokers in New Japan.” For those who do what Steve is talking about, this is pretty much a breach of kayfabe by outing them as s the bookers. For those who don’t know what Steve is talking about, his statement really won’t make much sense. So why even say it?

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