Ring of Honor on Destination America 6/24/15 Review

1. Roderick Strong vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

Well this was...disappointing. I love Nakamura, and Strong has been on a real nice tear the last year +, but this just didn't gel. A couple of Strong's knees looked nice, a couple of Nak's knees look nice. But they did too much of that obnoxious fast slow fast big match indy style, where we're rushing all around, but then suddenly we're both sooooo tirrrrred and we're hit hitting each other with forearms using the lasssst strength in our boddddddies.......but then we're up and running and we're doing moves where we awkwardly drop each other on our own bodies instead of the mat!! I didn't like it. I've seen so much Strong that I've liked lately, and this felt like him wrestling like the Strong I have not liked. Loved Nakamura flying face first and getting turned inside out on Strong's flying kick, but all the moves dropped onto knees looked crummy, the fast slow fast got tiring, and they just didn't click. I still like both guys, it just didn't work for whatever reason.

2. Gedo vs. Michael Elgin

This was short but I liked it plenty. Elgin has maybe too much offense, could probably trim that up a bit, but I liked Gedo peppering him with jabs and trying to avoid big bombs and throws from Elgin. I wish there was some more Gedo offense as it was mostly him sticking and moving and trying to dodge Elgin offense before Elgin just kinda goes on a run to the finish. Elgin hits a brutal back elbow, and his powerbomb into turnbuckles, then seated was nice. The corkscrew senton seems a bit silly for him, not just compared to his power offense but within the context of this match. But his power stuff looks good. I wish I could have got at least one Gedo fistdrop though. It's like Modern English not doing "I Melt With You". I shit you not, Modern English played "I Melt With You" twice in a row when they played my college town. They literally played it, people loved it...and then they immediately played it again, and people flipped out even more. What's that about highspot overkill?

3. Kazuchika Okada & Roppongi Vice (Rocky Romero & Trent Barretta) vs. AJ Styles & The Young Bucks

God, Phil is going to murder me for writing up a fucking Rocky Romero match instead of any number of things he has saved in Drafts. But I actually dug this match....and I think I kind of really like The Young Bucks, which either makes me a complete asshole, a total chucklehead, an ironic contrarian, a contrary Iranian, or a person with poor taste in wrestling. Wrestling is absurd bullshit in most of its forms, and I often don't care for comedy in wrestling, but sometimes there exists some sort of parody that is so on the nose and amusing that it just clicks for me. I'm thinking Chris Hero's weird Chris Divine tribute run in NOAH that no NOAH crowd understood. Bucks seem just a slight tick different than Chuck Taylor brand comedy, and it's all the difference in the world. There's a smug shrug about them, where instead of appealing to the crowd with their bullshit, they just do their bullshit to entertain themselves, because they can. And what's great, is they cut off others' bullshit, to do their own bullshit, which is awesome. Barretta was doing his stupid ass apron spot where he runs around yelling before hitting a disappointing slingshot move (I had blamed Chuck Taylor as a poor influence on him before, but here he did it again with no Chuck in sight, so the blame for shittiness is all on Trent now) and as he goes through his whole "crowd hype" routine, one of the Bucks waits until the very end to superkick him. It would be like letting Scotty get all the way to the end of the Worm before superkicking him out of the way. It's like they read my mind. "Ugggh, gotta wait for Barretta to go through all of his dance steps before hitting this.......thank you. Thank you, Bucks." If you're going to buy into the absurdism that is standing forearm exchanges or rope running, then you may as well buy into a fucking stuff piledriver with a springboard 450 sitout assist. That kind of overkill takes things to a sort of practical performance art, where you look like a clueless asshole for even criticizing it. It's like criticizing the Stooges lyrics or Ratt's song titles or early 80s Italian "Escape From New York" ripoffs. They are exactly as they appear to be, and they don't give one shit. Over the top offense like that is a wonderful thing for a heel tag team to do. It comes off like the cockiest shit in the world when it hits, but the set up is so long that it provides natural opportunities for babyfaces to gain momentum. Their superkicks don't look great, but they're treated essentially as tantamount to slaps, so they don't need to be good. You start thinking of them as more of an insult as opposed to a killshot, and their matches suddenly get even better. Superkicks while Styles is about to hit a Styles Clash? Awesome insult to injury spot. So yeah, whatever the Bucks did in this match worked on me to insane degrees. They hit the right notes which is not what I was expecting.

As for the others, Styles worked well with Okada who looked about as expected. I liked Styles putting in little things like front kicking Okada's arm when he went for the Rainmaker. Romero has been working on his spit takes which are done well, but really feels like something a heel should be doing. Add in a Bucks spit take where one of them spits in the others face? License to print money. Barretta has plenty of bad traits, but then he'll bump like a lunatic (see him getting suplexed into the buckles by Styles) and toss out some offense with surprising impact. My opinions on him switch constantly within a match. I was not really excited for this match at all, but ended up really loving it, even with its flaws. Seemed like they had a goal in mind, and they met the goal. I'm kind of stunned at how much I loved the Bucks. I can see every single argument in the world against them, and I can see myself hating them the next match of theirs I see, but this shit worked.

This was easily the best show they've aired since being on DA. Really smooth hour of wrestling right here.