Ring of Honor on Destination America 7/8/15 Review

1. Watanabe vs. Dalton Castle

Good god why is Watanabe on TV so much!? I mean this guy just brings nothing to the table. I take that back, he had a nice little side thrust headbutt here. But the rest of the time he works real loose (his stomach kicks are so so bad) and works real slow. There's just so much down time in Watanabe matches. Castle looked better (not surprisingly) in his match against Liger, but he gamely tries to make Watanabe's offense look somewhat painful here. We have to sit through an interminable small package reversal sequence where they roll unconvincingly around the ring, the ref occasionally counting pinfalls even though shoulders were never touching mat. But Castle does hit a sick deadlift German, and I am a total sucker for a great deadlift German suplex. Castle's looked killer, really hanging Watanabe there like a pendulum before beginning that ascent. Highlight of the match. Although after the the match was over, Castle lies down on a man bench consisting of his two eunuchs. THAT is awesome.

Long Truth Martini promo with Jay Lethal. The fans cloyingly chant "You deserve it!" at Lethal. Yuck. Is there anybody in the fed that the fans REALLY dislike? Or even sorta dislike? Everybody gets chants. Everybody is awesome. Watanabe gets chants, presumably because he wrestled in New Japan. Who is an actual heel here? This whole interview all builds to whether he plans on vacating the TV title or if he plans on defending both titles on shows in separate matches. It's weird as he talks about valiantly defending both titles because he's a fighting champion, but also telling the fans to shut up. So he's a valiant heel? A bad guy who does heroic things? He also says the phrase "snowball effect" but it sounds like "snuggle effect". I wanna know what the snuggle effect is!! An overdose of coziness!!

2. Adam Cole, Michael Bennett & Matt Taven vs. Michael Elgin & reDRagon

"Elgin looks like he's having fun again in the ring". Man Corino and Kelly are BAD. You should have heard the way Corino said Elgin is "having fun". It's not like he finished rampaging through the other team and then Corino shouted "Elgin's having fun in there!!!" He said it more like two mothers talking about the daughter of another mother, who had recently had her stomach pumped because she took too many pills. And she had been volunteer assistant coaching the local high school's girl's lacrosse team and these two moms sitting at one of their respective dining room tables goes "You know Jessica's really having fun again! She lost her smile there for awhile but you should see her with these girls! She's really having fun again. Bless her heart." Neither of them think Jessica is actually okay. They just wanted to gossip about her without sounding like gossips.

And this match is just kind of maddeningly bad. Really bad in an in your face kind of way. This is about 20 minutes of Elgin doing tons of offense and big moves to the opposing three guys, and then kicking out of everything they throw at him. reDRagon are very much afterthoughts in this save for one section in the middle, the rest is ALL Elgin working a 2003 HHH routine and just being the ultra mega super man. This whole match was just set up as a Michael Elgin spot exhibition. This same crowd who was cheering and chanting wildly for WATANABE of all people actually chant "This match sucks". And it was moments after Kelly and Corino were talking about what a tremendous main event we were witnessing. A lot of guys in this didn't look good. Matt Taven is the master of missing offense that never would have hit, just to set up an opponent's offense. Here he did an axe handle off the top rope that landed him nowhere near anybody, just to get kicked by O'Reilly. I did like Taven setting up a boot choke in the corner by yelling "Stacy Keibler!!" before choking a guy out with one of his long gams. O'Reilly himself regularly looks lousy, with poor strikes (his running body kick in the corner looked especially terrible) and then just looking really awkward getting into position for thing. Him setting up a Fujiwara armbar variation took longer to apply than Undertaker's old Devil's Butthole or whatever UT's submission was called. Fish looked good in his couple brief moments, dug his nice slingshot senton over the turnbuckles. We do get a couple fun dives, we get Elgin powerbombing Taven onto everybody over the top to the floor, and we got Elgin running through every single piece of offense that he's ever seen anybody do ever. Elgin throws nice elbows. He can throw a nice clothesline. His power offense looks good. But holy shit. The layout of this match was just...stunning.

But we get a Mark Briscoe match next week, so yay.