Ring of Honor on Destination America 9/30/15 & 10/7/15 Review

9/30/15

1. Matt Sydal vs. KUSHIDA

Well this was pretty unlikeable. This was that perfect combination of uninteresting ringwork combined with constant crowd chanting. Crowd is chanting This is Awesome as the match begins, because you see, they're in on the gag. We jerk off with some bad matwork with one guy holding still so the other can do stuff, and then doing stuff while the other guy holds still. The strike exchanges were weak and the moves were really poorly set up. KUSHIDA has some slow motion handspring offense that doesn't look good if and when it connects, and requires Sydal to either stand there while a man does a handstand, or run face first into a man doing a handstand. KUSHIDA hits a decent flip dive at one point. Sydal still has a pretty shooting star press. Boy I did not like this.

2. Adam Page vs. Will Ferrara vs. Watanabe vs. Moose

Boy we are not doing well tonight. This was a rushed 4 way, starting out clunky then burning through some suplexes leading to the early finish. Page was a standout and this was probably the best I've seen him, showing some personality and setting up offense for others nicely. He also had a really great fallaway slam on Ferrara at one point. Ferrara has terrible strikes but is game to take a bump. Moose is always disappointing. There is still plenty of potential there, and he throws a nice back elbow here, but there's just always tons lacking. Watanabe is from Japan, LAND OF WORKRATE and thus he is awesome and we must all throw streamers at him. He never looks very good. Everybody threw suplexes. Colby Corino took a decent bump from the apron at one point, but he leaned way out of a Moose kick to get to that bump. Steve Corino continues to miss every emotional note, woodenly saying "Colby. Nooooooo. Get off of the apron." At least it was short?

3. Adam Cole vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

Well this was disappointing. Cole is not great, and Nak really didn't try too hard. We had Cole doing a bunch of fairly engaging leg work, leading to Nak not caring much at all about the leg work. Some of Cole's superkicks to Nak's leg were alright. I especially liked one to the back of Nak's leg. But almost immediately after the legwork stopped, Nak was back up, throwing knees, doing suplexes, jumping around, being generally just fine. My time felt wasted.


Eh, Rachel was on the phone with her sister and she didn't want me to watch You're the Worst or The League without her, so what else was I going to do. But this show was three matches that could have been good, but none of them were.

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10/7/15

Oh man this show is filmed at MCU Park in Brooklyn and it already looks so awesome. This needs to be done more often. Such a great venue and it reads super cool on TV.

1. Time Splitters vs. Briscoe Bros.

The Time Splitters...are not a team I would like to see again very soon. KUSHIDA is just really bad. Their comedy doesn't work, most of their actual ring work doesn't work, they just don't work. Shelley can at least throw a halfway decent punch. KUSHIDA is one of those guys who has really bad trademark offense, but it's made even worse because he doesn't make any of it look good. He's the one who picked this offense. You'd think he would know more than anyone that he has a shaky handstand and a bad looking jab. But then he goes and does bad handspring offense and just a terrible left jab combo. We get a too long super silly arm wringer segment which I'm sure is amusing to the live crowd and all but I'd rather see Briscoes kicking the hell out of them. And we do get that, we do. We just get so much KUSHIDA. Too much. He's junk. I'd rather just watch the Briscoes fight each other.

2. Watanabe vs. Cedric Alexander

Well hey this was the best I've seen Watanabe look! The match was JIP so who knows what kind of mess we missed, but Watanabe looked like a guy I would actually want to see here! Stiff senton, nice strikes (actual painful elbows! Funny how NJPW main event style always has interminable elbow exchanges, yet most of their guys have lousy elbow strikes), a couple of headbutts I didn't expect. Cedric knows how to miss big and I dug his thrust headbutt. Veda Scott is always amusing at ringside. Maybe Watanabe just likes working in the outdoors more? I had a copy (like a photocopy) of Farmer Burns' old "Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture" and it recommends to always do your calisthenics in an outdoor setting or at least next to an open window. It also recommended eating your daily steak next to an open window. And to use soothing syrups made from only the finest heroin. But still, I have seen many indoor Watanabe matches that were terrible. And now 100% of the outdoor Watanabe matches I've seen have been good. Science.

3. Roderick Strong vs. Kazuchika Okada

For a guy nicknamed Mr. ROH you think they would just spell his name ROHderick. Okada is very much not good but there were moments in this I enjoyed. Instead of their usual guardrail with metal signs on it, the infield had these flimsy plastic barriers (I guarantee there were some people upset that they paid for front row and were denied flat metal to slap their palms on) and at one point Roddy backdropped Okada onto a barrier, overshot a bit and dumped Okada on his head into the crowd. But man the way Okada builds matches is just annoying. He has no clue how to go back on offense. He just gets hit with a move for a nearfall, both men sell, then Okada just does his own move. We get a few strike exchanges, and Strong's strikes completely smoke Okada's, so Strong always gets the better of him, and then every time Strong then turns to run the ropes that's when Okada greets him with a dropkick or something else. This shit happens in every. single. Okada match. It's just lazy structure, and it's why I get sucked out of his way-too-long matches at the halfway point. At a certain point it switches into "opponent does shit until Okada just does his signature shit". Nothing means anything after awhile. Strong gets a nice nearfall with his running kick, people in the crowd can't believe it, thought it was over. But then Okada just gets up at the same time as Strong and hits a tombstone. Story of the match, story of the wrestler. Yuck.

Not a bad show, although I have now officially seen too many Okada matches. I don't like him. BUT I loved the outdoor setting of the tapings. Gives the show a nice fresh look and looks like they got a bunch of people there. Funny as I hated the look of WMIX, but grew to enjoy the look of outdoor shows more and more. I wonder what moment turned me. It could have been Onita riding in a boat to get to a ring. Or a WCW Spring break show with somebody falling into a pool. It may have been CW Anderson riding on the back of a tractor to a ring in the middle of a cornfield. Yeah. It was probably that one. But whatever it was, I love the outdoor show vibe. So, excellent marks for presentation.

Also, A+ on the sound mixing. Kelly and Corino were mixed WAY down so I could hardly hear them, making them so easy to tune out. I don't know if this was Destination America or ROH themselves, but mixing those two dunderheads down is just an excellent move all around. Great job gang!