Ring of Honor on Destination America 10/14/15 Review

1. ACH vs. Matt Sydal

This was awesome. Great fun. It was super spotty, but when all your spots work and they all look awesome, then shiiiiiiiit I can get into that. ACH starts with some fun wrist work and it does effect the rest of the match as from here Sydal switches to knees and kicks, and all of his knees and kicks looked gooood. ACH is freakishly athletic and can land in all sorts of crazy ways, really leaning into Sydal's baseball slide and going sprawling into the barrier. Sydal is no stranger to big bumps himself and both guys really bust out all the spots they know, ACH nails some nasty elbows, lands the punt on the apron (as well as an awesome rope running punt later to boot Sydal off the top), and ACH's screaming fast Fosbury Flop dive is just gorgeous. Both guys fly into the others knees on missed flying moves, ACH dumps himself on a reverse rana, and this was just tons of fun. Not much story to speak of, but when both guys have cool offense you can work a good "one-upper" type of show me match. Awesome stuff.

The Addiction and All Night Express have a spirited mic showdown, but neither team says much of anything. They speak in catchphrases, they don't stumble over words, they speak loudly and pointedly annunciate specific words in sentences, but they don't say anything. "Belts are still ours!" "ANX does it all night long!" There's a recap. Watching it took much longer.

2. Beer City Bruiser/Silas Young vs. The Boys

So apparently Silas won The Boys. This already feels like a major disappointment. Dalton wasn't out here causing a ruckus? This angle got way less gay and way more uninteresting way too fast. This match was fun though. Beer City Bruiser is an egg-shaped old Harley trainee, hits a nice elbow and a powerful dropkick, dumps one of the Boys with a nasty suplex. Another boy takes a nasty lariat from Silas. Short little squash, but good. I wish the Bruiser was on TV more. But man this is just so predictable and frustrating. Silas vs. Dalton with Silas himself volunteering to take the Boys, the simmering homosexual lust, all of it wasted. Castle not even running out fighting for his Boys is just unexcusable. Also, instead of a Tale of the Tape at one point there should have been a graphic with Silas Young looking into an ornate mirror, with Dalton Castle being reflected back. It would have been perfect. Dalton Castle, the man Silas Young is refusing to accept as his real identity, just staring back at him. If it was reflected in a truck stop men's room mirror it would have been even better. I'm so bummed they messed this all up. They could have easily just ripped off the Beecher/Chris Keller storyline.

3. Watanabe vs. Jay Lethal

Well, this was better than I expected it would be. I was expecting it to be terrible, but, tiny victories. Jay Lethal is just bad. He has terrible flimsy blowjob offense, offense that would be terrible if he were a babyface, except he's this awful HHH "have my title match masterpiece" performer now and so he wedges all this lousy blowjob offense into these awful touring champ main events. He does the 3 topes (which has now become a totally played out move. It's the Roll the Dice of 2015 indies) and the Lethal Injection is hands down the worst finisher in wrestling. Watanabe was fine here, liked his big suplex comeback, liked his senton, liked how he sold his back going into the barrier off the topes. Hated Lethal. So tired of Lethal main event epics.