ROH on Destination America 8/12/15 Review

1. Watanabe vs. ACH

"My god how long will Watanabe be on this side of the pond!?" That was the thought that I thought, although perhaps my thoughts were more vulgar and disappointed. Watanabe has been horrible in his ROH appearances. He gets tons of chants because...I guess his Japanese birth gives him workrate credibility? It certainly can't be because they enjoy his matches. But you know? This match was a ton of fun. Watanabe did not look great, but he hung in there, and ACH was fucking killer. We had an extended dumb "HIT MY CHEST" spot, and Watanabe's chops looked and sounded dull, but ACH pretended they were very painful, and then made up for Watanabe's by throwing thunderous ones of his own. ACH dug down deep in this one and drug Watanabe's ass through all of this, breaking out wild shit like a no hands twisting moonsault to the floor, and massive (and well timed) penalty kick on the apron, and then being a generous and giving partner by taking a nasty flip over German on the floor, and a stupid fisherman buster. ACH hits an impossibly snug 450 to end it. So, we had a bunch of nonsensical tide turns, with both guys trading off without much thought to it making sense; but shit looked good, and my eyeballs loved it much more than I would have expected when Watanabe walked through the curtain.

2. J. Diesel & Donovan Dijak vs. War Machine

I know wrestling is wrestling is wrestling and all, but ROH actually bills J. Diesel as 5'10". So...that would make Truth Martini about 6'2" and Dijak like 7'6", with War Machine being around 7' each? Look, I get it wrestling. But even 5'8" is a MASSIVE stretch for Diesel. You can pause at any time and see Diesel comes up to Martini's nose. And a couple weeks ago Martini was clearly smaller than ODB. Also apparently War Machine only outweighs them by 20 total pounds. I'm....having a hard time believing any of this. I still like Diesel even though LIES, and my favorite part of this was probably the early corner punch exchange between he and Rowe. I loved Diesel's big right to the chin. Hanson's offense really annoys me, with the cartwheel being the shitty tasting icing. His clubbing shots to the chest are so wimpy. I am not much looking forward to a Lethal/Hanson singles.

I think I would have more interest in a Corino/Whitmer match if I had never seen a moment of the build up. If I just saw it on paper I would probably go "oh I could see that being good". But seeing how bad Corino has been in almost every second of these segments is just sapping any interest. Whitmer has been surprisingly good at goading him, yet Corino flubs almost every single reaction.

3. The Kingdom (Michael Bennett & Matt Taven) vs. reDRagon (Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly)

This started out pretty dodgy and it's badness kinda peaked when Taven whiffed a flying kick by a couple of feet, O'Reilly sold it anyway and Kelly yelled "Nailed it!!" Then Taven slightly crazes a swanton. Things were looking bad. BUT, the home stretch picked up nicely. O'Reilly's strike combos actually looked nice, and I loved when O'Reilly was going for some sort of rebound lariat and Bennett super kicked him from the floor. It was timed great, I didn't see it coming, and then a piledriver laid him out for the rest of the match. Awesome spot. Bennett throws some nice elbows, Taven wasn't entirely miserable after his peak level of being miserable, Fish generously sold a flimsy indecisive spear from Bennett and the Hail Mary never really looks that great as Taven always pusses out of the spike part of the piledriver, but the piledriver part always looks nice. A good home stretch can really save a match, and hey, this episode wasn't half bad! The last couple weeks have been full bad! This was very much not bad at all.

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