ROH at UMBC 10/12/18

TKG: So I haven’t been to an ROH show since maybe Sinclair maybe earlier. But a couple guys at bar had gone to All In (my favorite story being asking Blue Meanie at Meet and Greet if he had any of his merch in XXL and him responding “Of course all I have is 2XL and up” and they were talking about going to ROH in Baltimore and a couple more guys were down for it, and I was like “sure”. We kind of got lost stumbling around UMBC for a while but got there a little way into the Jeff Cobb v ROH trainee match

Jeff Cobb vs. trainee

TKG: This was surprisingly back and forth. The trainee had a second who you expected was the manager who was going to eat a bunch of suplexes after match and didn’t. I was told that was trainee’s tag partner who was legit injured. Not sure why he was out there.

Briscoes vs. Beer City Bouncer/Bryan Milonas

TKG: Also thought this was going to be worked less evenly. Briscoes still have that kind of Sabu/Sandman aura of anything can happen. Mark did a kick through ropes, chairs were thrown in air, guys were thrown into guardrails and there was a tower suplex spot. But this was mostly really impressive showcase for Mark and Jay’s selling as they really made you believe in the Bouncer/Milonakas team and made you buy into idea that any moment all hell could break lose.

Marty Scurll vs. Hurricane

TKG: Last two matches had no real face/heel structure and then this one which was advertised on paper as hero v villain and they could have theoretically worked as Hurricane heel v Scurrl face but….Scurrll is super over with crowd and was going to get cheered for everything and any move done against him was going to be booed. First four minutes I thought they were going to go with a Hurricane heel v Scurll face dynamic with Helms working over Scurrl in a cloverleaf. But then it Scurrl just went to his stuff. Scurll was also a guy who had a real Sabu/Sandman what the fuck is he going to do feel when I first saw him on tape but here he was just a guy running through his stuff some heelish (match died whenever Scurll slapped on a hold), some faceish, some just there…till a shmozz finish. Post match, Hurricane’s mask is stolen and Helm’s makes sad-contemplative-and then-serious-Command Bolshoi-with-mask-off face.

Summe Sakai and____________vs. ____________&_____________

TKG: I think Sumie Sakai’s tag partner may have been an Adam Cole girlfriend, cousin or sister or just facially looked like Cole as audience yelled “Adam Cole Baby” whenever she hit a move. I think her belly ring may have snagged the woman who speared her which was kind of interesting but this felt like it went way too long. I went to find the Brothers Cooke during this and we talked wrestling and they’re both still hilarious. No intermission, I swear ROH used to have intermissions.

They do a backstage interview segment with Bubba Ray hosted by Caprice Coleman. Always liked Coleman, is he no longer wrestling? He kind of did more bug out eye selling off Ray’s mic work then necessary but fine interview segment.

Bully Ray vs. Jonathan Gresham

TKG: I had mostly seen early niche grappling Gresham and on way to show talked about this match not making any sense on paper. I’ve no memory of ever seeing Bubba work a mat exchange. But it ended up easily being my favorite match on show. Bubba comes out takes the mic and does less profane but more obese Joel Gertner mic work. He calls out audience talking about how there is no one with any athletic experience in the crowd, challenging people to fight him, mocked fans inability to hit him with streamers and talking about how proud he is of his New York heritage, mocks the Orioles does more about the greatness of New York, when Gresham comes out he points out that supposed fan favorite got no standing ovation and cheers (of course leading to crowd standing and cheering), don’t anyone say Tracy Sucks, don’t call me Paula, etc mic work and it was great. The women's match may have been face v heel but not sure, this was first one on show where it was really clear and Bubba doing essentially Dirty White Boy’s “I’m from New York” act but without any of DWB’s big brawling spots made for a really fun match. I have no idea how this will play out on tape but live this was the match of the night. Bubba brought a table in ring which got knocked over and forgotten for a big chunk of match, no one chants for wanting tables at this point and I was super looking forward to idea of match with table in ring where never gets used. Eventually set up and you get the PE in WCW, guy brings table in ring to eat a spot on table. But outside of that no real big bumping a couple chair shots , just match structure, selling and cool setting up of face offense and comebacks. Gresham with dropkicks, an octopus, sleeperhold and chair stuff was perfectly at home in this match too. Gresham not niche guy but well rounded in way wouldn’t be out of place working fired up babyface opposite no knee pads Budro.

Cody Rhodes/Team Macktion vs. So-Cal Uncensored

TKG: SCU started with some “I hate the locals “ mic work which was absurd to do after the Bubba match where entire match was built around I’m from New York City. Rhodes and Kazarian are apparently co-owners of a cigar company and both wear wearing shirts advertising it and they did a bit at beginning of match where they cut an insincere commercial shocked to see the other in matching shirt and talking about the cigar company they owned together. In the 90s I remember wrestlers telling me about how Jimmy Valiant was a genius because he understood the money in wrestling wasn’t in the gate but in the merch sales, and he wouldn’t want to work main events but instead the last match before the intermission to increase merch sales and would make sure to work a gimmick he was selling at his merch table into the match. He understood that better than anyone not named Vince Sr or Jr. With internet on demand sales, you don’t need to actually spend the time hawking wares at table and can work a semi main. The Gabe by way of Heyman booking is you work this spotfest multiperson match at end of show to send crowd home happy and enthusiastic. PE v Eliminators, Chilly Willy, Balls v Baldies, Smackdown Six, SAT v. XL/Devine Storm, Special K, Second City Saints v Generation Next, etc. This was that although worked in the semi-main. Christopher Daniels was kind of a known quantity in 2002, felt like a guy from a veteran of earlier generation as opposed to rest of ROH guys who were experimenting and trying to find themselves work out something new. Everyone felt like that here or maybe less like that and more like I was watching a solid workrate sprint between Riggs, Kidman, and Riggs v Riggs, Riggs, and Kidman. Both a throwback style and match that was less of a “HOLY SHIT I have never seen that before” and more like an AJPW old man wrestling match/or Russo era WWF where it was all built on pops for signature spots. It was interesting, nothing was missed that I noticed, Cody & Kazarian had more presence than I expected and fans left it happy. Some un-masked white guy named Savion came out with a belt and started filibustering about how he’s beaten everyone and deserves respect.

Jay Lethal vs. Silas Young

TKG: This was a fine title match with challenger coming out confident, champ takes control with wrestling, challenger responds to wrestling with putting up dukes and wanting fisticuffs instead, some ringside brawling, champ continues to control with wrestling, challenger keeps on threatening dukes, they do a I have a reversal of your reversal segment, than heel takes over for a big run, face champ tries finisher and build finish run. I dug this. The “reversal to reversal segment” never became as corny as those things can become. That’s a segment that normally goes about three minutes longer and it didn’t. Segment that often ends in a standoff restart and it didn’t do that either. It ended right where it should have with heel control. For a match where heel challenges fisticuffs, I never bought that it would happen. But this won the crowd back after the 6 man. Post-match Cody came out to challenge for the title and was interrupted by Kenny King who did the same speech as Savion about all the people he had beaten and how he was deserving of title. I haven’t seen King since maybe a Jeff Peterson memorial and he was really good at doing this bit and kind of stupid to have Savion who isn’t as good stumbling over the same talking points earlier on the show. Cody then did a Tommy Dreamer, Triple HHH, Ian Rotten post show state of the biz thanking fans for coming, “we do this all for you, and this company that means so much to us” speech. Cody was surprisingly endearing at that speech. He moves really well from smarmy to Eddie Marlin sincere and then back and then back again.

Overall fun show with both Bubba v Gresham and Lethal v Young being things I would be interested in revisiting.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 11/18/15 Review

1. Silas Young & Beer City Bruiser vs. War Machine

So now instead of overtly passionate men now we just get jokey segments with Young teaching the Boys about being men. It's all still clearly gay, I mean it is at a highway rest stop, but now it's getting too winky and hokey. This basically felt like Slick teaching Kamala how to bowl. But the match was real good so *shrug*. We get a lot of meaty bodies crashing into each other and War Machine actually felt like hosses instead of the usual hoss cosplay (hossplay?) that especially Hanson comes off as. I loved the early shoulderblock exchanges with Hanson eventually sending Bruiser flying, we got avalanches, cannonballs, big splashes, the kind of stuff you'd want. Rowe kinda whiffs on a superman punch but makes up for it later in the match. I dug Beer City Bruiser here, he really dumped himself on suplexes a couple times, hit a big frog splash, a wild cannonball off the apron into The Boys, and yeh this was good.

Steve Corino gets in the ring with Nigel wanting to reinstate him, but Corino talks about how 79 tours of Japan (but who's counting!) have left his body broken, and he needs serious neck surgery so will not be able to wrestle. He really should have thought about that before working so many non-ROH indies this year.

2. Michael Elgin vs. Kevin Lee Davidson

Booooooooo. Davidson is a big lumpy fat guy who I immediately get excited to see, and the match ends after one okayish clothesline. Elgin as HHH is tired.

3. The Addiction vs. The Kingdom

This match can kind of be summed up by one Daniels missed corner charge. Daniels threw Taven into the buckles, watched as Taven stopped himself by kicking his legs up and back. We see Daniels watching Taven, waiting for the right moment to run underneath him while not getting kicked in the face, because that's how the spot goes. So Daniels watches Taven kick up and over, runs towards the buckles and ducks WAY low to avoid Taven kicking him in the face, and then, when arriving into the turnbuckles, he stops and confusedly looks around, flabbergasted how he ended up chest first in the buckles instead of bumping dicks with Matt Taven, or whatever move he was pretending to do while just running towards the turnbuckles. Dur durdur where did he go General Daniels?? You threw him into the buckles, but when you arrived in the buckles seconds later, he was gone! Look around some more, did he sneak past the ring pole? You watched him not hit the buckles, you ducked really low to run underneath his body, but then his body was not in front of you! That body that you just ran underneath!

We got all four guys realllllly showing off their comedy chops in this one. It was terrible. Tons of yuks. Daniels looked so bad. The guy telegraphs everything to an insane degree. We got a dive train spot where nobody knew how to catch anybody else. Ref bump. Comedy spots. Contrived double teams. A real triple threat!

And to think, I won't even get the privilege of watching this on television in a couple weeks.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 11/4/15 Review

I skipped a couple weeks as the product wasn't doing much for me and I found my brain wandering something fierce during the last couple episodes. One episode I even nodded off during! When I nod off and wake up in the middle of a Michael Elgin match my reaction will likely never be "I better rewind this Michael Elgin match". So really the only thing I remember about the last couple weeks of TV is Rachel saying that Veda Scott always appears to look uncomfortable wearing her short dresses. Like she doesn't quite know how to best move in a small dress. She also thought Maria - in her tight dress and strappy heels - looked like Jersey trash's idea of dressing up. I told her I didn't think Maria was from New Jersey and Rachel assumed she might just be cosplaying as Jersey nightlife. This seems accurate.

I had no idea O'Reilly was Canadian until he dropped several "SO-rees" in his opening interview. "Adam Cole, you're gonna be real SO-ree."

1. Silas Young & The Beer City Bruiser vs. The Young Bucks

So Silas Young made The Boys look and dress more like what HE feels men should look like, so now they look like damp Seattle street rent boys. I appreciate that Silas is at least trying to capture a specific region with his desires, molding them into the type of boys he'd like to pick up. "Yeah, put on these scoop neck ribbed tanks, lemme wet you down a bit....tear those jeans around the thighs.....yeah, now you look like men." This part of the match was fun. Bucks looked good, Young and Bruiser were fine. This whole things was mostly a Bucks double team show, with, yes, a lot of superkicks. Their superkick is a real nice cutoff spot, which is mostly what they use it as. Young has a bunch of silly offense that doesn't fit his supposed character, but you knew that. He did plant a Buck with a nice Finlay roll, but then went into some dorky headstand on the buckles that thankfully saw him get superkicked. Matt throws a nice back elbow, Bruiser takes a nice back bump to the floor, and yeah this was good enough. And it leads tooooooo

2. Young Bucks vs. The Boys

Young and Bruiser bailed and made The Boys finish the match, and Boys are working a kind of enhanced Mikey Whipwreck of guys who don't actually have offense (even though they can't help themselves and still do some indyish offense). The match is basically them being whipping boys for more Bucks flying. One of the Boys gets a silly double rana, meaning he did a rana simultaneously on both Bucks, but that was it, Bucks took over and hit More Bang for Your Buck on both men stacked on top of each other. The fact Dalton Castle has not ONCE come out on TV fighting for his boys, or even confronting Young, is ridiculous. Really feels like a WWE move where Castle got over too much so they had to knock him down a few pegs. Out of all the things they could have done with the Boys angle, this is just about the blandest. It's still dripping with Silas Young's blatant and out-without-ever-officially-coming-out homosexuality, but it's missing the passion. And you need the passion.

3. Will Ferrara vs. Roderick Strong

Extended Strong squash and he looked good. Ferrara was either really good at putting over submissions, or just actually hurt while in Strong's submissions. Strong had nasty chops, a couple great leaping knees, and worked some nice fast sequences with the smaller Ferrara, and also hit a mammoth dropkick and a big stomp to the face (one of which gave Ferrara a nice welt on his forehead). But this was all about the couple subs he locked on: His camel clutch into a cravate was super painful looking, with him locking his knuckles under Ferrara's jaw and really wrenching that jaw to the left. After he dropped the cravate he was holding just a basic chinlock but even that looked like his ulna was hooked right under Ferrara's throat. It did not look like a casual chinlock. Match ends with him locking on a standing Boston crab while standing on the side of Ferrara's face, with Ferrara screaming. I love when Strong works like a total badass like this.

4. Adam Cole vs. Kyle O'Reilly vs. AJ Styles

Well this was predictably messy and disjointed. Long periods of guys selling, because 3 way, match based on breaking up stuff rather than beating down stuff, silly 3 way submission spot, blecch. O'Reilly isn't very good and his armbar is done so much that it's impossible to take it too seriously. It's not approaching levels of the Angle Lock, but it's now a move he goes to several times in a match that rarely goes anywhere. Everything here felt really rushed, with the only actual inspired moments coming in the last couple minutes: Styles and O'Reilly had a cool little strike exchange with both guys tossing out elbows and kicks at weird angles, not just forearm tradeoffs. You had kicks to the spleen followed by slaps followed by elbows with neither man waiting for the other to time it just both guys winging them out there. The O'Reilly caught a Styles strike and dropped into a triangle. Styles tries to fight out and deadlifts O'Reilly, and then gets him into position for a Styles Clash while still stuck in the triangle. That's an awesome visual. Cole hits a superkick to the back of Styles head which sorta drops O'Reilly with the Styles Clash (and could have been a really dangerous fall for Styles since the triangle was still on), and then Cole hits the unnecessarily goofy brainbuster on his own knee for the win. Normal brainbusters look better. That own knee nonsense is just silly. So, that hot final 90 seconds or so was a hoot, but the rest was triple threat garbage.


Still overall this was a better episode than we've been getting, so maybe I'll get back on the bus. We did have a lot of Mark Briscoe commentary, and who could hate that?

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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.

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