AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 11/13 - 11/19, Part 2

Ring of Honor 11/16/23

Eddie Kingston vs Dalton Castle

MD: It's tough to work off of just one or two data points. I picked up a definite impression from Eddie between the Rocky match (wrong title, same idea), the Komander match, the Angelico match, but these weren't the only matches he had in that period and something like the Suzuki match was exactly what you'd expect it to be, right? These other defenses have been something new and I've discussed them as such. It's been the debut of Ace Champion Kingston, shifting gears to operate with more of a "sports/competition" feel than just the endless weight of grudges and enemies and grievances that Eddie always carries with him to such great outcome.

We've hit the point now where I think that even if it's not intentional, it's undeniable. I'm not getting "fighting spirit" from this stuff, so much as I'm getting "real sports feel," in the same way I do from 86 NJPW with the UWF guys or from old World of Sport. That's not to say the details are the same, but I'm getting that same sense of gamesmanship and of competition. That it's playing out with Eddie, who is such a heartfelt and distinctive wrestler, and with such variety from opponent to opponent, while still achieving that same overall effect, is providing me with something I can't get anywhere else in modern wrestling and, to be honest, I'm not sure I've gotten quite this way from any wrestling ever.

For this match, much of that was driven by the strategies at play. Dalton Castle, not unlike Eddie in theory though completely unlike Eddie in the details, is entirely unique. You could compare him to someone like Goldust or Orange Cassidy, but given how he carries himself, a better comparison might be a Terry Funk or a Roddy Piper (or yes, an Athena). With someone like Cassidy, it's about mind games and getting an advantage. Dalton is more of a force of nature, a fey creature out of A Midsummer's Night Dream, some primal fairy lord. He operates on his own set of rules, but they're nothing any mere human could ever understand. You can't treat him like a rational actor; at any point he might do something you'd never expect. That is who he is. What he is? In the ring? An amazing creature of leverage and perseverance, someone who can get under you and heft you over at any moment.

He came in to wrestle, and Eddie, the ace, the champion, had him scouted. He'd been training for someone like Castle and and was his equal on the mat, could match him suplex for suplex. So what did Dalton do? He hit any number of nasty back elbows. He couldn't outchop Eddie, couldn't out punch him, but he could spin backwards and jab one of the hardest parts of the body into Eddie's skull. It worked for a while too, but Eddie can spin around and knock your soul out of your body at any point too, and ultimately, he did just that. Dalton, an entity strong enough to have overcome a broken back to win his greatest victory, held on, but Eddie kept coming; that what he does. That's what a champion does. That's what the pillars did.

So Eddie overcame, beating back the unnatural, holding the forces of entropy and chaos at bay one more night, carrying the weight of the company on his shoulders and not at all afraid to tell it to the world. And we got another interesting, one-of-a-kind defense out of him. And I have enough data points to tell you that this is a trend, and it's the most interesting one in wrestling. I can't wait to see where it goes next.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America Review 9/16/15

1. House of Truth (Dijak & Diesel) vs. reDRagon

Kevin Kelly puts over J. Diesel's "golden gloves background" as he's doing a dorky jerkoff screaming forearms in the middle of the ring exchange. He would be much more interesting if he actually attempted to use this background, instead of jacking off in tribute to Japan. It's like facing Mecca while you pray. You have to face east while doing jackoff forearm exchanges. Overall this was a pretty fun match. Fish - the guy I like the most out of these four - was kinda off the whole time, worked pretty sloppy. But Dijak? This was the best I've seen Dijak look. First part of the match was him tossing Fish and O'Reilly around, including dumping Fish with a cool back breaker into just hurling him over the top to the floor. All of the stuff Dijak was involved with was fun, loved him getting chopped down by reDRagon's leg kicks. Fish caps off his match long sloppy run by landing on Diesel's face while doing a samoan drop, busting his nose open. Still, fun overall match. Lethal was loud and grating on commentary. He just shouted so much.

We get an Epic Brisco Bros. promo to hype up their PPV match against mystery opponents. These guys are the best. "Let me take it for a bit Jay". Talking about how they can be scouted, but Briscos can't scout them because they don't know who they are, and how the Briscos gameplan is just going to be to punch them in the face. Their chemistry and interplay and style is perfect.

2. Cedric Alexander vs. Dalton Castle

Oh man, Silas Young on commentary is talking about how he's going to make Castle's boys into men. "Oh I got a lot of things to do to these boys, coming out here with their greased up bodies". THESE GUYS ARE GOING TO FUUUUUUUCK and it's going to be glorious. The fans want it soooo bad and they hate how good it makes them feel. "These boys need to be taught how to be men." Young is actually talking about teaching them how to properly urinate. Match is fast paced and fun but I was admittedly distracted by Young's wanton desire on commentary. Castle's delayed German always looks killer, also liked his spin around rana from the apron. Veda Scott knows how to work a crowd, and I really liked the timing on the one spot where Cedric hides behind her, and she ducks just in time for Cedric to punch Castle over her. I'm normally not a fan of "opponent distracted, gets rolled up" finishes, but Cedric did one of the best roll ups I've ever seen here and leveraged all of his weight on Castle. It really looked like a pin that would be impossible to kick out of, so it totally worked. Fun stuff.

3. The Kingdom vs. War Machine

Another fun match. Seems like if they keep these things under 10 minutes then nobody gets stretched out beyond their worth. Most in the fed can fill an 8 minute match without making too many logic gaps. I think the more time Hanson gets the more he does stupid cartwheels and the longer matches go the more likely Taven is to do really bad flying offense that misses by a mile. But this is to the point, plays to everybody's strengths, and totally works. Rowe is clearly the better member of War Machine and he does some cool stuff here. The best was his running double knees with Bennett bumping hard into the buckles. Taven doesn't mess himself here, Hanson actually works like a big hoss instead of a large fat Kofi Kingston. This is a War Machine I could get comfortable enjoying.

And then we get a Dalton Castle promo talking about celebrating his victory by having quiche and mimosas.


Overall this was probably my favorite episode of ROH TV since they've started on DA. The matches didn't expose anybody and in fact played up a lot of strengths, and adding a Briscos promo will liven up any situation. More of this stuff, ROH.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 8/19 & 8/26/15 Review

1. Silas Young vs. Dalton Castle

Awesome little TV match, one of my very favorites since I started watching their weekly TV. Castle jumps him at the bell with headbutts and punches and it's clear right away these two just work real well together. Castle bumps big taking an awesome Jerry bump that didn't feel set up from a mile away, really felt integrated into the match nicely. He also bumps big into the railing and later takes a great tumble over the top, tackling Young. Young actually works more like an asshole here, as opposed to working like Chris Sabin...which I suppose is just working like a different kind of asshole. More backrakes, less flips. Both men move really well in there and everything was laid out great, nice build and logical progression. One of the eunuchs takes a big bump, and postmatch Young wants a stip added to a future match where HE gets possession of the eunuchs if he wins. I love it. Castle kept taunting him with flamboyance and it drives Young mad with seething passion. Him demanding the eunuchs is so obvious. He's accepting a dare that nobody at all was daring him to do. "Okay guys, FINE, I'll take the eunuchs." It's like Lindsey Graham saying he'd spend a night in a rest stop men's room if he wins any primaries. Nobody else is asking him to do it, clearly just a guy offering to do it. Silas Young's character makes so much more sense if you think of him as a closeted gay man.

2. Will Ferrara vs. Moose

They do the tale of the tape and Kevin Kelly actually says "No mention of heart, though". Ugh. This is the best I've seen Moose look, so this accomplished what it set out to do. He's still kinda sloppy and still seems lost, but the offense he chose to do worked, and he did neat things like take a spike tornado DDT on the floor. Plus the all white gear looked brilliant.

2. Young Bucks vs. RPG Vice

***NOTE: I'm not sure what happened to my write-up of this match. It got gone. It once was, but no longer is. Long story short, did not love it. Rocky Romero is horrible. Romero working schtick is unbearable. Bucks had a couple nice cut off moments, notably cutting off Trent during his apron ass hattery. Match went too long, Bucks weren't as violent and twerpish as they can be.

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1. Bloodbound Warriors (Grey Wolf & Red Scorpion) vs. Briscoes

Never seen Bloodbound Warriors before, but they appear to be shortish God of War or Warhammer cosplayers, and they've clearly committed to it and instead of making gay-intensive Vines they've focused it into pro wrestling. GREY Wolf is covered almost entirely in RED body paint, which is confusing. He's also not very good. Mainly he staggers around selling for Jay, so it's not like he got to do a whole lot, but his staggering wasn't very good. Scorpion has a big HGH belly and was much better. He had a couple nice press slams and I like a good press slam. Mark took a head first press slam over the top off the apron, takes a wild bump into the railing, and later got flipped over the buckles to the floor. Mark was a maniac in this. Jay hits a wild tope on Wolf, both guys kick the hell out of Scorpion (with Mark hitting a huge pump elbow off the top and Scorpion getting dumped on the back of his head with a clothesline). This was really fun. I'd actually like to see BW back, just because they seem a bit different from some of the ultra super serious workers we usually see.

2. Donovan Dijak vs. Roderick Strong

This worked! Checking my pre-match predictions, and yep, I was in the "this won't work" camp. But it worked. Dijak has a ways to go, his "reeling" especially looks horrible. And since this match had plenty of strike exchanges it also had plenty of him reeling and just...looking stupid while waiting to be hit. He can break out some impressive fast sequences (his 360 pump kick looked killer) but doesn't have any of the little things yet. He could get there. Roddy has had a great year and looked good here. He smartly built the match up to some good nearfalls that tricked me. Truth actually had some of the only good stuff I've seen from him. There was a really nicely timed spot where Roddy jumps over potential Truth interference while on the apron, and then Dijak belts him. The timing in this was spot-on throughout. Really solid stuff. Dijak just needs to figure out what the hell to do with his body and face while waiting to be hit.

3. Future Shock (Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly) vs. Addiction

Frankie Kazarian's vest is ridiculous. It's trying soooooooooo HARD you guys. It's like he went into Spencer's Gifts and bought every single patch they had, then ironed them onto his vest in a super organized fashion. They run the full gamut of "bands who are well known enough to sell patches at the mall", so he's got the Rolling Stones on his shoulder and The Beatles on his back and Led Zeppelin on his side. Hey, man. I'm a man. A man with a vest. I am definitely a man who has patches of bands that every human listens to. So many inches of vest are filled up with these personality-free patches, all of them placed on the vest as properly as possible. It is truly a vest that was workshopped by moms. It might as well be one of my mom's old appliqué holiday vests, like the Christmas one with felt gingerbread men and candy canes. It's that awful. Except my mom loved her holiday vests. She had all of autumn and winter covered: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. They spoke to her personality and she would still be wearing them today if that damn Stacy and Clinton didn't constantly put them down on What Not to Wear. They've ruined the vests for her. Frankie Kazarian's vest tells me nothing about him, except that he has zero personal taste of his own. His vest looks like it was decorated by a 45 year old man who is in charge of decorating teen bedrooms on sitcoms. "Looks like that back wall could use another rock & roll poster, Gary."

And the announcer calls The Addiction the "World Tag Team Champions of the World". Why is this a thing? I'm pretty sure Corino called them this a couple weeks ago. The Ring of Honor Pro Wrestling Champions of the World of Ring of Honor Pro Wrestling.

And this match bleeeeeewwwwwww. For a guy who is known for his cold, bland, robotic execution, Daniels sure does execute a lot of things horribly. He's like one of those replicants from the show Humans who is at the end of his shelf life, so the muscle memory is there, he's just really horrible at doing all of his programmed commands and sometimes ends up lost in the forest, his A.I. caught on a low hanging branch. Here we get really awful thigh slaps, overshot moonsaults, clunkily moving into position for offense, all really bad. He did a slow tortured walk to try and catch O'Reilly on the ropes that was the just the worst community theater Frankenstein's Monster walk you've seen. At one point Cole/O'Reilly do a shitty legsweep/clothesline combo on Daniels and no physical connection is made by anybody. So you have three bodies all moving to their own beat, with Cole whiffing a legsweep, O'Reilly whiffing a clothesline and Daniels back bumping to nothing. If one segment could tell the story of the match.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 7/29/15 Review

So last week was a real dud of an episode. Let's hope for a wee bit better show this week? I already had a laptop blow up, fiscal year end kicked my butt, and I need a good show here.

1. The Kingdom (Mike Bennett & Matt Taven) vs. Corey Hollis & Jonathan Gresham

This was a decent enough extended squash, got over the Kingdom as it intended. Gresham took some nice bumps into the railing, and man is he tiny. I kind of hate how Hollis bumps. I had never seen him before. I'm okay with that. We go through a long awful stretch where Bennett is repeatedly duped by Gresham essentially running back and forth in the ring. Taven on one side, Bennett on the other, Gresham running between them and getting grabbed by Taven, then slipping out with Bennett chasing him back and forth. It looked terrible, just an awful run of cat and mouse. They did it so much it looked like the moment when you noticed HHH set up every single one of his moves with an Irish whip. But, that was just the middle. It was fine. Not fine to the literal dictionary definition; but fine, as it's most commonly used. Which is to say, it was okay.

Destination America regularly pushes a show called "Killing Bigfoot" which...I gotta say I do not understand. Destination America has (no less than) 9 shows dedicated to Bigfoot. A cursory check of some well known science journals confirms that as of this writing we have still discovered zero Bigfoots. But apparently there is an entire show dedicated to killing a Bigfoot. I am looking forward to watching other Destination America programs like "Sanding Down Unicorn Horns" or "Shitting Down the Long Neck of Loch Ness".

2. Caprice Coleman vs. Brutal Bob Evans vs. Silas Young vs. Cheeseburger vs. Moose vs. Dalton Castle

God hearing Kevin Kelly try to explain Silas Young's gimmick is the worst. "He's in a baaaad mood...and...he's angry...and he thinks people like Dalton Castle are what's WRONG with society." Really? That's what you got? This wasn't that good, but really who was expecting it to be with these participants. I liked some of Castle's cut off spots. Coleman had some nice moments like a weird little moonsault to the floor that Bob and Cheeseburger whiffed on catching. Moose is one of those guys like Uhaa Nation who is a large impressive black man who has improbably soft offense. His little flipping spear looks so super gentle (and really to use that as the finish directly after Mike Bennett used his spear to set up the finish, come on). Highlight was pretty easily Castle hitting his hardway German on Moose, really slooooowly lifting him up and over. Really impressive spot. Cheeseburger continued his run of terrible by being way late for a pinfall break-up, so Sinclair had to stop the count for no reason before the 3. Evans had his feet on the ropes, but Cheeseburger was clearly supposed to break up the pin. He was way late, Sinclair just stopped counting the pin. And it was immediately before the finish. Tough spot for Sinclair to be in, and after he tried pretending like he had seen Evans' feet on the ropes, but he clearly stopped while still looking down. Yuck.

Corino and Kelly are so bad during these Whitmer segments. I don't know what they think they're going for when they do reactions shots, but they're failing. Kelly is sub-Tenay when it comes to expressing realistic outrage, and Corino does some sort of weird fake cry/trying not to laugh face.

3. ACH vs. Bobby Fish

Hey this was fun, and pretty easily the best match on a show with zero competition for that title. ACH's apron kick looked great and his handspring moonsault was crazy, also liked a couple of his kicks to Fish's calf. End got a little sloppy with kicks landing when they were supposed to miss and then subsequently not sold because they were supposed to miss, and things getting overall way too cooperative. But, I like Fish and ACH has some fun athletic spots, and for a short little TV match this was much more of what I was hoping for.

Better show than last week, but it would have to be historically bad for that to not be the case.

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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.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 6/10/15 Review

Actually liked the Kazarian/Daniels promo to start this, and "Hey I liked that Christopher Daniels promo!" doesn't feel like something I've said a whole bunch in my adult life.

1. The Addiction (Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian) vs. Kyle O'Reilly

This was supposed to be reDRagon (also, I don't understand the name. Pointless capitalization? Meaning I'm missing? Accidentally misspelled when it got back from the printers, so they just ran with it?) but Bobby Fish is on injured reserve, so O'Reilly takes them on solo. Match only goes about 4 minutes and is actually pretty fun, almost entirely because of Kazarian/Daniels. O'Reilly looked awful and nothing about his flimsy offense looked like it would keep two guys at bay. But Kazarian and Daniels bump and do pratfalls like crazy for him and somehow make a lot of it look plausible. O'Reilly throws these embarrassing hockey punches on Daniels (at least I think that's what those were supposed to be...whatever they were they were hilarious) and throws really bad regular punches where he kind of aims somewhere over his opponent's head. But Kazarian/Daniels bump for his stuff, fly into guardrails really tough, even set up for a wild O'Reilly dropkick off the apron into both of them, who had been placed improbably in a chair. Eventually Daniels hits him with the belt and the match is thrown out, but this was probably better than it should have been when you factor in the participants, and that it was a handicap match.

2. Dalton Castle vs. Jushin Liger

Well this was fun! I have never seen Castle before, and he's like a cross between Michael York, Cassandro, John Tatum and Blake from Workaholics. He has a couple of eunuchs with him who fan him with peacock feathers, even has sparkly tights (under his awesome glittery Bowie jumper/cape) with a glittery peacock feather on them. The dude has got the look. His work was good too as he bumped all over for Liger (loved his big bump off the apron from a Liger chop, and the way he took the finishing brainbuster and sold it after was great). Liger dogged it a little bit, had some lazy little palm strikes a couple times that looked like a kitten batting at yarn, but he flew into Castle's knees off a splash, threw some nice suplexes and jeez the guy is 50 and certainly works more athletically than most other guys who are 50. My dad already hated going on walks when he was 50. Castle knew how to stooge for him, this was plenty enjoyable.

3. Brutal Bob Evans vs. Cheeseburger

Bob Evans looks like a David Koechner character; or, a line cook at an actual Bob Evans. He does not look like somebody who should be wrestling on a nationally broadcast wrestling program. Yet he comes off as more of a wrestler than Cheeseburger, who seems like a guy who used to populate opening matches of IWA-MS shows because he sold enough tickets to earn a spot on the card. Nothing he does looks very good. He tries a springboard knee that whiffs by a couple feet, looks scared to go fullspeed into a turnbuckle or even the ring ropes (noticeably slowing way down before hitting the ropes or the turnbuckle), throwing lousy strikes, just looking like a guy who is only given a job because he was promised one after completing training. Bob throws some light punches himself although they are close to being salvageable. Something tells me at the age of 42 he won't be working too hard to improve them. He hits a nice enough shoulderblock and I did really like the sideslam off the apron through a table. I didn't see that coming so the surprise was nice. But man these are two guys who should not be featured on TV.

4. The Kingdom (Michael Bennett & Matt Taven) vs. Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson

Oh, god I have to watch Red Shoes on the program too? Cahmannnn. I was hoping I'd get to see him working his Billy Crystal routine with multiple televised feds. Bullet Club seems to be all the rage amongst live wrestling crowds these days. Lots of BC shirts and whatnot. I don't get it myself. Bullet Club matches usually just mean a bunch of poorly executed interference and matches that would have been better if there wasn't interference. Maybe it's just a cool logo that white guys like to wear? I had not seen Taven before this. I do not want to see Taven after this. Man he looked bad. Taven, Cheeseburger, Will Ferrara...are these the kind of guys the ROH school is churning out?? Good lord. Taven undershot every moved he tried by a few feet, peaking with him going for a moonsault to the floor and landing about 6 feet short, so that Gallows had to sprint several steps just to get grazed. Earlier he got caught with a Gun Stun leaping off the top to the floor, but to make it work required him to land - again - about 6 feet short of his target. Dumb spot. Bennett and Anderson throw some unconvincing Frye/Takayama stuff, shove Red Shoes a bunch, Red Shoes works his schtick where he doesn't actually do anything worthwhile as a kayfabe ref, and instead focuses far more on mugging. Gallows looked fine, Anderson tends to look better in a NJPW setting, Bennett looked good enough, Taven dragged the rest down. Match couldn't have gone more than 5 minutes before the non-finish.

Well, I really liked Castle/Liger, and the rest of the show was...well, not as bad as last week. So that's some progress. They still threw us a couple Brisco promos which are always a great thing. The promos from everybody are actually a far stronger part of the show than the wrestling has been. Eh, where do I have to go on Wednesdays? I'll keep checking it out.

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