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

1. Cedric Alexander vs. ACH

Kevin Kelly puts over the unique concept of the wrestlers in Ring of Honor shaking hands before and after matches. God is that something they're still trying to promote? This match didn't do a whole lot for me, honor or no. It felt like a back handspring contest. I'm not sure who won, but there were a lot of handsprings. Also a lot of hiptosses with guys landing on the apron on their feet, a lot of "well-scouted signature offense". It all kinda runs together when there's no breathing room in a match. Veda Scott was really good in this, using herself as a human shield to block ACH's punt, allowing Cedric to hit a nice STO on the apron. She also held her ground when Cedric almost flip dove into her, with him having to hold the ropes to avoid hitting her "by mistake". I woulda got out of dodge and she stuck right in for the spot. There were a couple things I liked, ACH hit his cool rope run flip dive, Cedric throws a real nice running dropkick, and Cedric's blown springboard leading to the finish was really cool. I don't know if it was supposed to be blown, but he blew it spectacularly, catching a foot on the top and then bouncing chest first on the other side. It reminded me of all the great planned Hamrick blown spots. But the bulk of the match wasn't even move exchanging, it was reversal exchanging. At times it felt so far up its own ass, like actual moves weren't even being done because they were just focusing on reversing reversals of other reversals.

2. Will Ferrara vs. Caprice Coleman

This is maybe the quietest I've ever heard a ROH crowd. My were they silent during this. Coleman was real slow on offense. His standing leg drop and sliding leg drop to a seated Ferrara looked nice, but the set-up for all his stuff was slow, sluggish. Ferrara is blandish but Coleman didn't give him much to work with. For his part Will took two real nice "shoulder to the post" bumps in the corner, one on a missed charge and the other with Coleman tossing him. He's also good at putting over submissions. Last week against Strong he made me believe Strong was stretching him, and this week he made something Coleman did look deadly, so clearly this is just a great skill of his. Ooooooooo and after the match Nana gives him an envelope! It could possibly be coupons and newspaper clippings, like Rachel's mom cuts out and sends to her.

3. All Night Express vs. Briscoes

Hey, this was an All Night Express match that I liked! That isn't a thing that happens. But it happened right here! And it wasn't even all because I love the Briscoes, ANX also did some things I enjoyed! Titus hair flips a bunch but this might have been the best I've seen him. His share of the double team offense looked good, took Briscoes' stuff violently, flipped his hair some more, did some Martin Starr cosplay, hit a nice standing splash, more hair flips. I dug Mark starting things with some grappling. I want to see a character shift where he masters his redneck kung fu so moves on to a new challenge, and becomes a redneck RINGS worker. Mark's dives get crazier every week, dude really plays lunatic better than anybody else right now. I really liked the structure of this as ANX control Mark for awhile, Jay tags in and he and Mark go on a tear, King gets a run of kicks and suplexes, finishers get blocked, and then Jay hits a wicked Jay Driller and Mark hits a lung collapsing Froggy Bow. It's an easy way to fill 12 and both teams have the formula down. King took a weird bump off the apron and did a strange phantom knee injury for like 3 seconds. But yeah this was good. More stuff like this.

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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 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!

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

1. Adam Page vs. Matt Sydal

This match happened, some stuff was good, other stuff was not good. Starting to think Adam Page is not very good. BUT his shooting star "shoulder block" off the ring apron always makes me laugh. It's just so stupid and impossibly indy. It makes next to no contact, looks really dangerous, would be confusing to explain what was happening to a non-wrestling fan, it just checks off all the boxes of hilarity. There was a real nice moment where Sydal hits a huge baseball slide dropkick that accidentally takes out Colby Corino. Colby really leans into it and takes a big bump off it. Steve Corino was horrible (but also unintentionally hilarious) on commentary, saying really forced things like "My son! My son was sacrificed for the benefit of Adam Page!" Just...the worst read. This whole match just left me a little flat. I liked things both guys did (although the more I see him the more I think Sydal peaked during his '09 Superstars/ECW run), liked Page's pumphandle fallaway slam with a bridge, liked a Sydal spinning back kick, and really loved the baseball slide I mentioned, liked Page's slingshot flipping lariat (Page is really a guy who does a lot of stuff, some of it even good!) that Sydal flew into. It just didn't add up to anything for me. Each guy did things until it was time for the match to finish. There was no actual flow, just a series of moves in a bubble.

Veda Scott is a marginally more attractive Chelsea Peretti. Maybe slightly more than marginally. Marginally x2. She's pretty. But Chelsea Peretti would clearly be better at riling up a wrestling crowd.

2. Silas Young vs. Will Ferrara

Ah Silas Young. The man who looks like James Gammon yet wrestles like Chris Sabin. And for a 5 minute Velocity match this was pretty fun. It had a played out finish, with Dalton Castle's eunuchs distracting Young leading to Ferrara's roll up victory; but the match had tons of cool stuff, like Ferrara's cool armdrags including a real nice one into a short arm scissor. Then Young did the awesome Backlund lift all the way over to get out of the scissor. Ferrara took a big DDT and planted vertically. Young worked some nice headlocks where he would refuse to get pushed off. I love stuff like that. This was probably the most interesting I've ever seen Young look, so maybe his work is catching up to his mustache? We'll see, but I liked what I saw from both guys here.

3. Mark Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal

Wow, Jay Lethal is a really really boring wrestler. He just really does not do anything for me. His control segments were so bland here, and while he made Mark's offense look good, Mark has offense that's really easy to make look good, and Lethal never made it mean anything. Briscoe looked great, all his stuff was on. He made Lethal's shots actually look like they had something behind them (which, ehhhh), but I love all of Mark's offense. He throws some really great elbow drop variations, nice big boot, amusing uppercut strikes, etc. The match turns pretty messy when Lethal's untalented goons get involved, and then ODB comes out, and then Jay comes out to make things actually interesting. I defy anybody to come up with a stupider finisher than Lethal's handstand into a diamond cutter. I mean come on. How can anybody take that seriously. A finisher that requires the recipient to wander independently into the middle of the ring, wait in position while the gymnastics takes place, and then just take a move that looks far less devastating than if he had just done a diamond cutter without a dorky handstand. I cannot see any argument for that move being improved by adding that handstand. It feels like Lethal is trying to work more "serious", like he's a touring NWA champ. But it really isn't a style that suits him, and it's not one that he's capable of pulling off.

I had been excited for the main this week, but Briscoe just couldn't lift it up to his level. Ferrara/Young was a pleasant little surprise, though. This episode was filled with guys executing things nicely. But move execution doesn't mean a whole lot to me when it goes nowhere.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 6/3/15 Review

I'm happy to have more wrestling on my TV. Maybe I'm a luddite - well, I definitely am - but getting to watch something on my large HD TV screen will always win out over watching that same thing on my laptop. I've been mostly out of the ROH loop for the last year or two - there are no Sinclair stations in my area - so let's dive back in and watch, shall we?

I know these aren't filmed exclusively for DA, but it would be cool if this brings them any amount of new fans. And I can't imagine a better introduction to new fans than seeing the hate-filled scowl of Jay Briscoe and caveman insanity of Mark. I love Briscoe promos.

1. Will Ferrara vs. KUSHIDA

I had not seen Ferrara before, and that was probably a good thing. Will Ferrara was definitely a current day indie wrestler. Went through all the motions and movements of a wrestler, no substance whatsoever. There's this certain way a lot of newish indie workers move, this puffed chest/butt out style of movement, and he's got that down pat. He wimps out of his clothesline follow through and seems scared to hit people with his dropkick, but he knows chest puff/butt out style. KUSHIDA has popped up lately on the Friday NJPW show, and he's okay but also has a lot of weenie strikes. His springboard head graze is apparently a signature spot of his (I thought he was working a parody highflyer gimmick against Ricochet), and he throws these real lousy not punches/not forearms where he just kinda hits Ferrara's forehead with his wrist. Imagine the worst version of the way Robert Gibson would throw punches off a hot tag. Ferrara hits an impressive suicide dive tornado DDT but it doesn't really go anywhere. I do love the hoverboard lock as a finisher, looks nasty and Ferrara only briefly held on before wisely tapping. So I liked that, but a lot of this was....not much.

2. Silas Young vs. Watanabe

Young's "Last Real Man" persona rings a little hollow with me as I'm always just left wishing he was more of an asskicker. He's got a great 'stache, and a good mug, but doesn't really work stiff and really, just kind of scowls. It needs some work. Watanabe is a pretty low end NJPW guy who throws poor elbow strikes and sells moves by making exaggerated Eddie Murphy-as-Buckwheat faces. Young kicks him in the ear and Watanabe perks his head up, widens his eyes and purses his lips. Maybe it's more of a Church Lady reaction. He does it three different times here. Young takes a couple nice bumps here, bouncing off the apron after a clothesline and flipping over off a suplex on the floor, but Watanabe isn't very good and Young seems like he needs an actual asskicker in there with him to bring out his best.

3. Moose vs. Colby Corino

I'm a fan of a good squash and Corino manned into some stuff admirably here. Corino is scrawny enough that I cringed whenever he would get tossed around. He takes a big time bump into the guardrail, takes a powerbomb on the apron and one on the floor. I dig squashes in wrestling, especially on an ROH card so we don't just see 8 straight matches of do-si-do mirror sequences.

4. Donovan Dijak & J. Diesel vs. The Briscoes

This was a nice extended squash. Diesel works an amusing golden gloves boxing gimmick, Dijak is a guy with some height and not much else. I love all of Mark's strikes and his dropkicks are some of the best in wrestling. Jay is maybe the most intense dude in wrestling today, his scowls are downright mean. I wish I could have seen them work WAR. I love Briscoe matches when they just start going on a rampage, they both know how to ramp things up so damn well.


This was kind of a weird episode to debut to a wider audience. I know they just opted to show the Sinclair episode that already aired this week (which makes sense) but this was not a good episode in the least for new eyeballs. The homegrown guys looked like duds, and the two matches they pushed from the very beginning of the show didn't end up actually happening, which might look odd to new eyes. Not that anybody would have likely been clamoring for BJ Whitmer in a singles match, but it's strange to start a show advertising just two matches, and keep advertising them throughout the show, and then do a bait and switch on both of them. At least the Briscoes were featured, who are no doubt the best guys in the fed, so at least they had that on their side. Still, you have to assume somebody somewhere was seeing this for the first time. And that person just got to watch Will Ferrara.

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