Ring of Honor Wrestling

[bradhindsight]

I've still got the last two matches to watch on Global Wars but I thought the Briscoes/War Machine tag was MOTN - and maybe the best ROH match of this year for me.

 

One thing that's really stuck out to me in reading a bunch of show reviews for not just Global Wars, but also Supercard of Honor and even the 3/12 Philly show - you could see four different matches from the same show be pimped as the match of the night by different people.

 

Booking aside, I think that really speaks to the quality of the roster and the diverse work and styles you'll see up and down the card.

[soup23]

Just finished the main event of Global Wars.

First with the negatives:

1. The pricing model for PPV is insane. Everyone knows this at this point. $45.00 is a hell of a ask for the people I come in contact with on the IWC. I have no idea how profitable they are overall for the company.

2. The main event angle does feel like a retread but it is a difficult situation. Using the muse that most people on here are subscribers of NJ World, the reboot of Bullet club feels like something that has been drawn out and seen multiple times elsewhere. However, I do frequent other parts online where the only interaction people have with NJ talent and Bullet Club in general is when they are involved with ROH. Last two times I have went to ROH live, one shirt has sold out and that was the Bullet Club one. It may end up blowing up in ROH's face but less face it, they aren't the in vogue promotion for our stratosphere right now anyway. They have consistently kept up good gates and are doubling down on the NJ and Bullet Club approach until they see significant diminished returns. It is a delicate game to play and could alienate hardcore fans but I am still invested in the product and promotion overall.

The show overall I thought was really good as a standalone show. I have watched this and Evolve 60 back to back this morning (having a sick kid does have some small dividends), and the shows felt on par in a vaccumm with ROH being more consistent but Evolve building to a greater peak and having greater highs in the final two matches. I do think the burial of ROH by NJ talent is overblown on Global Wars only as Moose was presented as equal with the pillars of NJ, Fish defeated Ishii and O'Reilly was presented as worthy challenger to the IWGP champion. I also thought it was clever the Young Bucks didn't superkick in their match to heavily emphasize the main event angle. Overall, the show may have ended in a dud for many but the action leading up to that was very good.

[Luchaundead]

I've still got the last two matches to watch on Global Wars but I thought the Briscoes/War Machine tag was MOTN - and maybe the best ROH match of this year for me.

 

One thing that's really stuck out to me in reading a bunch of show reviews for not just Global Wars, but also Supercard of Honor and even the 3/12 Philly show - you could see four different matches from the same show be pimped as the match of the night by different people.

 

Booking aside, I think that really speaks to the quality of the roster and the diverse work and styles you'll see up and down the card.

 

This is so true, if they could get their coordination better, ROH and NJPW are really suited for each other right now as they both complement each others weakness and strengths right now.

 

ROH may have the strongest current roster going, with the possible addition of Hero and other Evolve guys that don't' "...have upward mobility to move onto WWE developmental." It's only going to keep getting better. What comes with such a strong roster is that every show has multiple matches that can easily be seen as MOTN or even MOTYC. Unfortunately ROH booking is stale and almost no match ups feel fresh.

 

Conversely NJPW just lost all their top workrate guys but, the Shibata, Omega, Elgin and Naito/Ingobernables stories, characters, and pushes have all seemed to catch fire chasing NJPW shows to feel like exciting and new even with matches we've seen dozens of times. A more that prime example of such was the recent Ishii vs Naito main even from Wrestling Dontaku, these two have been wrestling each other regularly for nearly a decade the most recent encounter being within two months yet, this match still delivered and felt new.

 

If ROH and NJPW can use their strengths succinctly to mitigate their deficiencies we could see something truly special very soon.

[bradhindsight]

To one of Chad's points above - I think the ingoing perception (and reality really) of NJPW dominance hurt the Fish match the most. There was the one dual cheer, but no one was buying him until really the very end, which was a shame since I thought he worked his ass off.

 

I was surprised given the heavyweight/junior heavy NJPW designation discrepancy how much O'Reilly really got to take it to Naito. I had a false presumption going in that Naito rolled over him (stupid twitter), but that couldn't be further from the case. Both O'Reilly and Fish abandoned their usual limb work to focus more on strikes and work a different style than their normal matches also.

 

I like the Moose/Okada team a lot. Was really surprised how in-sync they were. That's a nice rub for Moose too. I thought maybe he'd be the guy to beat Ishii eventually, but apparently not.

[soup23]

The New York card will be telling. There is a ton of New Japan vs. ROH matchups where they could give ROH a bone in one of the underling matches beating Gedo and NJ going over in the other matches. I think that will be a nice indicator of the parity between the two companies at the moment.

[Migs]

What's the reasoning on ROH TV being so stale? Like, they ran a huge angle this week, but there's no way the TV in the next two weeks will cover it, and none of the shows this week were billed as a TV taping. That's going to hurt their momentum (how much, given their current model, I don't know). Is it just a cost thing that they tape so infrequently? You'd think a taping every three weeks would make sense.

[Grimmas]

Just finished the main event of Global Wars.

 

First with the negatives:

 

1. The pricing model for PPV is insane. Everyone knows this at this point. $45.00 is a hell of a ask for the people I come in contact with on the IWC. I have no idea how profitable they are overall for the company.

]

It's absolutely insane. You could get NJPW World, WWE Network and an EVOLVE show one month for the price of one ROH ppv. There is no justification for that price and I can't believe anyone buys it.

[Infinit]

What's the reasoning on ROH TV being so stale? Like, they ran a huge angle this week, but there's no way the TV in the next two weeks will cover it, and none of the shows this week were billed as a TV taping. That's going to hurt their momentum (how much, given their current model, I don't know). Is it just a cost thing that they tape so infrequently? You'd think a taping every three weeks would make sense.

I believe they are taping this Wednesday night in Toronto.

[soup23]

Wednesday is a TV taping but apparently it wont be airing until June. I have no idea why and agree that it stunts the momentum. A shame too because the tv up until the Honor Rising break was good this year with the blowoff to the Young/Castle angle and the fun Top Prospect matches.

[Dylan Waco]

From my perspective the Global Wars main event was unforgivable and the kind of thing that kills my interest in the promotion. In fact I was supposed to go to an ROH show later this Summer and actually cancelled plans as a result of the finish of the show.

 

I said this on Twitter, but to me the Young Bucks are basically Brock Lesnar-lite but so much less believable that I can't even laugh at it. By this I'm not only talking about their on screen depiction (serious question - does ANYONE buy them as asskickers?), but also the fact that much of ROH booking seems built around the idea that the Bucks are bigger stars than they actually are. As with Brock I say this with the full knowledge that they are insanely over and to a degree are the biggest stars in their respective company. The problem is neither company seems to get all that much of a return on their investment, and I think storytelling and developing other acts is often subordinated to the big contracts and personas that the Bucks/Brock are.

 

I hate Colt Cabana, and I'm not in love with Jay Lethal as a worker, but the angle that set that up was excellent and better than any main event angle ROH has put together in ages. It deserved some kind of payoff in the ring. No matter what the reason for that (there are rumors that Cabana refused to job and I see no reason why we should ignore them), it leaves an incredibly sour taste in my mouth to see no delivery on that angle so that we can get The Young Bucks running through their tired schtick for what seemed like half an hour to close a ppv.

[sek69]

It doesn't make sense for Cabana to refuse to job considering the big show-ending angle makes more sense if the Bullet Club "ruined" things by having a non finish in a PPV main event (which has more impact in a place like ROH where that doesn't happen often).

[shoe]

Again the whole Cabana thing is the company's fault. If they didn't have him under contract they deserve what they get. The angle would have had more impact if it was Hero in the spot. They could've ran the angle with Jimmy Rave or Spanky and had a better match than Cabana.

[soup23]

I actually thought that this was going to set up Hero returning with Lethal beating Colt and again proclaiming that he had beaten everyone. If Cabana did refuse to job, that is shitty on him and something the company should have cleared before bringing him in.

 

I am really conflicted on Young Bucks. They never will be my favorite act but I have liked their isolation a good bit in the tag division within ROH. The shows I have caught this year have had them as a cog of the system but in a compartmentalized portion of it. Now with the Global Wars angle, that is out of the picture. The thing is that the Bucks do still feel a bit special when they come out much like Brock still does in WWE for me now. I definitely see the potential detrimental situation of being too attached to them, but it feels like a necessary evil that ROH has to take in a certain way.

[Mad Dog]

Why is Delirious so entrenched?

For all of his faults, he stabilized the product after Cornette ran into the ground. He's just good enough to not get rid of in favor of someone else. He knows the fanbase and what to give them.i honestly think his biggest fault is the same as the rest of the company and that's the poor eye for upcoming talent.

[Luchaundead]

 

Why is Delirious so entrenched?

For all of his faults, he stabilized the product after Cornette ran into the ground. He's just good enough to not get rid of in favor of someone else. He knows the fanbase and what to give them.i honestly think his biggest fault is the same as the rest of the company and that's the poor eye for upcoming talent.

 

If you believe Cornette he was also Jim's right hand man as he ran the company into the ground so shouldn't that really be a double edged sword situation? It's like saying "Hey thanks for helping us fix what you helped someone else fuck up"

[bradhindsight]

Define "ran into the ground" for me - I thought business had been up during Steen's run, even if Cornette was losing his mind with the office.

[InYourCase]

Define "ran into the ground" for me - I thought business had been up during Steen's run, even if Cornette was losing his mind with the office.

No, not at all. They were drawing in the low hundreds for most shows outside of NYC.

[Luchaundead]

 

Define "ran into the ground" for me - I thought business had been up during Steen's run, even if Cornette was losing his mind with the office.

No, not at all. They were drawing in the low hundreds for most shows outside of NYC.

 

Turns out "Former OVW star and Spirit Squad member Mike Mondo FKA Mikey" on posters at Six-Flags wasn't as big of a draw as Cornette had expected.

[Mad Dog]

 

 

Why is Delirious so entrenched?

For all of his faults, he stabilized the product after Cornette ran into the ground. He's just good enough to not get rid of in favor of someone else. He knows the fanbase and what to give them.i honestly think his biggest fault is the same as the rest of the company and that's the poor eye for upcoming talent.

 

If you believe Cornette he was also Jim's right hand man as he ran the company into the ground so shouldn't that really be a double edged sword situation? It's like saying "Hey thanks for helping us fix what you helped someone else fuck up"

 

 

I think they were using him to transition and because they're cheap fucks and then he started getting some traction with his own ideas. The product started getting a lot better once the stink of Cornette was off of it. And honestly, I can't think of anyone that would navigate the landmines as well as he has.

[InYourCase]

I also believe Johnston being Cornette's sidekick is overblown by Cornette. The product, when it was at its worst, was laced with Cornette tropes. The booking, while it isn't very good, feels very different from Cornette's style.

 

That being said, if there's one thing that Cornette was great at that Delirious lacks severely, it's the ability to make main event matches feel like a truly big deal. Lethal vs. Briscoe from this past summer was the closest Delirious has come to having something truly feel important. Even with the Davey vs. Eddie series and the subsequent Davey vs. Steen feud, while some of those matches may not have been great, they all felt like a big deal.

[Mad Dog]

During the Cornette era they needed 500 people a show to break even if I remember correctly and they weren't getting that most nights. The last few years they've been going to a lot of new markets and getting 600-800 in a lot of places.

[goodhelmet]

To be fair... there is no Davey Richards.

[Mad Dog]

Yeah, using such an unlikable douche as your main babyface for a national expansion was a bad idea.

[goc]

It's funny how Davey went from (in certain circles) being talked about as one of the best in the world a few years ago to pretty much being totally off the radar now.

[Loss]

I found this in my collection. A reminder of ROH's humble beginnings.

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4a3bq1