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ROH: Best in the World.... Live As It Happens


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I’m going to tomorrow’s show. Predictions:
Briscoe vs. Lethal [Title vs. Title]: I don’t get why they’re doing this match. If Briscoe wins, you’ve made your top heel look bad. Regardless of who wins, you’re losing your secondary champion until the point at which the winner drops one of the belts. It's not a unification, so I could it see it being a deal where Moose/Elgin/Strong soon beats whoever walks out of this World champ. Which further begs the question of why they’re doing it. For that reason I suspect they’ll do some weird finish. Maybe even a time limit draw. But just to pick someone, I’ll say that Lethal cheats to win both titles, but is beaten by Moose soon.

The Addiction vs. reDRagon [Tag Titles]: I don’t like either team, but reDRagon’s the better option. No idea why the Addiction are even champs, and O’Reilly has a lot of momentum right now.

Strong vs. Moose vs. Elgin [#1 Contender’s Match]: If Briscoe wins the main event, it’ll be one of the heels. But if I’m picking Lethal, I also have to pick Moose. He’s the best choice if you wanna strap a rocket to someone new. Strong is by far the best worker of the three right now. I fear they’re pick Elgin, but I loathe him so much that I refuse to even predict his win.

Kingdom (Cole/Bennett/Taven) vs. Bullet Club (Styles/Young Bucks): Unless there’s some weird New Japan power play, I see no reason for the Kingdom to win. They’re IWGP champs, and a loss here is more interesting booking.

Sydal/ACH vs. Page/Whitmer: I have lots of babyfaces winning on this show, and from TV booking it seems like they want to keep the Decade strong. Sydal/ACH are such a bland non-team that I don’t see why they should win.

Dijak vs. Mark Briscoe: Don’t really care, but feels like they want to push Dijak and build further heat between Briscoes and House of Truth.

Dalton vs. Silas: Probably the most intriguing match on this show, if not second to the main event. Castle is the kind of gimmick where they seem to think they can beat him all the time, and Silas is coming off a TV loss against Watanabe. But: maybe because it’s going to be a very smarky pro-Dalton NYC crowd, I think he pulls it off as Silas’ midcard woes continue.

War Machine vs. C&C Wrestle Factory: I would hope that War Machine wins a monstrous four-minute squash. I think it’ll be competitive, but War Machine should be booked as 1987 Road Warriors right now.

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Preshow: 4-way between Cheeseburger/Romantic Touch/Will Ferrara/Jay Diesel. "Bootista" chants for Diesel. Romantic Touch is entertaining, if a bit one note. Cheeseburger is the only one who knows how to sell. He won with with a bridging pin on Touch. Cheeseburger's strikes suck, but that's true of everyone in the match, and at least he's over with the crowd. After his win, a fan gave him a Quarter Pounder that he consumed to roaring cheers.

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Donovan Dijak w/ Truth Martini vs. Mark Briscoe w/ ODB

- Nothing happening until the insane bodyslam to the outside. Briscoe is incredibly stupid for taking that bump.

- The fact he sold his back the rest of the way was a bonus.

- I liked that he retaliated with the neck breaker on the floor and I was hoping it would lead somewhere later on.

- At least Mark wasn’t jobbing. Fun opener

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Matt Sydal & ACH vs Adam Page & BJ Whitmer

- I know Matt Sydal is free from the WWE chains but he is doing himself a disservice growing his hair out like a Wyatt member.

- OK, I have seen everything now… a shooting star headbutt

- I guess Sydal’s knee is perfectly fine now.

- Fun match with a convoluted finish. I thought the finish was stupid, especially since Sydal’s pin after the Shooting Star Press looked so obvious he was grabbing the wrong leg so Colby could interfere.
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NO DQ for the ROH World Tag Team Championship

The Addiction © vs reDRagon

- Not a fan of the crowd brawling at the beginning

- Early on, too many car crash spots for my liking. I know it is a No DQ match but they seem way too clean for a violent match.

- The weapon shots were pretty good for this kind of match but I prefer the straight tag match they had in San Antonio

- The pull the ref spot would have been more effective if we didn’t see it on the 2nd match of the show.

- Fun match but nothing close to the SA match.
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Champion vs. Champion

ROH World Champion Jay Briscoe vs. ROH World Television Champion Jay Lethal w/Truth Martini

- Dueling elbows… dueling dives…. Dueling uppercuts

- This really got hot after Truth got dumped.

- I understand the landscape of using a bunch of finishers but I really hated Jay popping up after each RKO so he could set Lethal up for his next spot. I also hate how Lethal has to do the Muta springboard before each RKO. So phony after going to war for 30 minutes. ‘I enjoyed the match but it also had the worst elements that bother me about ROH. I’ll probably be in the minority.
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Good match worked in a way that felt like an important main event. Lethal's finisher is awful. I don't care for Lethal at all but his family in the crowd makes me give the win a thumbs up just for the moment even though I think it's a bad move.

 

Mediocre undercard.

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Bullet Club-Kingdom was what the crowd was most excited about, even moreso than the main event. I don't watch a ton of New Japan, so I was really surprised by how over Styles and in particular the Bucks were. Huge reactions to their NWO/DX mimicry shtick. Match was a shameless spotfest with a lot of ridiculous excess. And yes, the Maria spot was totally unnecessary. None of it should have worked, and yet as a live over-the-top spectacle for a rabid crowd, it was incredibly entertaining.

 

I've enjoyed Lethal's last few months, so I'm up for him as the top star going forward. That finisher's gotta go, but he worked hard and it did have the feel of a real coronation. The promo afterwards and tone of the match seemed like they're trying to make him into their Ric Flair of the moment - or at least their Shane Douglas - as old school athletic heel champion who can win both on his own or with his interference. He cut a very tweener promo that walked that line of praising Briscoe and the company, while declaring himself the best thing in it. Otherwise:

 

* Show opened w/ an awesome hype video for Jay-Jay that I assume they played to start the PPV as well.

* Mark's back was visibly red and bruised after that flat back bump to the floor. Without a doubt the craziest bump of the night, and it happened two mins into the show.

* Loud "Blowjob Whitmer" chants during the Decade match.

* Elgin is unbelievably bad, and I can't believe he bitched his way into the G1. For those people who think the way to get genuine heel heat from smarks is to wrestle badly and look repugnant, this guy is your poster child.

* Moose's football entrance was phenomenal.

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Will there be a reaction show for this one, guys?

 

I'm curious to see what they do with Roddy moving forward. Strong's been phenomenal in PWG, and he feels like a top flight level heel. He's been refreshed in that role, and I honestly LOVED the way they had him constantly tormenting & poaching Kyle O'Reilly (the then champ) for months & months on end before finally robbing him of the crown. Great storytelling, perfectly paced stuff.

 

So yeah. Part of me would like to see that approach for him here in ROH. But I don't know. He's surprisingly good as this experienced, battle-tested babyface as well. It's not on par with his recent heel work for me, but I'm not opposed to it altogether. I'd much rather have him grow naturally & organically into the top heel, although I wasn't a big fan of his last ROH Title run in that capacity. Then again, I wasn't blown away by the majority of his babyface run that followed it either.

 

Also, I know most reviews I've seen have shit all over the Kingdom's stint in New Japan. But I'm excited to see them working back in ROH. Styles being involved certainly helps, but Cole and Bennett are great modernized heels - ESPECIALLY in a work-rate ROH landscape. I think their time spent under the Matt Hardy learning tree has been very valuable in hindsight.

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