ROH Final Battle 2022....I guess this can go here technically

[The Thread Killer]

I’d be much more kindly disposed to the whole Honor Club deal if the ROH back catalog went back farther than 2013, and if I wouldn’t still be expected to shell out an additional $40.00 every three months for the new quarterly ROH PPV’s. 

I ordered the last three AEW produced ROH PPV’s on FITE, which comes with unlimited replays…so I don’t need access to Honor Club for that. I’d love to go back through the ROH archives and watch some classic stuff…like say Joe vs. Kobashi or the Joe/Punk Trilogy…but that stuff isn’t even available on Honor Club and there’s rumours it might never be. Supposedly it will be a massive pain and expense to convert that classic stuff to streaming quality and it’s speculated that the VQ might render a lot of it unusable. I have a ton of those old shows on VHS and DVD and I can see that being a problem.

So basically aside from seeing the yet to debut weekly TV, there is zero incentive to sign up for this thing.

[NintendoLogic]

I checked out the dog collar match. For the most part, I thought they did a good job of creating a chaotic atmosphere while maintaining a sense of structure, which is the key to a high-end brawl. After Mark took that bump into the pile of chairs, though, it entered too-brutal-to-be-entertaining territory for me and I just wanted it to end. I also found the booking of the match rather questionable as there was no precipitating event to turn the rivalry into a blood feud that would necessitate booking a grudge match. It was just the Briscoes challenging FTR to a fight after losing two wrestling matches. Good on them for winning, but FTR are still the better wrestlers.

As far as trilogies go, there are quite a few who consider WrestleWar to be the best Flair/Steamboat match. It was the 1989 PWI match of the year, after all. And Dominion 2018 is widely considered to be the best match of the Okada/Omega trilogy. I mean, technically it's a tetralogy, but the G1 match doesn't really count since it was non-title and had a 30-minute time limit.

[Embrodak]

Can AEW do All In now that they own RoH? Weird to me that they wouldn’t be interested in using the title of the most successful independent show in modern history.

[WingedEagle]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

Last great "trilogy" is Syuri vs Utami Hayashishita, as they had their third match in one year and a half a few days ago. Funny enough, likewise FTR vs Briscoes, their match 1 & 3 were the best to me. Although I think I prefer FTR vs Briscoe III and Utami vs Syuri I. Above everything, I'm just glad I'm able to get this kind of pro-wrestling now. Lucky me.

I think you're leaving out their 5* GP matches, but yeah, great stuff from them over the last year and a half.

[Dale Wolfe]

Boogie Jam 84 is my favourite Flair/Steamboat match but then i am an old bastard. I know its not part of the "trilogy" but worth mentioning. Some unreal sequences in that. 

Sounds like I need to watch this dog collar match? Think ROH need a rebrand before they get TV tbh, it's never actually been a successful show really. 

[Migs]

22 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

That was fucking nuts. 

A thousand agreements.

[Migs]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

Last great "trilogy" is Syuri vs Utami Hayashishita, as they had their third match in one year and a half a few days ago. Funny enough, likewise FTR vs Briscoes, their match 1 & 3 were the best to me. Although I think I prefer FTR vs Briscoe III and Utami vs Syuri I. Above everything, I'm just glad I'm able to get this kind of pro-wrestling now. Lucky me.

Okada-Omega 3 (if the trilogy are the title matches) is also the best of the series, although I think they're all  pretty close.

[Migs]

1 hour ago, The Thread Killer said:

I’d be much more kindly disposed to the whole Honor Club deal if the ROH back catalog went back farther than 2013, and if I wouldn’t still be expected to shell out an additional $40.00 every three months for the new quarterly ROH PPV’s. 

I ordered the last three AEW produced ROH PPV’s on FITE, which comes with unlimited replays…so I don’t need access to Honor Club for that. I’d love to go back through the ROH archives and watch some classic stuff…like say Joe vs. Kobashi or the Joe/Punk Trilogy…but that stuff isn’t even available on Honor Club and there’s rumours it might never be. Supposedly it will be a massive pain and expense to convert that classic stuff to streaming quality and it’s speculated that the VQ might render a lot of it unusable. I have a ton of those old shows on VHS and DVD and I can see that being a problem.

So basically aside from seeing the yet to debut weekly TV, there is zero incentive to sign up for this thing.

It goes back to 2002 and has for a while. Joe vs Kobashi is on there (https://www.watchroh.com/details/27924). I think at least some of the trilogy is on there, haven't looked for it.

The catalog is not complete, and the early years are laid out pretty oddly (and some of the best stuff is on the compilation tapes). Haven't played around with the new layout, maybe it'll be easier to search for stuff than the old one.

[The Thread Killer]

1 hour ago, Migs said:

It goes back to 2002 and has for a while. Joe vs Kobashi is on there (https://www.watchroh.com/details/27924). I think at least some of the trilogy is on there, haven't looked for it.

The catalog is not complete, and the early years are laid out pretty oddly (and some of the best stuff is on the compilation tapes). Haven't played around with the new layout, maybe it'll be easier to search for stuff than the old one.

Thank you for the heads up. That’s weird though, I downloaded the app last night as soon as they made the announcement, and when I looked around, it only lists the events going back to 2013. But you are right, if you search by year, using the search function, you can find older events. 

From an appearance standpoint , the app actually looks pretty well engineered. It’s much more professional looking than NJPW World, that’s for damn sure. If they end up offering the complete archive, and then the weekly TV show, it may be worth the investment, although not having the pay-per-view’s included live is still a rip off.

[sek69]

It sucks not having the PPVs until 90 days later, but the archive + new weekly shows isn't a horrible deal. 

[WingedEagle]

Perhaps a victim of 24 hours worth of expectations setting a high bar, but my initial reaction is that the Dog Collar outing was my least favorite of this series.  Still a great, great match at ****1/2 with great blood, violence and and fun, original spots we hadn't seen from them before, but it didn't have the the ebbs and flows of the 2/3 falls outing or the dream match vibes of the original.  We're splitting hairs but I was expecting to be blown away in a fashion that just didn't materialize.

[sek69]

2/3 falls matches have the same issue Iron Man matches have imo, where you know it's going to be a long match but nothing's really going to matter to the end. To me, the Dog Collar match was special since it was a gimmick we don't see very often and allowed for more creativity in what could be done. 

[Childs]

Thought the trilogy was so great in part because they worked to the format of each match. They put a lot of thought into making this a special thing for those of us who care about this shit. It would have been great to have TV segments building to each chapter, but the psychology of going dog collar worked for me. The Briscoes went 0-2 trying to outwrestle them straight, so they resorted to mayhem, and FTR had too much pride not to go with them. Not so much a blood feud as an expression of each team's character when pushed by worthy rivals. I came out of this thinking all four guys deserve consideration for my GWE list. 

[sek69]

I like how Ian pointed out on commentary that because match two was 2/3 falls, each team has won 2 falls each in this feud so far. 

[The Thread Killer]

17 minutes ago, Childs said:

Thought the trilogy was so great in part because they worked to the format of each match. They put a lot of thought into making this a special thing for those of us who care about this shit. It would have been great to have TV segments building to each chapter, but the psychology of going dog collar worked for me. The Briscoes went 0-2 trying to outwrestle them straight, so they resorted to mayhem, and FTR had too much pride not to go with them. Not so much a blood feud as an expression of each team's character when pushed by worthy rivals. I came out of this thinking all four guys deserve consideration for my GWE list. 

I loved the promo that the Briscoes posted on Twitter. They talked about how Bret Hart was FTR‘s favourite wrestler, but that they loved Terry Funk. They mentioned how if Terry Funk fought Bret Hart in a normal wrestling match either guy could win or it might even favor Bret Hart, but if it was a cage match or hardcore match, they would pick Terry Funk every time...and that’s why they finally had the advantage with a dog collar match.

[Childs]

19 minutes ago, The Thread Killer said:

I loved the promo that the Briscoes posted on Twitter. They talked about how Bret Hart was FTR‘s favourite wrestler, but that they loved Terry Funk. They mentioned how if Terry Funk fought Bret Hart in a normal wrestling match either guy could win or it might even favor Bret Hart, but if it was a cage match or hardcore match, they would pick Terry Funk every time...and that’s why they finally had the advantage with a dog collar match.

Didn't see that but sounds perfect.

[The Thread Killer]

2 hours ago, Childs said:

Didn't see that but sounds perfect.

 

[Dav'oh]

In the few years I've lightly dabbled in fantasy Aussie Rules, fantasy EPL and fantasy Big Bash (cricket), I have never been happy having only one fantasy team. I always create at least one more.

Seems like Tony's no different.

[Alucard]

That crowd was loving all things Keith Lee vs. Shane Taylor. Keith's big catch was one of the biggest pops of the night. 

[NintendoLogic]

10 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

I loved the promo that the Briscoes posted on Twitter. They talked about how Bret Hart was FTR‘s favourite wrestler, but that they loved Terry Funk. They mentioned how if Terry Funk fought Bret Hart in a normal wrestling match either guy could win or it might even favor Bret Hart, but if it was a cage match or hardcore match, they would pick Terry Funk every time...and that’s why they finally had the advantage with a dog collar match.

But that doesn't explain why the match was set up in the first place. The Briscoes lost the first two matches fair and square. Where do they get off asking for another title shot, let one under rules that favor them? If you want to say FTR are fighting champions who never back down from a challenge, that's all well and good. But then they lost, so they seem more like overconfident chumps. Feuds between babyfaces where both sides come across not so great seems to be a TK booking staple because the same thing is happening with Mox/Page. As it currently stands, Hangman is a punk who's upset about being knocked out by a perfectly legal wrestling move and Moxley is a prick who mocked an opponent's serious injury.

[Matt D]

1 hour ago, NintendoLogic said:

But that doesn't explain why the match was set up in the first place. The Briscoes lost the first two matches fair and square. Where do they get off asking for another title shot, let one under rules that favor them? If you want to say FTR are fighting champions who never back down from a challenge, that's all well and good. But then they lost, so they seem more like overconfident chumps. Feuds between babyfaces where both sides come across not so great seems to be a TK booking staple because the same thing is happening with Mox/Page. As it currently stands, Hangman is a punk who's upset about being knocked out by a perfectly legal wrestling move and Moxley is a prick who mocked an opponent's serious injury.

One could argue that they were goaded into it by the Gunns, who have been taunting them with the baldcap and interfering in their matches. But I don't think 95% of the audience base was looking for any kayfabe argument at all. They just wanted the match.

[concrete1992]

The set-up for the Briscoes versus FTR was pretty poor. More of an output guy myself though

Overall, another great PPV from ROH. It is the easiest gig in the game to book for this promotion. Just book a match between two of the best teams of the past 20 years, then book a bunch of stuff that sounds good that you don't actively have to build towards, I love it.

For the Honor Club business, I could be absolutely swindled into paying $10/month I just wish this hadn't been built up like it was a big thing. If this was announced today and not on the scrum I would be all over that.

[The Thread Killer]

5 minutes ago, concrete1992 said:

For the Honor Club business, I could be absolutely swindled into paying $10/month I just wish this hadn't been built up like it was a big thing. If this was announced today and not on the scrum I would be all over that.

That’s pretty much where I am at with it, too. If TK had just announced this as his plan for ROH from the get-go, or even handled the announcement differently I would probably be a lot more excited about it. But the way he dealt with it kind of came across like he had no choice but to do this, because people have been bitching about all the ROH stuff on AEW TV and he couldn’t get a TV deal anywhere else, so this was his last resort. It didn’t exactly instil a ton of confidence in me.

[Timbo Slice]

The two biggest issues ROH faces now:

 

Running as net-negative business and having it be added while the parent company is in a lull, and having any type of marketing structure in place outside of AEW TV making mention. 
 

NXT made that work because they were able to get on USA and recoup a lot of the losses as ad revenue, but now ROH won’t get that, has a smaller audience, and an accessibility problem on top of that. 
 

In the US the exposure is probably slightly above NJPWWorld, and I don’t see how you build something viable long-term. Everybody talks about how the streaming miss sucks, and that’s true, but there are other outlets Tony can go through that he never pursued, and now he’ll have to use Honor Club as a bridge. And that’s perilous at minimum. 

[El-P]

FWIW, I believe TK said that he already made more money out of ROH with the PPV's than he spent buying it.

The fact he said that there will be a heavy NJPW involvement and that the details will come out after the Tokyo Dome is pretty intriguing though. A merger of sorts with NJ Strong ? A ROH presence in NJPWWorld ?