By Haydn Gleed
ROH Hits
Bobby Fish vs Shibata: It was great to see the TV title not only defended in the main event on this show, but they progressively built up the importance of the match throughout the program to the point the match felt like the climax that a main event should be. It made the TV Title seem like an important championship and one that viewers should stick around to see when it’s advertised. I’m an old fuddy duddy and I would like to see the TV title defended more as the main event of the ROH show because…well….it’s a TV title, and this match proved that you can achieve a multi layer amount of things within the confines of a contest. They put over Fish as being resilient and quick minded, they put over Shibata as a never say die character, and they made the TV title feel like an important championship all through the course of one main event match. The quality of the match alone would have been a minor Hit, but what they managed to achieve in the main event gets a solid Hit from me.
ROH All Star Extravaganza hype: Under normal circumstances with Ring of Honor pay-per-views, the company has a hot main event program and a few matches sprinkled on the side. With the All Star Extravaganza pay-per-view in two weeks, I would argue they have a decent and somewhat confusingly random main event, but the other advertised matches have a bit of juice going into them. The Addiction, Young Bucks, and Motor City Machine Guns Ladder War 6 match was given a bit of time to show it’s importance, we have a reason to want to see Jay Lethal get his hands on Tetsuya Naito, and they built up the TV title match between Bobby Fish and Donavon Dijak. They also threw in hype for the six-man tag title tournament beginning. Overall, this show left me excited about the upcoming the pay-per-view and made me want to buy it.
Return of Steve Corino announcement: Under normal circumstances I would give this a massive Hit because Nigel McGuiness as a color commentator has been slowly bothering me more and more each week, but my guard is up for a change in character in Corino considering the dark turn that his feud with BJ Whitmer has taken. My guard is up for some form of “broken” Steve Corino and my guard is definitely up for ROH attempting some kind of “Final Deletion” of their own involving Corino, Whitmer, Punisher Martinez, and Kevin Sullivan. I hope I’m just being paranoid, but considering the twists and turns they have been taking, and the fact that this is a feud that has been going on for years and will never die, my guard is up. So until I’m hopefully wrong this only gets a minor Hit.
ROH Misses
Lack of logic for six-man tag match: I can understand if people are okay with Michael Elgin and Kyle O Reily taking the place of Evil and Naito in this match because Nigel McGuiness was at ringside to approve it, and I can also live with the fact it was a means to an end because their involvement did progress a number of feuds. Where I personally have a problem is from a pure competition stand point in that it simply didn’t make sense. ROH didn’t offer any explanation as to why it was okay for two people who their opponents hadn’t agreed to be in the match were suddenly officially in the match. Even if McGuiness had said, “Well, I’m okay with them taking the place of Naito and Evil because it evens the teams, and besides the match was booked as Lethal and two partners not specifically Naito and Evil,” I would have found it as a weak explanation but one that would have explained why the Bullet Club wouldn’t just say no, we’re not wrestling two men who are not part of this match. It’s only a minor Miss, but a Miss all the same.
As always, feel free to get in touch with me either through email haydn.gleed@gmail.com or through twitter @haydngleed if you want to discuss anything ROH or wrestling related, always happy to chat about either subject.
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