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Ring of Honor - 2023


Matt D

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14 minutes ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

Yeah but you have to tell that story and not just Calvinball everything after the fact - the Jay Briscoe Memorial Ladder Match should have had Mark on commentary so he could raise the winner's hands to put a cap on his tag-team career (since reports are that's what he wants to do). Leaving him alone in the ring with the tag belt after losing to Joe was just depressing.

Yeah I agree with you there. The storytelling wasn't there. At the very least if you're dead set on him working Joe as the lead in, have him have both belts with him and leave them set up in the center as he walks out. As a visual tribute to Jay and a passing on of the lineage thing. Anything other than him just leaving with one belt and no real segue into the next segment he's supposed to have a had a large part in creating (story wise).

Ultimately I think the sheer volume of content that he's producing is causing TK to lose the little details that used to be there and make things make a little more sense. Gonna be even worse with another in ring show on the way. For all the great things about AEW / ROH, I am not at all a fan of the WWE-ifying of their identity. Multiple brands. Too many hours of product to follow. Too many titles. Turning into quantity over quality.

I mean hindsight and all, but to me the real emotion fueled way to book Mark was to let him go on the most epic tag title run of all time. He does promo after promo about how he loves his brother and this is the last time they will ever hold tag titles together. How he's not ready to let that part of his life go and how he can't let go of Jay. Not without a fight. Then you send him on the most epic 2 on 1 run of all time. He defends the tag titles alone. Against all of The Briscoe's classic rivals. Have him beat SCU. Have him beat The Bucks. Have him beat The Kingdom. Just let that shit be the thing legends are made of. When the time is right someone eventually beats him. And you have (hopefully) created the hottest star in the company and he is ripe to get a world title run. But that's just where my creative juices go to.

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56 minutes ago, HumanChessgame said:

Ah, I had no idea and just figured he lived in Japan. If he spends most of his time stateside then it makes sense, especially if this helps further the ROH/NJPW relationship.

 

NJPW is supposed to be sending LA Dojo folks over reguarly for ROH, so it makes more sense with that.  I was surprised at it being as one-sided as it seemed.  Yuta looked more outclassed than I thought he should have been.

 

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29 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Then you send him on the most epic 2 on 1 run of all time. He defends the tag titles alone.

Or have Mark in the ladder match by himself like when Necro entered the Steel Cage Warfare match at Glory by Honor VII as his own team

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I don’t usually pick holes, but listening to Alvarez say Komander v Vikingo wasn’t a spot fest and then compare it to a gymnastics routine was classic stuff. 
I had hopes when they started off with some shady matwork but it then became a total stunt show and frankly gymnasts cantering to each corner of the mat prior to a tumble is more convincing. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it or find it breathtaking, just that MOTY talk is delusional. Go watch a Rey v Psicosis  match (not j cup 95 though!) and tell me these two haven’t got a bloody long way to go to be as good as they could be. 

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If the GAP band was a wrestler she would be Willow “get your back up off the wall” 

Willie Mack may have been born in South Central but probably got his education from the school of hard knocks not USC (university of south central) TK was super over as well. Got a this is awesome chant. Mack seemed to completely miss on his dive.

Crowd was hot for The MegaChampionShip with chants of “this is lucha” and “lucha libre” 

crowd was surprisingly split for Joe v Mark

6 man was too much standard rules go out the window and not enough meat slapping. GOA came out the heel entrance but got a semi positive response due to being socal boys

Most over Wrestler was Penta huge Ciero Mado on his entrance, Eddie was over big as well as all the NJPW guys as well 

Seems maybe the crowd wasn’t miked well Yuta and the BCC got huge heat, as did Garcia. Biggest heel was the guy in the front row in a Celtic jersey. He actually started playing to the crowd with the hulk hogan cup the ear and ex crotch chops. Crowd was really  into the near falls in the main event.

surprisingly to me that Joe and Claudio retained but Yuta lost. 

a few thoughts on the ladder match. Listen you may not like it but the right team won, with so many heel victories this was pretty much the hometown baby face going over. It’s an over 50% Mexican-American crowd and Penta is always over in socal (I’ve seen him wrestle for Pcw) Now Tony Khan who’s never taken a bump in his life can stop booking these spectacles seemingly every month , that was also third table spot on the show. What you didn’t see was Maria and Jose working together to fix the tables and apron ranna spot knocked out the announce teams monitors

best shirt I saw was a girl wearing a Butt stuff club shirt

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I thought this show was awesome, feels like ROH is on fire with the weekly show and then big events like this.

Komander/Vikingo was amazing, made for the perfect opener. Some crazy spots for sure. 

I never thought the somewhat random trio of Fox/Metalik/Blake should be the team to beat the Embassy, so I'm glad they retained despite the rumors surrounding Cage's status. I hope/assume this means he's sticking around. When asked in the scrum, Tony didn't say anything directly other than he'd like to keep Cage and all of the Embassy around.

Athena/Yuka was awesome as expected. Really loved the excellent finish! Now it's onto Athena vs MIYU next week! Super stoked for that being announced coming off Yamashita having a superb string of matches everywhere.

Joe/Mark was great with a shocking finish. Good stuff and near falls. Loved the 'Mark reaches for the tag' spot and gets second wind from that. Surprising outcome but makes me interested in where Joe's reign goes. Mark seemed super positive in the scrum, as did Tony regarding Mark going forward in ROH. I've been loving ROH since this reboot so I'm looking forward to it all.

Highly enjoyed Tanahashi/Garcia. Garcia is on fire lately and was an MVP here. His dance routine after mocking the air guitar and later doing the Nakamura taunt was hilarious, absolutely fantastic heel work. "Sports Entertainer!!"

Ladder match was wild. I think my favorite spot was actually the Kingdom's flying Doomsday Device on the outside, that looked incredible. I always root for RUSH, but a cool victory for the Lucha Bros nonetheless. 

Shibata/Yuta was solid. Shibata from the moment the music hits is always epic. Seemed like he pretty much kicked Yuta's ass here, won the title and didn't even use any of his rope breaks. Another unexpected outcome, but cool to see and definitely provides more to look forward to. Yuta's still great but I kinda miss fiery babyface Yuta.  

Main event was fittingly epic all the way through. Great spots, struggles, and near falls to the very end. Definitely bought on a few of Kingston's near falls. Nice out of nowhere finish and definitely had a feeling of not being completely finished yet. Excited for more ROH! 

Post-show scrum was fun. Nothing too groundbreaking but thought everyone there did really well. Athena acknowledged that Trinity (Naomi) was visiting backstage and was open about wanting to face her in the future along with a bunch of other AEW/ROH names. Tony said they will be filming ROH stuff next week at both Dynamite in NY and the Rampage/Battle of the Belts in Rhode Island

 

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I have a lot of catch up to do. I did see the main event this morning and enjoyed it a lot. Crowd seemed weirdly dead? I felt like the crowd for the ROH taping before/after Dynamite in St. Louis was weirdly hotter even just for something like Kingston/Daniels? Anyway, I disagree with every result on the show other than Athena going over, so that's big @The Natural energy for me. There are maybe 6-7 acts in the entirety of AEW/ROH I don't like (out of 100+!) but Lucha Bros is one of them. Building the tag division around them and their formless gooey bullshit is so disappointing (and poor Dante!). It's probably ok so long as FTR is going to anchor the AEW tag division though, but if they lose on Wednesday.....

But yeah, lots of catch up on. At least it’s a quiet weekend…

Edited by Matt D
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You couldn't have given us one of Kingston or Briscoe?  Goddamn.

I agree with Matt above, outside of Athena retaining and Yuta getting some comeuppance(i commented on this in the Dynamite thread, something about his face), i disagree with almost every booking result.  I'm assuming that Brian Cage and TK worked something out to keep him in ROH for the future since the Embassy retained, so I suppose I agree with that one, but it feels just mean spirited to have both Mark and Eddie lose.

 

and poor Dante.  Top Flight seems to always have the worst luck strike whenever they get some momentum.

Edited by StuntmanCrowley
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2 hours ago, zendragon said:

a few thoughts on the ladder match. Listen you may not like it but the right team won, with so many heel victories this was pretty much the hometown baby face going over. It’s an over 50% Mexican-American crowd and Penta is always over in socal (I’ve seen him wrestle for Pcw) Now Tony Khan who’s never taken a bump in his life can stop booking these spectacles seemingly every month

I'm on team ladder moratorium. 

I love Penta and Fenix and am thrilled to have them moving over to ROH for a run. I'm never against a Lucha Bros win, but it didn't feel like they stood out enough in this match to solidly earn the victory. That said, I'm not sure any team really stood out. Save for maybe the Kingdom with that great Doomsday spot that @dreambroken mentioned. 

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24 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Anyway, I disagree with every result on the show other than Athena going over, so that's big @The Natural energy for me.

Dare to be surprised. Match finishes feel like an issue when ppl are clearly being held back from the level they need to be at. In the case of both Mark and Eddie, they're clearly appreciated and a big part of this promotion going forward. There's really no doubt either will evenetually get their 'Win'. The other main concern with somebody taking a high profile loss is - it will kill their momentum. I don't see that being an issue with either the King or Mark. Neither were likely to have benefitted as being the talked about match or moment coming out of Wrestlemania Weekend - which is a worthy and fair booking consideration. I'd suggest both programs have likelyhood and potential to benefit from this loss when the big win comes at Death Before Dishonor or some other higher profile gig. And really, both chases just started and are fairly low profile at this point. I'm cool with giving this some time and a big build. Maybe it doesn't work out, but it feels like an even bigger moment, and hopefully in front of deserving energetic crowd, is strangely a good call.

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I’m probably in the minority but i don’t have a lot of interest in seeing Eddie or Mark Briscoe hold a singles title in. 2023.  I was a big fan of Eddie in the 2000’s and dug his two-year CZW feud with Chris Hero, but that was 15 years ago.  In 2023, AEW and ROH have a lot of guys under contract with bigger upsides than 40-year-old Eddie Kingston who could use the title more.  King is probably already as over as he will ever be.

That said, I won’t be surprised if Kingston chases Claudio and eventually wins the title.  Not sure if that will be enough to get me to subscribe to Honor Club or not.  I’ll reserve judgment until I see how it plays out, but I’m not inherently interested in that idea.

Giving Mark a short run with the secondary title might not be a bad idea, but the only reason to push him as a singles guy is sympathy.  Not sure if that will last or not,  two months ago, no one would have been clamoring for a singles push for him.  Again, I’d prefer to see a new face feud with Joe and get put over.

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2 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Giving Mark a short run with the secondary title might not be a bad idea, but the only reason to push him as a singles guy is sympathy. 

And the small matter of him being one of the very best wrestlers they have.

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Independently, I’d argue both Briscoe and Eddie losing were the right calls, but I could possibly see the argument against both on the same night without a big feel good moment. 
 

ROH would be less compelling with Kingston and Mark being champs and Mark’s win down the road in his own story arc. Kingston is like Homicide where his whole story is the chase and it will probably be a short run on top. 
 

Though, I’d also argue Dreamer should have never beat Raven. 
 

My only real criticism of the show was a was hoping this would be the beginning of the hard separation between ROH and  AEW and that wasn’t the case. 

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1 minute ago, evanknight said:

Independently, I’d argue both Briscoe and Eddie losing were the right calls, but I could possibly see the argument against both on the same night without a big feel good moment. 

Yeah, it’s more of a cascading thing for me, for multiple reasons. The story for both Eddie and Mark was that they couldn’t win the big one. Maybe the moral victory was that Eddie could hang and take it to Claudio but that was the deal with Garcia and Yuta too, etc.

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1 minute ago, EVA said:

And the small matter of him being one of the very best wrestlers they have.

Matter of opinion.  I wouldn’t say that.  I feel Jay had more potential in singles and, honestly, I didn’t think he was a “must see” act when he was ROH champion.

Briscoes were a damn fun tag team, but i definitely think they would have had a lower ceiling as singles guys.  

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1 minute ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Matter of opinion.  I wouldn’t say that.  I feel Jay had more potential in singles and, honestly, I didn’t think he was a “must see” act when he was ROH champion.

Briscoes were a damn fun tag team, but i definitely think they would have had a lower ceiling as singles guys.  

Well, everything is a matter of opinion, but I don’t think “Mark Briscoe is a awesome” is a minority one.

Even if we assume your premise is true, that it would only be “sympathy” to give Mark the belt…sympathy draws money in wrestling! And Mark is a genius who knows exactly how to get the most out of it.

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