Tony Khan Buys ROH

[Fatty Facesitter]

25/5 (I think? I’ve lost all track of time)

Overall - Another top episode. @Lorne Malvo’s assessment about the filler element is spot on and it could do with tightening up in a few areas, but damn these Universal tapings have been a rousing success and have showcased everything good about the brand. Long term I hope they keep repeating it as opposed to constantly taping post Dynamite/Collision etc. 

👍 The Kingdom vs Action Andretti and Darius Martin - Fantastic effort from all four here, putting themselves through the wringer for our entertainment. Some brutal spots here, but in the best sense of the word - a violent, vicious encounter. 

👍 Zack Sabre Jr vs AR Fox - Absolutely electric and a really terrific standard. Zack vs ‘Somoa Joseph’ will be an absolute cracker too.

👍 Rey Fenix vs Gringo Loco - Top opener again this week - ROH quietly becoming a great home for the lucha style in the American market. Neither were quite at their scintillating best but still a good standard here. 

👍 Mercedes Martinez vs Ashley D’Amboise - A short but sweet outing from both. Athena vs Martinez is quite the prospect if they choose to go down that route. 

👍 Willow squash - Did its job and keeps Willow’s momentum bubbling over nicely. 

👍 Sydal/Daniels vs Karter/Clayton - Another tidy tag match from tonight’s show. Very solid. 

👍 SAP vs Cheeseburger/Isom - As above, another solid tag encounter. 

👍 Gates of Agony vs Dalton Castle & The Boy - At the risk of repeating myself, another good tag team match!

👎 Iron Savages vs Wingmen - Not terrible and I do like the audience participation element, but not quite up to standard with some of the rest of the show. 

👎 Lady Frost vs Miranda Alize - Sadly this was a little rushed and it showed a couple of times with a couple of transitions. That said, they still displayed some good quickness and athleticism. 

👎 Workhorseman/Shane Taylor six-man squash - Too short to be anything of note and an easy skip. 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Fatty Facesitter

[JLM]

11/05

Mark Briscoe/Shane Taylor was a perfect opener. I hadn't seen Shane Taylor prior to Tony Khan ROH but he's made me a fan. Comes across as very authentic, good talker and I'm a sucker for powerhouse fat guy wrestlers. Mark Briscoe is so incredibly likeable, build him up and let him have another crack at Joe. I'm glad Shane Taylor didn't die when he got Jay Drillered. It looked quite safe but it seems like a terrible idea doing that move on such a large man. 

Claudio/Yuta tag was fun. I liked Claudio schooling and scolding Yuta during the match, he's really growing into this veteran bully role. 

Loved Joe vs Blake Christian. I am not about to skip a Joe match and I will never tire of the little flipster vs monster match up, so I managed to power through my aversion to Blake Christian. In-ring I have no issue with him and he was very good here, had a lot of urgency about him like he was aware that Joe could kill him at any moment. The finish was fantastic, the genuinely surprising counter to Joe's classic uranage in the corner then straight into the Muscle Buster. Only negative for me is that we didn't get the walk away spot against an aerial move.

Thoroughly enjoying this run from Joe. Does not feel like it's been 20 years since I first saw him live at Frontiers of Honour and nervously asked him to sign my t-shirt, and he remains a favourite to this day. The matches might be shorter but he is still a beast in the ring and there are still a number of X vs Joe dream matches out there even in 2023. One of the most convincing performenrs I've ever seen, both in the ring and on the mic. Even when he's getting whacky with it and declaring himself the king of television I still fully believe him. I don't know how much Joe we have left but I am here for all of it. 

The Infantry are sooooooo duuuuulll. Just going copy and paste that in each week. "Bad News and Tattoos" Carlie Brown is too long a name. I am on board with The Righteous. Their gear as a team is brilliant, evoking evangelical fundamentalist whackos and your more Manson-esque hippie whackos at the same time. Nice to see Vincent doing the Cult Leader thing right after Bray Wyatt shat the bed. The match got very messy but Dutch hit one of the sweetest Bossman slams I've seen to put it back on track at the end. The tongue waggling is great. 

Nice promo package for The Kingdom/Darius and Andretti feud. Darius sounded good, still cannot get behind Andretti at all. This would be much more fun if it was the real Top Flight as the babyface team. Poor Dante.

Agreed with Lorne Malvo on The Renegades. They have improved since they arrived but there are so many women signed to AEW and ROH who should be ahead of them. Also they do the twin magic thing without being identical or near identical twins, which is not on. Also they have one of the worst theme songs of all time. Honestly Vert Vixen has impressed me way more than either of them in the times she's appeared as a jobber. Unfortunately for her I think she's a bit too similar to Kris Statlander. I miss Kris Statlander very much. This was a match on the show. 

Mack vs Mack was a good laugh. Love Willie Mack's facial expressions, whether it's conveying that he's in the fight of his life against Claudio, or his incredulous responses to Ninja Mack's madness here, he is so entertaining. Hadn't seen Ninja Mack before but ended up watching a couple of highlight reels on Youtube after this. Very creative as well as being good at flips, good choice for a one off appearance. I liked the little story of Willie Mack showing that he can fly as well as the video game ninja he was up against. 

Embassy squash was there. I like The Embassy a lot as a trio. I'm a fan of Toa in particular, but the whole unit is strong and hides Cage's limitations very well. They need a better pool of credible opponents though. I'm down for the rematch with Dalton and The Boys, but beyond that... 

Fletcher and Deppen had a great closing stretch. 

I find AR Fox very boring. He does a series of cool looking spots. I have seen them. 

Dark Order vs Trustity Busletes was a Draongate-esque sprint which had clear babyfaces and heels plus the ongoing story of Stu's Dark Order status. You can do a series of cool looking moves at high speed AND tell stories. Thought the finish was really creative; it was the correct thing for Reynolds to do as Stu appeared to have lost track of who the legal man was, but also creates the visual of them celebrating without Stu, and him quite literally on the outside. This was all right up my street. 

I was VERY excited when I saw Athena vs Skye Blue was getting the last 20 minutes of the show. Best match of Skye Blue's career, hands down. Bumped lke a champ, stepped up her fire and intensity and managed to hold up her end in what had to be the most challenging match of her career too. Athena is the greatest. I don't know what else I can say. As much as Skye Blue held up her end here, I think Athena could get the crowd behind a sack of carrots at this point, *and* get the crowd hyped for the carrots' hope spots. Masterful performance, gradually taking Skye more seriously as it went on, getting increasingly rattled by her whilst still trying to keep up the veneer of trash talking cockiness, then having to resort to a more drastic "just fucking diiiiie!" finisher when the usual stuff didn't work. Classic Athena post match too, holding up her arm for juuuust long enough before the inevitable. 

Strong episode overall with a tremendous main event. 

[RedRooster]

7 hours ago, JLM said:

I was VERY excited when I saw Athena vs Skye Blue was getting the last 20 minutes of the show. Best match of Skye Blue's career, hands down. Bumped lke a champ, stepped up her fire and intensity and managed to hold up her end in what had to be the most challenging match of her career too. Athena is the greatest. I don't know what else I can say. As much as Skye Blue held up her end here, I think Athena could get the crowd behind a sack of carrots at this point, *and* get the crowd hyped for the carrots' hope spots.

She's phenomenal, and it's such a shame this run is playing out on ROH TV in front of a smaller audience as opposed to AEW television. Athena deserves to be seen right now. 

[Infinity Land]

Betweeen the last set of weekend tapings and the taping for next week I figured they had enough content in the can to get to Collision. Turns out they did but they also taped last night in Vegas and are burning through the Universal backlog tonight by the looks of things.

19 matches tonight. It's rightly being called out as Dark and the official twitter is handling it well. PPV worthy and Serpentico 🤣

My sympathies to those trying to review it this week.

[Fatty Facesitter]

Overall - Right, obvious point to start - why in the name of Riccaboni is this show three hours?! I’m not saying the action isn’t good, but 19 matches in three hours on a non-PPV/PLE is overly gratuitous. It’s hard enough for Raw, but at least you know roughly what you’re signing up for going in. This show still had some top spots and key moments, but there’s a lot of skippable material which didn’t have a huge amount of consequence. It appears as if our fears about the show turning into the equivalent of Dark are being realised. I realise complaining about too much actual wrestling is a mad argument, but it’s 99% in-ring and about 1% angle or storyline advancement and with everything else to digest across the wrestling landscape, I think they are overloading these shows and it ROH will eat itself alive in the long run if they can’t strike up more of a balance. 

With that in mind and due to the number of matches, I’m going to break slightly from tradition and review each match in ten words or less (not including the names of the participants). 

25/5 

👍 Samoa Joe/Zack Sabre JR vs Daniels/Sydal - Strong main event. Bring on Joe vs Zack, please, thanks. 

👍 Penta vs Slim J - Good semi-main albeit quite short. 

👍 Mark Briscoe vs JD Drake - Good start. Mark is always a solid choice for openers. 

👍 AR Fox vs Kyle Fletcher - Decent little ripper. 

👍 Willow vs Hyan - Good. Always liked Willow. Caprice’s raps are always fun too. 

👍 The Kingdom vs The Macks (?) - Enjoyable! The Mack combo is a fun pairing. 

👍 Mercedes Martinez vs Ellie - Vicious squash and a great presentation for Martinez. 

👍 Rocky Romero vs Titus Alexander - Good stuff again from Romero. Alexander has mad agility. 

👍 Righteous/Grayson vs LSG/Kross/Morales - Decent sprint against the extremely intriguing Grayson backdrop. Good angle. 

👍 Dralistico squash - Fine as a showcase for him. 

👍 Cole/Carter vs Andretti/Martin - Flashes of good athleticism. 

👍 Blake Christian vs Nick Comoroto - Christian’s a highly-energetic daredevil-type who I enjoy watching. 

👎 Athena squash - Athena’s brilliant, but this offered nothing unique. New direction, please! 

👎 Tracy Williams vs Shane Taylor - Nothing terrible but nothing amazing. Easy skip. 

👎 Claudio vs Serpentico - World champ, on second?! Again?! Multiple clotheslines? Ok. Strange finish.

👎 Keira Hogan vs Vertvixen - Effort was there, but nothing Earth-shattering. Soft finish too. 

👎 Ashley D’Amboise vs Danielle Kamela - Physical, but nothing memorable despite a good effort. 

👎 Miranda Alize vs Skye Blue - Pointless. They had zero time. Easy skip again. 

👎 Diamante vs Trish ‘Wiz’ Adora - Nothing surer. Not the one to brighten up my day. 

[Edgehead]

4 hours ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

Overall - Right, obvious point to start - why in the name of Riccaboni is this show three hours?!

The story is that they taped too much stuff, and then scheduled future tapings at the AEW arenas to facilitate the likes of Shibata and Vikingo.

They really could have broken up this episode into two and offered it as a "Special Episode" for Honor Club today or tomorrow if they wanted to.

[Loki]

@Fatty Facesitter If you need help finding a job, mate, I'm sure we can all pull together Nobody needs to watch every bit of televised wrestling every week!

[Fatty Facesitter]

On 5/31/2023 at 12:12 PM, Loki said:

@Fatty Facesitter If you need help finding a job, mate, I'm sure we can all pull together Nobody needs to watch every bit of televised wrestling every week!

You'll be pleased to know I've cut right down - I've binned a few shows as I've discovered that, when work is busy, it's tricky to find enough hours in the day! 

Regrettably ROH now falls into that category. There's some great stuff on every show, but it's just just far, far, far too much actual wrestling, which I know is an odd negative to throw out - but it does often feel like wrestling for wrestling's sake with only smatterings of additional consequence peppered throughout. 

I have enjoyed the stuff with Somoa Joe and Zack Sabre Jr among others though - I'll keep watching in bits and pieces and maybe keep and eye on the PPVs. 

[Lorne Malvo]

23 hours ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

 

Regrettably ROH now falls into that category. There's some great stuff on every show, but it's just just far, far, far too much actual wrestling, which I know is an odd negative to throw out - but it does often feel like wrestling for wrestling's sake with only smatterings of additional consequence peppered throughout.

I don't think the Thursday night airdate helps either. When Collision starts, that'll be Wednesday straight through to Saturday of AEW/ROH programming every night. At least if it was on a Monday or Tuesday it would help break the week up a bit.

I watched last weeks show.  I quite enjoyed it for the most part, none of the matches outstayed their welcome and it had the usual high quality in-ring. Matt Sydal is an absolute waste of a mini-push at this stage though, and nobody is buying into him beating Joe. Gravity looks like a really underwhelming addition to their lucha roster too.

Tony Khan really needs to tone down his on-screen appearances, they're so cringeworthy. Stokely Hathaway should be good value as a GM-type figure though.

[Lorne Malvo]

I think @Fatty Facesitter tapped out at the right time - this weeks show is 2 hours and 35 minutes long! 

I thought ROH being taped before Collision would turn it into a one-hour affair but it looks like it'll go the other direction. 

[gmoney]

I think they taped before Collision and after it, to a massively dwindling crowd.

[David]

Just now, gmoney said:

I think they taped before Collision and after it, to a massively dwindling crowd.

It seems they're taping an hour before and about an hour and a half or so afterwards.

[David]

Having dived into watching ROH of late, am I the only one who thinks Vincent of The Righteous has a great look and gimmick? I was never a fan of Wyatt, but this guy seems to have that weird, cult-like leader thing down perfectly. He has a definite Charles Manson/Otis B Driftwood vibe going on, and I like it.

The Righteous have got my attention. Even big Dutch sporting the white suit and 70's style glasses ala Jim Jones is a pretty cool touch.

[Lorne Malvo]

3 minutes ago, David said:

Having dived into watching ROH of late, am I the only one who thinks Vincent of The Righteous has a great look and gimmick? I was never a fan of Wyatt, but this guy seems to have that weird, cult-like leader thing down perfectly. He has a definite Charles Manson/Otis B Driftwood vibe going on, and I like it.

The Righteous have got my attention. Even big Dutch sporting the white suit and 70's style glasses ala Jim Jones is a pretty cool touch.

I do like Vincent but (and I know I'm nit-picking here) the gimmick falls down a few notches when he starts talking. I know it's an odd criticism, but he just doesn't sound anything like he looks. I'm sure I'll get used to it in time but at the moment it's quite jarring. 

[David]

Just now, Lorne Malvo said:

I do like Vincent but (and I know I'm nit-picking here) the gimmick falls down a few notches when he starts talking. I know it's an odd criticism, but he just doesn't sound anything like he looks. I'm sure I'll get used to it in time but at the moment it's quite jarring. 

Yeah, that's maybe the one thing that could be considered a negative. Which is a shame, as he looks the part for sure.