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Tony Khan Buys ROH


WyattSheepMask

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Posted (edited)


ROH 09/08/24


Rhodes/Guevara vs Dark Order was OK. Guevara is in good shape. Simple formula of Dustin getting his ass kicked until the Sammy hot tag. 

Athena/Starkz promo. Really piling on the Athena bullying now after Billie's loss. Starkz is demoted back down to Minion in Training. Aminata and Velvet interrupt to inform Athena and Billie they'll be facing them in a tag match later. A promo early in the show to set up a match later in the same episode? This is revolutionary stuff for ROH on Honor Club. 

Griff Garrison is interviewed and asked when Qole Qarter is due back. Interrupted by Angelico and Serpentico. I'm going to post a box of shit to Tony Khan. 

ROH Tag Titles: The Infantry vs The Undisputed Kingdom 

Normally would skip but I will give credit once again for ROH titles being contested on the ROH TV show. All four in the ring for the code of Honor at the start, Aubrey says "OK now one from each team, one guy from each team" then all four start fighting so she calls for the bell anyway. Guess the one from each team thing was just a suggestion. I think it's Shawn Dean's fault I usually skip The Infantry. Carlie Bravo has some fire and charisma about him but Dean is a big load of nothing. The match was perfectly fine, this residency with the lively crowd makes everything on these ROH episodes better. It played out EXACTLY as expected though. Back and forth match, Infantry doing OK, low blow, Kingdom win. I feel like they've done this 500 times. 

Taya Valkyrie defeated a jobber. 

Rachel Ellering fought a jobber. As ever, she is an incredibly unlikeable babyface, though I'm wondering if it's intentional at this point. Hard to say. Her entrance and the thing where she shouts "squiiish" before she does her senton I *think* are meant to be babyface spots? But then she makes fun of the jobber and talks shit during the match and seems very disingenuous. I don't know what her deal is. Also the gear is still terrible and I think she gave the jobber a bloody nose. So that's not good. Buuuuut she did win with a glorious spinning Bossman Slam. I am too easily won over by a Bossman Slam. 

Lee Moriarty promo, he says he's sick of the feud with Top Flight and Andretti. Oh mate, me too. This is the most relatable I've ever found a Moriarty promo. He then gives Andretti an ROH Pure title shot. Ewwww. 

Outrunners squashed some jobbers. Fun, high energy performance from The Outrunners here 

Robbie Eagles fought a jobber. They did some quite fun lucha/indyriffic counters I don't recall seeing before. 

Nese/Ishii was a decent scrap. Daivari seems to be leaning into the Andrew Tate look lately. 

Rachel Ellering promo. Harley Cameron interrupts to make it more fun. She also drops some pure, unfiltered truth on Ellering about the whole vibe and look she has going on. I hope Rachel takes it on board but it's probably going to set up a match. 

Good match from Johnny TV and Fuego Del Sol. Solid little run from Fuego on these shows. Obviously being in Texas helps but he's always been a decent underdog babyface, nice to see him get back on the shows for a bit. 

Aminata/Velvet vs Athena/Starkz. An actual main event, well I'll be damned. New theme song for Velvet, also I love that both teams have matching gear. Love teams in matching gear. Lexy ring announcing with the bare minimum enthusiasm for Billie was funny. 

Good tag match this. Heel/face dynamic is a bit messy because Texas loves Athena so much, so it's hard for her to be the heel even though her team cheats to win *and* she's bullying her own underling. Other than that though it was good stuff, these four work well together and they definitely have a better match than this in them. Also furthered the story of Billie being out of favour with Athena, who still didn't give her any credit despite Billie picking up the win. 

Last week we ended with a return angle, this week we have a bona fide high quality TV main event. We'll have to see if this changes when the Texas residency ends, but for now ROH TV is definitely doing the thing.

Edited by JLM
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28 minutes ago, JLM said:

 

Rachel Ellering promo. Harley Cameron interrupts to make it more fun. She also drops some pure, unfiltered truth on Ellering about the whole vibe and look she has going on. I hope Rachel takes it on board but it's probably going to set up a match.

 

I actually though Rachel Ellering showed some personality in this interview, but yeah - for the most part she is not good.

30 minutes ago, JLM said:

 

Griff Garrison is interviewed and asked when Qole Qarter is due back. Interrupted by Angelico and Serpentico. I'm going to post a box of shit to Tony Khan.

 

Laughed my head off at this.

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Posted (edited)

Yeah there were some fun bits in that promo to be fair, I just can't quite tell what she's going for. I'm not sure if she's being sarcastic or quirky or knowingly a bit lame or if she's just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks. I want her to put it together because for all the grief I give her I do think there's something there. It's like she has enough stats in total but they haven't been distributed correctly. 

Oh I also forgot, Dustin busting out the spinaroonie to copy Sammy but also call back to Bookdust was a cute spot. 

Edited by JLM
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16 hours ago, Chili said:

Delightful. I'm such a fan of Mansoor's amusing voice and their patter in general. Great to see their grafting post WWE release got them back in the big time.

 

They're absolutely brilliant, but credit to Maria Kanellis too, whose mic work is seriously underrate - I hope she gets the chance to manage someone on the main AEW roster, she's really good. 

Edited by RedTwoster
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Is anyone still watching this? @JLM?

When they moved to the Arlington residence it got a shot in the arm for a few weeks but it has since settled down into being the tedious overlong nothing-happening show it was prior. It's just so dead and shit. I'm begging Tony Khan just puts this brand out of its misery.

I'm still watching it because I'm a maniac but I would genuinely love to see the viewing figures/membership figures of HonorClub because there can't be that many people persisting with it at this stage.

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Funnily enough I have been skimming through the backlog. But yeah, back to two hour episodes with occasional nuggets of decent stuff buried under tonnes of filler. The Arlington crowd helped a great deal but it's not enough. It's so frustrating because there are loads of performers I enjoy watching and/or have potential. It just needs very basic pro wrestling booking like NXT black and gold did for a while there. Short feuds built over few weeks, hot streaks/short pushes leading to TV title challenges. The odd atttack/payback angle here or there to get a  bit of heat. Just the bare minimum would do.

They did it with Hirsch and Diamante! They had some matches/post-match attacks, couple of brief promos/backstage encounters, culminating in a cracking TV plunder match which was so good they had them do it again on PPV. It's so easy, and if you have all these people in the building anyway and you're putting out two hour episodes then why not? Is it because Tony won't delegate maybe? It'd be an ideal trial run for someone wanting to get on the creative team, just do a few weeks of very very simple booking using this fun cast of characters with no pressure because nobody watches anyway and even crappy booking would be better than NO BOOKING AT ALL. 

I was hoping Velvet winning the Women's TV title would help with this. They used to put all of the ROH women's undercard crew in pointless 4-way matches all the time. Why don't they bring those back but make them qualifiers for TV title shots, then you have a number one contender who can cut a couple of promos on Velvet and then have a title shot. Instead Lady Frost disappears off the show for months, turns up on one episode, does a promo, has an eliminator match on the same episode which she loses and that's that. The stories/acts they HAVE built exclusively in ROH also spin their wheels for a flipping eternity. The Comoroto/Watts thing actually works for me a bit, but it hasn't progressed at all since they started it. 

I am also a maniac so I'm still skimming through the episodes, but the "Skipped" list seems to get longer by the week. 

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ROH 15/08

Spoiler

ROH 15/08

Two hour long show, so obviously a lot of stuff had to be...

SKIPPED: Shibata vs Daivari. Pains me to skip a Shibata match but it's just too dull an opponent.
         Mark Briscoe vs Johnny TV. Johnny TV got the shot by going up to Paul Wight and asking for it. Basically as good as winning a Casino         Gauntlet.  
         GRIFF GARRISON VS SERPENTICO. ARE YOU FUCKING JOKING. 
         Action Andretti vs Lee Moriarty. 
       
Blake Christian vs Lio Rush was fun. Very intense and wrestled at a hell of a pace. Christian destroyed Rush's left arm, Rush did a good job fighting most of the match without it. Got a bit too indy-riffic towards the end but these two worked well together and this was better than the average ROH TV undercard match. 

Athena promo, Billie Starkz forced to do sit ups in the ring for the duration, ever so slowly building up to Athena/Starkz 2. Did not expect Abadon to interrupt! Be interesting to see what Athena can get out of Abadon in a title match. 

Typically brilliant Mark Briscoe promo, offering The Beast Mortos a title shot because Mortos pinned him on Dynamite. Paul Wight confirms that match is on for next week's episode. Should be a cracker! 

MXM promo! It was the excellent one Chilli posted where Garrison grabbed their tips. I can't believe Maria has been saddled with Griff Garrison and the never ending Serpentico feud for this long. I don't want Garrison anywhere near MXM to be honest. 

Harley Cameron vs Viva Van was a solid competitive squash and another very capable performance from Cameron. 

Anthony Henry and BEEF vs jobbers. BEEF is Henry's second cousin by marriage. Henry doesn't want to tag with him very much. Beef is excited to team with Henry though. That's the gimmick. The crowd loves BEEF. He is quite the ball of energy and has surprisingly explosive offense for such a goofy guy. 

ROH TV Title: Robbie Eagles vs Atlantis Jr

Robbie Eagles did a promo earlier in the show. He beat a jobber last week and now he wants a TV Title Shot at Atlantis Jr. which a graphic immediately confirmed he had been granted. Basically as good as walking up to Paul Wight and asking. Solid match this, probably the best performance I've seen from Atlantis on this ROH run. Also there were two guys in the front row who HATE Robbie Eagles for some reason, which encouraged him to heel it up and start ripping at the mask and get the people behind Atlantis a bit. 

The best thing about Paul Wight as ROH General Manager is various people walking up to him and looking incredibly tiny. Tony Nese was my favourite one this week. 

ROH Six Man Titles: Dustin/Von Erichs vs Cage of Agony.

Skimmed through the match. Most notable thing was post-match. Dark Order and The Kingdom ran in. Sammy tried to run in for a save but the combination of all 8 heels ended up beating down all four of the babyfaces. ROH TV ending with an angle again, would you believe it. 

ROH 22/08 

Spoiler


Skipped: Angelico vs Aaron Solo. 
         Komander vs KM 
         Iron Savages vs jobbers 

Dustin/Sammy/Von Erichs vs Dark Order/The Kingdom. Really entertaining multiman sprint, helped by the Arlington Crowd being incredibly hot for the babyface team. Don't often get a loud "this is awesome" chant on ROH TV! Sammy Guevara grabbing a fan's phone to film a live blog of himself kicking Mike Bennett in the face was a great spot. 

Briscoe promo on Mortos. He recommends that if a viable time machine ever goes on the market that Mortos should go back in time and tag out instead of pinning him on Dynamite the other week, as it would spare him the ass whuppin' he has coming tonight. I love Mark Briscoe. First ROH episode in weeks where I am genuinely excited about the main event. 

Cage of Agony vs Serpentico/Atlantis Jr/Fuego Del Sol. This was more fun than expected. Fuego Del Sol and my boy Toa both had strong showings. Also elevated by some very loud little kids in the crowd being massively into the babyface luchador team.

MXM promo! They are confronted by the Pillars of Destiny, who are forest-dwelling barbarian hunters as far as I can tell. Luckily MXM are not killed and eaten because they stay very still and therefore cannot be seen. Excellent.

Abadon killed a jobber. Abadon talks a lot during her matches now. Still in monster voice but more actual words. I like this development. Also loved how offended they were that the jobber wouldn't shake hands at the start. 

MXM vs Pillars of Destiny. Excellent choice of opponents for MXM here, Pillars of Destiny are great fun. They tag by fore arm smashing each other in the face, like MEN. Even MXM's jobber matches are brilliant.

Shane Taylor says he wants Mark Briscoe for the ROH title. Sounds good to me. 

Trish Adora vs Erica Leigh. Is Erica Leigh the Youngest Woman Alive? I have to believe she is. Trish is now saluting and making her opponents salute a lot. Reminds me of Kinya Oyanagi from Toryumon, who did the Japanese WW2 holdout soldier gimmick. It was more fun than The Infantry for sure.

Righteous/Archer promo. This is the first time I've heard Vincent do a promo were he sounded suitably manic and cult leader-ish. Said lots of profound-sounding things in a pretty scatterbrained way. Dutch also sounded good! My biggest disappointment with The Righteous is that they don't pull off the promo and character work to go with their excellent gimmick and good matches. This was a big improvement. 

EJ Nduka killed a jobber. Nduka impressive again. What an enormous man. 

Marina Shafir destroyed a jobber. I just love Marina Shafir squashes since her return. Could watch her do this all day. Nasty takedowns, great grappling/reversals and novel/violent/sudden ways to get the opponent into her finish. 

Angelico challenges Lee Moriarty for the pure title. That does appeal a little in a grappling pervert sorta way. 

Jacoby Watts and Nick Comoroto vs 2.0. Daddy Magic was an unexpected bonus on this random ROH undercard and I am still interested in this weird Watts/Comoroto act. Nice to see 2.0 get a win, would love some movement on the Watts Comoroto story. 

Lio Rush vs Tony Nese. Cracking little sprint this. Great chemistry between these two, and added heat with Rush having to Battle Mark Sterling on the outside as well. Best match on the show up to this point. 

ROH World Title: Mark Briscoe vs The Beast Mortos

This was every bit the fun TV main event I was hoping for. Two of my favourites this year, but also two guys who you just know will have tremendous chemistry. Really enjoyed this one. Mortos jumps Briscoe right at the opening bell with a shotgun dropkick and the pace never lets up from there. Great stuff, more defenses like this for Briscoe and more Mortos vs anyone please! 

Hell of a lot better than the previous episode. 

ROH 29/08

Spoiler

ROH 29/08

Skipped: Lance Archer vs Jobber
         Top Flight and Andretti vs Jobbers 
         Josh Woods vs Jobber
         Leila Grey vs Jobber 
         Blake Christian vs Jobber 
         Daivari vs Ishii 
             

Athena vs Aleah James. More substantial and competitive match than the usual Athena proving ground match. James looked good on offense and was very sympathetic when being brutalised by the champ. Good stuff. Abadon saved Aleah from the obligatory post-match bonk onto the title belt. Billie Starkz then took out Abadon as Athena ran away, only for Athena to give Lexy the credit. 

Sidney Akeem vs Johnny TV. Sydney Akeem the former Reggie/SCRYPTS of WWE fame. This was a messy one. Sidney got to show off some of his cool acrobatics stuff but there were also some sloppy moments on both sides, the worst being Johnny TV missing Starship Pain and landing on his neck. Frightening spot there. If this was a try out for Reggie it definitely could have gone better. 

Rachel Ellering vs Mina Shirakawa. This was good! Best Rachel Ellering match I can recall seeing. Rachel with the significant power advantage, Mina the speedy and more technically sound underdog. Solid competitive match that had the crowd fully on board by the end of it. For the thousandth time, TURN RACHEL ELLERING HEEL. This one highlighted it more than any other match so far. She is a natural dominant powerhouse and is bigger than most of the women on both the ROH and AEW main rosters. Mina is excellent every time of course, only wish she was in AEW more often. Taya Valkyrie attacked Mina after the match, so looks like we're getting at least one more match on this run. 

EJ Nduka vs jobber. Interesting choice to go with a bloody massive jobber who was almost as big as Nduka. Didn't stop Nduka hitting any of the same stuff he's been doing to small jobbers, guess that was the point. Nduka is consistently impressive. Tonnes of physical charisma, phenomenal look and pretty solid powerhouse/big man stuff in-ring. 

Rachel Ellering interview with Lexy, interrupted by Harley, who doesn't remember she has already done this to Ellering before. I love Harley: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvhs4QAasu4

Jacoby Watts vs Evil Uno. Watts with a terrible move trying to recruit Uno to his flock before the match. Uno says he's a one cult man. Easy win for Uno, nothing else to this. 

ROH Pure Title: Lee Moriarty vs Angelico 

Solid stuff this, lots of lovely chain wrestling and funky submissions and whacky counters. Two very well matched opponents and two great fits for this division. 

Not much going on this episode, Ellering/Mina and the main event both decent. 
 

ROH 05/09 

Spoiler

ROH 05/09 

Skipped: Aaron Solo vs Rocky Romero
         Nick Comoroto vs Lee Johnson
         Iron Savages vs Angelico and Serpentico 
         Lance Archer and The Righteous vs Jobbers 
         Diamante vs Jobber
         Griff Garrison vs Cool Hand Ang
         Nese and Daivari vs Jobbers
         John Silver vs Fuego Del Sol      
         Abadon vs jobber
            
Lady Frost promo! Holy shit, Lady Frost saying words on camera. She wants a proving ground match against Red Velvet. This is what I was hoping would happen when someone other than Starkz and Athena held a women's title in ROH. 

EJ Nduka saved Lee Johnson from a post-match attack from Comoroto and Watts, hitting gigantic spinebusters on them. Nice to see Nduka graduate from jobber matches and get a bit more involved. 

Anthony Henry and BEEF interviewed by Paul Wight for some reason. Henry not happy about this team and he misses JD Drake. Aww. They kill some jobbers later. The people love BEEF, Henry doesn't. The team is winning but Henry isn't happy about it. 

Rachel Ellering killed a jobber finishing with a massive spinning Bossman slam, which moves her into my top two favourite wrestlers on the ROH roster, second only to Dutch because his Bossman slam is better. 

Lady Frost vs Red Velvet. Bit of a shame this one. Thought these two would be ideal opponents on paper, but unfortunately they had some iffy/sloppy moments at the start and they never got enough momentum to liven up the crowd. They had some good stuff in the second half but yeha, these two can do better than this, it just didn't come off this time. 

Diamante attacked her jobber after the match, Red Velvet made the save. Presumably a future women's TV title match. Should be decent. Again, I like the ROH TV title being fought over by the ROH undercard crew so they have something to aim for. 

Lee Johnson promo. It's bad as usual. EJ Nduka joins in. He sounds a bit better. He's looking out for Lee Johnson going forward. 

Shibata vs Josh Woods. I liked the sound of this on paper but it never managed to rise above "OK" unfortunately. 

Mina Shirakawa vs Taya Valkyrie. This was fine, though Ellering/Shirakawa from the last episode was better. Taya looked a bit off with most of her offense and the two didn't seem to click as well as Mina/Ellering did. Still had the crowd into it by the end and had a decent closing stretch. 
 

 

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ROH 12/09

Skipped: Peter Avalon vs Atlantis Jr
         Top Flight and Andretti vs Jobbers
         Robyn Renegade vs Jobber 
         The Righteous vs Jobbers
         Daivari vs Sammy Guevara
         Willie Mack vs Jobber
         Preston Vance vs Jobber
         Serpentico/Angelico/Fuego Del Sol vs Jobbers
         Komander and AR FOX vs Jobbers

Billie Starkz confronts Athena about her favouritism towards Lexy. Notably put her hands on the world title.

Harley Cameron vs Queen Aminata, passable semi-competitive squash. 

Rachel Ellering interrupts Harley's backstage interview afterwards, copying the skit from the previous episode. It was funnier when Harley did it I must say. 

Outrunners beat some jobbers. Attacked by The Iron Savages after the match only for The Infantry to make the save! The great Outrunners/Infantry war is finally over. I like this but I don't like that I presumably have to watch an Iron Savages match next episode. 

Jacoby Watts promo on EJ Nduka. Presumably going to feed poor Nicky Boy to the big lad.

Lexy interviews Red Velvet. "How does it feel to currently be in possession of Billie Starkz's championship belt?" I love biased Lexy interviews. Diamante turns up and calls Velvet "Captain save-a-ho" for rescuing Diamante's jobber last week. They will have a TV title match at some stage. That should be pretty good. Audio was all over the place for this segment it was very weird, pretty sure I heard Sonjay Dutt laughing his head off half way through it like a Hey EW episode. 

Lady Frost beat a jobber. I watched it to see the Frostbite. Beautiful move. 

Anthony Henry and BEEF backstage. Henry wants BEEF to chill out, but BEEF is a man without chill. 

Lio Rush vs Rocky Romero. Decent match. 

Bloody hell that episode was dead. Nearly two hours long and it took about 15 mins to get through it. 

 

Just by recycling the people who were already on the show: 

Top Flight vs The Righteous

Queen Aminata and Lady Frost vs Harley Cameron and Robyn Renegade.   

Komander vs Fuego Del Sol vs AR Fox vs Sammy Guevara

Willie Mack vs Preston Vance. 

Lio Rush vs Action Andretti  

Atlantis Jr vs Rocky Romero 

The Outrunners vs Watts and Comoroto

Nothing mindblowing there but I wouldn't skip the entire flipping show if that was the card. You could still give wins to most of the obvious names in those matches too. Maybe it's just too difficult a decision to call who out of Willie Mack and Preston Vance can afford this massive blight on their record. 

 

Edited by JLM
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ROH 19/09/24

Back down to an hour run time. This is good. The card, on the other hand... 

SKIPPED: Red Velvet vs Jobber
         Gates of Agony vs Jobbers
         John Silver vs Jobbe
         Rachel Ellering vs Jobber. I did watch the big spinning Bossman Slam tough. That was good. 
         Infantry vs Angelico and Serpentico
         Anthony Ogogo vs Jobber
         Preston Vance vs Brandon Cutler. 
         Brian Cage vs Jobber
         Dark Order vs Sammy and Dustin. 

Skipped the entire episode there. Five Stars. 


ROH 26/09/24

SKIPPED: Action Andretti vs Jobber. In fairness the jobber was Tony Deppen, but the other guy was Andretti. 
         Iron Savages Promo. Don't wanna hear it.
         Iron Savages vs Dark Order
         Brian Cage vs Jobber 
         Komander vs Johnny TV 
         Preston Vance vs Lee Moriarty.
  
Abadon killed a jobber. Heating her up for a shot against one of the most dominant champions of all time via endless jobber squashes.

Red Velvet and Diamante face off ahead of their TV Title match. Velvet has a custom red strap on the belt, Diamante says red looks better on her. Diamante sounded the better of the two. 

Billie Starkz and Athena vs Jobbers. Billie had a new move where she sits on the ropes and then falls backwards into the ring to land a DDT. Pretty cool. Athena has dropped some weight, had some imrpessive power spots and also had a new submission finish. Abadon saved the jobbers from a post-match beatdown, Athena bailed and left Billie to be beaten up by Abadon. 

That's that. At least they had a bit of build towards the two upcoming women's title matches on this one. 

Whooole lotta nothing over two episodes there. Are they really going to put ROH on actual television as part of the new rights deal? If they do then it can't just be this, right? Right??

 

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17 minutes ago, JLM said:

Are they really going to put ROH on actual television as part of the new rights deal? If they do then it can't just be this, right? Right??

 

If it goes back to TV, they need to go back to Universal Studios permanently. I know it’s a small set up, but a home base I think would make them focus more.

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