Tony Khan Buys ROH

[TheBurningRed]

Just make the Iron Man match for the belt and call it Night of Champions. 

Conpletely forgot Mercedes has the TV title. She probably forgot she has it too. 

[HarmonicGenerator]

That card rundown suggests Aminata is no longer injured. Why has she not been back on AEW if that’s the case? It doesn’t make sense!

[Infinity Land]

8 minutes ago, TheBurningRed said:

Just make the Iron Man match for the belt and call it Night of Champions. 

Conpletely forgot Mercedes has the TV title. She probably forgot she has it too. 

The unification match with Red Velvet was only a week ago.

2 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

That card rundown suggests Aminata is no longer injured. Why has she not been back on AEW if that’s the case? It doesn’t make sense!

It suggests she hasn't been kicked out the never ending tournament. They've got this one last Dynamite taping next week before Final Battle to settle both Pure Rules semi-finals. 

[Lorne Malvo]

Did anybody bother with Final Battle? I couldn't blame you if not (after all, Ross Von Erich wasn't wrestling) but it was a decent enough show hamstrung by the usual ROH issues of them just not having a compelling week-to-week product.

The highlights were Moriarty vs McGuinness which was excellent (although the last 5/10 minutes were a little too busy for me), Red Velvet vs Mercedes (these two have great chemistry - and this was a genuinely shocking title change!) and the Survival of the Fittest match (I could watch Bandido vs Hechicero forever). Athena vs Persephone was a weird choice to main event, it's not really had any build-up at all. I'm very much over Athena's title run though, it was one great year followed by two midding years and I'll be happy for them to get the belt off her soon enough.

Purazzo vs Starks was decent and finally brings to an end the most drawn-out tedious title tournament in pro-wrestling history.

There's just too much shite they pad these cards out with. Eddie Kingston vs Josh Woods doesn't need to be on a ROH show. SkyFlight vs STP and LFI vs Billington/Priest were the usual title matches with zero build-up which are just impossible to get excited about. 

There's a Boxing Day Brawl show in a few weeks time (on Boxing Day, funnily enough) which is an outlier in that it's very rare for ROH to promote a weekly HonorClub show, so maybe this is a step in the right direction to them actually trying to build the brand again. But I won't hold my breath. 

Edited December 12, 2025 by Lorne Malvo

[BomberPat]

I skipped through it. I really enjoyed Nigel vs. Moriarty, but not much else stood out to me.

Adam Priest and Tommy Billington had some interesting spots - Tommy did a roll-through from a sleeper into some kind of mad pin that didn't quite work, but I appreciated the effort - but they have nothing going on as a team, and from what I've seen of Priest elsewhere, he's such a good little shithouse heel that he just seems totally miscast as a babyface. When he had his mini-programme with FTR in the middle of their feud with Edge & Christian, I assumed he was turning heel to become an FTR lackey. 

The match that stood out most to me was Ace Austin vs. Lee Johnson. Ace is a really interesting wrestler, and does a ton of stuff I've just never seen before, but maybe too much for one match - if he could ration out his ideas and make sure they get the focus they deserve, he could be something really special. Johnson has the exact opposite problem, which is that I'm watching his match thinking, "okay, that was Sami Zayn's move, that was Kota Ibushi's, that was Kevin Owens'" - everything is executed well, but there's nothing original, nothing unique that he brings to the table. If they could meet in the middle, there would be a great wrestler in that mix.

[Lorne Malvo]

3 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

The match that stood out most to me was Ace Austin vs. Lee Johnson. Ace is a really interesting wrestler, and does a ton of stuff I've just never seen before, but maybe too much for one match - if he could ration out his ideas and make sure they get the focus they deserve, he could be something really special. Johnson has the exact opposite problem, which is that I'm watching his match thinking, "okay, that was Sami Zayn's move, that was Kota Ibushi's, that was Kevin Owens'" - everything is executed well, but there's nothing original, nothing unique that he brings to the table. If they could meet in the middle, there would be a great wrestler in that mix.

Ace Austin is an interesting one, in that while I really like his in-ring work, I hate his presentation/look/character. He just comes across as a massive dork cosplaying as a wrestler, until the bell actually rings.

His whole look with the wacky hair and the glasses and the playing cards is all just too busy for me. It's an issue I used to have with Lee Moriarty where I felt the whole Taiga-style/mask on during the entrance/weird posing/dancing stuff he used to do was just too much - it just felt like you should try and get one element of your character over first otherwise I'm left wondering 'I have no idea what the personality of this guy is meant to be'. 

[gmoney]

Is there a lamer name than Ace Austin? I'd cringe if a mate had called a create-a-wrestler that. 

[Infinity Land]

51 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

There's a Boxing Day Brawl show in a few weeks time (on Boxing Day, funnily enough) which is an outlier in that it's very rare for ROH to promote a weekly HonorClub show, so maybe this is a step in the right direction to them actually trying to build the brand again. But I won't hold my breath. 

They did it last year as well. Taped over the Hammerstein Ballroom double tapings so you couldn't quite the tell the difference if I remember right. 

Cardiff & maybe Manchester will see some UK indie talents used for ROH. Then Hammerstein tapings. Next interesting stop would be Australia. Not just for the novelty of Global Wars, but because Collision has its residency in Arlington for January that could see some cohesive stories built. 

[LaGoosh]

1 hour ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Austin is an interesting one, in that while I really like his in-ring work, I hate his presentation/look/character. He just comes across as a massive dork cosplaying as a wrestler, until the bell actually rings.

His whole look with the wacky hair and the glasses and the playing cards is all just too busy for me

His look/gimmick is so generic it's insane. Strikes me as a guy with absolutely zero character/gimmick ideas at all so he's just doing the most basic cocky, flashy guy we've all seen a million times before. 

[Browser Brady]

The production and particularly the lighting of the original ROH bothered me way more than it should.

 

Black ring, black apron, black canvas ,  black ropes and turnbuckle pad complete with seemingly less light than that In Your House in 1996 that got hit with the hurricane. 

Seems like a great match though … 

Fuck me though..

 

 

 

Edited December 14, 2025 by Browser Brady

[LaGoosh]

That's weird, I always remember the ring and canvas being mostly red.

[simonworden]

On 12/14/2025 at 5:25 PM, LaGoosh said:

That's weird, I always remember the ring and canvas being mostly red.

In their first year (2002) they used an all red campus and didn't wrap black sheets round the venue I thought it looked best. The Boston venue with the red bricks was one of my favourite looking locations. Then in 03 they went blacker with the barrier pads and a red/black diagonal split canvas which was ok. 

 

By 05 they were post Feinstein wrongun stuff and had gone all black everywhere. I believe they were even putting up tarps/sheets on at least the hard cam side so you often had no idea what building they were in. Really dull to look at on video and was a reason I quickly lost interest around then. 

[Lorne Malvo]

The ROH show which aired last week on the 1st Jan having a Christmas-themed main event (MXM & Johnny TV vs Dalton Castle & The Outrunners) bothered me far more than it should. You can't get away with doing anything Christmas-related after the 31st December! I know it's still technically the holiday season in some calendars but by that point I don't want to see another candy cane for another 11 months, thank you.

I can't grumble too much though, as Taya Valkyrie in Grinch get-up unlocked a previously undiscovered kink for me it seems. 

Things actually happened on this show, amazingly. Jay Lethal has turned heel (again) on Bandido and joined forces with The Swirl, and Madison Rayne seems to have retired. 

I didn't say they were momentous happenings, but when you watch this show every week like I do you'll take any storyline developments.

Oh, and they're still doing Billie Starkz/Athena minion 'can they co-exist' bullshit for fucks sake.

[Lorne Malvo]

Wake up babe, new Ross Von Erich match just dropped! Unfortunately he's not as shit as he used to be, and the only thing interesting about him in the first place was how terrible he was. Now he's bang-average there's no joy in watching him.

They're doing some weird babyface experiments on ROH at the moment. Aaron Solo and CRU positioned as babyfaces just arn't working at all. Although in Solo's case, he's wrestling and acting the same as always so I think Tony Khan told the commentary team he's now a face but forgot to tell Solo himself.

Stori Denali and Zayda Steel both have potential. Lumbering them with shitearse factions like Premier Athletes and SkyFlight just feels mean.

The Frat House are still brilliant WWE 2010-esque jobber lads. I'm a big fan.

On 1/6/2026 at 7:16 PM, Lorne Malvo said:

Oh, and they're still doing Billie Starkz/Athena minion 'can they co-exist' bullshit for fucks sake.

FUCK OFF.

So Athena did a backstage promo this week about how in 2026 shes changing things up and striking out on her own. I thought it would be incredibly on-brand for ROH to drop a 3 year storyline in a backstage segment with no resolution, but the whole thing has been so shit I welcomed it.

Imagine my surprise then when Athena later accompanied Billie Starkz to the ring for her match.

At this point I'm pretty sure Tony Khan is booking this for the sole purpose of trolling me.

[Lorne Malvo]

Ross Von Erich was in the ring for probably less than a minute this week. In that time;

- he completely missed two running high kicks

- he tagged in his brother and got on the apron, forgetting that him and Marshall were meant to do some combo shit together, meaning Marshall had to stand around like a dickhead while Ross remembered his spots (he did this TWICE by the way)

- completely lost the plot after this and went full deer in the headlights, leading to an excrutiating moment where him and his opponent just ran into each other and nobody sold anything then he just panicked and kind of grabbed an headlock.

Worst in the world. I love him.