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Post by Kriss on Jul 14, 2023 6:31:23 GMT
I enjoy the ROH TV, but I enjoy it like I did Dark and Elevation. It's a fun little show with some good to great matches and a chance to see some new talent in the ring.
ROH as a promotion is a disaster. They have a PPV a week from today, Death Before Dishonor, and the only match they had advertised, which was only set up last week, was Claudio vs Mark Brisco for the world title. Now Mark is injured so they are back to nothing. The main event of this show should be Athena vs Willow Nightingale. They are doing Athena dirty if she doesn't close this show, because she's been the only champion going out every week and giving main event level performances. They were building to Joe vs ZSJ, but that's all disappeared now, and Joe will be facing Dalton Castle or Shane Taylor. TK has too much on his hands booking 5 hours of AEW every week. ROH should be handed over to someone else. He's fallen into the Vince micro-management trap and spread himself too thin.
I wonder if they will load the show with AEW regulars to attract PPV buys.
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Post by srossi on Jul 14, 2023 14:44:50 GMT
There is nothing that disappoints me more about TK than him buying this company and burying it. I watched every show that ROH ever put out for 20 years, and he turned it into Velocity. I don’t follow it anymore at all. It’s nothing like what ROH was. I didn’t know there was a PPV in a week. They never promote it. The only time you hear about ROH is when some jobber comes out for an AEW match and they write under his name that his last match was a win in ROH. It’s embarrassing. If Vince did this to a company as beloved as ROH, the uproar would be unreal. TK should hand over every aspect of the show to someone else, whether it’s bringing back Delirious or trying someone new, and get the show on YouTube so you don’t have to pay to see it. Completely separate the rosters and send them back to a small soundstage or whatever in Baltimore to film 4 shows at a time every few weeks. It couldn’t cost that much. Just make ROH ROH again. Or just end the company at Final Battle this year and bring back all available alums, maybe finally have Mark win that damn TV title he’s been going after for 10 years, and kill it. Call it Dark again come January or anything else.
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Post by srossi on Jul 20, 2023 21:57:22 GMT
The original plan was Claudio vs. Kingston, but Kingston was invited to the G-1 tour and TK caved and said he didn’t want to stand in his way since Kingston really wanted to do that. I mean, everyone would want a boss like that, but the boss has to make people unhappy sometimes by thinking of the business first. So with Kingston out, they pivoted to Mark Briscoe. Then Mark got hurt. Now they will throw PAC out there in the main event at the last minute. I don’t think there was any build at all for this PPV main event, but I don’t watch ROH anymore.
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Post by Kriss on Jul 21, 2023 5:46:11 GMT
The original plan was Claudio vs. Kingston, but Kingston was invited to the G-1 tour and TK caved and said he didn’t want to stand in his way since Kingston really wanted to do that. I mean, everyone would want a boss like that, but the boss has to make people unhappy sometimes by thinking of the business first. So with Kingston out, they pivoted to Mark Briscoe. Then Mark got hurt. Now they will throw PAC out there in the main event at the last minute. I don’t think there was any build at all for this PPV main event, but I don’t watch ROH anymore. It's more a case of TK not checking his calendar. They were building to Joe vs ZSJ, but he's also in the G1. The only match on the card with a real build is Dark Order vs The Righteous. Claudio vs PAC is based on PAC walking out on the BCC in Blood & Guts. Athena vs Willow is based on Willow beating Athena in the Owen Hart tournament, but they do have something of a feud going on in ROH. Shibata vs Garcia makes sense because Garcia has been pushing for a title shot for the Pure Title. All the other matches are just thrown together. The 6-man title challengers are all making their ROH debuts. On paper the card looks fantastic though. It's got some of the best wrestlers in the world from AEW and New Japan and the in-ring will be great. People pay for all sorts of wrestling PPVs these days, and at least you know the production values will be high and they aren't going to be wrestling in a tiny ring. TK admitted that the internet fans were unhappy with the lack of build, so hopefully he'll take some steps to rectify this.
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Post by srossi on Jul 21, 2023 15:33:46 GMT
The original plan was Claudio vs. Kingston, but Kingston was invited to the G-1 tour and TK caved and said he didn’t want to stand in his way since Kingston really wanted to do that. I mean, everyone would want a boss like that, but the boss has to make people unhappy sometimes by thinking of the business first. So with Kingston out, they pivoted to Mark Briscoe. Then Mark got hurt. Now they will throw PAC out there in the main event at the last minute. I don’t think there was any build at all for this PPV main event, but I don’t watch ROH anymore. It's more a case of TK not checking his calendar. They were building to Joe vs ZSJ, but he's also in the G1. The only match on the card with a real build is Dark Order vs The Righteous. Claudio vs PAC is based on PAC walking out on the BCC in Blood & Guts. Athena vs Willow is based on Willow beating Athena in the Owen Hart tournament, but they do have something of a feud going on in ROH. Shibata vs Garcia makes sense because Garcia has been pushing for a title shot for the Pure Title. All the other matches are just thrown together. The 6-man title challengers are all making their ROH debuts. On paper the card looks fantastic though. It's got some of the best wrestlers in the world from AEW and New Japan and the in-ring will be great. People pay for all sorts of wrestling PPVs these days, and at least you know the production values will be high and they aren't going to be wrestling in a tiny ring. TK admitted that the internet fans were unhappy with the lack of build, so hopefully he'll take some steps to rectify this. I have absolutely no reason to watch ROH if the slight bit of build there were for these matches occurred in AEW anyway. And it was VERY slight as I feel like the only reason PAC walked out was to get to this match in 3 days. It didn't make sense really. They tried to say PAC was a loner, reminiscent of Bad News Brown walking out on 2 Survivor Series teams in a row (which was a rare bit of awesome booking for the WWF at the time), but that's bullshit considering PAC has mostly been used as part of a trio with Death Triangle since coming to AEW. So they made a curious booking decision in the main event of a very hyped AEW show to get to a main event of an ROH PPV that even if you watch AEW religiously (as I do) you barely know is happening. ROH has really become an albatross that TK has no idea what to do with. If TK couldn't figure out availability of talent due to the G-1, that's a totally different issue, and I have a hard time imagining he would be that dumb. I don't know what happened with ZSJ since obviously he has to go through NJPW to book him, but the Kingston situation sounds like he was just being a softy and letting one of his contracted talents wrestle elsewhere during an important time period when that should not have been allowed. Unless even TK doesn't think that making ROH dates is very important.
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Post by Kriss on Jul 22, 2023 8:01:49 GMT
Say what you want about the build, but Death Before Dishonor was a tremendous wrestling show from top to bottom. Not a bad match, and the last three matches were all awesome for different reasons. They did the right thing and gave the women the main event, and they delivered big time.
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Post by srossi on Jul 22, 2023 14:14:22 GMT
Say what you want about the build, but Death Before Dishonor was a tremendous wrestling show from top to bottom. Not a bad match, and the last three matches were all awesome for different reasons. They did the right thing and gave the women the main event, and they delivered big time. I hope to watch it this weekend somewhere.
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Post by Kriss on Sept 22, 2023 13:58:03 GMT
A great promo to kick off ROH last night by Eddie Kingston, dedicating his title win to Xavier. If for no other reason, AEW/ROH needs to exist because Kingston couldn't do what he does in WWE.
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Post by Kriss on Nov 25, 2023 8:19:05 GMT
Quite surreal to see Ronda Rousey on ROH TV this week. When she joined WWE, she came in to be the champion and to headline WrestleMania. She did it, and she was very successful in her first WWE run. Fair play to Tony Khan for letting her do what she wanted to do and to help her friend Marina Shafir. She could easily have appeared on Dynamite as a surprise to a big pop that would lead to nothing, since if she was interested in signing she would have done that. They didn't pay for the Joan Jett music either.
Rousey/Shafir vs Athena/Starkz was a great match as well. Worth going out of your way to see.
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Post by srossi on Nov 25, 2023 19:06:28 GMT
Quite surreal to see Ronda Rousey on ROH TV this week. When she joined WWE, she came in to be the champion and to headline WrestleMania. She did it, and she was very successful in her first WWE run. Fair play to Tony Khan for letting her do what she wanted to do and to help her friend Marina Shafir. She could easily have appeared on Dynamite as a surprise to a big pop that would lead to nothing, since if she was interested in signing she would have done that. They didn't pay for the Joan Jett music either. Rousey/Shafir vs Athena/Starkz was a great match as well. Worth going out of your way to see. Obviously the show was taped, which destroys any surprise for the home viewer. They even announced the surprise partner at the top of the show on a graphic, I guess assuming everyone would know by that point. But in the arena, jaws literally dropped. You just don’t see that kind of legit shock in wrestling these days. Anyway, the match is very good and Rousey was selling and bumping like a maniac. When she cares, she's instantly as good as any woman's wrestler on the planet. And when she doesn't care, she let's everyone know about it, like that last year in WWE.
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Post by Kriss on Dec 14, 2023 14:28:45 GMT
ROH Final Battle is tomorrow night. I guess it's a PLE and not a PPV since it's exclusive to the Honor Club streaming service this time. It's gonna be a great show, no doubt, but suffers from the fact that most of the ROH champions are actually AEW wrestlers who rarely if ever appear on ROH TV. And the Gates of Agony are in Japan right now, so no 6 Man Tag Title match. No world title match because the ROH title is part of the Continental Classic tournament. No tag title match because MJF hasn't really been mentioned in ROH, let alone having him actually wrestled. No Pure Title match because Wheeler Yuta is I'm the Jay Briscoe tribute match. So that leaves the TV title, which is up in a six way Survival of the Fittest tournament final after Samoa Joe relinquished it because he was going AEW full time. We have a hastily announced AAA Mega title match between Vikingo and Black Taurus, who has never been in ROH before.
The saving grace of MVP is Athena and the great build to her main event with Billie Starkz. Athena is deservedly main eventing a PPV for the second time in a row, and the first time as the sole announced main event. Last time out she closed the show, but it wasn't announced in advance.
I think the only other announced match is Keith Lee vs Shane Taylor. It's a rematch of sorts from the tag match they were in in an earlier PPV, but Lee has never appeared on ROH TV.
There will probably be 4ish more matches by the time we get to the show.
I'll watch it and I expect it to be very good, but they've had weeks of TV and only one match has any build.
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Post by Kriss on Dec 15, 2023 13:14:45 GMT
As usual with a ROH "PPV" we get the rest of the card the day before the show. A lot of people who never appear on ROH TV on this card, and some who never appear on AEW either. Again, I expect this to be a great wrestling card, but they could have build up a lot more of this. Only three of the nine matches are part of ongoing ROH TV stories.
Pre-Show:
The Von Erichs (Marshall and Ross Von Erich) vs. The Outrunners (Turbo Floyd and Truth Magnum)
Main Show:
ROH Pure Champion Wheeler Yuta vs. Tom Lawlor
I Quit Match: Ethan Page vs. Tony Nese
AAA Mega Champion El Hijo del Vikingo vs. Black Taurus
ROH 6-Man Tag Team Champions The Mogul Embassy (Brian Cage, Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona) vs. TMDK (Shane Haste, Kosei Fujita and Bad Dude Tito)
Keith Lee vs. Shane Taylor
Survival of the Fittest Finals for the vacant ROH World Television Title: Dalton Castle vs. Komander vs. Kyle Fletcher vs. Lee Johnson vs. Lee Moriarty vs. Mystery Opponent
Jay Briscoe Memorial Fight Without Honor: FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) and Mark Briscoe vs. Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, and Claudio Castagnoli)
ROH Women's Champion Athena vs. Billie Starkz
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Post by srossi on Dec 15, 2023 16:35:23 GMT
It's just another indy show, thrown together with no build, putting whatever names are available into a hat and trying to get a good card out of it. It doesn't have the feel of a real company at all anymore. Other than the Jay Briscoe Memorial match, there's really no other names that aren't readily available to accept $100 and a 6-pack to show up at any National Guard Armory in the country. Even Vikingo does random U.S. indy shows. If this show was an MLW card, you'd say, "Oh, they did pretty good this time, but I'm probably not going out of my way to find it." In many ways, this show is even harder to find as they force you to buy the Honor Club membership, which I doubt Dalton Castle's mother even has because they essentially make you pay to watch Dark every week. And this is ROH's Wrestlemania! I really hope TK puts this brand out of its misery.
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Post by OneFanGang on Dec 15, 2023 18:07:04 GMT
AEW matches have all this ROH culture interspersed into it anyway with dwelling on handshakes before and after, even if it isn't "required" and numerous callbacks to friendships or rivalries that are carbon-dated around 2006. That isn't a problem in and of itself, but nothing seems to move forward in time. AEW and ROH are like little dioramas Tony K created so he can always look at them and present to select audiences in a private art gallery-like showing. Minutiae can be dredged up on a moment's notice to spin whatever storyline suits his booking. This Continental Classic tourney involving an ROH belt to make a Triple-Crown indicates to me the brand isn't going to go away. But just because Eddie Kingston wanted to sweeten the pot for this first tourney, does that mean any subsequent ROH champion is required to lump it in with the others each year around tournament time? Or is every title defense after the finals an amalgamated defense of three belts at once?
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Post by srossi on Dec 15, 2023 18:41:36 GMT
AEW matches have all this ROH culture interspersed into it anyway with dwelling on handshakes before and after, even if it isn't "required" and numerous callbacks to friendships or rivalries that are carbon-dated around 2006. That isn't a problem in and of itself, but nothing seems to move forward in time. AEW and ROH are like little dioramas Tony K created so he can always look at them and present to select audiences in a private art gallery-like showing. Minutiae can be dredged up on a moment's notice to spin whatever storyline suits his booking. This Continental Classic tourney involving an ROH belt to make a Triple-Crown indicates to me the brand isn't going to go away. But just because Eddie Kingston wanted to sweeten the pot for this first tourney, does that mean any subsequent ROH champion is required to lump it in with the others each year around tournament time? Or is every title defense after the finals an amalgamated defense of three belts at once? On that point, Roderick Strong threw out a line on Dynamite about Adam Page being his “young boy”, and said he still hasn’t forgotten about that. But did ANYONE else remember it? It was from a stable called The Decade from 10 years ago where Page was the young boy of Strong, BJ Whitmer, and Jimmy Jacobs (who all had spent a decade at that point in ROH)? Even Kriss had to be scratching his head trying to recall that one. Excalibur explained the angle in 3 words and then we moved on.
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