ROH on Sinclair – Episode 014 – December 24th 2011

With the conclusion of Final Battle comes a mini-off season for Ring Of Honor. Kevin Steen is back in ROH, the Briscoes are now 7-time Tag Champions, whilst Davey Richards and Jay Lethal retained their respective singles championships. That’s the state of play as we leave 2011, and it will be a month until we see any new content from the promotion (when they return to Philadelphia for Homecoming 2012). In a couple of weeks it’ll be ‘Road Rage’ editions of the TV show with material taped at the Battle In The Carolinas weekend, but for the next two weeks when ROH collides with major holiday dates of Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, Kevin Kelly will take us through some ‘Best Of 2011’ highlights, presumably all from the first 13 episodes of the TV show. With that in mind, I’m not intending on rewatching matches I’ve already seen – I’ll just copy and paste reviews I’ve written previously into it. If they’ve cut anything out from the original broadcast I probably won’t catch it as I’m only skipping through these shows looking for new content. Kevin Kelly is in the ROH studio…

Minimal fuss – Kevin takes us straight to Episode 2 of the TV show and El Generico defending the ROH TV Title against Jay Lethal…

El Generico vs Jay Lethal – ROH TV Title Match
Of course, the drama and suspense to this one is slightly reduced by the fact that we already saw Jay Lethal running around with the TV Title at Death Before Dishonor 9 but never mind. Generico won the belt from Christopher Daniels at Best In The World 2011, and won the right to carry the TV Title coming into the first new television tapings under the new ownership – a huge honour for him. He has worked for years to be a singles champion in this promotion, and will be desperate not to let it slip away from him on his very first defence.

Generico enjoys a hot start, taking Lethal off his feet with a hurricanrana. But Jay is quick and athletic in his own right, and he BACKFLIPS into a hiptoss then nails a headscissors takedown to even things up. He lands the first major strike, hitting a dropkick to the back of the head for 2 and it’s quickly followed with the hiptoss dropkick combo. The challenger ties Generico up in a brutal surfboard stretch, showing real similarities to former ROH mentor Samoa Joe as he strings together quick strike combos with some aggressive submission work. El Generico realises he’s struggling here and rallies to get Jay out of the ring using a flurry of armdrags. The stakes are high…and he reacts with the RUNNING SOMERSAULT PLANCHA TO THE FLOOR! Both are flat out on the floor as we go to commercials (grr), and apparently during that break he managed to nail Lethal with a moonsault off the guardrail! It was a high risk strategy from the champion but it paid off and he has Jay very much on the rack at this point. He somehow musters up the energy to hit a handspring elbow but all that does is leave him flat out on the canvas next to his masked opponent. There’s only 3 minutes left in the time limit as Lethal comes form the top with a missile dropkick for 2, and he follows it with an awesome rear lift neckbreaker. And they are emptying the tanks on each other as Generico simply absorbs the punishment and gets up to hit the rope run tornado DDT! Less than a minute remaining in the time limit now! Generico lands the Blue Thunder Driver but doesn’t win it…and the Yakuza Kick is countered! They jostle for position as Generico tries a Brainbuster – as the 15:00 time limit expires (12:54 shown). Fans want five more minutes and neither wrestler seems satisfied with the conclusion either. Jim Cornette says he can’t give them 5 minutes because there isn’t that long left in the show…but gives them 3 and the fight is on again! They fly at each other with fists flying and the place goes NUTS! YAKUZA KICK BY GENERICO! HALF NELSON SUPLEX…FOR 2! Generico wants the Turnbuckle Brainbuster only for Lethal to block it with a running suplex. MACHO ELBOW NAILED! Generico kicks out and the place is jumping…TURNBUCKLE EXPLODER! Yakuza Kick COUNTERED WITH THE LETHAL INJECTION! NEW CHAMPION! Jay wins at 15:46 (shown)

Rating - **** - Great introduction for new fans into what Ring Of Honor is all about. I could complain for a long time about how I feel like Generico should be TV Champion for this new era, not Lethal, but as a match this was so fun. Jay Lethal took the advantage early on, so Generico realised he had to go high risk to do similar damage to his challenger. That meant that in the final third of the contest both guys were equally wounded and tired – but still keen to fight and drop bombs on each other. The time limit draw gimmick doesn’t always work but Cornette’s decision to give them more time blew the roof off the place and the crowd stayed red-hot for the remainder of the match.

More brilliant production from Sinclair, as their ROH ‘holiday special’ commercial advertises the World Title Match at Best In The World 2011 using the ‘ROH Tag Title Match’ graphic. Idiots…

INSIDE ROH – They replay ‘Inside ROH’ segments focusing on Eddie Edwards and WGTT, so there’s no new content here either.

Following from that, Kevin takes us to the main event of Episode 1 which we join in progress

Charlie Haas/Shelton Benjamin vs Kings Of Wrestling – ROH Tag Title Match
These two teams have been rivals since WGTT first arrived in this company. That night the Kings beat them in a memorable non-title bout using Hero’s notorious ‘lucky’ elbow pad…and it started a rivalry which took us all the way to Honor Takes Center Stage in Atlanta when Haas and Benjamin finally defeated the Kings to end their year-long reign as champions. Will the Kings be able to kick of the SBG era by winning the belts for a third time or will Haas and Benjamin defeat their rivals for a fourth time in 2011?

According to the Tale Of The Tape Charlie Haas is 39? That seems seriously old for an ROH talent. It doesn’t stop him taking Claudio to the mat and comfortably out-grappling him. Castagnoli tries to use his strength but again gets dragged to the mat where Charlie has the obvious advantage. Benjamin tags and displays his incredible athleticism and speed as he tosses both Claudio and Hero around in quick succession. He actually out-strikes Hero too as the champions continue to dominate the first 5 minutes. Finally Hero ducks the Dragon Whip and levels Shelton with the Rolling Flash Kick. Claudio holds him on the floor and allows Hero to hit a sliding dropkick to the floor as well. The fight continues on the floor as we go to commercials…and when we return the Kings still have Shelton isolated from his partner. Highlights show Shelton going for a Stinger Splash on the floor and crashing himself into the ringpost in so doing. But at last he hits the Dragon Whip on Claudio…only for Hero to pull Haas off the apron as he lunges for a tag! Suplex Elbow combo gets 2! Just when Benjamin looks to be out of it, he manages to drop both Kings with a double neckbreaker…and finally gets the tag to Charlie. He dishes out the suplexes on the challengers, before he climbs the ropes and hits a FLYING HEADSCISSORS on Claudio! His momentum ends when Hero floors him with an elbow smash for 2. Rolling Elbow knocks him down again, before he is picked up by Claudio into the Big Swing Flash Kick. Benjamin has to dive in at the last to save Haas from the KRS-1…then he levels Hero with a Superkick. Leap Of Faith (Leapfrog Hilo) on Claudio, before WGTT drop Hero with the Hart Attack. That’s enough for them to retain the belts at 14:28 (shown).

Rating - *** - I’d heard that this was a disappointing match so I wasn’t expecting much…and in truth this actually surprised me with how entertaining it was. Considering the last time we saw WGTT team as at Tag Team Turmoil/No Escape weekend when they had a real nightmare showing, this was really competitive. They clearly weren’t going in top gear but I imagine, if you’d not seen ROH or these two teams wrestle each other before, you’d have found this especially compelling. Of course it’s a low key and disappointing way for the Kings to leave ROH (you could write a whole column on whether it’s right that the new ROH allowed the Kings, one of the greatest teams in their history, to just slide away without even announcing it to the fans so they could say their goodbyes) but as an introduction to the tag team division here in ROH I thought this was good.

Urgh, more production horrors – the sound is absolutely abysmal during a commercial for ROH’s Showdown In The Sun weekend. SBG are a f*cking media company with lots of money, how is it acceptable that this is being put on broadcast television?

Final match shown is from Episode 6, featuring the Briscoes/ANX with #1 contendership to the Tag Titles on the line…

Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe vs All Night Express
As we said when they met last, the feud between these teams ended at Death Before Dishonor 9 when ANX won Ladder War 3. But they met again in Chicago for television and the Briscoes got the win after Jay used a low blow before pinning Kenny King. Jim Cornette refused to sanction them as the top contenders due to his cheating, and booked one more match between these rival duos to determine who goes to Final Battle as challengers to Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team

Neither team wants to wait for Bobby Cruise to get through his ring introduction and the fists are soon flying. ANX put a couple of sequences together on Jay after incapacitating Mark on the outside to seize the early advantage. That extends to Rhett feeding Mark into a spinning heel kick from King for 2. Jay gets the tag and the momentum appears to turn in favour of the Briscoes as we go for our second commercial break in less than 4 minutes. American TV is so annoying! When we return we’re in the middle of a heat segment with the Briscoes working Kenny over. Powerbomb/neckbreaker looks to have the match won but for a last gasp save by Rhettski. Hot tag to Titus…IMPACT EXPLOSION DROPKICK ON JAY! I love how Rhett is slowly working more and more Austin Aries spots into his repertoire. One Night Stand blocked…Jay Driller blocked too, leading to Rhett dropping Jay with Snake Eyes. Mark drops Rhett with the springboard Ace Crusher then turns around into the springboard blockbuster of Kenny King! All four men are down now! Jay saves his brother from the Doomsday Blockbuster, then holds his brother on top of Rhett for another cheap win at 10:33 (shown)

Rating - *** - I have to be honest and say this still wasn’t that good, but it was enough of an improvement on their first TV match from the last tapings to make it to 3*. A lot of the action down the stretch was really exciting, but the flat finish sort of killed it for me

NEXT WEEK – Holiday Special 2 as it’ll be New Year's Eve

Tape Rating - N/A - How Sinclair managed to make some basic production errors in an hour long show, most of which consists of recap material they’d already broadcasted once, is anyone’s guess and completely unforgivable. If I’m a casual wresting fan trying to plan my Wrestlemania 2012 weekend, I really don’t think some blurry, crackly footage of Kevin Kelly interviewing WGTT is going to convince me to drop my money – just saying. That said, the match content was decent (Generico vs Lethal in particular) and it’s to ROH’s credit that they had Kevin Kelly tape some footage and put together some specific Holiday Season music effects and whatnot. Nothing major, but it just gives the whole thing a more professional, and less rushed look (alongside lousy audio and basic errors of course). Honestly, the HDNet recap shows were better though…

 

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