ROH on Sinclair – Episode 167 – 29th November 2014

One week and two episodes of the TV show to go before the Final Battle 2014 pay-per-view. Tonight we bid farewell to the exceptionally decent Florida tapings with one last high profile main event as World Championship #1 contender Adam Cole prepares for Final Battle with a stern test against Matt Sydal – the apparent #1 contender to the TV Title. Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino are in Lakeland, FL.

QT Marshall vs Cheeseburger
Marshall returns to ROH after a relatively substantial hiatus tonight. Fans really got on his back (and quite rightly too) when he was presented to us as a serious ‘top prospect’…but he’d actually started to find his niche as a comedy goof and was starting to get interesting as part of ‘Marshall Law’ when he departed. For all the heat QT gets, I’d rather watch him in a 6-hour Iron Man Match than continue to endure Cheeseburger in Ring Of Honor. The lovable underdog gimmick worked with the likes of Spike Dudley and Mikey Whipwreck in ECW. ROH has spent years trying to recapture that magic with various students (Pelle, Grizzly and now Burger)…and it never works.

Burger slaps QT in the face to get us started…and takes to the air like a lunatic with a springboard crossbody to the floor. Marshall rather mean-spiritedly dismisses that to maul him against the rails. ‘You don’t like Cheeseburger then there’s something wrong with you’ – Kevin Kelly. Thanks for that insight Kev…just for the record I don’t like YOU either you big dork. Marshall’s offence is still rather uninteresting, but he does invade commentary momentarily which is more fun. Cheeseburger hits the most fake-looking satellite DDT imaginable for 2, before QT finishes him with a Dominator at 04:34

Rating - DUD - The match sucked and was a completely braindead way to start your TV show. Why on earth would you open an episode with a match which is almost certain to drive people into switching channels? I’m not exactly leading the charge for Marshall to get his spot in Ring Of Honor back, but I find him far more tolerable than Cheeseburger who is another sh*tty, cheap, un-funny joke act that ROH books to keep costs down and/or pretend like their wrestling school matters in the slightest – and needs to go now.

QT grabs the mic to complain about not being booked for Final Battle…so calls out the World Champion now to make up for it. They have an impromptu match which Jay Briscoe wins within a minute.

Adam Page vs Stupid Haircut Jobber
Unless I missed it the enhancement talent doesn’t even get named before the bell rings. It’s cool seeing Page as the established guy in the ring though, and plays nicely into the development of his character as a fully-fledged member of The Decade now. He faces Roderick Strong on ppv next week so needs to crush whoever the hell it is that he’s wrestling to build some confidence…

Stupid Haircut hits a generic dropkick of doom, gets poleaxed against the guardrails and still hasn’t been referred to as anything other than ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘the kid’ by the commentators. Eventually they list a surname of ‘Solo’. The crowd is basically dead for this. Page lands the somersault lariat for 2 then wins with the Inverted Tombstone at 03:02

Rating - DUD - I like Page, and I like that ROH are finally making a serious investment in promoting him…but matches like this do him no favours. Nobody cared about it, he looked stupid having to give a jobber so insignificant he was barely named so much offence, and even at three minutes this was far too long to give him any kind of credibility boost. That said, it doesn’t dent my enthusiasm for Strong vs Page at Final Battle either. My fingers are crossed for a breakout moment for Adam then…

Adam Page demands the microphone and is presented it by BJ Whitmer. His promo drags a little, but the punchline is calling Roderick Strong a ‘b*tch’ so it ends on a snappy note. Strong himself runs in and chases both Page and Whitmer away

SIDENOTE – This episode is twenty minutes in and has been atrocious so far. Even when their parent company owns the networks they air on it seems utterly appalling that ROH can waste twenty whole minutes of precious television time on such dross.

A video package runs down the Final Battle 2014 card. As usual, despite having months to hype the show, most of the undercard feels totally rushed because Delirious is pretty inept…but on the whole it looks a decent night

Matt Sydal vs Adam Cole
The #1 contenders for the Television and World Championships collide in the ultimate warm-up match just a week away from Final Battle. Sydal is still pretty fresh into his comeback to Ring Of Honor, and has looked pretty good inside the ring albeit without winning any high profile matches at all (losing both his return match to AJ Styles and playing a minor role in the Survival Of The Fittest finals). Even with the distraction of his Final Battle opponent, Jay Lethal, at ringside his years of experience and pedigree make him a formidable opponent. Can Cole maintain his focus on this one knowing that he’s just a week away from one of Ring Of Honor’s most violent matches?

Lethal petulantly sulks about Sydal turning down a spot in the HOT, and his huffing and puffing at ringside probably steals the show from the low key back and forth they choose to open with. After several minutes the point has been hammered home that Sydal is quicker but Cole is more of a dick. Matt eventually starts evading his opponent’s dirty tricks and crushes his face with a lunging double stomp for 2…prompting the former World Champion to leave the ring. Sydal appears to have a counter to everything Cole tosses his way only to make a critical error by lining up a premature tope suicida (apparently to wind Jay Lethal up) and sailing straight into a jumping roundhouse from Adam. He makes the same mistake seconds later too by diving for a crossbody and propelling himself right into a dropkick to the ribs. Cole busts out a sweet counter to one of Sydal’s signature leaping attacks as he sweeps him into a backbreaker for 2. The crowd, probably exhausted from a long night of tapings, is disappointingly quiet which probably dampens the usual verve of Cole’s heel act. When we come back from commercials Matt attempts to start a comeback with a crucifix driver (shades of former GeNext colleague Austin Aries) but has taken so much punishment he is slow to capitalise. Eventually he does though and gets a close nearfall with the standing moonsault. He doesn’t appear to have the strength in his core to lift Cole…but shows all his experience by switching up into The Slice instead. Cole catches him with the CRADLEBREAKER to damage the neck some more…then locks in the Figure 4 to pile the pressure on Sydal’s legs (which had been injured for basically two years before his WWE release). Matt refuses to quit, instead opting to slap Cole in the face then hit a HEAD DROP REVERSE RANA! METEORA FROM THE SECOND ROPE TO THE FLOOR! Sydal gets into a petty squabble with Lethal on the floor possibly costing him his window of opportunity in the match. Meteora back into the ring COUNTERED WITH AN INSANE SUPERKICK! Sydal suplexes him into the turnbuckles, but gets distracted by Lethal again as he preps the Sydal Press. SLINGSHOT NECK DROP GERMAN BY COLE! FLORIDA KEY! Cole wins at 16:44 (shown).

Rating - **** - To be fair this was probably only a ***1/2 level match at best, but I like to be generous when it comes to television – particularly when Sinclair and Delirious have the courage to give two elite level talents such as this plenty of TV time to go out there and express themselves with. The completely flat crowd wasn’t ideal, to the extent that they seemed to suck a lot of the usual shine and enthusiasm from Adam Cole’s normally outstanding performance levels. Even he seemed a little low key as this one took an absolute age to get out of first gear. The Jay Lethal intervention wasn’t my ideal finish either but it was a necessary evil to put any kind of heat at all on the Lethal/Sydal TV Title Match on pay-per-view. Ultimately, if you stick with this one there’s actually a lot to enjoy about it. Sydal’s return to ROH has rather cruelly gone under the radar, which is a shame because he comes back from the WWE a far more slick, polished and intelligent professional than he was back in 2007 when he left.

Jay Lethal takes more potshots at Sydal whilst he feels the effects of the Florida Key. Cole watches with a smirk on his face until Jay Briscoe runs out to attack him. Tommaso Ciampa gets involved with everyone just because he’s mental…and the show ends with Matt climbing for a TOP ROPE SYDAL PRESS TO THE FLOOR ON EVERYONE!

Tape Rating - ** - The first half of this episode was unforgivably diabolical. I understand taping a month’s worth of television in one night is challenging and I sympathise with the issues this must cause Delirious and the Sinclair team. But spending HALF of the penultimate broadcast before a big pay-per-view with acts like Cheeseburger, QT Marshall and nameless dumb haircut jobber in the ring is inexcusable. 90% of the Final Battle card is under-baked. Outside of Strong/Page and Briscoe/Cole nothing else on the card has even remotely enough build. Why didn’t we have a backstage segment involving Nigel, Elgin and Ciampa (all of whom were booked for this taping) to build the ‘problem children collide’ Final Battle clash? ACH and Cedric Alexander were at these tapings. Why not have them in a backstage segment in a little argument or something to put any kind of heat at all on their thrown together trios tag with the Bucks and The Addiction? Presumably Delirious knew he was going to have Moose cost RD Evans at Glory By Honor – why not do something with Moose and RD? I know there is an episode left, and I appreciated the entire main event both from a wrestling perspective and the attempts to engage me on the Lethal/Sydal title showdown, but this is ROH’s biggest show of the year and it’s a shame to see half an hour of wasted television when there was so much to accomplish. The near-total lack of backstage segments in general since Sinclair took over is bizarre in fact. If you have a Ringside Membership start watching this episode at the 30-minute mark when the main event gets underway…

Top 5 Lakeland Taping Matches
5) Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe vs Michael Bennett/Matt Taven (*** - Episode 164)
4) Tommaso Ciampa vs Cedric Alexander (*** - Episode 164)
3) Adam Cole vs Matt Sydal (**** - Episode 167)
2) Jay Lethal vs ACH (**** - Episode 165)
1) AJ Styles vs Hanson (****1/2 - Episode 166) 

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