ROH on Sinclair – Episode 242 – 7th May 2016
It doesn’t feel like it because ROH Television has been busy airing content from February for the past SEVEN weeks…but another pay-per-view has snuck up on us. This is the go-home episode for the Global Wars 2016 PPV. In the absence of ‘new content’ (other than a brief video package featuring Colt Cabana’s return) Kevin Kelly and Mandy Leon have been drafted in to host a special ‘Global Wars preview show’ to set the scene and shill PPV buys.
First the Television Title situation is spotlighted, with Bobby Fish and Roderick Strong embroiled in a feud over the belt only for Tomohiro Ishii to accept a ‘Roddy vs The World’ challenge in Tokyo and capture the belt for himself. Clips of Ishii winning the belt are shown, followed by the triple threat defence he made in Vegas against both Roddy and Bobby. Mandy introduces clips of the 2/3 Falls Match that took place at Supercard Of Honor 10. As a result of his win in that Fish will challenge Ishii for the TV Title in Chicago on PPV.
Supercard Of Honor 10 is the scene of our next video package, this time with the concluding moments of the O’Reilly vs Cole No Holds Barred classic. It is included to help us understand O’Reilly’s mindset and headspace. His reward for winning is a high profile match against Tetsuya Naito of LIJ on pay-per-view. Apparently Adam Cole has not been seen since Supercard Of Honor (he wasn’t part of the Conquest Tour events from San Antonio or West Warwick in late April either).
Clips of Moose vs Okada at the 14th Anniversary come next. That match apparently earned Moose the respect of both the Rainmaker and his manager Gedo. As a result they will form a tag team at Global Wars, to face another NJPW/ROH cross-over team in the form of Hiroshi Tanahashi and Michael Elgin
The Bullet Club are coming to Global Wars too. After The Elite stole the show at the 14th Anniversary against the demi-faction of Matt Sydal, ACH and Kushida, that group want some payback. It will be the Bullet Club of the Young Bucks and the debuting Guerrillas Of Destiny against Sydal, Kushida, his Time Splitter partner Alex Shelley and Shelley’s MCMG partner Chris Sabin.
After winning a #1 contendership match at Supercard Of Honor 10, Jay and Mark Briscoe are in line to challenge War Machine for the Tag Titles. Hanson and Rowe have been dominating champions, but have never beaten the Briscoes and don’t consider themselves ‘true champions’ until they have a win over the most decorated duo in ROH history. To promote that Global Wars encounter, they air the closing stages of their enjoyable match from the 2015 Conquest Tour.
We end with the same footage of Colt Cabana’s Supercard Of Honor comeback that was part of Episode 241 as well. To reintroduce Colt to new fans we even get some amazingly dated-looking footage of him winning the ROH Tag Titles with CM Punk…then competing in Punk’s ROH farewell match in 2005. That this footage looks so ancient makes me feel a million years old! Dave Prazak and Gabe Sapolsky’s commentary is even included. I miss both of those guys being part of ROH (albeit definitely not Gabe’s commentary!)
Tape Rating - N/A - Pulling together a taping schedule is challenging, and the intricacies of ROH’s schedule mean that they’ve had to rely on their live events and social media platforms to do most of the work in promoting the Global Wars PPV, rather than the content of their weekly TV show. As a result this hard-sell episode was something of a necessary evil. Mandy Leon isn’t the greatest on-air personality there has ever been (Scarlett Bordeaux should have got that spot) so adding Kevin Kelly’s veteran broadcaster presence definitely aided the episode in flowing smoothly. They covered lots of ground and did a competent job setting the scene for most of the high profile Global Wars matches. In truth that show already sold itself on the strength of the New Japan brand-name anyway.