ROH on Sinclair – Episode 243 – 14th May 2016
ROH really have gotten themselves into a muddle with this taping schedule. Was the event that was cancelled due to inclement weather during the Winter Warriors Tour due to be a TV taping, and is that now why they are in such a tangle? After running a pay-per-view they did almost nothing to promote on TV other than jump up and down shouting ‘New Japan guys will be there’, and having not put any content onto TV taped after February, we now spend the next two weeks (whilst the War Of The Worlds Toronto content is edited together) with special ‘feature’ episodes. Next week we’ll delve into the 'history of the Bullet Club', but tonight we are going to look back at Jay Lethal’s Ring Of Honor career. Kevin Kelly is your host…
We go back to Supercard Of Honor 8 when Lethal joined the House Of Truth and won the ROH TV Title from Tommaso Ciampa. They then skip over some GREAT defences against the likes of ACH and Jushin Liger and instead show extended highlights of his hugely disappointing defence against Alberto El Patron at the 13th Anniversary Show (got to get those ex-WWE names on television I suppose).
Inevitably we turn our attention to the Briscoe/Lethal champion vs champion showdown at Best In The World 2015. They’ve shown clips of this match in many of these highlight reel episodes before, so I don’t think they needed to dwell on this for as long as they did. I also don’t think the match itself belongs anywhere near the conversation of ‘greatest ROH matches ever’ no matter how hard Ring Of Honor try to promote it as such.
Once again they bypass a lot of good stuff and instead go to Roderick Strong ending Lethal’s TV Title reign at the Glory By Honor 14 TV Taping, which seems an odd thing to include on a ‘Best Of Jay Lethal’ episode. They don’t even show enough footage to make the point that it was a great match (the Lethal/Strong 2015 trilogy was outstanding). It is used as a transition point to him trying to become the greatest ROH World Champion of all time – and they show feature-length highlights of his gripping encounter with AJ Styles at Final Battle 2015.
We end with him committing to defending the World Championship all over the globe. He has defended it in Europe and Japan…and the last clips are highlights of his defence against Tomoaki Honma from Night 2 of the Honor Rising 2016 NJPW events. I’m still not quite sure why they haven’t found a way to air this match in full on TV.
Tape Rating - N/A - I’ve laboured the point that ROH haven’t got their schedule right here and going almost three months between tapings (when they only tape four weeks of TV at a time) isn’t ideal. I won’t harp on about that any more…but I will say that in the absence of new content this didn’t feel like a particularly imaginative episode. It was promoted as a ‘Best of Jay Lethal’, but it was pretty much lengthy cuts of Lethal beating WWE stars Alberto El Patron and AJ Styles, interspersed with his title wins over the last two years. Failing to make reference to his beginnings all the way back in 2002 as Hydro, or the fact that he also held the Pure Title (winning an epic against Samoa Joe at the legendary Manhattan Mayhem event in 2005) feels like a major missed opportunity for Ring Of Honor to put over their rich history. Does this mean next week won’t be an exploration of the history of Bullet Club at all, but just a load of clips of Bullet Club guys in ROH?