McXal's Reviews

I’ve not seen anything announced or the episode formally, but a quick glance online tells me that Naito and EVIL teaming in the main event plus more debutants arrive on excursion from New Japan arrive in the form of the Tempura Boyz (Roppongi 3K). Kevin Kelly and Steve Corino provide commentary from Lowell, MA.

With Kamaitachi lined up for an imminent return to NJPW, two more young talents have arrived for an elongated excursion with Ring Of Honor in the form of the Tempura Boyz. They are Sho Tanaka and Yohei Komatsu, who would go on to become Roppongi 3K upon their return to Japan. They have a tough debut match scheduled, facing the current #1 contenders to the Tag Titles in Cabana and Dalton.

Cabana starts with Yoh, as the commentators utterly bury the newcomers. The Boyz bust out some early rapid double-teaming to get the best of Colt. Castle tags and drags Komatsu to the ground, making an example of him on the mat and turning the momentum in their team’s favour. Tag to Sho who clocks Dalton with a running lariat for 2. Saito suplex by Castle, into the Superman Pin from Colt gets 2 right back. The Party Peacock gets over-confident and misses a flying splash off the top. The Everest German on Tanaka is a much better approach. He wins the match for his team after hitting Bang-A-Rang on Yoh at 05:17

Rating - * - A complete squash that took far longer than it needed to. It is immediately apparent that Sho and Yoh won’t be getting the same treatment as White and Kamaitachi and will be starting a lot further down the card. It felt weird seeing them so comprehensively crushed, and having Kelly and Corino cracking constant jokes about them made it feel like they were even more useless. 

During commercials the Briscoes come out and sarcastically applaud Cabana and Castle. Jay and Mark inform the casual viewer that they recently beat Colt and Dalton, and also hold a victory over the Young Bucks. As a result they want to face the winner of that Tag Title match at Final Battle.

Adam Cole announces that Jay Lethal’s ROH World Title rematch will take place in London during the Reach For The Sky Tour…but thinks the result won’t be any different than it was at Death Before Dishonor.

Elsewhere Kyle O’Reilly, without any notice or announcement from Nigel McGuinness at all, is announced as the #1 contender to face the Cole/Lethal winner at Final Battle 2016. 

So having been announced as the top contender for the World Championship at ROH’s biggest show of the year, the pressure is now on Kyle to strong some wins together. Personally I can’t think of a worse way for ROH to have booked his title shot (they just put twice as much effort into giving Silas Young a random title shot at a Florida house show than they have Kyle for their biggest event of 2016), but it is the right decision. This is an intriguing rematch from what I believe was Jon Gresham’s ROH debut during the inaugural Top Prospect Tournament back during the ROH on HDNet run. Kyle won that night and went onto the finals, is that a loss Gresham can avenge here? How is Kyle’s arm after the assault at Adam Page’s hands at All Star Extravaganza?

With black medical tape on the arm, it’s no surprise that Jon instantly looks to attack O’Reilly’s injury. He’s one of the few who has the chops to hang with Kyle on the mat, and utilises all manner of funky counter-hold to keep going back to the arm despite the #1 contender’s best efforts. They battle over a hiptoss and end up throwing each other over the top to the floor. Deciding that they are too evenly matched trading holds they instead decide to run the ropes…and again come up even so go back to trading hiptoss attempts. O’Reilly is favouring his shoulder, and Gresham drills it again with a European uppercut. Back from commercials and O’Reilly has found a way to make his strike-power count – but is still visibly struggling with his arm. Jon kicks at it to escape a heel hook, then grabs it to roll him up into a crucifix pin for 2. Kyle is furious and tears the medical tape away, before attempting an ill-advised Brainbuster. He can’t lift Gresh initially…so leans forward and chokes him out! BRAINBUSTER! That’s enough to give O’Reilly victory at 06:19 (shown).

Rating - *** - This was a neat little standalone match, but also demonstrated that these guys have real chemistry together and could have done much better with more time. Their grappling sequences were so fluent and a real joy to watch, whilst O’Reilly’s selling of the arm was very decent (not for the first time on ROH TV in recent weeks). I thought the finish, with his arm being weakened rendering him unable to lift an unconscious Gresh up for his finishing Brainbuster – so choking him out instead – was really effective and made both performers look strong.

Adam Page sprints out to do another hit-job on O’Reilly. He tries to give him Rite Of Passage, but is cut off by Bobby Fish. Hangman happily brawls with Bobby given that he wants to be TV Champion! Adam Cole comes out as well giving us a Bullet Club vs reDRagon brawl. Page uses a chair to beat the sh*t out of Fish’s ribs, injuring him just as he injured Kyle at the pay-per-view.

Cheeseburger and Will Ferrara are in the ring, with Will snatching the microphone away from his pal and issuing a challenge to BJ Whitmer and Punishment Martinez to come face them…

Burger and Will don’t always team up, but they are supposedly friends and train together at the ROH Dojo. They’ve both been victimised repeatedly by Whitmer and Martinez as those two look to make a statement and lure Steve Corino back to the dark side, under the orders of Kevin Sullivan. Will this be another massacre, or can the Dojo squad pull off something remarkable? Sullivan and his bath robe are in the building this evening – joining commentary to antagonise Corino.

BJ doesn’t even bother getting onto the apron at first; standing on floor and watching as the Punisher mows through their opponents. Sullivan tells Corino on commentary that he doesn’t want ‘Benjamin’ as his favourite son – and urges Steve to come home. Inside the ring the aforementioned Benjamin finally gets involved and eats a springboard knee strike/tornado DDT combo from the Dojo boys. Martinez punches Ferrara’s lights out…then throws Burger at his broken body. Whitmer sneaks in to profit and take the win at 04:00

Rating - DUD - The sad part about all this is that Martinez looks like a hell of a talent. He’s tall, powerful, agile and has a snap to his execution that even Dijak can’t match. Unfortunately he is almost an afterthought in the circus of complete nonsense that Whitmer, Sullivan and Corino are pushing. Who on earth in Ring Of Honor or Sinclair thought this was of any interest in 2016? Even Kevin Kelly on commentary tried to stop Sullivan and Steve waffling on in incomprehensible gibberish and explain what the f*ck they are on about. How much longer do we need to watch Punisher rough up Burger and Will before he moves on to serious matches? 

Punishment gives Burger the South Of Heaven as Sullivan starts whispering things in Corino’s ear. Whatever he said seems to provoke Steve into running to the ring and cutting short Whitmer and Martinez’s attack. Quite incredibly, they do the same Golden Spike will he/won’t he tension with Corino AGAIN. This is comfortably the third or fourth time they’ve run this exact same angle. 

Sabin and Shelley are the first ‘survivors’ of Ladder War 6 to wrestle, and given that this was taped just 24 hours after that violent spectacle they really can’t be in great shape. Naito had a bad night at All Star Extravaganza too, losing to Jay Lethal in something of an upset. Shelley has been a vocal critic of the rise of powerful, multi-man factions like Bullet Club and Los Ingobernables, so will relish the chance to make a statement and put a beating on one such group in our main event. Chris Sabin (with his ribs bandaged) grabs a microphone and reveals they were offered the chance to take the night off, but refused because they want to compete.

Naito attacks Sabin from behind – kicking him in the injured ribs like complete asshole. Shelley, also sporting bandages, makes a save and dives off the apron with a knee strike. Sabin follows suit with a cannonball senton! How are these guys still moving after Ladder War? Naito drives Chris ribs-first into the apron then whips him into the guardrails to leave him slumped. On the other side Evil wraps a chair around Alex’s taped neck and cracks it against the ringpost! LIJ work Shelley’s neck hard after that, but can’t put him away before Sabin recovers and makes it back from the floor to tag in. Evil saves Naito from Future Shock – with a kick to the ribs. Flying crossbody blocks by both Machine Guns, followed by a through-the-legs tope suicida as they defy their injuries to take the fight to their opponents. Skull & Bones blocked with an Evil lariat! EVIL STO dropping Alex on his neck. Naito hits an inverted DDT, into Destino on Sabin – giving LIJ the win at 07:49 (shown).

Rating - *** - This could have been really awful. The Machine Guns are victims of ROH’s taping schedule and really shouldn’t have been working at all so soon after Ladder War…whilst Naito and EVIL have form for slacking off and not putting much effort in during their ROH matches anyway. The fact that this was a lively, engaging, little sprint is therefore quite a pleasant surprise. Having Sabin and Shelley bandaged up and battered made them sympathetic babyface characters, and of course the LIJ representatives had no problem playing douchebags trying to profit from those injuries. This was far from a classic, but as a quick free main event I thought this delivered the goods.

NEXT WEEK – Semi-Final action in the Six-Man Tag Title Tournament will see The Cabinet face Kushida, Jay White and ACH. The Addiction are also scheduled to be here, completing a miraculous recovery from the brutal beating they took at Ladder War to face the Briscoes…

Tape Rating - ** - Not as good or consistently enjoyable an episode as #265. The set-up for Final Battle began in earnest this week, but the way they did it was really weird. The Briscoes and Kyle O’Reilly appear to have decided for themselves that they are #1 contenders for the titles at Final Battle. Not having Nigel McGuinness announce either of those decisions felt really weird and silly. Inside the ropes there was some good (particularly O’Reilly/Gresham), but I wasn’t comfortable with how the debut of the Tempura Boyz was handled and would happily skip ever seeing anything involving this Kevin Sullivan angle again. The fact that they’ve literally done the same exact spike angle on multiple shows is inexcusable.