ROH on Sinclair - Episode 380 - 28th December 2018
Our 2018 ends with a 'Best Of Women Of Honor' special. Something else ROH didn't get enough credit for across the year is the improvement in the quality of its female division. It isn't hard to understand why; matches still all blur into one because they never get more than 5-10 minutes, talent comes and goes without explanation, angles and storylines are kept to the barest of minimums and the Women Of Honor Title Tournament felt flat even before the final stunk up the place at Supercard Of Honor. Sumie Sakai was an overwhelmingly disappointing choice as the first champion but - to her immense credit - has carried the resurgence of the division on her shoulders with some really solid matches. This is a look back at some of the stand-out moments from the Women Of Honor this year. Ian Riccaboni is, once again, our host for the hour.
We begin with the debut of Tenille Dashwood at Honor Reigns Supreme. Her arrival injected some badly needed star-power to the WOH roster before injury and illness cruelly ended her year early (just when she looked set to win the title from Sumie at Death Before Dishonor). We see the majority of her debut bout, teaming with Mandy Leon to face Kelly Klein and Stacy Shadows.
Sumie's reign as WOH Champion is featured next. Clever editing makes her Supercard Of Honor title win over Kelly Klein look a little less clunky, and extended clips of her under-rated defences against Jenny Rose in Chicago and Chardonnay in Doncaster are included to document how she turned the new belt into a 'World' Championship.
The broadcast ends with a near-full broadcast of arguably THE outstanding Women Of Honor match from 2018, when Kelly Klein teamed with Oedo Tai of Kagetsu, Hazuki and Hana Kimura to face Sumie, Jenny, Tenille and the ace of Stardom Mayu Iwatani at Best In The World. In my review of that show I compared this match to the Michinoku Pro trios match at ECW Barely Legal in 1997, or the original Dragon Gate trios match at the first Supercard Of Honor...but a lack of time meant it was denied the opportunity to be as influential, impactful or inspirational as those two.
Tape Rating - N/A - As a 'best of' show this felt more authentic and focused than the rather cynical broadcast we got the previous week. Of course that is in no small part due to how much less content the WOH division has produced (and in turn the relatively small percentage of that content which had any real, long-term significance)...but the narrative was clearer here. Tenille was the biggest star until she got injured. Sumie was the veteran work-horse who surprised everyone by holding the belt all year and contesting some really competitive matches. Getting the Stardom talent and that cracking little 8-woman tag at Best In The World onto the show was smart and makes the episode worth checking out if you've not seen that one. I was disappointed with the lack of Deonna Purrazzo, who left in the second quarter of the year but was comfortably MVP of the division before she left. And it felt weird how little Kelly Klein was featured, considering she'd end the year as WOH Champion and was one of the few core, contracted, recognisable talents left on the roster going into 2019...
Top 10 Best Matches of 2018
10) Marty Scurll vs Christopher Daniels (****1/2 - Final Battle 2018)
9) Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe vs Young Bucks (****1/2 - Best In The World 2018)
8) Young Bucks/Adam Page vs Christopher Daniels/Frankie Kazarian/Scorpio Sky (****1/2 - 16th Anniversary Show)
7) Mark Haskins vs Adam Page (****1/2 - Honor Re-United: Night 2)
6) Frankie Kazarian/Scorpio Sky vs Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe vs Young Bucks (****1/2 - Final Battle 2018)
5) Jay Lethal vs Jonathan Gresham (****1/2 - Masters Of The Craft 2018)
4) Jay Lethal vs Jonathan Gresham (****1/2 - ROH on SBG Episode 364)
3) Jay Lethal vs Mark Haskins (****1/2 - Honor Re-United: Night 3)
2) Jay Lethal vs Jonathan Gresham (****1/2 - Honor Reigns Supreme 2018)
1) Dalton Castle vs Jay Lethal (****1/2 - 16th Anniversary Show)
HONOURABLE MENTIONS - Bucks/Page/Scurll vs Kingdom/Taylor (Manhattan Mayhem 7), SCU vs Bucks/Flip (Supercard Of Honor 12), Briscoes/Martinez vs Bucks/Page (SBG Episode 353), Lethal vs Kushida (Best In The World 2018) and Robinson vs Beretta (Global Wars 2018: Toronto)
Top 10 Best ROH on Sinclair Matches of 2018
10) Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe vs Roppongi 3K (**** - Episode 351)
9) Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe vs Frankie Kazarian/Scorpio Sky vs Young Bucks (**** - Episode 374)
8) Jay Lethal vs Punishment Martinez (**** - Episode 348)
7) Matt Taven/Vinny Marseglia/TK O'Ryan vs Cody/Young Bucks (**** - Episode 362)
6) Cody/Adam Page/Marty Scurll/Young Bucks vs Tetsuya Naito/Hiromu Takahashi/EVIL/SANADA/BUSHI (**** - Episode 352)
5) Silas Young vs Austin Aries (**** - Episode 350)
4) Dalton Castle vs Jay Lethal vs Matt Taven vs Cody (**** - Episode 357)
3) Jay Lethal vs Will Ospreay (**** - Episode 330)
2) Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe/Punishment Martinez vs Young Bucks/Adam Page (****1/2 - Episode 353)
1) Jay Lethal vs Jonathan Gresham (****1/2 - Episode 364)
By the sole measure of match quality, 2018 was an improvement on 2017 for Ring Of Honor. A quite substantial improvement in fact. Jay Lethal produced a slew of top quality wrestling matches, lifting the quality of the World Title scene and elevating the status of Jonathan Gresham with a stunning trilogy of matches too. If you watch nothing else from ROH all year, PLEASE check out the Castle/Lethal World Title Match from the 16th Anniversary. Under-rated by many, it reminded me of AJPW King's Road style matches, and I almost regret not going to 5* on it. No other match from 2018 has stuck in my mind the way that one did. The Young Bucks, even on their way out of Ring Of Honor, showed time and time again that their skill in complex, fast-paced and offence-filled matches is unparalleled - not just starring in several of the most spectacular and violent matches of the year, but also reliably providing high quality content for the weekly TV broadcast as well. The Briscoes flew under the radar in 2018, but actually had a REALLY strong, resurgent year. As the Bucks spent the year slowly heading towards the exit door it fell to the Briscoes to once again stand at the fulcrum of the tag division; a task they handled admirably with a number of superb matches - including a stunner with the Bucks at Best In The World, and victory in Ladder War 7 which saw then end the year as 10-time Tag Champions. Even by their lofty it standards it was quite the renaissance.
Unfortunately the problems for ROH in 2018 lie a little deeper. The roster remained as filled with talent as ever, and the constant quality produced from that talent carried the product...but often in spite of the circumstances surrounding them. In a year when ROH should have been HEAVILY planning for what the company would look like in a post-Elite universe, unfortunately the company ploughed on in a state of lazy, bean-counting stasis. The list of talent leaving ROH at the end of the year is vast, so the fact that we end the last full year with those guys on the roster with so very few memorable storylines to speak of is a travesty. Given that, of the few long-term storylines we did get, Bully f*cking Ray was in arguably the most high profile says everything about how dire the situation truly was. Complacency was very much the order of the day. Why worry about engaging, long-term storylines which create new stars when you have Cody under contract and access to Kenny Omega to deliver the biggest box office in history? Why think about the quality of your creative when you have the Young Bucks handling it via their weekly web-series? Why worry about ensuring Honor Club subscribers get a product they want keep paying money to watch when you can just leverage that New Japan relationship for a week of half-baked, half-assed house shows? With ticket and merch sales strong (hell, with a f*cking Madison Square Garden sell-out on their hands)...in short, it felt like nobody was stopping to think about why those things were happening and who was actually responsible for those numbers. In fact, there was so little concern that Ring Of Honor/Sinclair actively helped lay the foundations for AEW, the company that would eventually cripple them, by partnering with The Elite and helping them with All In. It was a staggering display of mismanagement, a continuation of a problem which has blighted ROH for the last couple of years...and one which would drop the promotion into a complete slump in 2019. The wrestling was good, the houses were strong. Sadly nobody appears to have thought about what would happen if the catalysts for those strengths (namely The Elite and NJPW) backed away until it was MUCH too late.
The kicker is that, I feel like I'm going to annoy people with my 2019 reviews. I actually watched a lot of the product in 2019 and, I actually rather liked it. 2019 was the year that it became fashionable to bury Ring Of Honor. Clearly much of that damage was self-inflicted; G-1 Supercard was a creative disaster, there were several baffling decisions/high profile bombs in creative and images of the company running huge buildings with miniscule audiences became an ongoing joke (and I've not even mentioned the fall-out from Joey Mercury's very public separation from the promotion). But on an in-ring level I really feel like the product was very under-appreciated, with the high volume of inbound talent acquisitions radically changing the make-up of the shows. Unfortunately none of that changes the fact that as 2019 progresses it becomes clear that ROH is as stone cold as it gets. 2018 was, in many ways, just another year of the self-sabotaging indifference and utter lack of foresight that put this once-proud company in such a sorry state.