McXal's Reviews

We now enter Ring Of Honor's Coronavirus-enforced quarantine shut-down period, following the cancellation of the 18th Anniversary Show and Past vs Present in Las Vegas. Last week's episode was the only show where any content from Bound By Honor/Gateway To Honor 2020 weekend would make air...and for the foreseeable future ROH will be dipping into their extensive back catalogue to fill their schedule on the assorted Sinclair stations. I'll be checking these out in the interests of being a completist and ensuring all episodes of the show are covered for my 'McXal's Reviews' archive, but I must admit I'll mostly be watching out of curiosity to see how ROH/Sinclair covered and worked through the pandemic on television. We start this period of inactivity with a special spotlight episode covering the ROH careers of the 'Day One' veterans the Briscoes, and I believe the plan is to continue these special character profile broadcasts each week, as the world battled the initial escalation of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

We are literally on the Briscoe farm, so I presume this is using footage ROH already had in the can either for TV or for a compilation DVD I've not seen. It must be relatively recent though as Jay has his dreadlocks (which he hasn't had for that long). They talk about wrestling in their backyard as kids, with Mark literally digging around under the house and pulling out a rusty length of barbed wire they'd used for barbed wire boards in their youth! It's interesting to hear Jay comparing how they used to work as a team in the hen-house, on the farm as kids, to how they work as wrestlers in adulthood.

A TV edited version of the Briscoes vs Kevin Steen & El Generico from Driven 2007 is shown.

Back on the farm, Jay and Mark are perched in their home-made ring talking about their fights going back to their youth (with some adorable photos of them as kids overlaid). That segues into talking about Era Of Honor Begins and Mark criticises Jay for embarrassing the family by losing to Amazing Red that night (just as he spent most of 2002 berating Jay for!). They air clips of Mark's debut (beating Jay) at Honor Invades Boston, with the brothers talking about Jay being knocked out during the match - which I'd never known. They then show highlights of their other matches down the years; First Anniversary, 5th Year Festival Finale (still their best match) and even the Pick 6 contendership bout from the HDNet show.

Jay makes fun of Mark for never having won a singles title, whilst he is a two-time World Champion. Mark says he 'never cared about no singles title'...which is DEVASTATING to hear given how much time Kevin Kelly (and later Ian Riccaboni) invested in assuring me that it has 'always' been Mark's dream to be TV Champion.

A TV edited version of the Jay Briscoe vs Mark Briscoe World Title Match from Best In The World 2013 is shown. VQ on it is somehow way worse than the footage they've shown from 2002, 2003, 2007 or 2010 on this same episode...

Tape Rating - N/A - I really enjoyed this. Of course they had the benefit of having this interview footage in the can, and I'm not sure if it had already been broadcast on Week By Week or in some kind of compilation DVD/VOD which I'd not seen previously. However, I liked getting a glimpse into some of the off-screen relationship between the Briscoes, particularly when they stayed out of character and discussed their childhood. The match content was obviously great for those who haven't seen it previously as well. I will say that Best In The World 2013 was a weird choice of Briscoe vs Briscoe match to show. I understand why it was chosen, since it took place under Sinclair ownership and featured the Briscoes looking much more like they do in 2020 than the singlet-wearing stuff from their early years - but the VQ was so bad and the match isn't THAT good to make it worthwhile.