McXal's Reviews

So here's where ROH and their pandemic-filler content might lose me a little. Of all the options available to them, their next profile episode focuses on PCO, which to me feels rather strange. I've found the guy entertaining, but he had barely been in the company a year by this point and his World Title win at Final Battle 2019 remains one of the absolute low points in the eighteen year history of the Ring Of Honor Championship...

I assume they went with PCO because they captured plenty of sit-down interview footage with him in and around Final Battle time when he worked the main event. It opens with him talking about deciding to walk away from wrestling after a relatively successful first stage of his career both in Canada, the WWF and elsewhere...but never closing the door because it was in his blood, and never stopping believing that he could come back and go to the very top. 

That's all the discussion we get on the rest of his career, and skip right to Villain Enterprises' rivalry with the Briscoes - which he calls the craziest feud of his career. He then jumps ahead to his terrible #1 contendership match with Marty Scurll, talking about it entirely in character and therefore coming off as a complete goof.

A TV edited version of PCO vs Marty Scurll from Glory By Honor 17 is shown.

From there he begins discussing his World Title win and calls it the biggest night of his career. He also calls Rush an opponent who 'gets over-excited' during his matches, which I can completely believe!

A TV edited version of Rush vs PCO from Final Battle 2019 is shown.

The episode ends with unaired footage of PCO being congratulated by the rest of Villain Enterprises in the ring after Final Battle '19, and addressing the crowd on the microphone...

Tape Rating - N/A - I don't want to be too harsh in my criticism because you really do need to consider the truly unprecedented circumstances within which these episodes are being put together. Having to cobble these episodes together at short notice can't be easy, and after they shot a whole heap of interview footage with PCO to promote Final Battle just a few months earlier, I completely understand why they opted to use it for an easy way to fill an hour of television here. And with that in mind I also do understand why there wasn't a whole lot with PCO talking about the first half of his career (everything pre-ROH is addressed in less than thirty seconds). Where I do take issue with this is the match content. The Final Battle title win I can live with, but PCO had a great run in ROH in 2019 - so to run a 'PCO special' and feature his two absolute worst matches is a real shame.