ROH on Sinclair - Episode 450 - 1st May 2020
Ring Of Honor's character spotlight special episodes go international this week, as we dive into the career of the UK's Mark Haskins. This one is, of course, more bittersweet because Haskins is someone who would never make it back to Ring Of Honor due to the Coronavirus pandemic; at a time when he was scheduled to wrestle for the World Championship on pay-per-view.
This episode leans heavily on pre-recorded interview footage with Haskins, and opens with footage where he talks about his childhood and beginnings in wrestling (which I believe were shot before Gateway To Honor 2020). It goes into more detail than we'd seen on TV previously though. He credits his match with Jay Briscoe on the Honor United 2018 Tour as the match which really opened eyes within ROH as to what he was capable of, and earned him his run in the International Cup later that year
A TV edit of Mark Haskins vs Jay Lethal for the ROH World Title from Honor Re-United Night 3 (London) is shown
Next they air an extended highlights package detailing Haskins' feud with Bully Ray, culminating in a violent Street Fight at Final Battle 2019 - from which Haskins emerged victorious.
A TV edit of Mark Haskins vs Alex Shelley from Free Enterprise is shown
Like Flip's episode last week, we end with an action-packed music video montage of various Haskins high spots from his run in ROH.
Tape Rating - N/A - From an in-ring perspective this was a really good episode. Haskins/Lethal from 2018's Honor Re-United Tour is one of the best ROH World Title Matches in recent years, and the Haskins/Shelley match from Free Enterprise is really fun too (although had already aired on TV earlier this year). To credit the production team as well, they did a clever job editing together a 45-minute spotlight episode on a wrestler without any new interview footage to call upon.