McXal's Reviews

We've arrived at the big 'Championship Edition' of Ring Of Honor television. It's a significant week where we'll see the Tag Titles and World Titles both up for grabs. La Faccion Ingobernable are deeply involved in both; challengers to The Foundation in the form of Dragon Lee and Kenny King...and defending champion as Rush looks to stave off the challenge of a highly motivated Shane Taylor. In the absence of live shows, 'event' episodes of their weekly TV show like this are crucial, meaning the matches and booking need to be on-point. More eyes than ever are on the product, now is the time to deliver the goods. Quinn McKay, Ian Riccaboni and Caprice Coleman are in Baltimore, MD.

The cold open video package for Rush/Taylor made the rounds on social media last week, and it is really good. From the opening credits we go into the LFI locker room where Rush, Dragon Lee and La Bestia del Ring lay out their plans to destroy and humiliate all in their path. Kenny King enters and asks Rush to act honourably with Shane Taylor (since he and Shane are friends). Amy Rose undermines Kenny, before the rest of LFI walk out having reminded King of his place...

The pandemic shut-down means that Lethal and Gresham have been Tag Champions for a long timem defeating the Briscoes in a superb match at Final Battle 2019 and holding them ever since. They now sit as two of the most influential men on the roster; Lethal 'the Franchise' and one of the most decorated champions in Ring Of Honor history and Gresham the reigning Pure Champion, riding the wave at the forefront of the overwhelmingly popular 'Foundation' movement. They are seeking to rebuild ROH from the tattered ruins of 2019 with purity and honour and have been embraced by the fanbase for doing so. But it has brought them into conflict with La Faccion Ingobernable. The 'ungovernable' group featuring World Champion Rush and TV Champion Dragon Lee are embarking on a reign of anarchy and chaos, now backed up by their father who debuted at Final Battle to trash the main event of ROH's biggest show of the year. The Foundation have denounced LFI's lawless ways, and both factions contain multiple championships. This is a philosophical battle for the moral and artistic future of ROH as a promotion. The 'purists' of The Foundation, the 'ungovernables' of LFI...we see their first skirmish tonight.

Kenny King has a long history with Lethal and spits at his hand in a very Covid insecure manner rather than shake it. Gresham and Lee start and holy sh*t are they good together. Gresh quickly forces Dragon - unfamiliar with the Pure Rules - to lazily use up his team's first rope-break inside a minute. The pace, speed and fluidity of the work between them is just spectacular to watch. Kenny tags in next, full of confidence and extremely excited to get back in a ring with Lethal. Jay quickly looks to get him on the canvas; backing himself as a better technical wrestler and aware that Kenny's natural athleticism is negated. The Figure 4 Leglock is soon applied, driving King to the ropes to use up LFI's second rope-break. Despite that King remains so confident that he slaps Lethal in the face, rolls out of the ring and starts strutting like Beyonce (seriously). Lee steps in with Lethal, brilliantly framed by Riccaboni as a battle between the 'greatest TV Champion ever' and the current champ. Dragon uses an illegal closed fist punch (earning an official warning for his team) to distract Jay, then rocks him with a missile dropkick. TOPE SUICIDA NAILED! It drives Lethal into the lawless environment of the floor where the TV Champ can put the boots to The Franchise with great aggression. During the commercial break LFI work over Lethal's back - with almost five minutes of match left on the cutting room floor. When we return we see Jay shaking off the attack to give King a SUPER DRAGON SCREW! Gresham and Lee rip into each other with strikes, before Gresh tricks King into booting his own partner in the head! Kenny doesn't have time to make amends either since The Octopus drops down for a hanging dragon screw in the ropes. Next he stomps on Dragon's arm and uses it to hook him up for La Magistral. King dives in to break the pin, costing La Faccion Ingobernable their final rope-break. ROCKET LAUNCHER CUTTER COUNTERED TO A CRADLE TOMBSTONE PILEDRIVER! Gresham barely survives that, and isn't even back up before Lee knees him in the back of the head. Fisherman buster by King...INCINERATION! LETHAL BREAKS THE PIN! It means the champs lose their first rope-break but stay alive in the match. TOPE SUICIDA...BUT KING DUCKS! Lethal lays out Amy Rose! Dragon Lee punches Gresham's lights out whilst referee Joe Mandak checks on Amy! With his head already brutalised, Gresh goes out like a light. Lee pins The Octopus to win at 09:18 (shown)

Rating - *** - I'd like to see the full, unedited version of this match. Maybe ROH will put it on Honor Club in the same way they did for the Pure Tournament? This was really good (particularly the closing stretch), and a brilliant way to set the stage for a bigger Foundation/LFI rivalry...but cutting out five minutes of a match which only goes fourteen minutes makes it very hard to rate this. Missing five minutes, which made up all of LFI's heat segment on Lethal really sucks and is yet another advertisement for why Ring Of Honor really needs a longer TV show. What they did include, and therefore what this match did really well, was play up the differences in ideology between two groups. LFI trashed the Pure Rules, not caring about their rope-breaks, happily using closed-fists, breaking pinfalls and cheating to win. Whilst The Foundation celebrated each rope-break they took from their opponents, the strength of LFI was that they didn't give a sh*t. The Foundation care about a specific style and presentation of pro-wrestling...which handicapped them against ungovernable ruffians who cared only about the victory. With the Tag Titles in their possession, the balance of power now shifts to La Faccion Ingobernable.

'Being ROH World Champion means you stand at the front of the line of innovation', says Shane Taylor over a stirring montage showing Low Ki, Samoa Joe, Bryan Danielson, Takeshi Morishima, Nigel McGuinness, Tyler Black, Kevin Steen and Adam Cole (among others, but tellingly not showing Kyle O'Reilly or Cody Rhodes). But he thinks that innovation doesn't include people like him: 'African American males who speak up about politics and social issues'. He acknowledges that his ethos makes him scary...but when the fans voted for him to get this shot via 'The Experience' and #ChooseYourHonor on social media, it proved that Ring Of Honor's audience do relate to him and are ready for 'someone like him' to ascend to the throne. His promo is fantastic and ends with him calling himself the 'uncrowned World Champion'. Rush has been a dominant performer in his ROH career and seems more unstoppable than ever. But he has never faced anyone like Shane Taylor before. It feels like real momentum is building behind Taylor, giving this a genuine big fight feel. New Tag Champ Kenny King, current stable-mate of Rush and former stable-mate of Taylor, joins commentary (alongside Caprice Coleman, himself a member of the same group with Taylor and King). 

No handshake from Rush, and he starts the match by wiping his boot on the back of Shane's head. The champ tries to overwhelm the challenger early using his speed, striking and sheer intensity...but can't shake him and winds up smeared all over the canvas after a pop-up spinebuster from Taylor. Instantly Shane takes the match outside to batter the champ into the guardrails; brawling and fighting on the floor a more comfortable setting for him clearly. Ian R points out that the likes of Vincent, Taven, Brody and PCO have all used this strategy with some success too. HANGING DDT ON THE FLOOR! That knocks Rush for a loop, clearly convincing Taylor he can return it to the ring. That turns out to be over-confident as Rush explodes back into the fight, pulling Shane back to the outside and repeatedly smashing a door in the guardrails into his head. If that weren't enough he then throws Taylor into the guardrails with such force that he almost breaks them. Just like Final Battle he pulls electrical cable from under the ring and starts whipping his challenger with them. Now brimming with confidence, every strike Rush delivers is broken up by a pose or pointed word into the camera lens. He sees Taylor breathing heavily and moving slowly meaning he can now stalk him around the ring and pepper him with shots. Shane tries his best to fire back, hits a knee strike then LEVELS Rush with a lariat for 2. Baldo Bomb gets 2 as well...before Taylor collapses to the ground beaten down and exhausted by the rigours of this championship match. GERMAN SUPLEX/INCINERATION COMBO gets 2 for Rush. With a smirk on his face he hangs Taylor in the ropes and hits a diving double stomp looking to extinguish the dying embers of the challenger's fire. Rush leans casually on the ropes as Taylor struggles to get up...but when he does he is still throwing bombs and rattling El Toro Blanco to remind him that he has a puncher's chance. HEADBUTT by Rush! Delivered with such force that he almost KO's himself on Shane's hard skull. SLAPS BY RUSH! HEADBUTTS BY TAYLOR! PACKAGE PILEDRIVER! ONE COUNT OF DISRESPECT BY RUSH! Turnbuckle belly to belly suplex nailed! Both men are down in a heap again! Taylor pulls himself up, but inadvertently leaves himself in the corner. Rush licks his lips and lines up the Bull's Horns...but knocks Todd Sinclair down in the process. La Bestia del Ring immediately comes to ringside with a chair and hands it to his son. Kenny King leaves commentary and stops Rush using it! He grabs the chair for himself, swings it seemingly at Rush, who ducks. Taylor is knocked the f*ck out with the chair as Rush and King embrace! Kenny tells Rush to finish him. BULL'S HORNS! Rush wins at 15:38 (shown).

Rating - *** - Another big title match with genuine anticipation around it...once again let down by terribly unimaginative booking. As with Rush/Brody at Final Battle, before the finish this was a great match. In truth it was better than the Brody King match, with genuine drama created as Taylor fought desperately against the tide to close the gap on a composed, dangerous and comfortable main event player like Rush. The story was simple; Taylor's size, brawling and strike-power makes him dangerous - but Rush has the class and big-match experience to punish every mistake. Unfortunately the quality of the match was let down by another bogus finish. It is apparent that Delirious doesn't understand the power of a clean finish or the ability of a GREAT match with a clean finish to protect, promote and build new stars in a way that 'clever' booking like this never can. There has been a real ground-swell of support for Shane Taylor and those fans didn't need to see him 'protected' by a meddlesome 'swerve' angle featuring Kenny King. Fans come to Ring Of Honor for great matches not overbooking marring major matches (or maybe they used to) and unfortunately Delirious has a track record for failing to deliver that, which is why fans abandoned ROH in 2019 when The Elite weren't around to plug the holes in a sinking ship. ROH has more eyes on it than it has for some time...and it is frustrating to see them squander that opportunity with stunts like this. Rush is apparently the sixth-longest reigning ROH Champion of all time. Yet ROH still don't trust him to have a great match on his own it seems. In fact his tenure is pretty amazing considering he has NEVER been put in a position to really deliver a genuine top-tier, MOTYC, iconic World Championship Match.

NEXT WEEK - Josh Woods vs Dalton Castle in a Pure Rules Match, plus a four-way #1 contendership bout between Matt Taven, Jay Lethal, Jay Briscoe and EC3.

Tape Rating - ** - In terms of the wrestling on display this is clearly a good show. Both championship matches on this special 'Championship Edition' produce in-ring action of a decent standard. The main event was a f*cking fantastic WRESTLING match for the first fifteen minutes it ran. But in my introductory paragraph I said it was important that both the matches and booking were 'on-point' this week...and I simply don't believe they were. In truth this felt like an enormously frustrating missed opportunity; a blown chance to impress with more fans tuning in. The ideological chasm between LFI and The Foundation looks set to be a central pillar of the ROH product, and I appreciate that as 'ungovernables', LFI don't necessarily follow the rules. But the ROH Championship has always been about being the 'best in the world' or, as Taylor put it, being at the 'front line of innovation'. Men like Rush and Taylor fit that mould. Rush is charismatic and as good as anyone in the world as a performer in a low/no-crowd post-pandemic environment. Taylor is gritty, superbly-spoken and as authentic as it gets (as well as being a hell of a wrestler). The stage felt set for them to put the BS to one-side and produce the kind of 'big-time' World Title bout which used to be ROH's calling card. Sadly we didn't get that. Sadly once again Delirious didn't back his performers to deliver the goods without ref bumps and shenanigans to protect them at the end. I won't pretend that the end of the main event didn't leave me bitterly disappointed - even outright annoyed. And it came after the restrictive time-limits/formatting of ROH shows meant that the Tag Title Match was shafted for time, radically reducing the impact it was able to make as well. In Gresham, Dragon Lee, Rush, Lethal and Taylor ROH had some of the best, most dynamic and most relevant professional wrestlers on the planet on their TV show this week. Some of my favourite wrestlers anywhere in fact. Therefore, that I come away disappointed and completely distracted from their skill as professional athletes and performers is telling. ROH promised they'd do better than this. They have to do better than this...