McXal's Reviews

The last two weeks of ROH television have been wonderful from an in-ring perspective, whilst being a little light on angles or storyline progression. That may chance tonight as we see La Faccion Ingobernable for the first time the 19th Anniversary. On that night they lost control of the TV and Tag Championships...then found themselves confronted with a dangerous new enemy in the form of Brody King's 'Violence Unlimited'. Our main event tonight is Rush, La Bestia and Kenny King of LFI taking on Brody King, Chris Dickinson and Homicide. Quinn McKay, Ian Riccaboni and Caprice Coleman will be our broadcast team in Baltimore, MD.

This is an extremely interesting match. Both men are products of ROH's 'Future Of Honor' system, and they each enter tonight on the back of arguably their career-best matches thus far. Draper's performance in a high profile PPV Pure Title Match with Jonathan Gresham really turned heads even in defeat, whilst Eli's scorcher with LSG back at Episode 498 is still fresh in the memory. Quinn informs us that Isom hasn't been pinned or submitted since his return too. It means both men have eyes on them; they have proven they can produce high quality matches - now they need to keep hitting that bar on a consistent basis. Draper's presence here indicates that, having failed to win the Pure Title, he has now transferred back to the TV Title division...

Draper looks to quickly establish dominance with his size and power, but needs more than a minute to finally knock Isom down. Eli tries to quicken the pace...so Draper pancakes him through the air straight down onto his face. Recognising that Dak is setting up to work the midsection just as he did to Gresham at the PPV, Isom tries to cover up in the ropes but is punished with a flurry of stomps to the ribs. Mile High Muffler blocked so Draper drives repeated shoulders to the sternum instead. Again Isom tries to quicken things up, misses a springboard, but this time does counter Dak into a lucha-inspired armdrag. Draper hotshots him throat-first on the top rope to shut it down. Draper Bomb blocked, so Dak ducks out under the ropes and SPINEBUSTERS Isom into the side of the ring for 2. Grounded bear hug applied during commercial break...into a disrespectful barrel toss when Eli tries to escape. Still he evades the Draper Bomb though, this time landing a jumping enzi to the neck and following it with a rib-selling ripcord northern lights! Dak kills his momentum by leaving the ring, so Eli gives chase with a SPRINGBOARD MOONSAULT TO THE FLOOR! Frog Crossbody back inside gets 2. Isom doesn't appear to have enough strength to lift Draper for The Promise, so instead he lands an arm-capture German suplex. DRAPER BOMB gets 2. Once again Isom blocks the Muffler, but this time Draper rides the counter and hits a springboard elbow. Isom just keeps countering Dak's signature holds though. Promise blocked...Magnum KO blocked...as the fifteen minute time limit expires. It is a time limit draw at 12:24 (shown)

Rating - *** - A very solid follow-up to Draper/Gresham and Isom/LSG. This lacked the intensity and urgency of those matches but served as an extremely competent showcase of their skills, told a simple and relatable story throughout and left us wanting more. I'm an advocate for the selective use of time-limit draws where a booker wants to 'protect' his talent and not book either of them to lose cleanly, so much preferred this over a goofy, overbooked conclusion. Both guys leave having enhanced their reputation, having proven that the quality of their respective previous high profile bouts was not a fluke and having laid the groundwork for a rematch down the road. 

Both men quickly call for five more minutes, and referee Joe Mandak seems to agree. Before he can ring the bell they are interrupted by Dalton Castle sporting a new look, new music, new entrance routine and new-style Boys. He thinks ROH has gotten 'dull' and everyone 'only thinks about competition'...and he reminds everyone that this is a television show, so needs some 'spice' and 'drama'. To that end he kicks both Eli and Dak in the dicks then leaves!

Violence Unlimited are in a dirty, smokey room somewhere. Homicide says he's back 'like a ghost' and puts LFI and The Foundation on notice. Dickinson calls their group the 'past, present and future' of ROH, whilst Brody gloats that Rush no longer has 'the numbers' on him. He isn't coming for the World Title anymore - now he wants Rush's 'head'...

APRIL 20TH WEEK BY WEEK - Beer City Bruiser defeated Joe Keys in a YouTube exclusive, and is then confronted by the rest of the Future Of Honor guys (Dante Caballero, Eric Martin and Ken Dixon). Dixon smashes a beer bottle over Dante's head, then helps Bruiser chokeslam Martin over the guardrail into the crowd. Backstage he tells Quinn McKay that he is fed up of the 'Dojo propaganda', calls Pure Wrestling a 'failure' and says he never fit in with the rest of the Dojo guys anyway...

The whereabouts of Vincent remain unknown. The rest of The Righteous; Bateman, Vita and 'Dutch' (Bill Carr) enter the arena. Bateman (cleverly playing off Marseglia's mannerisms and mic style) says Vincent is gone - but his 'hand is still guiding the knife'. Vita, reading from a card, tells us to prepare for a 'Righteous rebirth'...

La Faccion Ingobernable have ruled ROH with chaos, anarchy and the numbers on their side since Rush took the World Title back from PCO in early 2020. Rush is a man pinned only once in his entire ROH career in fact. But after using those numbers to keep Brody King from the World Title at Final Battle 2020, then doing so again to injure him and take him off television early in 2021 they have unwittingly created a new and completely unexpected problem. Brody is back and now he has back-up. Dickinson has appeared once before - in an under-rated banger with Michael Elgin back in during the Winter Warriors Tour. He was supposedly promised more dates, but reportedly felt that ROH 'ghosted' him after his controversial inter-gender match with Kimber Lee went viral. He now returns and, as regular viewers of NJPW Strong will tell you, remains an outstanding worker. But his return is a secondary story to the comeback of an ROH original. Homicide is back for the first time since 2014; a former World Champion, a legend in this promotion and a man with previous when it comes to violent factions causing chaos in ROH. Kenny King calls The Foundation 'lucky' that they got to face an 'unprepared' LFI and took belts from them at the PPV...and tells Dickinson that 'there are no women to hit with chairs' in ROH!

Rush walks right up to Brody and punches him square in the face to get us started! They trade blows ferociously as everyone else rumbles around ringside! Bestia crumbles Homicide against the ringpost, whilst inside the ring Kenny almost pins Dickinson early before they try to knock each other out with martial arts kicks. As we go to commercials we see Rush once again using electrical cable to choke out Brody on the floor. It seems like a big portion of the match was cut for time sadly, including LFI triple stomping Dickinson from the apron and Homicide breaking out the TOPE CON HILO on Rush! We come back with Dickinson blocking the Royal Flush and unleashing a fired up Brody who steamrolls everyone. Falcon arrow/Warrior Splash combo by Dickinson and Brody gets 2, with Kenny saving then back dropping Homicide over the top rope. Somersault senton by La Bestia scores a nearfall. That's enough for Brody, who whacks 'the patriarch of LFI' with a steel chair to get his team DQ'd at 04:29 (shown)

Rating - N/A - There wasn't much to rate here. Most of the match was clipped out, so all we really got to see was a succession of energetic snippets of a brawl. I really liked the presentation of Rush here though. Clearly he's the rudo in this situation, but he wasn't presented as a coward at all. He had no problem fighting anyone Violence Unlimited put before him and held his own throughout, which adds to his credibility and aura far more than another title defence with a shady finish. As a fan of this company since 2002, I won't pretend it wasn't wonderfully nostalgic seeing Homicide hit that tope con hilo again as well.

The match is over, but the fight obviously isn't. Rush gets some payback for his father by battering Brody down the aisle with a chair. Their fight knocks the entire aisleway guardrail over...and as it hits the ground The Foundation charge out of the locker room to get in on the action! Ian and Caprice flee the announce table as members of LFI, The Foundation and Violence Unlimited brawl with each other all over the set!

NEXT WEEK - The war continues as Tony Deppen of Violence Unlimited takes on The Foundation's 'Hot Sauce' Tracy Williams...with the TV Title on the line.

Tape Rating - *** - A different kind of show this week, and I thought the change of pace was welcome. After a few very wrestling-centric weeks of programming it was nice to switch gears and get some storylines moving again (although Dak/Eli did still provide a really solid in-ring encounter). Dalton's rebrand was at the very least 'interesting', with very little given away at this point. Beer City Bruiser gaining a new ally was shown on TV for anyone that missed it on YouTube, and we checked in with The Righteous following the 'Unsanctioned Match' that left the whereabouts of both Vincent and Matt Taven unknown. Then came the main event segment - and I will call it a segment because it the 'match' part was barely more than a few clips - which gave us another skirmish in the now three-pronged battle for ROH supremacy between the purists of The Foundation, the egotists of La Faccion Ingobernable and the brawlers of Violence Unlimited. It felt like ROH accomplished a lot with very little screen-time in this episode, and that is to be commended. Not everything will have stuck with every fan I'm sure, but I also felt like everyone got something and fans of all types were given a reason to tune in again next week. That is the very essence of good pro-wrestling television isn't it?