McXal's Reviews

With Final Battle in the books, the 'End Of An Era' is very much upon us. We have a couple more weeks of pre-taped TV content left before ROH enters hiatus. At time of writing it remains very much unclear as to what ROH TV will look like as we enter 2022, if indeed Sinclair opts to continue to fill their syndication blocks with Ring Of Honor content at all. This week we're set for a 'Top Prospect Special', highlighting some of the top talents to come out of the Future Of Honor system. The Pure Title is on the line in the main event as 2017 TPT winner Josh Woods defends the belt against 2019 winner Dak Draper. Matt Makowski also makes his TV debut against Dante Caballero. Quinn McKay is our host, with Ian Riccaboni and Caprice Coleman on commentary in Baltimore, MD.

This is essentially a showcase match for the some of the final class of 'ROH Dojo'/Future Of Honor talents. In truth most of them have already started the process of moving on and working elsewhere, such as Keys, Rayo and Soriano all working AEW Dark matches. But with Final Battle in the books, they get a chance to show their stuff on national television and need to treat this as an opportunity to earn work elsewhere in 2022. Soriano is part of the 'Primal Fear' trio, Keys and Martin have appeared on TV periodically, mostly as enhancement talent in the Pure Division. It is Rayo's first TV match though. He was around ROH and working dark matches in 2019, but the pandemic killed his momentum. He makes his first ROH appearance of 2021, but comes into this having recently made debuts in both CZW and on AEW Dark.

Everyone starts at full tilt, knocking each other around the ring with big strikes. Keys drills Soriano with rolling German suplexes, pausing on the way to give Martin a back body drop at the same time. For the final suplex, Adrian grabs hold of Rayo so Keys simply tosses both of them. Diving powerbomb by Eric to curtail his momentum, and Martin goes right into a sit-out powerbomb on Rayo as well. The Peruvian recovers and hits a double underhook backbreaker on Soriano for 2, but he then gets distracted by the rest of Primal Fear setting Adrian up for a retaliatory superplex. Keys hits the ring and hits a Gory Driver/DDT combo on Martin and Rayo. Rayo recovers quickly and starts attacking all of Primal Fear on the outside...until Eric dives at them with a rather ungainly top rope plancha. Rayo hits a springboard elbow drop on Martin to win at 06:50 (shown)

Rating - * - A rushed and rather unspectacular spot-fest, which I didn't really need to see on my television. I'm not wholly unsentimental; I do understand that this match serves as a thank you for the hard work of the men involved and gives them a televised platform to put themselves in the shop window for future bookings. It just wasn't anything I wanted to see, never felt particularly exciting and they didn't do anything clever, innovative or even interesting about the lay-out either. It was just two guys rotating in and out hitting spots on each other with almost no reasoning or thought.

I covered Makowski's ROH debut, which was on an episode of Week By Week a while ago. As I said then, Matt is someone I really like and someone I'd certainly be looking to see ROH use more often if they were not potentially shutting up shop at the end of the year. He does at least get to make his TV debut before they do, and will be looking to make a big impression. Caballero will be a challenging opponent though. Whilst Dante has never really broken out, he has featured sporadically on television for several years now and is far more familiar with this stage than 'Weapon X'. That goofball Rocco comes out before the match to reveal that he is now Makowski's manager...

Makowski starts the match looking to ground his opponent, going as far as to toss Dante to the ground with a hammerlock suplex. Caballero has enough experience to realise the pattern of the match doesn't suit him - and tries to quicken the pace with a series of powerful tackles. Unfortunately Matt's strike-power is such that he is able to floor Dante with a single kick. He delivers an armbreaker from there and renders Caballero unable to utilise his arm immediately. Cross armbreaker blocked so Makowski simply transitions to a version of the Rings Of Saturn instead. Dante again tries to speed things up; charging into a couple of big strikes in the corner and muscling him up for a Michinoku Driver. A spinebuster follows for 2, with Caballero not looking remotely bothered to sell the arm. Indeed he actually starts using his 'injured' arm to rearrange his hair. Makowski snaps his arm over the ropes - and rebounds out of the corner with a flying enziguri for 2. Saito suplex scores for Caballero, but he gets distracted by Rocco...setting Makowski up for the cross armbreaker. Dante submits at 10:07 (shown)

Rating - * - Makowski is great, but this was an awful match which even his individual ability wasn't enough to salvage. Ten minutes ring-time was FAR too much; too long to be an effective squash, and also giving Dante enough time to demonstrate that he has some real areas of his game that could use some improvement. A real pet peeve of mine is a wrestler who competes in a match where having their limb worked over is literally THE focal point of the whole bout yet flat out ignores it when it's their turn to start hitting some spots. Caballero did this on multiple occasions and it absolutely killed the match for me. And that was before we had to tolerate Rocco getting involved, doing even more than Dante's lousy selling to damage Makowski's credibility.

In a fitting main event to a 'Top Prospect Special', our main event pits the 2017 winner against the 2019 winner. And having successfully defended the Pure Title against Brian Johnson at Final Battle, Josh agrees to Dalton Castle's demands to put the belt on the line against the Mile High Magnum tonight as well - which is a bold move considering how hard Draper pushed Jonathan Gresham at the 19th Anniversary earlier in 2021. The first ever winner of the Top Prospect Tournament (2011 winner Mike Bennett) guests on commentary.

The opening grapple is interesting since Draper is so tall and his height makes it difficult for even Woods to toss him around. It does mean that his long legs basically fall against the ropes without his knowledge and cost him his first rope-break too however. Dak has amateur wrestling experience of his own too, which he demonstrates by going hold-for-hold with the Technical Beast on the ground. He doesn't have the strike game of the champion though - which Josh demonstrates with a vicious flurry of strikes in the corner! Closed fist punch by Draper; taking the warning just to shut down Woods' momentum. DEAD-LIFT SUPERPLEX from the apron! Commercials leave more than four minutes of the match on the cutting room floor, during which time Woods was able to utilise a submission to force another rope-break...before Draper used his long legs to boot the champ in the head and gain an advantage for the first time. Draper Bomb blocked into a gutwrench suplex by Woods, but he is clearly nursing his midsection (which is the same body part that the Mile High Magnum worked when he challenged Gresham). A springboard knee strike rocks the challenger too, although Josh stays down clutching his torso at the same time. A muscular powerslam crushes the ribs again for a close nearfall. Rope run plancha by Draper...COUNTERED WITH A FLYING KNEE! It rockets Dak clean out of the ring, buying Woods precious seconds to recover. When Draper returns he eats another barrage of strikes and uses his last rope-break to save himself from being pinned. ONE-ARMED DRAPER BOMB to block a cross armbreaker, saving the match for the challenger again. Woods blocks the Magnum KO and counters to the Beast Slam, getting the win at 10:04 (shown)

Rating - **** - An admittedly very generous rating, particularly since we lost almost four minutes of the match (an absolute crime when you consider how much shorter Makowski/Caballero should have been). But I thought this was a really good TV bout, making excellent use of the core skill-sets of both performers to put together what I felt was a legitimately exciting match. They did some really interesting and unique stuff within here. Draper being too tall for Woods to use his typical ground-based grapple-heavy style made for a kick-ass start. The size and range of the challenger meant that Draper became a real threat to the title, in much the same way as he did when he challenged Gresham. The difference between Woods and Gresham as champions though is that, unlike Gresh, Josh has a rich MMA background and an imposing strike game as well. Whereas Gresham had to use his wrestling skill to out-wit Draper; Woods was able to bludgeon his way to victory. From the midway point in the match the vast majority of his offence consisted of strikes. It protected his injured midsection and it eventually rendered Draper so defenceless that he could hit his elaborate finishing move the 'Beast Slam' - which is exactly the kind of move Draper's height made impossible earlier. 

NEXT WEEK - Rok-C defends the Women's Title against Holidead, and we end the year with the traditional 'Christmas Surprise' multi-person tag match.

Tape Rating - ** - I'm not sure everyone will have enjoyed the main event as much as I did, but I really did think it was such a smart wrestling match. It was actually so good that it salvaged the whole episode, which had been almost insufferably bad before that. Putting it bluntly, the first half hour of this broadcast really sucked. With Final Battle in the books, it felt like a show nobody really cared about so they decided to give a televised 'thank you' to all their enhancement talents. As good as Matt Makowski is, his match with Dante Caballero was particularly poor (due to factors beyond Matt's control). It should have been cut WAY down to allow Woods/Draper to air in full...

Final Battle may be over and Rok-C may have retained the Women's Title, but The Prodigy's championship will be in jeopardy until the very end of the year. Although she survived the challenge of Willow she still has one more scheduled title defence - that taking place against Holidead on the Christmas TV special. Holidead and Willow have teamed up successfully in the past to defeat Alex Gracia and Laynie Luck - and will both enter this motivated to prove a point. Nightingale will be gunning to avenge her PPV loss to Rok-C, Holi will want to lay down a marker before her title shot.

Quinn and Willow start, with McKay valiantly standing up to the Babe With The Power and even taking her off her feet with a running dropkick. The champ tags and hits the Rok-Knees for 2. Holidead tags and tries to intimidate Rok-C, blocking all of the champion's signature lucha spots. Rok-C ups the stakes with her rope-walk lucha armdrag which hurls the imposing Holidead all the way back to her corner! But from there she cheap-shots Quinn from behind, handing her team the advantage. She and Willow isolate McKay, with Holi also finding the time to throw multiple strikes in Rok-C's direction as she watches from the apron. They work over her core, demonstrating more of their quirky but watchable odd-couple tag team chemistry along the way. Holidead becomes more and more pushy as she bosses Willow around, eventually refusing to tag her altogether even when Quinn rallies to hit a flipping neckbreaker. Nightingale blind-tags her way in to save her partner; dropping McKay with a wrist-clutch Olympic Slam for 2. Quinn survives, and scuttles into a hot tag to the champion. Legsweep/DDT combo on both opponents by a fired up Rok-C! Crossface on Willow...only to be attacked from behind by Holi. McKay saves with a flying crossbody, but is nowhere near ready to be back in the match. Holidead smears her into the canvas with a swinging flatliner. Willow looks to put an exclamation point on it with a superkick...only for McKay to duck causing Nightingale to lay out Holidead! TKO from McKay to Willow - and she scores a huge win at 11:41, whilst Holidead walks out!

Rating - ** - Perhaps I'm a tad biased because Willow is by far my favourite performer of these four, but after being promoted to a pay-per-view title challenger at Final Battle, she felt rather marginalised here. I certainly didn't feel that it made sense to have her putting Quinn over clean, making the finish come off somewhat like a gratuity to McKay for her commendable service as a broadcaster and team player. Having said that, I did like the heat segment on Quinn (she is so likeable it was hard to not cheer for her when experienced pros like Willow and Holidead are throwing her around), and all the exchanges to promote Rok-C/Holidead were really strong.