McXal's Reviews

So, as announced by Tony Khan on the March 2nd episode of AEW Dynamite, ROH has now been bought out entirely by Khan. It is reportedly a separate entity from All Elite Wrestling, wholly owned by Tony Khan and the purchase includes all intellectual property, video archive plus other assorted pieces. It was already apparent that Sinclair would listen to offers for ROH; you don't release almost all the employees and put pause on something to 're-imagine' it without being open to serious offers to take it off your hands and save yourself the hassle. Khan would subsequently reveal that there are a lot of details still to work out, but he does intend to keep ROH as an ongoing promotion of sorts (leading to immediate speculation that ROH will become 'AEW's NXT') and that his plan is to take charge of it as booker. I've made no secret of the fact that I do not like what Sinclair Broadcasting have done to the Ring Of Honor brand in their decade of ownership. I've heard plenty toe the corporate company line and explain to me how ROH would have died in 2011 if not for Joe Koff and Sinclair saving it. That may be so - but a decade of pillaging and profiteering from a once great wrestling company and its loyal fanbase, littered with so much indifference, so much corporate greed and so many fundamental errors and failures to try understand what it was that truly made Ring Of Honor so special - has left ROH in a sorry state. No wrestlers, no fans and its only real worth lying in a catalogue of historic footage; of which a huge portion of the noteworthy content pre-dates Sinclair's buy-out. I am joyous that the zombified, lifeless husk of ROH has been ripped off of SBG's life-support and put into the care of someone who is, if nothing else, a massive wrestling fan who will love and care for the legacy of Ring Of Honor. But for a company who once prided themselves on being 'fiercely independent', seeing them reduced to nothing and bought out by one of the many companies who has overtaken them building in no small part on the foundations that ROH had built during it's near-twenty year existence, is sad. ROH as we once knew it is dead. We knew that anyway, but Khan's buy-out ensures that it will never be a separate entity - a 'fiercely independent' promotion - again. To be totally transparent, I am waiting to hear more details about what the 'new ROH' will look like (if Tony truly does want to do anything more with it than use the tape library to bolster AEW's own streaming service plans) before I decide to continue my own ROH review series. I've been doing this for twenty years; I love ROH and in many ways it chronicles my journey from adolescence to adulthood, but it may be that Supercard Of Honor is my step-off point. Assuming that show even happens - as I begin writing this review there are currently rumours that ROH/Sinclair have done very little and have pretty much downed tools on promoting the show whilst the sale was negotiated. 

On to today's show and it's another 'Hall Of Fame' special. After a month of individual spotlight HOF episodes, we've now got another episode picking out choice cuts from the entire class. I'm not sure I'd call that particularly 'innovative and exciting' content - the kind we were promised during this interim period between Final Battle 2021 and Supercard Of Honor. But at least some additional effort has been made with this episode, as Ian Riccaboni and 'ROH Ambassador' Cary Silkin are live in person, in the studio together to host it.

Ian opens the show and introduces a video package documenting Jay and Mark Briscoe's twenty year run in ROH. This is recycled from their own episode; as is the second video package featuring all of their championship victories. Cary arrives and puts them over hard, emphatically agreeing that they were the right choice for first pick into the Hall Of Fame

Ian and Cary move on to talking about what "All Elite Wrestling's" Bryan Danielson meant to ROH. Cary says that the famous Bryan/Nigel match happened in London, not Liverpool, which irks me. I don't mind that his memory slipped for a second, that happens and it isn't Cary's fault. I am annoyed that so little care is shown for ROH's product that they couldn't be bothered to pick that up and re-shoot it. Minor quibbles aside, we go into a montage of highlights from Danielson's career including an epic with Roderick Strong at the original Supercard Of Honor, unifying the World and Pure Titles in Liverpool, a wild Fight Without Honor against Takeshi Morishima and his farewell bout with Nigel.

They move on to discussing Samoa Joe with Cary stopping to point out that Joe was a 'key component' in why ROH was able survive some huge problems early in his tenure as owner. His highlights package includes a few clips from his 2015 run, ending with footage of the June 2015 dark match where he teamed with AJ Styles to face The Addiction in New York (after he'd signed with WWE). This is the first time they've showed this on ROH television at all I believe...

And we can't talk about Joe in ROH without talking out the last inductee - CM Punk. Cary admits to being nervous when Punk signed his WWE contract on the ROH World Title belt. Punk's highlight video includes a battle with Terry Funk, his World Title win over Austin Aries (post-match speech included this time), his classic defence against James Gibson and his tearful farewell in Chicago.

The episode ends with Ian presenting a special 'Hall Of Fame' legacy award to Cary, who seems genuinely touched

NEXT WEEK - The clip-shows continue as we take a look back at the history of Supercard Of Honor

Tape Rating - N/A - It was nice to get Ian and Cary in the studio to at least make this seem a little more authentic. For the most part it still felt lazy, cheaply produced, not at all 'innovative' or 'exciting' and as a premise I think this show felt a little superfluous coming after four weeks of Hall Of Fame episodes already. But some of the old footage is lovely to see, the inductees to the first ever ROH HOF class are absolutely deserving and Cary's legacy award was a nice way to end. It is impossible to escape the feeling that ROH is now limping towards to end of its run under Sinclair ownership with some truly slapdash filler content...