Ring of Honor 16th Anniversary Live Review

Read my top matches of January and February lists!

A couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to finally attend a Ring of Honor show. It's been some time since I followed ROH with any type of regularity, but thanks to their working relationships with New Japan and CMLL, I have been able to keep up on what the major feuds are, and I had an idea that the show was going to have some good stuff on it.

ROH has been coming to my area - the Las Vegas metropolitan area - for a few years now, and from what I've read of old reviews, they tend to put on a good show, so I made sure to pay attention to the storylines this year and... Has the anniversary card stopped mattering?

It's one month away from Supercard of Honor, which I feel is getting far better matches and more buzz. The anniversary card, I had come to understand, was one of the four quarterly major cards. Still, there were some good matches, and the card looked more trustworthy than the Elimination Chamber card that happened the week before, so I paid the $35 for my ticket and made the trek to Sam's Town with my brother and 2 cousins.

First things first: Sam's Town is a surprisingly good wrestling venue. This is the only casino that does watch parties for WWE events, and as one of the oldest casinos (not only for Boyd Gaming, but the city as a whole), it shows its age constantly. It was built to look like an old saloon and the smoke that fills the video poker area certainly maintains that image.

That said, their staging area was large enough for the full setup, and there really aren't any bad seats in the building. My only gripe is that the second biggest wrestling company in the US really should be able to fill more than a 750-capacity ballroom/convention hall at the Casino that Time Forgot. Why not the Cox Pavilion? It only seats 2,500-3,000, it's closer to the Strip, and UNLV seems receptive to charging decent rates.

I got there about a half hour before the rest of my group because I wanted to see the pre-show festivities. The Kingdom was shouting a bunch of cult-like madness at the merchandise table, and SoCal Uncensored's members were signing copies of a comic book in the main area. I chose to pay a little extra for the meet and greets since I'd never tried one.

I met three of the talents: Hiromu Takahashi, Tenille Dashwood and Cody Rhodes. Takahashi seems pleasant enough. There was a language barrier, but he carried himself cordially. Dashwood was nice, but her match was a half hour away at that point so she did try to move people along quickly. Rhodes was absolutely a great guy. He was one to make a show of all his meet-ups and make them memorable. We talked about Stephen Amell and his "Dashing" gimmick. Fun stuff.

Anyway, on to the card itself:

Pre-show: WOH Tournament Eighth-Final: Sumie Sakai d. Hana Kimura - This match was more posturing than anyone else. The story was that 20-year-old Kimura tried to sell the arena and the tournament as her time, and that Sakai was no longer relevant. This led to a lot of taunting and a very slow match. It was decent in places, but I am surprised Sakai went over here. Why bring a young talent in from Japan if she's only there for one pre-show match that lasts less than 10 minutes? Oh well. 2 stars.

Pre-show: WOH Tournament Quarterfinal: Tenille Dashwood d. Brandi Rhodes - Clash of former WWE talents here. Dashwood came across as far more adept here, as she should have. The match was shorter, and moved a little quicker because the taunts were more blended into the action.
2 stars

My brother and cousins arrived just before this match, so I'll include their reactions to the main card, as their perspective is unique. Of the three, only one has watched any ROH this year, and even he had only seen 2-3 episodes. I actually follow it closer than any of them.

Main card time!

Hiromu Takahashi d. Flip Gordon - I'm not a big Flip fan, but he brought it more than usual tonight. Takahashi did his comedy with Daryl, but it wasn't too in-your-face, so it was fine. I was impressed with it. This is where I had a disagreement with my group. They all enjoyed Flip's style and thought Takahashi was breaking the action. I thought Takahashi wrestled a consistent match while Flip just tried to be over the top. Overall, a good match, though. 3.25 stars.

Marty Scrull d. Punishment Martinez - We all agreed, however, that this was the match of the night. Both men came out swinging and thoroughly impressed me. I knew Scrull was going to be good (and his entrance is amazing live), but I had never heard of Martinez. His match here made me a fan quickly. He reminds me of a more competent Baron Corbin, and that's a high compliment. Nothing on the card came close to this. 4 stars.

ROH TV Championship: Kenny King (c) d. Silas Young - It was in this match that I realized this was not a local crowd. King is a local boy who I've actually seen make appearances at FSW shows. He should have been big here, and my group certainly tried to cheer him on. That said, this building must have had a lot of Wisconsinites and midwesterners because Silas got a lot of support. A "Last Real Man" gimmick should NOT be getting face pops, but here we are. It threw off the match to me, and it wasn't going that well to begin with. They mustered a decent effort on talent, but it's not a must-watch. 2.5 stars

ROH 6-man Tag Team Championship: SoCal Uncensored d. Hung Bucks (c) - This match felt like an IWGP Jr. Heavyweight tag team bout: a spotfest. The match had everyone invested early on, but by the time they started setting up multiple table spots and the spot with the metal barriers, it started to feel contrived and I started losing interest. At one point my youngest cousin and I both heckled Kazarian for taking a punch, clearly laying down on a table unforced, and waiting nearly 30 seconds for his opponent to scale a ladder and jump off onto him. It looked so bad. Maybe it came across better on TV. For me, it's a top-flight spotfest, but there's a limit to that, and that limit is 3.5 stars

Cody d. Matt Taven - I am a huge Cody fan, and I looked forward to this, but this was a disappointment. Taven and The Kingdom are not interesting in any way, and this actually made me unsure of the CMLL pay-per-view since Taven was booked on the card.

The All-In bear thing was odd, but it made sense by the end when Kenny Omega revealed himself. Because I don't keep up with all the promos online, the Omega-Brandi kiss confused me, but having gotten the full context it makes more sense. Kind of. Worth noting: Some jerk jumped the guardrail and had to be carried out during Cody's entrance, and you can see Brandi and the bear waiting at the top of the entrance ramp until it gets taken care of. Not sure if it showed up on PPV, but it was interesting nonetheless. 2.5 stars

ROH Tag Team Championship: The Briscoes d. Motor City Machine Guns (c) - Admittedly, this was the match I looked forward to the most. I loved the MCMGs in TNA, and the Briscoes know tag wrestling. Because of this, I felt very let down by the brawling-type match they had. I know there is a better match in these two team, and the fact that it went so short and barely used any traditional tag-team wrestling disappointed me. Hopefully a rematch will give a better performance. 3 stars

ROH Championship: Dalton Castle d. Jay Lethal - I had a lot of fun with the crowd in this match. One of my cousins absolutely loathed the fact that a gimmick that was so over-the-top could take the title, so he began openly dumping on Castle throughout the match. Since we all liked Lethal from his TNA days anyway, all four of us joined in. The ROH hardcores in the row in front of us gave us multiple sideways looks, and having now seen an ROH crowd, I take that as a badge of honor.

As for the match itself, it was ok. Technically, there wasn't anything bad in it, but Lethal's heat segment ran a long time and never felt convincing. Castle never did anything to grab my interest, and combined, the two's effort became wasted as the match never entered 'great' territory. Not really worth going out of your way to see, but good enough, I guess. 3.25 stars

As to the crowd itself, I like the "us against the world" mentality the crowd has, and Bubba Ray Dudley is a great enforcer to push that narrative, but the company clearly has flaws that the crowd exacerbates. No one's face or heel work functions right because the crowd does whatever they please. In many ways, ROH fans remind me of ECW's fanbase: They recognize quality, and they are great support, but they overwhelm the show and cause the wrestlers to do too much. It makes the show very hard for newer people to get into because the crowd, wrestlers and announcers are all pushing different agendas.

Big spots are blown way early in the card, so the show feels like it peaks in the first hour. Later matches have to contrive increasingly ridiculous ways to push the envelope, and it leads to laughable spots like in the 6-man tag match. And with a face-heel dynamic that's fluid, the storyline is lost and you can only judge on the quality of moves.

Channel Awesome just talked about the movie Legend for "Tamara's Never Seen", and I think the problem with ROH is summarized in their review of the movie. Production values can be great, everyone can be acting at 100 percent, and the direction/cinematography can be gorgeous; however, if you forget to provide a story for people to follow, the whole thing becomes a boring mess. A beautiful boring mess, but a boring mess nonetheless. ROH isn't at that point yet, but there are plenty of signs of this company losing the narrative of their own feuds.

Don't let this critique take away from the fun of the show. I actually did have a great time, and my whole group agreed it was a better use of time and money than Elimination Chamber. I would definitely check out another ROH show if the storylines and matches get me invested.

Here's hoping ROH play their cards right so I'm back at the 17th anniversary.