Csonka’s ROH TV Review 4.20.16

ROH TV 4.20.16 (taped 2.19.16)

OFFICIAL RESULTS
– Jushin Liger & Matt Sydal defeated Dalton Castle & Ryusuke Taguchi @ 8:20 via pin [**½]
– Delirious defeated Gedo @ 7:53 via pin [*]
– ROH TV Title Match: Tomohiro Ishii defeated ROH TV Champion Roderick Strong @ 20:07 to become the NEW ROH TV Champion! [****]

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– Matches come from the ROH Honor Rising Night One, which took place on February 19th. It seems a bit silly to be airing them now.

Jushin Liger & Matt Sydal defeated Dalton Castle & Ryusuke Taguchi: This felt like the regular, solid but unspectacular opening match you’d get on any NJPW show, minus the cool young lions. Taguchi doing his own version of Castle’s gimmick was fun, but then I remembered his offense is based off of his ass and I came back to Earth. Castle and Liger had some fun interaction, with a call back to the singles they had on ROH TV, including Liger posing with the Boys. Sydal hit the shooting star press on Castle and that as enough to pick up the win. This was both solid and unspectacular, and Castle losing in his Japan debut felt poorly booked.

Delirious defeated Gedo: This battle of the bookers ended up being eight-minutes of grab ass and stalling. They had a decently fun little match last year, but this time it just felt like they were filling time and by the end of it, it was just a frustrating exercise in then trying to have fun, I guess. Delirious scored the win with a roll up, and we move on because there is nothing to see here.

Tomohiro Ishii defeated ROH TV Champion Roderick Strong: I was looking forward to this match, hoping that Strong would recapture some of that early 2015 magic and deliver a great main event with Ishii. Now this wasn’t quite in the same league as the Ishii vs. Shibata matches, but it was a damn great main event with a surprising finish. The one thing I liked was that while they worked a physical and intense match, it didn’t feel like the usual Ishii match, and that’s a compliment because I love to see guys deliver great matches while working outside of their comfort zone. Strong got control after slamming Ishii to the apron, which played into Strong’s wheelhouse, working the back. They worked a great pace, and the action escalated well to the end very well with good near falls and the surprising finish when Ishii hit the brainbuster, and Strong was down for the three. Going into the main event I had hoped for a physical and competitive match, with a near fall or two that could make me buy that Ishii was going to win, But ROH and NJPW did one better and actually pulled off the title change. It’s nice to be surprised in a finish that everyone thought was a lock for Strong.

* End scene.

* Thanks for reading.

“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia.”

6.0

The final score: review Average

The 411

While I liked the main event more than most, the show was average at best. I get the TV taping situation, but showing the Ishii title win two months after it took place, but had already been addressed on TV (hell he’s had a title defense) is poor planning. If they wanted to highlight matches from Japan, they should have selected a few and spliced them into the previous programming, or released them as free web matches.