Csonka’s ROH 16th Anniversary PPV Takeaways

Welcome back to column time with Larry! Today I’d like to talk about the ROH 16th Anniversary PPV, which was a pretty great wrestling show, but also left me with some negative takeaways and some questions. I’d like to discuss those today and feel free to share yours. Thanks for reading, and remember, it’s wrestling, we love it and will disagree. The only rules are “have a take, be respectful, and don’t be a dick.”

QUICK HITS
* The TV title match being added to the PPV with almost no hype was extremely disappointing, but at least it led to a cool angle.

* Silas Young has again been boned by the lizard man’s booking.

* I am not a fan of “enforcer Bully Ray” running out and beating up the roster members.

* Colt Cabana & Ian Riccaboni continue to gel into a great commentary team.

* I like Marty Scurll getting a title shot, even if he’s only playing challenger of the month. But I really thought that they’d save it for the UK shows in May.

* Many people were hoping Kenny Omega was playing Bury at Manhattan Mayhem, but it was great that he wasn’t to establish Bury, which made tonight’s angle & reveal come off even better. Cody, Kenny, and all invoked have been great at building this angle.

Don’t Piss On My Leg & Tell Me It’s Raining: I have to be honest with you, I am absolutely sick of all of these speeches, proclaiming ROH to be all thriller and no filler, that they are real wrestling and not sports entertainment. It was one of the traits of early ROH commentary I loathed, as it was completely overdone and came off as completely pretentious. My theory when it comes to things like this is don’t tell me; show me. But this isn’t even the worst part of this; because the fact is that it was all bullshit. You can’t come out, proclaiming to “real wrestling & not sports entertainment,” and put on a show with an authority figure, multiple ref bumps, an unnecessary ring announcer bump in the main event, Hiromu attacking Flip with Daryl (I love Daryl), and the BURY the bear angle (which I did love by the way). Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, if you want to be a “real wrestling” product, then just be it, and don’t insult WWE or anyone else while trying to be that. I find it almost childish, especially when you contradict yourself on that same show

ROH Refuses to Change Their Culture With The Women of Honor: ROH continues to talk a good game, they continue to tell us how the Women of Honor are important and how they will be featured on TV & PPV going forward. They have aired some matches on TV, but then quickly resorted to showing only seconds of clips, skipping out on showing the women‘s matches on TV (unless your Mandy or Brandi). Deonna Purrazzo, one of the best wrestlers in the tournament, recently got a 20-second feature for her tournament match, and when she did media for ROH, had to tow the company line, saying that while disappointing, that she wasn’t upset and was glad to get so much attention via Youtube. ROH announced that the finals will actually be part of the Supercard of Honor show, with the semifinals taking place earlier that day, and that is all well and good, but refusing to regularly focus them on TV & PPV proves that ROH is only playing the PR game, saying what people want to hear, and not really delivering on it. ROH is talking a good game, but they refuse to change the culture and refuse to give the women a fair shot. Were the Anniversary show pre-matches good or great? No, but on TV & PPV, the men have shit the bed plenty of times, but they still get chances; fucks sake I have to watch Brian Millonas on TV while Gresham can barely get used when healthy. The company needs to stop fucking around, and fully commit to the women, and give them a real chance to sink or swim. At this time, the company is saying the right things, but not giving them a real chance. They need to stop pretending with the women.

PPV Streaming Issues: ROH ran tests on their Honor Club infrastructure to ensure that there would be no issues when it came time for launch. The free stream worked, Manhattan Mayhem worked, but when it came to the first PPV on the service, they shit the bed for whatever reason for the first 20-minutes of the how (at least that’s when I got it back). I heard reports of people having issues all throughout the show that made the show nearly impossible to watch. While I eventually got the site back and was able to watch and review the show, I had buffering issues all night, and was extremely upset with the lack of customer service help/responses. One or two posts on Twitter noting that they know about the issues and apologizing doesn’t do it, especially when $120 was paid for the VIP service, ensuring me the PPVs on the service. The worst part about this is that there wasn’t even a lot of buzz for this show, even with it being an anniversary show. All of the anticipation is for the WrestleMania weekend show, which has already sold over 5,000 tickets. What’s the demand going to be like that weekend? Will they have things sorted out and running smoothly, or will the service shit the bed on the biggest weekend of the year? They didn’t make a lot of people happy this weekend, and many are already doubting the service and dumping the $120 a year to get all of the PPVs and live shows for that one price.

The Impact of Austin Aries’ ROH Appearance: One of the biggest things to come from the 16th anniversary show was the arrival of Austin Aries. Aries, the current Impact Wrestling, WSW, IPW, & Defiant champion fancies himself a belt collector these days, and smartly worked himself back onto TV & into Impact without a contract. He controls his own destiny, appears when and where he wants, and not only seems happy about it. Without a contract, ROH reached out to him for a booking, and Aries was smart to take the booking. He keeps upping his stock, and got himself and all of his belts on PPV. While some want to believe that this means that Impact is working with ROH, I highly doubt that’s the case. This is Aries being a smart businessman, but you can’t blame Impact for wanting to work with ROH, because ROH leads them to NJPW, and everyone knows that NJPW is not only a hot product, but were a big reason ROH turned business around, started doing bigger gates and year to year, higher attendances. Impact is trying to reinvent themselves, and don’t lie to yourself, they’d sacrifice some babies to get New Japan talents, and Bullet Club on board in an attempt to start drawing notable live event crowds regularly, bigger ratings, GWN subscribers, and PPV buyers. But keep in mind, while Impact is looking to work with people. NJPW is locked in with ROH & CMLL, and wouldn’t want to upset their deal with CMLL as Impact works with AAA.

But if you believe the dark twitter rumors, there’s a lot more to the appearance, and it isn’t good for Impact. The reason I am discussing this is because it comes from people who constantly and reliably are breaking news before the news paid sites do. The word going around is that the money earmarked for Impact is drying up and that Anthem isn’t offering quality deals to the top stars. And because it’s wrestling and everyone talks, both ROH & WWE know about this, which is why WWE went after EC3 & Lashley, and now ROH is reportedly looking to make a play for 2 or 3 top Impact talents to bolster their roster. Aries is a smart guy, he’s handled his post WWE run well so far and is in a position of power. If Anthem isn’t going to make an offer that entices him to stick around, then he’s smart to shop himself around. Aries’ Impact run has been a ton of fun and he’s delivered in the ring, if Impact can’t lock him down, it’s a huge miss and mistake on their part. ROH is smart to go after Aries, they have an angle set, and Aries is smart to test the waters to see if going back is worth it.

It’s all rumor, for now, but there are a lot of variables at play, including the fact that Aries isn’t challenging at Supercard of Honor. Hopefully, Impact has him locked in enough until they get the title off of him and then he moves on. Aries appearing was certainly a surprise, and he made waves for himself. He’s done well keeping buzz around him up post WWE. In all honesty, I’d love to see him stick with Impact over ROH at this point, and really hope that Impact will start locking people, the right people into deals to really build around. Shift all of that Alberto money to other people that are less problematic and that are more consistent and overall better performers.

– End Scene.

– Thanks for reading.

“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia!”