Csonka’s ROH TV Review 5.24.17

Csonka’s ROH TV Review 5.17.17

OFFICIAL RESULTS
– NEVER Openweight Six-Man Title Match: Champions Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, EVIL & SANADA) defeated Tiger Mask, Jushin Thunder Liger & Delirious @ 10:42 via submission [**½]
– IWPG NEVER OpenWeight Title Match: Champion Hirooki Goto defeated Punisher Martinez @ 10:57 via pin [***½]
– Bullet Club defeated CHAOS @ 20:30 via pin [****¼]

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– This week’s matches come from the FEBRUARY Honor Rising events in Japan.

Champions Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, EVIL & SANADA) vs. Tiger Mask, Jushin Thunder Liger & Delirious: The bell rings, Delirious runs around like an idiot and tags right out to Liger and then tags himself back in. Delirious and EVIL to begin, they go back and forth leading to SANADA taking the heat on Tiger Mask. Tiger Mask fights back against BUSHI, stops the shirt choke and then uses it himself. BUSHI attacks the mask of Liger, and they all brawl to the floor. LIJ work the heat, isolating Liger, and scoring some near falls. Liger fought back, hit some palm strikes and then tossed SANADA to the floor. Tiger Mask gets the tag, works over BUSHI and gets a near fall off of a top rope arm drag. The tombstone follows, EVIL makes the save, but Tiger Mask hits the tiger driver for the near fall. Delirious in, runs around like an idiot and scores a near fall off of a lariat. Delirious runs wild for a bit, it breaks down and Delirious locks in a cobra clutch on SANADA; EVIL makes the save. Delirious escapes skull end for 2, gets another roll up and keeps going for pinning combos, but SANADA survives. Chair shot by EVIL, skull end and Delirious taps. Champions Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, EVIL & SANADA) defeated Tiger Mask, Jushin Thunder Liger & Delirious @ 10:42 via submission [**½] This wasn’t bad, just lackadaisical and very average feeling; there wasn’t much life to this at all. The finish was absolute shit, as there is no reason to protect Delirious, he’s the booker and almost never wrestles anymore; LIJ should have just won clean and moved on.

NEVER Openweight Championship: Champion Hirooki Goto vs. Punisher Martinez: Martinez played B-movie monster early, laughing like a movie villain and stomping around clumsily like a mummy. After some back and forth, Martinez took Goto to the floor for some brawling. Back in and Martinez slowly controlled. And then popped up with a jumping spin kick. Goto finally fired up and traded strikes with his larger opponent, throwing bombs and channeling Frye vs. Takiyama; Goto then hit Ushogoroshi and they continued to trade strikes center ring. Martinez took out Goto with the bog boot, hit another spin kick and then corner elbows. Falcon arrow (HE DID THE DEAL) by Martinez got 2. Goto retreated to the floor, and Martinez followed with a big dive. Back in, Martinez up top and he hits the big spin kick off the ropes and covers again for 2. Martinez keeps fighting back, snags Goto for a choke slam, but Goto counters into the GRT and retains. Champion Hirooki Goto defeated Punisher Martinez @ 10:57 via pin [***½] I joked about Martinez looking and moving like a movie monster here, but that actually worked for him, slowly and consistently fighting forward with one purpose. He did well here, better than at any point I have seen him in ROH to this point, and took a match I had no desire to see and made it fun and entertaining; this was very good overall and I could see him picking up a return booking later in the year, possibly for WTL action.

CHAOS (Will Ospreay, Kazuchika Okada, Mark Briscoe & Jay Briscoe) vs. Bullet Cub (Nick Jackson, Matt Jackson, Cody & Kenny Omega): Omega and Okada to begin, but Okada is completely dismissing of Omega, wanting Cody in the ring. So now we get mark and Cody to being things, Mark is fired up early, taking control and tagging in Jay. Cody quickly tags out to Nick, so we get some very familiar territory with the Bucks and Briscoes for a bit. Ospreay in, he and Matt do a few fun passes and he then arm drags both Bucks and does the superhero pose. The Bucks catch him on s dive, but he escapes the indie taker and then gets sent to the floor. Bullet Club cackles and celebrates; they then isolate Ospreay in their corner with Cody and Omega working him over. Bullet Club keeps the heat on Ospreay, the crowd loves it as Ospreay counters and sends Nick into his partners and as Ospreay dives for the tag, his partners are pulled to the floor. Superkicks to Ospreay, Omega and Cody keep catching him and setting him up for more as the punishment will continue until morale improves; double teams by the Bucks but Ospreay survives. Omega in now; he continues the heat. Ospreay finally fires up, hitting a stunner and crawls for the tag and then hits the satellite DDT and we get tags to Cody and Okada. The Bucks are in to cut off Okada, Okada fires up and tells then to suck it but Cody hits the disaster kick. Okada counters cross Rhodes into the neck breaker. It breaks down, red neck kung fu by Mark as the Briscoes run wild, we get dives and the cactus Jack elbow follows. Ospreay and Omega go back and forth, Sasuke special from Ospreay and then Cody and Okada fight up top, Ospreay saves Okada and is suplexed to the floor onto the pile. Omega and Okada are alone in the ring, V trigger by Omega connects and looks for the one winged angel, but Okada escapes, superkicks by the Bucks and then Omega hits the snapdragon suplex. TRIPLE Superkicks to Okada, Ospreay in to make the save but Cody cuts him off as it totally breaks down. Dropkick to Omega by Okada, Jay takes Omega up top, superplex, elbow drop by Okada, froggy bow! Rainmaker pose! Omega counters the rainmaker, knee strike follows but Ospreay catches him with the Spanish fly! Falcon arrow by Ospreay (HE DID THE DEAL) on Cody, heads up top, but Cody rolls out of the way of the shooting star press. Spin kick by Ospreay on Cody, but Cody catches the cutter, counters and hits cross Rhodes for the Bullet Club win. Bullet Club defeated CHAOS @ 20:30 via pin [****¼] This was an excellent main event to cap off the two nights of action from Japan; it featured great work, tons of fun spots, wall to wall action and a hot crowd throughout. This is everything you want from an all star tag match.

– End scene.

– Thanks for reading.

“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia!”

7.7

The final score: review Good

The 411

As mentioned at the start of the review, this week’s matches come from the FEBRUARY Honor Rising events in Japan. It’s highly questionable to air matches from three months ago and to also do so AFTER the War of The Worlds tour. The company should have broken up the TV tapings heading into the tour, and aired one of these matches a week if they wanted to give fans a taste of the ROH/NJPW cross over product; that would have been more effective than the lack of build they actually did. Again, more questionable decisions made in the production of ROH TV around the company’s various PPVs.

Now with that being said, and it needed to be said, as a wrestling show this is most certainly a good show. If you haven’t seen the matches, skip the opener, but the others are worth your time.