Csonka’s Takeaways From ROH BITW 2017

– Welcome back to column time with Larry. It’s time for one last look back at the ROH BITW 2017 PPV. I hope that you enjoy, and feel free to share your takeaways/future booking plans or whatever from the PPV. The only rules are “have a take, be respectful of other’s opinions and don’t be a dick.”

Ring of Honor Continues to Devalue The Women of Honor Project: Ring on Honor continues to devalue their Women of Honor project, it’s a complete joke at this point because they are looked at like they aren’t worthy enough to be featured in any way. They shoot their Youtube exclusives, they try to shoot angles and maybe once a year they get a TV show dedicated to them because ROH need to fill TV Time, but most of the time, those matches have already aired on Youtube. They haven’t built the roster, losing talent like Taeler Hendrix and Veda Scott; the roster of women was thin as is, so they keep bringing in people for one shots like Jessie Brooks & Tasha Steelz, but they aren’t making any real moves to lock in talent or to move the project forward. There has been talk for the past few years about a title belt, but when you’re core hasn’t evolved past Kelly Klein, Sumi Sakai, Jenny Rose, Faye Jackson, & Mandy Leon with cameos by Deonna Purrazzo (and they are ok for a core, but the product is not evolving and growing) it shows that the Women of Honor have become stagnant. On the BITW PPV, we had a “Losing Team Must Disband” match featuring Search & Destroy (Alex Shelley, Chris Sabin, Jonathan Gresham, & Jay White) vs. The Rebellion (Kenny King, Rhett Titus, Caprice Coleman and Shane Taylor). This feud has been a staple on ROH TV, and honestly it should have stayed there. The PPV match was good, but certainly nothing special. The action, stipulation and time frame they had would have worked perfectly for a TV main event, and would have been built to well through the weeks. No offense to these guys, but this would have been a perfect chance to build to and feature a Women of Honor match on PPV instead, instead, in ROH it’s 1915 and the women have to stay in the kitchen and aren’t allowed to vote. In a time when WWE is featuring women more than ever before, the approach by ROH shows that they do not value their women at all (or have any real clue what to do with them), banishing them to Youtube exclusives and pre-show matches; God forbid we let the women on TV or PPV. The company can talk about how much they value and invest in the Women of Honor project, and how much a part of it’s future they plan for it to be, but it’s all bullshit until they actually feature them.

B.J. Whitmer to make TV commentary debut on ROH PPV on Friday https://t.co/F8fIWWYL9U via @daytondailynews pic.twitter.com/dQy5sztZFL

— ROH Wrestling (@ringofhonor) June 23, 2017

BJ Whitmer is Steve Corino From The Most Generic Timeline: Prior to the ROH BITW PPV, it was revealed that Ian Riccaboni and BJ Whitmer would be the broadcast team; Colt Cabana was touring in Australia, and Kevin Kelly was not brought in to work the show. I felt that Ian Riccaboni did really good and continues to grow and improve as the lead commentator, but the move to Whitmer was a bad decision. I’ve heard him do commentary on the Youtube exclusives, where he was very average unless talking about someone he trained or really likes, like Kelly Klein. Other than that, I felt that he added nothing to those appearances. I don’t know if Kevin Kelly had another commitment, but if they simply decided to “not bring him in” for one of their few PPVs of the year then that was an idiotic move on ROH’s part. I get that not everyone likes Kelly’s work, but he’s been with ROH since 2010, knows the product and maybe even more important is enthusiastic about the product. Whitmer came across as timid, not quite knowing what to say at times and dropping lots of “wows” and “oh mys,” simple reactionary responses and offering little else. He didn’t even really have any special analysis as a wrestler to offer. Even worse than that, through out the evening he slowly evolved into a Steve Corino parody, dropping lines like “he kicked him in the ding ding” and reacting to any sort of violence like a 9-year old reacting to seeing his first set of tits. He wasn’t funny, he wasn’t informative, he added nothing to the product that he was calling and was a failure. ROH desperately needs to figure out its commentary situation. You’ll notice that above I mentioned that I would have taken the Rebellion vs. Search and Destroy match off of the PPV, making it a TV main event, and replacing it with a Women of Honor match. The other reason that I would have done this was so that I could have moved Alex Shelley to commentary. Since Nigel’s departure, Shelley has been one of the many rotating commentators working with Riccaboni on ROH TV. Shelley has been excellent during his commentary appearances, not only coming off as informed and enthusiastic, but he has been completely focused on putting over what ever or whoever is in the match, being near perfect in putting over talent on each appearance. I feel that he would have easily been the better person to use in this situation

KUSHIDA vs. Scurll Delivered Quality & Surprise: KUSHIDA vs. Scurll was the match I was looking forward to the most; KUSHIDA is coming off of an incredible BOTSJ run, while Scurll had a very strong run in the tournament, solidifying him self in the eye of the Japanese fans. Their TV match was hurt by the last of time and Adam Cole interference (which while it made sense didn’t enhance the match). So I was really curious to see what they would do on PPV, in a rematch with an appropriate amount of time to tell their story. They had an absolutely great match, getting nearly 15-minutes, and not only getting the crowd involved, but giving the show a much needed great match that up and to that point, it was lacking. But more importantly than delivering a great match, the finish came off as a complete surprise. I thought that with KUSHIDA achieving his goal, winning the BOTSJ and getting his title back (along with word that he wasn’t scheduled to work a lot of ROH dates in the summer) that he would not only drop the title back to Scurll to get him back on track in ROH, but I also felt that the title change would be done to set up a KUSHIDA vs. Scurll Junior title match down the line. But it was in that surprise that I think helped the match, the action was great; Scurll was working more aggressively and KUSHIDA is such a great babyface. But I kept waiting, I kept waiting for Scurll to cheat and pick up a shitty win, I kept waiting for the Young Bucks or Adam Page to run in and ruin the party so that Scurll could win; I just kept expecting Scurll to win and it never happened. It went against all the evidence and predictions of most, and that’s ok because in 2017 unpredictability can be hard to achieve, but they did it here, and I loved it.

Cody is Champion: As expected, Cody won the title and is ROH champion. It was a “good match,” which really seems to be the ceiling for Cody in most cases. Cody orchestrated one of the best modern WWE departures; it was smart, well planned and it worked to make him feel like a bigger star than he was in WWE. Many thought that the list was silly, but he created a buzz by listing some of the most popular indie acts and events. Cody reportedly priced himself smartly, picked up a ton of bookings right away and did it on his terms; he didn’t want to be a contracted talent, and wanted to basically “work the territories” as much as possible. This led to him working TNA Bound For Glory, ROH Final Battle and then NJPW WrestleKingdom following his release, which is a hell of an accomplishment. I have been very hard on Cody’s post WWE run as far as match quality goes (not bad at all, but disappointing at times), the one thing I can say with certainty is that he’s made himself a big star outside of WWE, and did so with an excellent exit plan. He’s worked the hustle and I can appreciate and respect that because he’s already worked longer and harder than so many others that claim, “the handcuffs are off and I will prove WWE wrong.” But with that being said, he does nothing for me as ROH champion. I also think that ROH completely miscalculated the audience reaction, they portrayed Cody as an evil outsider coming to steal their title, he stole the belt from the ROH legend that fought 15-years to get it and then the crowd turned on Daniels and supported Cody like a hero. I hope he has a great title run and proves me wrong.

– End scene.

– Thanks for reading.

“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia!”