ROH Nation – welcome to another edition of… BAIT AND SWITCH.
This week ROH is showing matches from their Honor Rising cards, which took place back in February prior to the 14th Anniversary show. With that said – be sure to check out our complete Honor Rising coverage, courtesy of Dave Musgrave here (night 1) and here (night 2).
I’ll be circling back to these eventually and i’m still mulling over including them in my ROH TV Match of the Year listing. Here’s what was shown on this episode with very quick hits:
Dalton Castle and Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Jushin Liger and Matt Sydal – perfectly fine, Liger apes Castle’s shtick just like at last year’s Global Wars. Sydal pins Castle.
Delirious vs. Gedo – Delirious makes his Sinclair Ring of Honor TV debut! And he wins!
Roderick Strong vs. Tomohiro Ishii for the ROH TV title – they showed the pre-match interaction with Fish, which is played up later as part of the reason Roddy loses here. Although I thought there was a skirmish between the two, whereas here it’s Fish just getting in his head. It could be the TV cuts, but I was completely underwhelmed by this given the expectations of what I had read months ago. I’d go something in the ** range for what is shown (our friend Chad was at **1/2 and ROH partner and Mission:Indiepossible host Steve Wille also thought it was poor). Ishii is perfectly fine, but wasn’t digging Roddy at all. Then I had this super meta thought where you could not only explain the loss but his “off” performance because of the Fish interaction.
What’s cool about these shows is the clips away from the ring. Dalton Castle interacting with fans, Todd Sinclair sight-seeing. Nice little touches by Ring of Honor.
This week is not sans ROH coverage by me however. Be sure to check out my in-depth look at Jay Lethal vs. Lio Rush from Supercard of Honor X.
Please shoot me your feedback on twitter @brad21126. Thanks!
