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Guest Editorials
EDITORIAL: After watching ROH's "Caged Collision" PPV, Ring of Honor needs to improve PPV product Apr 18, 2009 - 2:15:15 PM
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GUEST EDITORIAL
By Ivan Trembow, PWTorch.com reader
Ring of Honor is the only pro wrestling company whose PPVs I still buy, but they are making it very difficult to stay connected to the product without slapping me across the face and making me feel disconnected.
One example: The last time there was an ROH PPV, Austin Aries and Jimmy Jacobs hated each other and practically wanted to kill each other. Within a minute of this PPV starting, Aries and Jacobs were being interviewed together and appeared to have no problem being in the same room together, even if they weren't friends.
There was absolutely no explanation of why Aries and Jacobs are no longer at each other's throats until much later in the PPV. Even then, it was just a generic explanation that they both hate Tyler Black more than they hate each other. Are these the characters in which I'm supposed to be invested as a viewer? I know that ROH's answer might be, "Well, it has been explained on ROH's TV show." Well, guess what? Ninety-five percent of the country doesn't have HDNet, so that's not an acceptable answer.
Why am I supposed to care about the characters if ROH doesn't even care about them enough to offer some kind of explanation to viewers (which could have just been a few sentences from the commentators) before showing Aries and Jacobs being interviewed together?
Not to mention the fact that Aries's new look is hauntingly similar to Deputy Travis Junior, Jr. from the show Reno 911 (with the mustache and sunglasses and facial expressions), which is not a good thing if viewers are supposed to be taking him seriously.
Another example: After the main event ended, why on earth would Larry Sweeney's character voluntarily walk right into a steel cage that was filled with his enemies? That makes absolutely no sense. Again, are these the characters in which I'm supposed to be invested as a viewer?
Also, I know that ROH wants to be more "traditional," but making one of their commentators play a stereotypical "heel pro wrestling commentator" character just feels forced and completely out of place.
Finally, is there some kind of rule that ROH World Title matches aren't allowed to be the main events on PPVs? The ROH World Title has literally been in more non-main-event matches on ROH PPVs than it has been in PPV main events. And on this show, the World Title match was in a non-main-event role for what? A cluster-mess ten-man cage match with hard chairshots to the skull and so many people blading that it meant nothing? That was deemed more important than the World Title match?
As always with ROH, there was some good wrestling on this show, but in this case, there wasn't enough of it to make up for all of the faults. I buy ROH PPVs primarily because I hope to see one match per event that is at least four stars in quality. When that doesn't happen, all of the presentation and internal logic problems become a lot harder to tolerate.
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