ROH FINAL BATTLE PPV ROUNDTABLE REVIEWS 12/19: Radican, DeRosenroll, Roe, Leahy rate and review

Sean Radican, Torch columnist (4.5)

I've never been so frustrated with an ROH DVD, PPV, or live event since starting to watch the promotion. This show featured fantastic wrestling up and down the card, but the booking totally cut the wrestlers off at the knees.

I was so excited for this show. It was the first chance people would have to watch the company air a live event. There would be no waiting period to see the show and the lineup was stacked with an incredible lineup on paper.

The reality is the show was full of production woes on the audio end that made it impossible to hear the announcers at times. It was also really annoying that the announcers and crowd could be heard for most of the night over the video packages. These problems culminated with the audio completely going out with about 5 minutes left in the main event. The picture looked fantastic for an ROH show and the three camera shoot really came across well during the transitions. I hope ROH re-records the commentary for this show for DVD release. It would simply be embarrassing for this show to be released on DVD "as is."

So how does a show with numerous four star matches and big angles go so wrong? Well, it mostly begins and ends with the main event. After Teddy Hart and Jack Evans showed up when fans thought they weren't due to the snow and tore down the house, the fans are given a one-hour draw after already having endured nearly three hours of wrestling.

A number of vocal fans crapped all over the match, despite of how good it was, but the finish was simply terrible and left Tyler Black dead and buried. I can't imagine what ROH's band of creative geniuses was thinking when they put a one hour draw down on paper to end their signature year-end event. The entire match was designed for Black to finally catch Aries, who has literally been running from him for a year. Instead, Aries literally ran for an hour and Black never caught him.

For a show with so many great matches and angles, one thought entered my mind when the show was over I thought this was all really lame

Mike DeRosenroll, Torch ROH TV reviewer (6.0)

Best Match: Aries vs. Black. Worst Match: Delirious & Dempsey vs. The Embassy.

Despite the frustrating audio problems, I can't give a show with this much good wrestling a bad grade. Some of the New York fans apparently only want to see spot fests and turned on the Aries-Black main event, but I felt that Aries's heel stalling tactics built heat very well and set up an exciting final fifteen minutes of the one hour draw.

The Young Bucks-Steen & Generico tag match almost stole the show on the undercard, but the unprotected chair shot to Generico's head ruined Steen's heel turn. The Briscoes-American Wolves tag title switch, the King-Strong match, the Kozlov-Romero match and the Evans-Hart spot fest were all very good.

Some of the booking was questionable; in particular I think Black has been chasing the title so long that it was time to either pull the trigger on the title change or give up on Black as a main-eventer. Overall, the wrestling on the show deserves an 8.0, but I'm shaving off a point from the show for the audio problems and another point for needlessly endangering El Generico's health with the unprotected chair shot to the head.

Brian Leahy, Torch Specialist (8.5)

ROH has been criticized over the years for how "old" its product is when viewed. There was a point where ROH fans had to wait 4 months for a DVD release (which is now down to maybe 10 ten weeks), its PPVs were taped MONTHS before they were televised, and its present TV product its weeks old when screened at the best of times. And so, the prospect of a live online PPV is pretty exciting to an ROH fan, and so this PPV with all its faults (and there were quite a few, mostly audio related) will serve those ROH fans well, and most probably very few else.

In ring, the action ranged from very good to near sublime. The names you'd expect to deliver were the ones that did. Not to sit on the fence, but it's "take your pick" between the three best matches as to which took MOTN honors. Steen & Generico vs. The Young Bucks was another great match out of these four (and probably the last), The Wolves vs. The Briscoes was hot as hell, and only goes to enforce ROH's valid claim of having the most important tag titles in North America, and despite all the factors that ran against it (stalling, crowd), Black vs. Aries was a really good Broadway encounter.

Despite these positives (and to be honest, there was no matches that were remotely bad on the card), my rose tinted glasses can only do so much. The audio was bad. It was extremely amateur: poor audio levels, hearing what we were not supposed to, not hearing what we were, two lots of audio playing at the same time, not hearing anything at all - it was pretty bush league. The commentary itself may have been fine, I don't know. Larry Sweeney (hopefully over his personal problems) was inaudible and I cant stand Santamaria.

Maybe it's just me on this, and don't take this as too much of a criticism, but I felt like far too much "stuff" happened on the show: The Steen Turn, The Kings of Wrestling reunion, The Sweeney return, a Tag Title Change, and a One-Hour Draw in the World Title Match. I know ROH has always had big occurrences at Final Battle, but the landscape of Ring of Honor was hardly recognizable by the close of the show.

Recommendations: Well, if you're an ROH fan you'll either have watched it or are planning to whenever the re-run comes up. The technical issues wont be any surprise or deterrent to you. If you're not an ROH fan, the action is good, but the production could put you off the product. You may as well take the chance though, because the action makes Final Battle easily the best "live" PPV of the year in-ring.

Mike Roe, Torch contributor (6.5)

A good show that was hurt by production issues, travel delays, lackluster booking, and a show wearing out its welcome at four-and-a-half hours. The highlight packages and promos might have done more to get people hyped up for the show, but the complete failure on sound that made them impossible to hear was depressing. It was also awkward the whole night to barely be able to hear the returning Larry Sweeney on commentary, when it would have been easy for the color guy to just trade mics with Sweeney so that fans could hear the guy people care more about.

The opening four-way between Kenny Omega, Claudio Castagnoli, Rhett Titus, and Colt Cabana was a fun match to open the show, with Omega and Cabana working together being a highlight.

Erick Stevens and Bison Smith against Delirious and Bobby Dempsey had a great energy with the fans going nuts for Dempsey, but it was just one aspect of the undercard that left the fans burned out by the time the main event rolled around.

Chris Hero and Eddie Kingston was a blast. I'd seen them feud live in PWG, and it was nice to see that they still had enough up their sleeves to keep me entertained. Dropping Kingston on the back of his head on the guardrail in the ropes seemed unnecessarily reckless, and it's disappointing to see stuff like this still being done on the indies when WWE has apparently started learning their lesson.

The Young Bucks versus Kevin Steen and El Generico was a fun match, but after seeing both teams a million times in PWG and not seeing much new here, it felt good but not great. I'd love to see the Young Bucks get new looks to freshen up their act as we move into a new decade instead of looking like a couple time travelers from the '90s. Steen's post-match promo was good (what we could hear of it with the spotty audio), and his turn on El Generico with the kick to the guy was a great moment. This was a bit soured with the unnecessary unprotected chair shot to the head, and even if it weren't for the stupidity of still doing stuff like this, it just didn't significantly add to the drama.

The intermission match was a nice touch to remind everyone that a lot of big names have come through ROH over the years. It might have been nice to see them use a TNA star there too, but it served its purpose.

I want to like Kenny King, but the hip-hop stuff was getting a bit under my skin in this match. Roderick was entertaining as usual, but ultimately this match was just decent and the announcers didn't do a great job getting over the Pick Six ranking aspect.

Rocky Romero versus Alex Kozlov was good, but it fell flat with the crowd after the explained that the original tag match with Jack Evans and Teddy Hart wasn't going to happen and we were instead left with two wrestlers who are talented but don't have the same novelty and expectation of something flashy that Evans and Hart provide.

The American Wolves versus Briscoes match was exciting and probably the best combination on the card of storytelling, in-ring action, and payoff. The tag title change was expected due to Davey Richards' involvement in Evolve, but it was still a moment. They kept the excitement going after the match by immediately moving to their next storyline with the attack by Claudio Castagnoli and Chris Hero and the fans chanting "Kings of Wrestling" for the surprise reunion. This was logical, simple storytelling, and it would have been nice to see more of this up and down the card.

Jack Evans and Teddy Hart was a fun video game-style spotfest, but it was just a bit odd with Julius Smokes playing referee, wrestling in street clothes (wait, that's what Evans and Hart wear in real life?!), and the fans didn't seem to get as up for this as if they'd appeared earlier in the show. Not a lot of logic to this match, but at least it provided a fun surprise, though only after the fans had been swerved earlier.

The main event was solid and told a good story, but didn't feel like the right way to go out in your final show of the year. Austin Aries has star quality; Tyler Black is still missing that X-factor that makes a wrestler feel special. ROH could largely get past that by pushing him as if he was a star and letting Black continue to develop as they did so, but his continual failure when it comes to getting the world title makes it hard for fans to choose Black as their man to root for. It's a match I want to watch back when I get a chance to see if, freed from watching it at the end of a four and a half hour show and not expecting Black to win, I would be able to appreciate the work throughout the match more.

[Torch photo credit Wade Keller (c) PWTorch.com]

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