ROH HITS & MISSES 8/13: Matt Taven successfully hypes Glory By Honor match, show lacking “go home” feel, more

Hits

MATT TAVEN PROMO

Taven gave a great straight forward wrestling promo for his match versus Vincent at the Glory by Honor PPV. He very passionately stating his mission statement to defeat Vincent and regain what he perceives he had lost. By ending the promo with him shaving off his scraggly beard he drove home the whole point, that the true Matt Taven was on his way back. Very Good.

Misses

HOLIDEAD VS. MAX THE IMPALER (w/Amy Rose)

First off, Holidead needs to stop playing around with her tongue piercing. It just creeps me out. So, in this match we get two “caricature” wrestlers whose gimmicks are pretty standard for pro-wrestling, but do not really show anything unique. We have the grunting silent giantess in Mad Max Road Warrior get up and the “risen from the dead” face painted crazy person. The match consisted of strikes after strikes and power moves without much selling by either wrestler, until the second act of the match when Max took control. As the match continued, the big strength moves continued to the point where the match lacked any story except grunting by Max and trash-talking by Holidead making for a rather boring watch after the initial pop of seeing these two wrestlers’ tee-off on each other. As with many of the ROH matches without any audience, the lack of that audience hurt the performance making the match an overall miss. An audience reacting could have saved it.

Champions (Dragon Lee, Homicide & Chris Dickinson, Jonathan Gresham, Bandido) VS. All Stars (Flip Gordon, The Briscoes, Josh Woods, EC3)

Okay, this is a ten-man tag team match featuring teams made up out of wrestlers that are not really on the same page as there are rivalries within the teams which should make for some interesting moments. Have to say, starting off with each wrestler’s complete entrance was a bit stupid considering there were no fans in attendance to react. I understand that they are trying to put on a TV show and pretty much ignore the fact that there is no audience but going through almost 10 minutes of noiseless entrances (including commercial breaks) is just not good TV.

Once the match started there was good action but as is the nature of these massive multi-person matches, everyone got tagged in to get in their spots and feature the built-in tension within the makeshift teams while also teasing brief confrontations between wrestlers who will be facing each other either at the upcoming PPV or will soon be in a feud.

– While this match was mostly a miss for me, I will give both the wrestlers and the agents a good deal of credit for choreographing the match without anybody getting injured. I will also grant that as the match reached it’s climax the action was pretty good, but without any crowd noise to confirm my own feelings, it just ultimately fell flat, and rather than getting excited by the multiple near falls, I was upset that the match didn’t end.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I would not say this was a great “go home” show for ROH Glory by Honor. ROH has to get in front of fans quick to turn some of these misses into hits.

CATCH-UP: 8/16 RING OF HONOR TV REPORT: Ten-man tag main event, Holidead vs. Max the Impaler, more