Ring of Honor “Road to Final Battle 2015: Fort Lauderdale”

[adamclark52]

Ring of Honor “Road to Final Battle 2015: Fort Lauderdale”
December 5th, 2015
From the War Memorial Auditorium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Commentators: Kevin Kelly and Mr. Wrestling III

Tonight: Jay Lethal and Donovan Dijak face the Young Bucks.

Will Ferrara vs. Mark Briscoe
This was a REALLY GOOD fast-paced, rough wrestling match. It’s one of the better Will Ferrara matches (who was having a lot of really good matches at this time) but it was one of the better solo Mark Briscoe matches I’ve seen too.
Winner: Mark Briscoe

Tim Hughes vs. Kyle O’Reilly
I’d usually be rooting for Tim Hughes anyway but in a match verses Kyle O’Reilly it’s not even a question. Although O’Reilly was more entertaining in these days where he was breaking out as a singles star rather than pushed as a main-eventer. This was a pretty one-sided affair. I don’t think Hughes got one shot in.
Winner: Kyle O’Reilly
Kyle O’Reilly cuts a promo hyping his upcoming match with Adam Cole at Final Battle. I don’t remember ever hearing him cut a promo. He wasn’t entirely terrible and he kept it short.

Adam Cole vs. Kenny King
Geez; what is this video? This was another “one of the better matches I’ve seen from...” matches from both of these guys. They gelled together very well.
Winner: Adam Cole

RoHwrestling.com/shop advertisement.

The Dirty Blondes vs. War Machine
There was a lot of jigglin’ going on in this match. The commentators built the Dirty Blondes up pretty well before this match got going but they ended up jobbing almost as bad as Tim Hughes.
Winners: War Machine

For the Ring of Honor World Television Championship
Delirious vs. Roderick Strong (champion)
Given how good the show had been up until this point this was a bit of a disappointment. Delirious was as entertaining as usual and the match itself was just “good”.
Winner: Roderick Strong

4-Corner Survival Match
Rhett Titus vs. Cheeseburger w/a broken hand vs. Moose w/Stokely Hathaway vs. Dalton Castle w/o Boys...or his usual entrance gear
This wasn’t a good match, but it was a FUN match. Dalton suplexed Moose at one point and I think that may have been the exact moment in time that the back problems that have plagued him later on happened. His back bent BAD and he had huge man land on his head.
Winner: Moose

ACH and Bobby Fish come out for their match and ACH says that since Fish’s partner Kyle O’Reilly didn’t have much competition against Tim Hughes earlier in the show why not make this a tag team match? He brings out his surprise partner: Alex Shelley! Bobby Fish agrees but is really pissed off.

ACH & Alex Shelley vs. reDRagon
So as much as I’m always hard on Kyle O’Reilly I am a fan of his tag team work. Shit, the guy’s good in singles matches but he’s just not main event material to me. Anyway, this was a good fast-paced match.
Winners: reDRagon

Matt Sydal vs. Jay Briscoe
I don’t think poor Matt Sydal was ready for an opponent like Jay Briscoe. They wrestled before in tag team matches during Sydals first run in Ring of Honor ten years earlier but this was a different Jay Briscoe. Sydal did get some offence in during the latter portions of the match but it was mostly a beating, and even though I have nothing against Sydal I loved it.
Winner: Jay Briscoe

The House of Truth (Jay Lethal and Donovan Dijak) w/ Truth Martini and Taeler Hendrix vs. the Young Bucks
It took me until they came out together to start this match for me to remember that Lethal and Dijak were at one point part of a stable together. This was really good. They made great use of the house stage and that was a nice element. It probably sucked for the live crowd, except those that were sitting on the stage. But as a viewer at home it didn’t matter.
Winners: the Young Bucks
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DVD bonus features:
Martin Stone & Aaron Solo w/Trina Michaels vs. Colby Corino & Shaheem Ali
I googled and looked at the Online World of Wrestling page for Aaron Solo and it’s kinda odd that a guy named Aaron Solo has predominantly been a tag-team wrestler for most of his eleven-year career. This was surprisingly good for a dark match.
Winners: Colby Corino & Shaheem Ali

Post show recap with Kevin Kelly and Mr. Wrestling III
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I watched this tonight and I watched a show from the lead to Final Battle 2016 a day or two ago and it’s weird how much difference a year made in Ring of Honor, and in my opinion for the worse. This was about six months before the Bullet Club and NJPW fever really took over Ring of Honor and RoH was able to be its own show. It’s its own show now but it doesn’t have the roster to back it up now that it did then. This took me back to a time before the wrestling landscape changed to its current meta dick measuring contest. A time when anything that wasn’t WWE was still relatively underground and there was a different kind of excitement. I miss those days.

This was an exceptionally good show. No one match sticks out but I guess the simple fact that I said in my reviews that the matches with Will Ferrara, Mark Briscoe, Adam Cole and Kenny King were some of the best matches I’ve ever seen from any of those guys is all that needs to be said. It was a lot faster paced than Ring of Honor shows usually are and that was a nice change. The main show was only two hours and fifteen minutes and there were two more matches than usual (nine as opposed to the usual seven) than usual shows which run a half hour longer. I mean, two of those matches were relative jobber squashes that almost never happen on Ring of Honor shows but sometimes you need one of those to break up things.

I liked the way the arena was set up here. I swear I’ve seen wrestling shows from the War Memorial Arena before but this looked different. They came out on the house stage and there wasn’t even a curtain. It looked very “Indy”.

“Hulk Hogan guy” from all the WWF videos that were filmed in Florida was in the crowd!

Everyone just seemed to be having so much fun at this show (the wrestlers, the crowd) and it made watching it that much better. If you’ve never seen Ring of Honor and are only familiar of them because of all the negativity surrounding them from the last eighteen months check this one out.