This review is in Fair to Flair’s trademark Woo/Boo system: woo referring to every time Nigel McGuinness spoke, and boo referring to every time the racist, sexist fat ass next to him spoke.
Woo
The two tag matches were pretty good.
There was nothing there I hadn’t seen a hundred times before, but yeah, they were fine. The main event of the Kings of Wrestling v. Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas was obviously lengthy and satisfying because the four men involved are all stars, but I can’t say the bell-to-bell time was impressive for the hour.
This is clearly a wrestling show for adults
Ring of Honor has a very distinct, cool sense of style. Everything is black or dark grey. Smoke fills the arena. Wrestling outfits are muted. Ring of Honor’s wrestlers are purposefully less gimmick-fueled than WWE, which makes me think I’m watching a show about men competing against one another as opposed to cartoon characters bouncing around.
The red ropes remind me of TNA and Monday Night Raw, though, so maybe they want to think about that.
The hard camera a little high and just a little too far away, but it’s also at a slight angle. Mixed with the smoke and standard def broadcast, it gave the matches a lomographic feel, which is not a terrible way of covering up a shoestring budget.
Streamers look good on TV
Do that more. The dark colour scheme made it so the streamers really popped.
Boo
We’re the best. All we want to do is be the best. We like fighting the best, because we are the best. Also, did you know we are the best?
Look, ROH. You know you’re a distant number three. We know you’re a distant number three. You’ve got a brand new TV show, and that’s awesome, but there’s absolutely no reason for all this grandstanding. It looks like you’re trying to kid yourself, which is not great for creating customer faith.
One of the things the original ECW did was own up to its own shortcomings. The arena looked awful, the wrestlers looked homeless, and Joey Styles regularly pointed this stuff out. It became endearing. Just because wrestling is scripted doesn’t mean you have to pretend you’re selling out Madison Square Garden.
Oh, we still don’t have any sponsors?
Obviously this changes from network to network, but FOX28’s commercials were essentially all for either Ring of Honor or Seinfeld reruns. Watching this show reminded me that while regular people don’t like wrestling, businesses really don’t like wrestling.
You should watch Ring of Honor because it isn’t 1997.
So why is Kevin Kelly there?
Kevin Kelly is there
Not only is Kevin Kelly the main commentator, which means listening to the show is difficult, but he’s also the pitchman on every commercial, cutaway, and interview. I feel like Kevin Kelly had more face time than any wrestler.
Kevin Kelly is a foul writer with offensive opinions, and literally nothing he said during this episode justified his employ at the company. He provided stilted play-by-play, and he pitched the website like he’d never been to one in his life. He’s a fat, ugly vacuum who drags the product down. To once again compare ROH to ECW, Joey Styles felt like he was part of the show, and friends with other people on it. Kevin Kelly’s performance felt like he was a hired hack be a guy in a suit on a show desperately trying to look professional.
In Short
They have to fix the hard camera, because it just takes the wind out of otherwise-intense moves, and they have to replace Kevin Kelly with literally anyone else. Do those two things, and we might have a decent wrestling show on our hands. As it stands, the great wrestling quality ROH is known for is seriously undermined by production decisions, things you’d think would have been fixed by Sinclair.
K Sawyer Paul is an author and publisher living in Toronto. He tweets and tumbls. In the wrestling world he is known for International Object.
Edited by Jason Mann.
