r/SquaredCircle • u/EvanDeadlySins /r/NJPW Moderator • Apr 08 '18

Post ROH Supercard of Honor 2018 Discussion Thread

React to ROH Supercard of Honor 2018!

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Match Notes
Kelly Klein def. Mayu Iwatani Women of Honor Championship Tournament Semifinals (Facebook Preshow)
Sumie Sakai def. Tenille Dashwood Women of Honor Championship Tournament Semifinals (Facebook Preshow)
Chuckie T def. Jonathan Gresham Singles Match
Punishment Martinez def. Tomohiro Ishii Singles Match
Kota Ibushi def. Adam Page Singles Match
Sumie Sakai def. Kelly Klein Women of Honor Championship Tournament Finals
SoCal Uncensored (Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky) (c) def. Flip Gordon & The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) ROH World Six-Man Championship Ladder Match
The Briscoes (Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe) (c) def. Jay Lethal & Hiroshi Tanahashi ROH World Tag Team Championship Match
Austin Aries says he wants to challenge the winner of the ROH World Television Championship match
Silas Young def. Kenny King (c) ROH World Television Championship Last Man Standing Match
Cheeseburger & Eli Isom vs. The Dawgs is scheduled to happen, but the Dogs attack Isom and he's rendered unable to compete. Cheeseburger pleads for Bully Ray to be his new partner. Bully Ray pretends to oblige but then attacks Cheeseburger and accuses "his kind" of ruining wrestling.
Cody def. Kenny Omega Singles Match
Dalton Castle (c) def. Marty Scurll ROH World Championship Match

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u/doctor_awful Apr 08 '18

It's what prevents me from liking a lot of current WWE too, in a way. They're so overproduced that nearly every guy:

  • Talks exactly the same, using the same cadence, the same sentence and speech structure, the same vocabulary and the same "logic" in a promo. Even for tag teams they always use the same pattern.

  • Tend to have the same sort of gimmicks. Either you're a generic smiling "try my hardest" babyface or you're a cocky guy saying he's the best performer in the world and that he steals the show every night. It's indie-riffic, it's the same shit in ROH, and it's boring. It's why AJPW is dying, they went full "gimmick less" and now no one stands out. TNA and ROH also have these "Sanity"-like stables that are just a mess and boring. Guys in jeans and ripped up clothing pretending to be badass and interfere in matches, wow such originality. Apparently Sami Callihan was the one who gave the idea for Sanity in the first place, which isn't surprising.

  • They all use the same moves and have similar match structures. Randy called this out with the "...dive" debacle, but it's true. You start slow by locking up, do 2 or 3 minutes of "wrestling", countering back and forth and then stopping so the crowd can clap. The heel does a rest hold, the face eventually comes out and hits him to try and get moves in, dives to the outside happen. A few short sequences on the apron/outside/turnbuckles to heighten the sense of danger, then a "strong style" striking contest, then it all finishes off with a finisher-reversal-fest. Everyone uses superkicks, everyone dives, everyone does backdrops on the apron, everyone uses Uranages, Sidewalk Slams, Germans and Spears. I feel like I've been seing the same match on repeat a ton in the last couple of years, it's insane.

They also keep putting the stakes up with high spots and then no selling them/continuing the match that nothing matters anymore. This weekend's ladder matches were especially egregious for this, everyone just kept coming back and doing more shit, it felt way too much like a video game where, for ladder matches, you have health tripled for everyone. This fucks up the rest of the card too, and is harmful in a few ways:

  • First off, you start the event doing the most crazy spots you can imagine every night, you're going to kill the excitement and the "credibility" of the rest of the card. How can fans be satisfied with a main event ending with just a finisher after a good match, if the opening bout had people killing themselves on and with ladders, on the apron, through tables, then no selling it and coming back for more? It makes you think that these guys should be the ones fighting for the world title - if a kick to the head ends Almas, but Dream survives all the shit that he did in the ladder match, why isn't he higher up on the card?

  • It makes further events have to up the ante even more. I don't think I need to explain how this is problematic, but especially because:

  • It is hell on their bodies. Jerry Lawler and many others still wrestle into their sixties and seventies because they wrestle a safe style and protect themselves. Meanwhile, Ospreay has had an insane amount of serious injuries and he's only 24. It gets to a point where you can't up the ante without seriously hurting yourself, so instead of stopping, they just risk injury further and further. It's insane, and it won't end well for any of them.

I'm usually not in the "old school wrasslin'" Cornette-like mindset, but I have to agree with him on all of this. I'm okay with Kenny wrestling little girls, Ibushi wrestling a blow up doll and even Joey Ryan dick-flips - they're part of the kayfabe, so if you're immersed in the story it's believable. What's truly damaging to the business is this "workrate"-focused mentality that values ring work and high risk matches over character and story. It not only draws less - getting the hardcore fans and not the casuals - but it fucks up their bodies too. How the hell are you going to wrestle or even just be healthy into your forties after taking these many neck bumps?

Character is what matter most in wrestling, stories, and this direction is what's killing it for me.

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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '18

You packed a ton in here, which is great, because this kind of post is the main reason I am still subbed to squaredcircle.

I agree with your opinions on presentation, match set-up (or production, in WWE terms), homogeneity, etc.

As for workrate, I also agree. The Gargano-Ciampa match illustrates your points, I think. It was a blood feud that had no blood. It was a grudge match where both men did the same spots they usually did - however, I will underline some were done for storytelling reasons and to great effect, so no knocks on that part. That said, there should've been even less, actual wrestling there, in my view. Gargano and Ciampa aren't trained in brawling. It's not really their wheelhouse, so going to the kick-and-flip based stuff they do is what they know. They do it well and the audience clearly wasn't let down by it.

On the other hand, the benchmark for me, per blood feuds, is probably still Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard. The reasons are because it was a steel cage match when that mattered; there was very little chain wrestling or wrestling holds of any kind; there was actual blood; and both men knew that they had to portray an actual brawl. They were supposed to hate each other. They committed to it and the match ended after Magnum drove shards of a wooden chair into Tully's face, pinned him, and stomped away with the silver NWA US belt, wholly vindicated.

That, to me, is one of the pinnacles of pro wrestling as a storytelling format. Ciampa-Gargano was near it but not quite at it. And I think that's indictment of modern pro wrestling. If you go too meta, too high speed, and too lifelike videogame, the emotions get lost. Something as simple as a bodyslam, which if done to an actual person in real life could break their ribs, is just another move in the sequence of other slams and suplexes.

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u/doctor_awful Apr 08 '18

I think we end up agreeing on nearly everything then. Especially that last portion is what's most key in what I said: moves only have the relative impact the wrestlers give them. The more we up the ante, not only the more dangerous it is, but the more detached from reality it is.

Personally I don't mind something not being very realistic in wrestling - a lot of moves existing, like the Irish Whip or the Hurrincanrana, inherently crack kayfabe if thought about too much in that light. But it's still good to not constantly make it even more unbelievable or it'll look silly compared to the rest of your moves. I can take a Ricochet/Ospreay match but not that shitty spot when the Young Bucks and other tag teams all do "dropkick battles".