Ring of Honor Review - April 20, 2016

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion Matt Sydal and Jushin "Thunder" Liger def. Dalton Castle and Ryusuke Taguchi

I'm a big fan of Sydal's work and I always enjoy Liger whenever he's in action, so seeing them team up was a real treat. Plus, Castle and Taguchi had fun chemistry together, so it was a very entertaining matchup on the whole and perfect in the opening slot. Sydal winning with a move that Liger innovated was also a nice touch. Taguchi was the only one I wasn't too familiar with coming into this bout, but I definitely want to see more of his work after being exposed to him here.


Delirious def. Gedo

It's worth noting that Gedo is the head booker for New Japan Pro Wrestling while Delirious is one of the head bookers for Ring of Honor, so that was a cool dynamic. I wasn't aware of Delirious' gimmick prior to this match because I've only been watching Ring of Honor for the past two years, but it's a fun character and he worked well with Gedo. The commentators did a nice job of relaying the importance of his return to ROH and bringing up how he had yet to appear on the television show before now.

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Tomohiro Ishii def. Roderick Strong for the ROH World Television Championship

Yes, this was taped over two months ago (which I'll discuss in more detail momentarily) and thus the ending outcome was never in doubt, but the match itself was terrific. I knew nothing about Ishii and therefore had no incentive to see him win the title, but the audience in attendance obviously responded favorably to him and was solidly behind him throughout the bout. Hopefully ROH does more to get fans familiar with Ishii during his reign as champion and so far they haven't done that in the two months since this was taped.


​Overall Show

As a wrestling show, I enjoyed this, but from a storyline standpoint, it's absolutely asinine to be airing a show that's this dated. As if that isn't bad enough, ROH has a pay-per-view coming up, so they're basically putting their current feuds on hold in order to air old content. The atmosphere was a refreshing change of pace and the in-ring action was excellent, but long-term, ROH is sabotaging their own event by not hyping it up at all with their weekly television show.