Kelly did his best and Riccaboni was serviceable, but once you have more than a play-by-play guy and a color commentator, it becomes a contest for everyone to “get a word in,” and it’s a mess. Why? Most wrestling promotions can’t do a three-man booth properly, but a revolving door of four commentators? It was just clunky and irritating. Lovely to have, but really only for the NJPW matches as his talent is wasted anywhere else. If Mauro Ranallo is wrestling’s Gus Johnson, Kevin Kelly is the late, great Craig Sager. This would be too many people for a panel show on FOX News. Poor Kevin Kelly, having to repeatedly say “If we could get the cameras back on the action!”. And there definitely will not be a replay! And don’t forget the backstage segments that didn’t play. You know SOMETHING happened, but you didn’t see it. There’s nothing quite like consistently hearing the commentary refer to something major happening in the ring while the camera is focused on the audience or the tables near the ring, then it flashes back to the ring where you see the wrestler laid out. Every single match had at least one major spot that was completely missed by the cameramen. I don’t know who to blame for this, but it looked like amateur hour out there. They either gave you the angle that made it obvious that the moves were fake, or they didn’t show you the wrestlers at all. The cameras were virtually never in the right place. But what I saw on Saturday was lazy and just plain bad. ROH and NJPW like to present themselves as real sports, so things are a bit toned down. WWE is sports entertainment, where showmanship is more important than literally anything else. I don’t expect ROH or NJPW to have the glitz and glamour of WWE products. And I’m not sure how you plan to recover. And yes, it was a co-branded show, but I’m going to show you how almost everything was Ring of Honor’s fault. I hate being negative about pro wrestling, but some of these things need to be said. Well, it turns out they didn’t have anything to worry about. WWE was, for the first time, a little scared of being upstaged. And on top of that, they had the star-power of New Japan Pro Wrestling. And a place that hasn’t had a non-WWE wrestling event since the Eisenhower administration. A place that garners an almost religious reverence. They were putting on a massive show the day before WrestleMania, in one of the most historic sporting venues in the country: Madison Square Garden. Ring of Honor had everything working in their favor. You could not have told me six months ago that when this weekend finally came, the G1 Supercard would be the event that disappointed me the most. Because one of them was so underwhelming…so infuriating…and so confusing…that it warrants its own article. But as I started going through the matches on each card, something became very clear. Match ratings listed above are from Dave Meltzer's highly respected Wrestling Observer Newsletter.When I started writing this article…after going through a 3-day marathon of pro wrestling…my plan was to give a breakdown of the major events from the weekend: NXT Takeover NY, ROH/NJPW G1 Supercard and, of course, WrestleMania 35. IWGP Heavyweight Championship (title change) ROH World Heavyweight Title (title change) IWGP Intercontinental Championship (title change) IWGP World Tag Team Titles ROH World Tag Team Titles (title change) IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title (title change)īrody King (c) & PCO (c), EVIL & SANADA, Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe ROH Women of Honor Championship (title change)įlip Gordon & Juice Robinson & Mark Haskins NEVER Openweight Championship ROH World Television Title (title change) O'Ryan, The Great Muta, Tomohiro Ishii, Tracy Williams, Vinny Marseglia, Will Ferrara, YOH, YOSHI-HASHI Black, Rhett Titus, Rocky Romero, Ryusuke Taguchi, Shaheem Ali, Shingo Takagi, SHO, T. Bad Luck Fale, Beer City Bruiser, Brian Milonas, BUSHI, Chase Owens, Cheeseburger, Colt Cabana, Delirious, Hirooki Goto, Jonathan Gresham, Jushin Thunder Liger, King Haku, Leon St.
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