I haven’t been off the ROH beat. I’ve been watching for the past month and a half as the tournament for the ROH World Title has unfolded. I did sneak a peak at the results of the iPPV, which was given out for free because of yet another malfunction, to see who the new ROH World Champ was because I didn’t think it’d be on TV. It was on TV though which gave me the additional two weeks of viewing, um how do I say this, pleasure. Sure, I’ll touch on the negativity in this article but for the majority of this time period, I have liked what I’ve seen.

In the last six weeks, Kevin Kelly has not completely sucked. For whatever reason, he seems more comfortable when Nigel McGuinness is his co-pilot. Wikipedia tells me that he got canned for budget reasons. I’d have to say he doesn’t do well arguing because he was tongue tied when Steve Corino or any heel is around. Of course, I spend most weeks bemoaning Michael Cole & Jerry Lawler not arguing with JBL well enough so maybe it was budget cuts. Kelly has made his fair share of dumb comments, but as an overall whole he has been good in selling the matches and describing the title tournament picture well.

I do like ROH’s style of wrestling since it is an alternative to the WWE and WWE Lite AKA TNA. I have noted my reservations about their multi-finisher set of moves numerous times. That problem hasn’t changed. I wish they’d throw in more basic offense instead of a second finisher. But the thing about all of those finishers is that they do look cool and require quite a bit of athleticism. Some people go over board with trying to make it look complicated but most if not all of the men in this tournament don’t do that.

Speaking of the wrestlers in the tournament, ROH made some smart decisions and whittled it down to the four guys at the top of their roster. Adam Cole against Tommaso Ciampa was one semi-final bout while Michael Elgin against Kevin Steen was the other one. The only people on their roster you could make a case for other than these four are Jay Lethal, who isn’t doing better since dropping the Macho Man gimmick but is still an excellent wrestler, Davey Richards, who stinks and is also in an ongoing feuds with Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish and Rocky Romero & Alex Koslov, and Michael Bennett, who needs to be built up but has the potential.

ROH dedicated the last show, this past week’s, to the conclusion of the tournament which is a great idea. They showed build up for Adam Cole and Michael Elgin. ROH also gave them promo time along with soon to be dethroned champion Jay Briscoe. I’m sure they didn’t show the entire match but they showed a lot of it. The match was the bulk of the show though, another positive. The last of three positives was the fact that they decided to throw the strap on the newly heel Adam Cole. He had been trending in that direction but Cole super kicking Briscoe in the back of the head after Jay had handed over the ROH Title to Cole cemented the turn. Too bad the “smart” ROH crowd ruined the moment by starting to cheer for Cole. Maybe ROH isn’t the problem. ROH’s fans are the worst. – Kevin