Ring Of Honor PPVs

Ring Of Honor/NJPW G1 Supercard (April 6th, 2019)

You want to talk about Bizarro World? Long before the Forbidden Door was a thing, we had this show; a collaboration between Ring Of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling putting together a Supercard PPV from New York City.

Specifically, the World’s Most Famous Arena itself, Madison Square Garden.

MSG was a longtime WWE stronghold and in particularly a longtime home base to the McMahon family dating back to the days of Jess McMahon. To see another wrestling promotion hold a show in New York, let alone the MECCA of sports entertainment, was unfathomable. And yet one April night in 2019, it finally happened. The first non-WWE professional wrestling event to be held at the arena since 1960, tickets for the show sold out within fifteen minutes of being on the market. And with a packed crowd of over 16,000 people in attendence, there were going to be expectations and whether those expectations would be met is… another story entirely.

The success of this show stemmed from the success of All In from the year prior, the event promoted by Cody, Kenny, and the Bucks and produced by Ring Of Honor, though technically not a Ring Of Honor event. The success of that show resulted in planting the seeds for the birth of All Elite Wrestling, which the mentioned folks would be a part of. So while this Supercard from MSG would be missing some vital players, did it have enough to stand on its own and deliver a show that lived up to the hype?

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Ring Of Honor SUPERCARD Of Honor 2022

So at the moment, I’m somewhat conflicted because I’m not sure whether I should count this as a Ring Of Honor PPV or an All Elite PPV. Because it’s the first ROH PPV since Final Battle in December and the first show since the company went on self-imposed hiatus, but at the same time, it’s also the first show since Tony Khan bought Ring Of Honor and I’m not sure which is which.

See, it looks like an ROH show in terms of the sets. It sounds like an ROH show, with the usual commentary crew doing the honors here. But the whole thing comes across as a thinly-veiled AEW B-show, with some of the underused AEW guys being featured prominenetly while you only had a handful of ROH guys from prior to the hiatus who aren’t signed by AEW.

In any event, it’s billed as a Ring Of Honor show despite now being part of the AEW empire and since I tend to treat NXT as its own thing during the few times I’ve covered their stuff, I suppose I should do the same here. And since I made the leap and jumped on board with an Honor Club subscription – because I might as well while the service is still up to try and take in as much ROH as I possibly could – maybe this will get the ball rolling on revisiting some old stuff from the promotion’s prime years and such.

But that is then. Let’s talk about this Supercard Of Honor show and how awesome it was.

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Ring Of Honor – JOE VS. KOBASHI (October 2nd, 2005)

Those UWF shows were a chore to sit through, kids. Fortunately, those were the only UWF shows we had to sit through and I thought that I had picked a nice little palette cleanser for this week’s musings. And that’s where today’s show comes into play… from Ring Of Honor circa 2005 and aired on The Fight Network ages ago – thus allowing me to preserve the event onto DVD-R, including commercials – today’s show doesn’t shy away from what the main event is going to be: Samoa Joe vs. Japanese legend Kenta Kobashi.

At the time, this was hailed as one of the best matches on U.S. professional wrestling soil. And seeing this match for the first time, it certainly had enough to live up to that hype because I had a ball with that match. However, much time has passed and one has to ask; Is Joe Vs. Kobashi still one of the best matches in U.S. professional wrestling history? Or has it lost its luster?

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ALL IN

So this past Saturday, Cody (Rhodes) and the Young Bucks (or Young Fucks) held their much-hyped self-financed independent wrestling show ALL IN, featuring a showcase of the very best that the independents had to offer as well as two World championship matches being contested. What seemed like a big gamble paid off considerably as the show sold out in 22-ish minutes and genuinely felt like a big deal going in.

This is the first wrestling PPV that I’ve bought in years and I was slightly pissed off because shortly after I paid the forty bucks for the show, NJPW World announced that they would have the show on their 999 yen per month streaming service. Not to mention there were some other minor issues with the live stream that I’ll get into after the break, but when all was said and done, I think I got my money’s worth and thensome.

So, I bought the PPV on Fite and had the page loaded Saturday so I’d remember that the show was on. 7:00 rolls around and I get a video error. Tried refreshing the video several times and gave up. Tuned back in about a few minutes later and the PPV was up and running, so sadly I didn’t catch the National Anthem being played or the card being run down by the announcers (including Don Callis – fuck me, this guy is suddenly everywhere all of a sudden.)

Unfortunately, trying to watch the video full-screen caused the streamer to stutter horribly, so I’m left watching the show on my television from a tiny window while the Young Bucks stare into my soul the entire time. Clearly, not a promising start to this first time running Fite.TV.

In any event, let us begin…

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