ROH’s Glory by Honor VIII, the finale of the Final Countdown tour, the last night of Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness in ROH was a sell out and thus can only be termed a major success. For Andy Mac’s review, click here and for my own click here. The atmosphere was great, but only for the first half of the show. The second half featured a far less impressive atmosphere, as the crowd was burned out by too many major matches in a row and a four and a half hour show. By tightening up several segments and changing the order of the matches, this show could have been far improved. Here’s how I would have done it.
1. Chris Hero vs. Eddie Kingston – a hard hitting opener and Hero would be over huge going on first in NYC.
2. Dark City Fight Club vs. Cheech and Cloudy – A good match, keeps the hard hitting going.
3. Bret Hart promo, followed by Austin Aries immediately calling him out, leading to Aries vs. Petey Williams – the only way Petey could be over in NYC that night is if Bret put him over.
4. Roderick Strong vs. Delirious vs. Sonjay Dutt vs. Grizzly Redwood – after Aries to preserve the surprise of who he’d face
5. Colt Cabana vs. Rhett Titus – A quick, comedic interlude between spotfests.
6. Jay and Mark Briscoe vs. The Young Bucks – and the bigger spotfest takes us into intermission.
7. Claudio Castagnoli vs. Kenny Omega – a good match with a slow build and flashy spots to wake the crowd after intermission.
8. Jim Cornette’s arrival and speech, then confrontation with Aries – separated from Aries original segment so the crowd isn’t overloaded on talk.
9. The ladder war between the American Wolves and Steen and Generico. This was billed as a main event, and had to build slowly due to the injury to Edwards, so let it go on second to last to get the crowd hyped at the end for.
10. Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness – After a brief semi-intermission to clear the ladder war rubble, the buzz in the arena for this would have been palpable and, while it went over well, it wasn’t as electric as the response for either man has been in the past. That was due a bit to sadness at their leaving and a bit to burnout after such a long, jumbled show. I think my match order takes care of the latter complaint.
After the show, Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness asked fans to continue to support ROH. I’m not sure if that’s a wise decision. Click here for the Pros and Cons of following ROH in the wake of their departure. What do you think?
