G1/RoH Supercard (of Honor XIII)

Welcome to my annual Ring of Honor (RoH) blog for their annual Supercard of Honor show. 2019 was a wild year for RoH. They started the year losing access to Matt and Nick Jackson, Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and all three members of SCU (Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky) as they all departed after their contracts expired at the end of the 2018 to help launch All Elite Wrestling (AEW). Before that it was known that those seven wrestlers would be leaving, RoH collaborated with New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) to announce a special live PPV they would be airing on WrestleMania weekend: G1 Supercard. G1 is a recurring PPV special for NJPW, and I am presuming Supercard is short for the Supercard of Honor PPV special that usually transpires during WrestleMania weekend which is why I am covering this PPV and treating it as Supercard of Honor XIII. There is another big reason I wanted to cover this show….

That is because this joint venture between NJPW and RoH emanated from the ‘World’s Most Popular Arena’ Madison Square Garden. This was a shocking announcement because going back several decades WWE had the exclusive rights to MSG and the last other promotion that ran a show in MSG was back in 1960! WWE tried pressuring MSG and briefly got them to remove the show from their schedule….that was until the owners of RoH, Sinclair Broadcasting, called up WWE and informed them they own roughly half the FOX TV affiliate stations that would be starting to air SmackDown on FOX within several months and have control of what time to air WWE’s new flagship show and that was reason enough for Vince McMahon to back off and G1 Supercard wound up running as scheduled during the 2019 WrestleMania weekend from MSG.

NJPW and RoH have been lending talent to each other for years, but this is one of the first times they evenly split a card 50/50 for each promotion’s matches. When the tickets originally went on sale, it was shortly before the much hyped independent All In PPV put on by most of the Elite (at that time consisting of Cody, Omega, Young Bucks, Marty Scurll and Adam Paige) that RoH lent a lot of their talent for. The show wound up being a huge success and all the buzz for All In presumably was the catalyst for G1 Supercard selling out in under a day of tickets officially going on sale. By the time the G1 Supercard rolled around all of the Elite, save for Marty Scurll, departed RoH a few months earlier leaving a huge void of headline guys for RoH. The NJPW half of the card delivered with exciting match-ups, while the RoH half stuck out with a lack of top level talent.

The PPV had two pre-show matches that are included as bonuses on the DVD. The first match saw Jenny Rose & Oedo Tai overcoming the handicap match odds and defeating Hung Kimura, Sumie Sakai and Stella Grey when Tai got the pin with a 450 in a bout that saw a lot of nonstop energy to get the crowd rolling. G1 Supercard will be the first PPV I can remember that had a 30 person Rumble match in a pre-show they billed as the ‘Honor Rumble.’ It was also the longest pre-show match I can recall at 49 minutes. Entrances were sped up at approximately 30 second intervals to keep up the tempo which made it enticing to see who would walk out next. Both RoH and NJPW stars competed and I only recognized roughly half of the competitors, but it was fun learning some new faces. Colt Cabana was on commentary for the night but took a breather to compete in the Rumble when Yano invited him to take his spot. Other faces I recognized were Justin Gabriel now going by PJ Black, Beer City Bruiser, Delirious, Kenny King, Cheeseburger and a trio of Asian wrestling legends in Haku, Great Muta and Jushin Thunder Liger.

I do not care how aged Haku is because he still looks like one of the baddest guys on the planet I would not want to mess with. I have no idea how active Muta is, but he was not at all agile and seemed very careful with his movements. Liger could still go, but he was in the midst of his retirement year tour and it was apparent his best days were behind him. The end of the Rumble saw it looking like it would come down to Liger and Muta, but then Kenny King pulled the ‘ol hide under the ring trick card and emerged to toss Liger and Muta out to win it all. That was a fun crazy Rumble with the frequent entrances and it brought back memories of that bonkers Rumble match on a 2000 episode of Thunder with all kinds of unique entrants that were AWOL in that time of uncertainty for WCW and also marked the last appearance of Macho Man in WCW.

The start of the actual PPV saw a ‘winner takes all’ match with two titles on the line in RoH’s TV Title and NJPW’s Never Openweight Title. Jeff Cobb beat Will Ospreay here to walk away with both belts in a bout that did not fail to deliver a ton of insane spots. Dalton Castle was the RoH champ on a previous SoH PPV I covered here, but now his stock has dwindled as he lost to Rush in 15 seconds here after three straight Shotgun Dropkicks. After Castle collected himself, he turned and obliterated his eccentric seconds, The Boys. The RoH Women’s Title was on the line next and saw Kelly Klein beat Iwatoni with an Airplane Spin slam in a decent bout. I had no idea TNA/Impact Wrestling’s The Beautiful People were still a hot commodity after their countless stop-n-go runs in that promotion, but when Velvet Skye and Angelina Love walked out after the match and attacked Klein the announcers put it over as the biggest thing ever to happen to their women’s division.

DJ/Hip Hop artist Mega Ran came out for a musical performance next, the song is a decent catchy beat for the DVD menus too which is a nice relief from the generic basement-rock that dominates most other RoH releases. Anywho, Bully Ray interrupted and harassed Mega Ran and laid out an open challenge that turned into a six-man tag with Bully Ray, Silas Young and Shane Taylor taking on Flip Gordon, Juice Robinson and Mark Haskins. This was a surprisingly a fun weapons brawl with lots of creative spots. The finish saw Ray fall victim to the Wassup Headbutt and the Gordon hitting the 450 for the win. The IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title was on the line next in a triple threat between Bandido, Dragon Lee and Taiji. In a bout that I will remember as having a sick tower spot, it saw Bandido capture the gold after hitting a variant of a driver-pin combination.

Another winner takes all titles match transpired next for both the RoH and NJPW tag team titles in a four way between The Briscoes, Guerillas of Destiny, Evil & Sanada and Brody King & PCO. RoH contributed some production dollars for PCO’s electric (literally) entrance that saw him get the Frankenstein electric chair treatment in a thrilling visual. Speaking of production dollars, this is easily the best looking RoH show I have ever seen, especially compared to the first couple of SoH shows I covered here. The Guerillas of Destiny walked out with all the tag gold when they hit their double powerbomb finisher on Brody for the victory. RoH caught a lot of heat for running a ‘worked shoot’ segment after the match ended with the wrestlers formerly known as Big Cass & Enzo running out and attacking the Briscoes after the match before they got escorted out, but RoH never officially acknowledged it on camera and after all the negative reception it got did not request feature services from Cass & Enzo so I will link to this fan footage of the run-in instead.

A third promotion contributed a match to G1 Supercard with Revolution Pro having their British Heavyweight Title on the card with Hiroshi Tanahoshi challenging Zack Sabre Jr. for the championship. I only remember Zack’s excellent work in the Cruiserweight Classic from a few years back so it was great seeing him again, doubly so since he was accompanied by another old favorite of mine I have not seen in over a decade in TAKA Michinoku. This bout saw a heavy emphasis on heavy duty technical and submission wrestling which was a breather from the spotfests that dominated the rest of the card. I want to re-emphasize ‘heavy duty’ because both Tanahoshi and Sabre did a superb job at conveying how much they laid into each other with a sick submission Sabre Jr. kept amplifying in unbelievable ways that I cannot even describe until Tanahoshi convincingly tapped out. Thinking about this now I would rank this as my favorite match from the night!

The tenth contest of the night saw the IWGP Intercontinental Title on the line between Naito and Kota Ibushi. I recognize both guys from the handful of NJPW Kenny Omega matches I tracked down after hearing a ton of buzz for and also recognize Ibushi from his Cruiserweight Classic run too. This match delivered, and had a great NJPW produced video package too. Both guys delivered a lot of intense neck and head spots, and Ibushi wound up winning after a rising knee strike in another match that was close to my favorite for the night. The RoH World Title was on the line next in a triple threat ‘Ladder War’ between Marty Scurll, Matt Taven and Jay Lethal. Lethal was hyped going into this as having the title the most number of days compared to all other previous champions….but I could never buy into him as a top level guy, and I recall despising Matt Taven on previous RoH shows and Scurll I have bad memories of his match against Castle last year where he spent eons trying to find a weapon under the ring so I did not have a vested interest in the bout. It was a solid match with a few unique spots and saw Taven winning the title after fighting off Lethal in the end, but I felt rather ho-hum coming out of this, and apparently so did the crowd watching their tepid reaction to Taven’s title win.

The headlining main event saw Jay White defend his IWGP Title against Kazuchika Okada. I love how NJPW produces their video packages, and this one got me amped up going into the main event. The duo told a great story, and White’s manager, Gedo found clever ways to get involved. I recognize Okada from another Omega match I saw that I believe went to a time limit draw, and this match also went on a while going just over a half hour before White fell victim to the RAIIIIIIN-MAKERRRRR Lariat with Okada capturing the IWGP Title.

I saw online reception noting the weak RoH half of the show, and compared to the New Japan offerings, they definitely were a couple notches below, but RoH still had a couple of really good matches like the TV Title and bout and Bully Ray’s open challenge was the perfect refresher for this long of a card. I will give big ups for the Honor Rumble, Tag Titles and IWGP Title matches, but my two favorites that blew everything else away on here was the Zack Sabre/Tanahoshi and Naito/Ibushi matches. More than anything I came out of the G1 Supercard wanting to get more into NJPW, but with so much other wrestling out there to keep up with, I will probably only be picking and watching the occasional match or two a year that generates a ton of buzz. Collectively, I will give G1 Supercard a strong thumbs up and recommend to track down, especially seeing both promotions operate in a big time atmosphere like Madison Square Garden made the event truly special and standout like few other cards from RoH history.

Past Wrestling Blogs

Best of WCW Clash of Champions
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3
Biggest Knuckleheads
Bobby The Brain Heenan
Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes
DDP: Positively Living
Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials
ECW Unreleased: Vol 1
ECW Unreleased: Vol 2
ECW Unreleased: Vol 3
Eric Bishoff: Wrestlings Most Controversial Figure
Fight Owens Fight: The Kevin Owens Story
For All Mankind
Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection
Hulk Hogans Unreleased Collectors Series
Impact Wresting Presents: Best of Hulk Hogan
Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story
The Kliq Rules
Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman
Legends of Mid South Wrestling
Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story
Memphis Heat
NXT: From Secret to Sensation
NXT Greatest Matches Vol 1
OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History
OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History
Owen: Hart of Gold
RoH Supercard of Honor 2010-Present
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Scott Hall: Living on a Razors Edge
Shawn Michaels: My Journey
Sting: Into the Light
Straight Outta Dudley-ville: Legacy of the Dudley Boyz
Straight to the Top: Money in the Bank Anthology
Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder
Then Now Forever – The Evolution of WWEs Womens Division
TLC 2017
TNA Lockdown 2005-2016
Top 50 Superstars of All Time
Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season
True Giants
Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns
Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe
War Games: WCWs Most Notorious Matches
Warrior Week on WWE Network
Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition
Wrestlemania 28-Present
The Wrestler (2008)
Wrestling Road Diaries Too
Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money
Wrestlings Greatest Factions
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017

Shawn Michaels: My Journey

With Wrestlemania approaching in a few weeks (which is in doubt due to a growing global epidemic as of this writing) it is time to dig deep into the wrestling backlog box and pull out a WWE DVD that has been sitting there since 2009 in the form of Shawn Michaels: My Journey (trailer). I have no idea why I neglected this collection for so long since I have always been a Shawn Michaels fan, but can assure I am a fool for waiting this long to view it after wrapping up this three-disc set.

Shawn’s previous DVD set, Heartbreak & Triumph, saw Michaels get the standard feature-length documentary in addition to an array of matches spanning his career. They switch things up in My Journey. It is another collection of matches previously unreleased on video, and Shawn does three-to-five minute one-on-one interview spots with Michael Cole setting up each match or where he was at with his character at that point in his career. There are 20 matches spanning from 1985 through 2008, with Shawn providing some insight with Cole before each one. Some highlights are partying hard with the Nasty Boys from their AWA days, winning over respect from Greg Valentine, The British Bulldogs and Demolition after having good outings with them in the ring, the highs and lows of his first WWF Title reign, making sure to step up against Kurt Angle and being a straight shooter about being portrayed as a villain in his infamous rivalry against Hulk Hogan. These are not 10 second soundbites, but evocative memories from Shawn’s career in an intimate studio set that make these interview segments pop more than the average interview snippet from a documentary.

Shawn also joins Michael Cole to provide alternative commentary for three of the matches in the collection. One is for a house show match against Bret Hart in 1992 early in Shawn’s single run where he reflects on having nothing but respect for Hart at that point in his career and wanting to rise to his level. Shawn also eerily foreshadows how he has Bret’s number and is ready to reconcile with Bret, which he would legitimately do in the ring a few months later in 2010 in one of my favorite in-ring segments ever. Another commentary session is for his match against Ric Flair at Bad Blood 2003 when Flair was at the tail end of still being able to go and the two have a technical classic, and it was fun hearing Shawn on commentary recall Flair being anxious for his first ever table spot in that match. Michaels’ final commentary offering is for his match with Triple H in the 2005 installment of Tribute to the Troops where Shawn fondly shares several stories about encounters with the military from those shows.

The 20 matches are almost all winners and offer a diverse mix of styles as Shawn evolved his wrestling over the decades. There are four tag team bouts from Shawn’s Rockers days with a 1989 match against the Brainbusters standing out the most. There are several matches from RAW in the mid-90s where Shawn gets memorable matches from Psycho Sid, British Bulldog and 1-2-3 Kid. I loved they got Shawn’s monstrously heel promo against Hulk Hogan in Montreal where the crowd dumps all over him. The last disc has several epics from Shawn’s last run in WWE like the five star classic against Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 21 which unbelievably holds up as good now as it did 15 years ago, an awesome unsanctioned match against Jericho at Unforgiven 2008 putting an exclamation point in their red hot rivalry and saw both men step up to deliver one of the best grudge match brawls that I can recount. The DVD concludes with what Michael Cole hypes up as the best ever WrestleMania match when Shawn squared off against Undertaker at WrestleMania 25. I would give the ever-so-slight nod to his Angle match as Shawn’s better WM match, but this easily has better highs with some legendary near falls that were glorious to relive.

In the final sit-down interview segment with Cole after the Undertaker match, Shawn hints that he is ready to retire, and is just waiting on the right moment. He would only wait a few months after Shawn Michaels: My Journey released and would have his final full time match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania 26 in 2010. This is a fantastic set from beginning to end. The interview format conducted for this set made them appeal in a special candor and the match selection is excellent for nearly the entire 20 matches.

Past Wrestling Blogs

Best of WCW Clash of Champions
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3
Biggest Knuckleheads
Bobby The Brain Heenan
Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes
DDP: Positively Living
Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials
ECW Unreleased: Vol 1
ECW Unreleased: Vol 2
ECW Unreleased: Vol 3
Eric Bishoff: Wrestlings Most Controversial Figure
Fight Owens Fight: The Kevin Owens Story
For All Mankind
Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection
Hulk Hogans Unreleased Collectors Series
Impact Wresting Presents: Best of Hulk Hogan
Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story
The Kliq Rules
Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman
Legends of Mid South Wrestling
Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story
Memphis Heat
NXT: From Secret to Sensation
NXT Greatest Matches Vol 1
OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History
OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History
Owen: Hart of Gold
RoH Supercard of Honor 2010-Present
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Scott Hall: Living on a Razors Edge
Sting: Into the Light
Straight Outta Dudley-ville: Legacy of the Dudley Boyz
Straight to the Top: Money in the Bank Anthology
Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder
Then Now Forever – The Evolution of WWEs Womens Division
TLC 2017
TNA Lockdown 2005-2016
Top 50 Superstars of All Time
Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season
True Giants
Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns
Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe
War Games: WCWs Most Notorious Matches
Warrior Week on WWE Network
Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition
Wrestlemania 28-Present
The Wrestler (2008)
Wrestling Road Diaries Too
Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money
Wrestlings Greatest Factions
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017