I give ROH New Horizons a thumbs up.  
 
Best match:  Daneilson vs. Black
 
I think that the focus of the four way survival should have been the Delirious/Rhet Titus angle after Delirious took the axe kick for Daizee Haze the night before.  
 
It was an otherwise exciting show with a pretty dramatic ending.  
They need to improve their production values if they're going to be taken seriously by a wider audience.  Better lighting for the end angle is kind of essential especially when they're not taking bumps on foam pads like in the WWE.    
 
Jason McNeil

ROH New Horizons Feedback
 
Thumbs Up
Best Match: Bryan Danielson v. Tyler Black
Worst Match: Erick Stevens v. Ruckus v. Delirious v. Shane Hagadorn
 
Hi Dave
I enjoyed this payperview. I was at the show live and at the time it seemed overshadowed by the amazing Toronto show the night before. But of course this had the best match of the weekend between Black and Danielson and what I would call a must-see match for MOTY voting. Even though the turnbuckle spot was unplanned, the match seemed to build to it and their improvisation afterward made this at least something that you don't see every day. Danielson continued his state-of-the-art body of work while Black seems to have moved into place to perhaps be ROH champion within the year. He has the vibe of Austin Aries in 2004 leading to his unseating Joe.
Nigel and Claudio had a great match and the vignette for Claudio was effective.
All the matches seemed to play their part. The four-way is the best I can come up with for a worst match candidate but I like all four guys. In fact, Stevens may be my favorite performer in my favorite promotion. I would say Stevens and Black are both strong candidates for Most Improved this year.
Dave Musgrave

 ROH PPV Thoughts:
Thumbs up
Best: Claudio vs Nigel
Worst: the 4-way
 
As far as ROH PPVs go, this is the closest I've ever come to a thumbs in the middle.

I'm just tired of this ANARCHY ROH ON PPV~! style. Fucking hell. It was something that was once nice and fun, but now its getting on my nerves. You know the idea... wrestler comes out with no match, which leads to a match, which leads to another brawl, which leads to another match. I get that they need to get around not being able to use themes on PPV, and that they save time by not having ring entrances, but it makes it look like ROH doesn't even book matches.

The first 40 minutes of the show gave me a headache. Shit was moving faster than an episode of Impact.

Jacobs and Black are in the ring. They cut a promo, and as with all promos tonight ROH gives us an EXPOSITION BONANZA. Every mention of a past event has to have a 3-second clip to go along with it.

"Blargh this wasn't scheduled! blargh!" Fucking nothing on your PPVs are ever "scheduled" Prazak. Have you not learned this yet? Here come the Briscoes! "Blargh they're not even supposed to be here!" Of course not! This is ROH on PPV.

Quick 45 second intro video! and the briscoes have opponents in the ring! Four minutes later our little squash is complete and we're treated to a sloppily put together 45 second "Briscoes at home" video. Then we are right into a 4-man match, with all of the wrestlers in the ring and about to do battle. 5 minutes of madness!

whew, thats over. Time to breathe and to obsorb the past 18 minutes. Whoa hold on! Austin Aries is out and its... unannounced! Its FIP and the inmates are running the asylum!

Aries calls out Jacobs but is attacked by Tyler Black and MsChif! Jacobs and his cohorts beat Aries up! That's not enough though! Now Steen crashes the party! He's challenging the Age of the Fall! By himself! Why isn't Generico here? Hey, for once a point when some exposition would have actually been useful! Oh well.

So Mr. stupid is seemingly challenging a big group of dastardly heels all by himself. Normally he wouldn't be this stupid, but this is ROH on PPV and he needs to find a way to be attacked without a theme song playing. So here comes the savage Necro Butcher from behind!

Artie in the earpiece says... this is now an official bout! No DQ!

Then we're treated to a wonderful hushed Adam Pearce promo, where he thinks he is channeling the great promo men of the past, but all he actually does is make awful metaphors and comparisons that would earn him an F on a tenth grade English paper.

Now we get our Hero/Go vs Strong/Marufuji match. Sweeney's on the mic! They're not happy and they are leaving! But WHEW good thing, wacky Lance Storm is there to put a stop to it! Why the fuck is he here? No bother! He says "In ROH they leave it in the ring!" and he's not letting Sweeney go anywhere. Let us begin our bout!

Okay. So that's like the first 40 minutes of the show. I really wasn't liking this. For all the shit TNA gets about Impact being BANG BANG BANG with too much going on and no time to obsorb any of it, this show should get just as much criticism. Thankfully they slow the fuck down from this point until the end of the show, but man was it a mess up until this point.

So this tag match wound up being really good. Then Albright cut a promo. It was the overdone "going back to your family and how you upset them" routine that WWE always does, but it was fine for what it was and way better than Pearce's bullshit.

Then Nigel and Claudio had a match that I was not expecting. Between this match, and CCs match with Dragon the night before and Nigel's match with Steen the night before, these two both had a hell of a weekend. This match was great. This is the kind of thing you could show a WWE fan who hasn't been exposed to anything else, and they'd be amazed by it, but they wouldn't be overwhelmed like they could be by some of the faster ROH stuff. Just great stuff here. At first I was thinking that I wished this was the match they had in NYC, but at the same time I'd rather see it in front of a crowd that bought it istead of an audience that resented Claudio. Who knows if it would have actually won them over?

Then Dragon vs Black went on. I wish I hadn't read about the turnbuckle spot the other day. It would have been a big markout moment for me, but it was kind of ruined knowing about it already. Anyhow, match was really good, but like that first match between them earlier this year that everyone creamed over, I wasn't in love with it. I'll probably just have to give it another shot, as I was eating and only half paying attention while I watched it.

Then there was more unnannounced wackiness as Aries and Jacobs had this really good brawl, and Necro killed them both on a ladder.

Show was still a thumbs up because the second half was really good, but the first 40 minutes of the show weren't so great for me.

People go on a lot about ROH having bad production, and normally it doesn't bother me... but their sloppy production does come off really bad when they OVERproduce stuff as they do on these PPVs. Sloppily thrown in edits during AOTF promos don't make the show look better than normal... it makes the show look really low-rent... as do sloppily thrown in clips of whatever is being mentioned during an in-ring promo, or hastily put together 30-second hype videos. Or nasty looking graphics telling me what a wrestler's finisher is.

And what is it about a show being on PPV that makes ROH think that the commentators need to speak during pauses in in-ring promos, when what the commentators say adds nothing? They aren't as bad as Tenay and West, but I have noticed it on all the PPVs to the point that its annoying.

Basically, I just think ROH should treat its PPVs more like their normal DVDs except shorter, and with less time wasted during wrestler entrances and exits. The only plusses as far as PPV production that are different from normal DVD production are 1) post-match replays and 2) commentary over ring-entrances.
 
Anthony Ammo Morone

Hi Dave,
 
for ROH New Horizons I give a thumbs up rating.
 
Best match Nigel McGuinness vs Claudio Castagnoli ROH title match.
 
Worst match.... none really, I liked all matches. Maybe the opener
with Briscoes vs Franklin and Young.
 
This show made me realize how much I like good wrestling. The
two main events were fantastic and I liked all workers involved.
Necro vs Steen was also good I think. I also liked the angle at the end
with Necro having his own thoughts.
Chris Hero also continues to impress with his new role.
 
Overall it was a great show.
 
Greetings,
Timo Knopf

Dave,
Some quick thoughts on last night's ROH PPV:
 
Thumbs up, way up
 
Best Match: Bryan Danielson vs. Tyler Black
 
Worst Match: Briscoes squash (despite the crazy crowd,
but the video package that followed was priceless)
 
I haven't seen Claudio Castagnoli wrestle since his
turn, but he has certainly been getting dumped on by
lots of ROH message board fans of late (though still
considered strong in Chikara). So with this being
really Cluadio's final match as a face, I was very
pleased with the Claudio vs. Nigel ROH Title match
which I thought was their best together (and the
sequence with the deadlift german suplex and ricola
bomb in the mix was AWESOME and the crowd shot showed
the huge response perfectly).
 
I can't even begin to find the words to describe the
Bryan Danielson vs. Tyler Black match (except saying
it was by far the best match of their series and
delivered in every way)!  I feel so lucky to have
followed Bryan Danielson's career from his start
training in Texas and have gotten to watch him grow
into a wrestler who continues evolve as a student of
his craft, blowing my mind on a regular basis.  I have
to thank ROH for believing in him and giving us, as
fans, the chance to see him work unfiltered and to his
true potential.
 
Dan Ball
Getzville, NY