Ring of Honor: Best In The World

Introduction:

Coming hot on the heels of our review of "Supercard of Honor", a title available only by online order, now presented for your (re)viewing pleasure is the general-release "Best In The World" DVD, showcasing some of the best action over the years of the Ring of Honor promotion.

Previous general-release DVDs "Bloodstained Honor" and "Stars of Honor" were critical successes, and with bouts featuring such great names as Kenta Kobashi, Samoa Joe, Austin Aries, KENTA, Bryan Danielson, and Lance Storm on this compilation, this production was virtually guaranteed to live up to its title.

Video:

Video is presented in 4:3 fullscreen NTSC (Region 0), is good for a DVD of this genre, and very good for non-WWE standards.

Most of the matches appear to be filmed with one steady camera, and and least one handheld, giving the bouts included a much more basic direction that the megabucks wrestling of WWE. But that's a positive rather than a negative, with WWE always inclined to mask the in-ring details that they don't want you to see.

As for the transfer to DVD, it is solid, with some noticeable digital artefacts, though these are not distracting in the least.

Audio:

Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, and is reasonable. The arena sound seems to have been recorded quite primitively, which allows the audio to mildly distort on occasions. But on the other hand, this type of recording conveys the rapturous nature of the audience in a way which much more elaborate productions often cannot.

Commentary is provided in most instances by Dave Prazak and Lenny Leonard, and interestingly, their commentary appears here on the Samoa Joe vs Kenta Kobashi match, where on previous DVD releases, none was present. In general, the commentary is of a good standard, accentuating the goings-on inside the ring.

Overall:
Released as part of Ring Of Honor's second foray into the general-release market, by its very title, "Best In The World" would seem to aim to showcase the very best of the ROH product. And in that regard, it certainly achieves its goal.

It's not all plain sailing, however. In between the brilliant - which we'll get to in a moment - there's also the intelligence-insulting, beginning with the Samoa Joe vs Kikutaro bout. I have no idea as to whether this bout was supposed to some sort of ill-judged comedy, but it certainly came across that way. Even Samoa Joe, one of the finest wrestlers in the company at the time, could not help but look helplessly foolhardy.

Terry Funk vs C.M Punk was nowhere near that level of stupidity, but it likewise had no place on a DVD designed to showcase the best of Ring of Honor. With all due respect to Terry Funk, he showed his age here, and the dreadful conclusion to this bout didn't help it one iota.

With those bouts out of the way, though, we can now concentrate on the good of "Best In The World", which ranges from very good, to exceptional, to Match of the Year. Bizarrely, the single contest here that did win the Match of the Year (as voted for by readers of the Wrestling Observer) is the first bout on the DVD, as Samoa Joe wrestled the Japanese legend Kenta Kobashi. A bout which had excellent action and even better psychology and drama, I feared for the rest of the DVD, for having to follow it.

Thankfully, AJ Styles & Matt Sydal vs Dragon Kid & Genki Horiguchi was a worthy follow up, in a different way, with some brilliantly innovative high-flying, particular from Dragon Kid. From there, KENTA (not to be confused with the aforementioned Kobashi) faced Austin Aries in a bout that was every bit as good as the opener, and was supremely-paced, and wonderfully hard-hitting.

Bryan Danielson - in the eyes of many, the best wrestler in the world today - brought Lance Storm out of retirement in the proceeding bout, which had an excellent mat-wrestling build, moving to a great finish, before The Briscoe Brothers faced Naruki Doi and Shingo Takagi, in a bout held in Liverpool, England. It's a very quick-moving contest, with lots of dare-devil high-flying, and some very convincing near-falls.

Going in, I wasn't completely convinced that El Generico vs Claudio Castagnoli was a fitting penultimate match-up, but both men worked an excellent bout here, even more remarkably so given that it was their third of the evening.

To finish proceedings, then ROH World Champion Takeshi Morishima faced London's Nigel McGuinness in another exceptionally brutal battle, which didn't build to the finish quite as well as the other bouts here, but was still a wonderful contest, and a fine "main event".

Overall, Ring of Honor's "Best In The World" is a remarkable compilation of some of the great matches in Ring of Honor history. There are many, many more in the company's archive, but until then, every professional wrestling must own this set of tremendous action, to call themselves a true fan.

Of the nine bouts available here, at least three (Kenta Kobashi vs Samoa Joe, KENTA vs Austin Aries, and Bryan Danielson vs Lance Storm) were legitimate Match of the Year contenders.

Ignoring the dross, it really doesn't get any better than that.