Bobby Roode vs. Masakatsu Funaki

[5.0] "Roode and Funaki are usually pretty solid workers (especially Roode around this time) but they just didn't have any chemistry here."

[6.0] "A solid and unique match. Roode being a heel at the time of it being taped helped. Solid action throughout and a nice showing for both talents."

[4.0] "Both of these guys are good but definitely didn't click well. Roode is the usual shticky heel that the crowd don't really care much for and Funaki is the guy who has to try to make this at least somewhat interesting, which he tries with some fancy Tiger Mask springs to escape a arm wrench (which he nearly fucks up but hey, credit for trying) but this was a lot of just slow, boring wrestling. Extended side headlocks, shoulder charges, shoves, clapping for a crowd chant, like all of the trademark shit you'd want to include in your match if you wanted to pad it up and make it longer, just painful lazy wrestling for the first half. Roode pulls Funaki to the outside and throws him into the ring post and whatnot to damage his arm and justify his control segment going forward. Roode works a slow, generic heel style pace, using stomps and dirty breaks to get in more damage to said arm with the occasional good-looking move like a very smooth side suplex. Seeing Funaki have to rope escape Roode trying on a cross armbreaker was a weird visual given the obvious background between the two. Roode tries getting the crowd interested with some more shouting but no dice. Funaki gets a generic comeback with his kicks, which look solid but he doesn't really do a whole lot else bar that, which felt lazy. The two work some clunky stuff as Roode gets blasted with strikes but is able to escape Funaki's Hybrid Blaster and whatnot by going back to the arm. Roode works a extremely lax Crossface before Funaki kinda just rolls out with no real issue and the two roll about a bit with near fall pins. Roode countering a ankle lock into a second Crossface was probably the only cool spot of the match, as was the Enzuigiri counter when Funaki tried grabbing on to it again. Sadly this is right at the end of the match as Funaki just casually escapes a Roode Bomb to grab on a ankle lock for the tap-out. Really phoned-in action, which was kinda typical from Funaki during his W-1 tenure. Roode much like Flair just doesn't work with a Japanese crowd; they don't care about his antics and he didn't get much of a reaction. As a result, it felt like he was going though the motions here when he realised they weren't going to get invested much. Same with Funaki, he didn't really care a whole lot and seemed to be just paycheck-hunting again as he pulls out some kicks, one or two signature spots and then a few holds, all at a lackadaisical pace. These two can do a lot better."