SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
HITS
Silas Young (w/Beer City Bruiser) vs. Jonathan Gresham: This match is for the final slot in the ROH TV title 4-way match at Final Battle in a couple of weeks. My first thought when I saw the announcement of this match was the difference in styles. While Young is very agile and can move well in the ring, I still see him as an old school bruiser type wrestler who will pound you and make ground meat out of his opponents whereas Gresham fights fair and has a versatile ground and aerial game. With that said, this was a good match. It had a lot more comedy in it than I expected but the crowd enjoyed it. From the start, I expected Young to defeat Gresham with help from Bruiser who was at ringside. While this didn’t quite go as scripted, Bruiser did get involved just enough to distract and take the concentration away from Gresham. Young defeats Gresham and Young will now move on to be a part of the 4-way match for the ROH TV title at Final Battle. Another solid opening match from ROH. As I look back at this year, I feel like ROH has done a great job of opening the show weekly with a good match and this week was no exception to that.
The Kingdom: Nothing spectacular but it was effective, and it served its purpose. Vinny Marseglia and TK O’Ryan promise to defeat the Motor City Machine Guns next week on ROH TV and become the ROH World Tag Team champions. I always like the plugs for next week and this served its purpose in plugging next week’s match.
Recap of Bully Ray and The Briscoes: While this segment was a nice recap, I would recommend going back and watching last week where The Briscoes left Tommy Dreamer and Bully Ray laid out. Solid recap but again go back and watch the full segment from last week and enjoy it.
War Machine Attacked by The Addiction: War Machine comes out for their match, but they are attacked by The Addiction. A match never gets started but during the brawl, Kazarian is thrown like a lawn dart towards the corner of the barricades and he hits a female fan. The female fan comes up full of blood. Everyone looks shocked in the audience. You can tell the fans are not sure if this was planned or not. Ian Riccaboni sarcastically asked The Addiction if they were happy about this and then they throw us to commercial. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. I understand the spot was planned but I wondered if this was something that set up The Addiction vs War Machine later down the line or if something else is happening. Being unsure is a good thing though because it lends itself to tuning in during the coming weeks to see what comes of this. I liked this, and I think we should stay tuned to see how this situation develops.
Coleman’s Pulpit (w/Kenny King): Coleman’s Pulpit got back on track this week where we saw Caprice Coleman question King on his title reign thus far and he claimed that ROH is just using King. King got upset about it and then it seemed like Coleman was promised a ROH TV title match in the future. It was unclear to me if this would happen before Final Battle or after. I think they could’ve done a better job explaining that part after the segment but otherwise I liked “evil” Caprice Coleman.
Flip Gordon & LSG & Shaheem Ali & Scorpio Sky vs. The Bullet Club (Matt & Nick Jackson & Page & Scurll): After Cody comes out and insults the fans and Dalton Castle, the match finally gets going. The team of Flip, Ali, Sky, & LSG are not as well-known as The Bullet Club but I thought the way we worked towards this being a match was well done. While I sat here thinking there’s no way The Bullet Club loses this, I still was looking forward to seeing how the new comers would do and I was not disappointed. No pun intended but Flip did what he does best and that’s “flip.” The series of kip ups by Flip when Nick Jackson was attempting to super kick him was impressive. From there, this thing broke down with all eight men getting involved which included at one point a back flip from the top rope by Adam Page who continues to impress me more and more each week. Overall, the newcomers of LSG, Flip, Sky, & Ali represented themselves quite well. I never got the feeling that the newcomers were in over their heads. I realized calling these guys newcomers may come across as short sighted, however, I am referring to their relative time in ROH by comparison to The Bullet Club members. You could tell they earned this opportunity and they were making the best of it. For a second, as we got close to the end of the match, I almost thought that the newcomers and Flip’s army would defeat The Bullet Club. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be as the Bullet Club was too much for them and The Bullet Club got the victory in a very good main event. The Bullet Club did defeat Flip’s army, but it wasn’t easy and they had to earn it. Very good main event in general and definitely an enjoyable watch.
MISSES
Coleman’s Pulpit: I know what you may be thinking. I thought this was a Hit, right? It was for the most part, but the ending was unclear to me. If Coleman is getting an ROH TV title shot is this happening before or after Final Battle? This isn’t a big deal but for clarity purposes it’s my only complaint of the segment.
Final Thoughts
Solid show this week from ROH. I really enjoyed the main event. While The Bullet Club got the victory, Flip’s army wrestled a great match in which they were definitely over matched, but you wouldn’t have realized it by watching how they competed. I’m curious to see what happens with The Addiction after what we saw happen. We were left with a cliffhanger after The Addiction’s segment with War Machine and my guess is we’ll find out more in the coming weeks.
Mike Mills is the PWTorch.com ROH TV Hits and Misses Specialist, providing his point of view on ROH TV weekly. You can follow Mike at @BTT_Podcast and @Mike504Saints on Twitter. Also, check out his old school wrestling podcasts at tinyurl.com/BTTPod.
NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: 11/18 ROH TV HITS & MISSES: Taven vs. White, Taylor vs. Cheeseburger, Castle vs. Page, Bully Ray Update
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