10 Thoughts on … Ring of Honor January 14, 2017 (Decade of Excellence tournament, The Rebellion Recruits Rush?, and the Emergence of Cody)

10 Thoughts, Reviews, Top Story

Thought Zero – Sorry for the little lateness of this 10 Thoughts column. Unfortunately, real life sometimes interrupts the fantastical world of professional wrestling. But here I am and I’ve got this week’s Ring of Honor television to watch. but since this is so late, I will try to keep these thoughts a bit brief. Here we go.

1) We start off the show with a six-man tag team match between The Rebellion (Kenny King, Rhett Titus, and Caprice Coleman) versus Lio Rush, Jay White, and Donovan Dijak. This match was set up by Lio Rush beating Coleman a couple weeks ago. Also, apparently the Rebellion has offered Lio Rush a spot in the Rebellion. Why? One may never know.

2) A couple random observations here. First, It is still weird that Nigel McGuinness is here and on commentary. Especially after the big role he played just this past weekend at the WWE UK Championship tournament. Second, Jay White still has not been able to find a scrunchy baskstage as his hair is still all in his eyes during the match. Third, maybe I was wrong about the Dijak face turn. The crowd really wants to cheer him and a “Dijak” chant even came up a few times.

3) The end of the match came with Lio Rush diving onto Caprice Coleman from off Dijak’s shoulders and the Dijak hitting a sweet springboard moonsault. The Rebellion attack after the match and destroy their opponents without any outside weapons or anything. Um, why couldn’t they do that during the match? They might have won. Regardless, they take it a bit easy on Lio Rush and we are left wondering if Rush is joining The Rebellion. Why would he though? He just beat them twice in a row. Before we get an answer, Chris Sabin charges to ringside for the save and slides on his belly like a penguin about 3/4 of the way across the ring. I don’t know about you, but if I were three tough guys who call themselves The Rebellion, I am not sure the sight of Chris Sabin would be enough to make me scatter.

4) Next we get a little promo about Marty Scurll, your ROH TV champion. Not much to the segment except to note that Scurll will be here next week. That is a good thing. But maybe someone can tell me why British wrestlers tend to choose an umbrella as their foreign object of choice? Scurll has an umbrella. Jack Gallagher has an umbrella. I could be wrong, but I believe the new WWE UK championship belt has an umbrella on it. I mean, I know it rains a lot in England, but it rains all the time in Seattle too and their football team isn’t the Seattle galoshes.

5) Back from break and we get a summary of the Cody Rhodes / Jay Lethal match from the last PPV. We also see Cody (who now has no last name) shove Steve Corino on his way out of the ringside area. We are also introduced to Cody’s new nickname. According to Kevin Kelly and Nigel McGuinness, he is either the Dark Prince or the American Nightmare. Now in the ring, Cody insults all of Ring of Honor by calling it Ring of Mediocrity. That’s pretty tame heel work. But the rest of his promo was pretty strong, including a bit of fire when threatening a heckler who said something about his wife. He ended his promo by saying that the crowd should be happy there is finally a star who hasn’t faded in the ring. I am still not sold on Cody as an uber-heel, but I will give him a bit of a benefit of the doubt from the quality of that promo towards the end.

6) And here comes Steve Corino. In wrestling gear. He is followed by Kevin Sullivan, Punishment Martinez, and BJ Whitmer. Why? Who knows? But Corino has a mic and wants to talk. But Cody cuts him off and mocks him to his face. After a little more tet-a-tet, we have a match starting. I’m still not following the whole Kevin Sullivan thing about having to “sacrifice a brother” being about Cody Rhodes.

7) As the match starts, Kevin Kelly tries to help us out by saying this is all about the Kevin Sullivan and an ancient feud with Dusty Rhodes. And Steve Corino has now embraced his dark side and is now fully an evil man and back in Kevin Sullivan’s crew. No, you’re right. You didn’t miss anything. It is true, none of this makes any sense.

8) Nice package piledriver by Corino on Cody. But he follows that up by going after the golden spike. Aw crap. But Cody kicks him in the nuts and hits the beautiful disaster kick for the three count. Now Jay Lethal hits the ring and starts brawling with Cody. Then Cody bails and Lethal takes a microphone. Lethal defends Ring of Honor and threatens Cody for kicking him in the balls. Lethal then calls out Jushin “Thunder” Liger for a first round match in the Decade of Excellence tournament. Lethal makes a good point that he wants to win this tournament because he wants, no, needs to win so he can challenge the ROH champion at 15th Anniversary. Good enough for me.

9) It’s still impressive how many solid bumps Liger takes at his age. I’m being dead serious too. Liger is a legend and the things he could do back in the day were incredible. What he can still do right now is incredible. But the dude is almost 10 years older than me and I couldn’t imagine taking the doing the things that he puts his body through.

10) Back to Lethal. As everyone knows, Lethal is my favorite wrestler today. And I will give you an example of why. Lethal whipped Liger into the ropes and jumps up for a front dropkick. But Liger grabs the ropes and holds on, so Lethal adjusts in mid-air and does a full backflip. He follows that with a Lethal Combination which looks as awesome as always. Liger reverses the Hail to the King elbow drop into a pinfall attempt. A couple of Shotei palm strikes later and Liger is able to pull off a top rope Frankensteiner. But Lethal slides out of a brainbuster attempt, hits an elbow, a superkick, and finally a Lethal Injection to get the victory. So Lethal will now face Jay Briscoe in the semifinals, in what promises to be great.

 

Overall, a good episode of Ring of Honor wrestling. A little heavy on the talking and promos, but it balanced out with some Jay Lethal goodness. I will continue to give Cody a shot as his heel persona has some possibility.

Next week should be incredible though as the ROH TV champion Marty Scurll will be here. Also, Christopher Daniels and Chris Sabin will compete in a Decade of Excellence semifinal match. Finally, there will be a Triple Threat match between Dragon Lee, Kushida, and Will Ospreay. I doubt my fingers will be able to move fast enough to keep up.

Until next week…

Human. I think.