Thought Zero – Ring of Honor is back for another week of television. Surprisingly, this relationship has not gone stale yet. That is a pretty high compliment, actually.
1) We start with Coast 2 Coast. That does not inspire confidence.
2) Oh wait, Flip Gordon is out there with him. This just got 1000% more interesting. They are taking on the new ROH 6-man tag team champions – Dalton Castle and The Boys. Personally, I would rather just watch Dalton Castle versus Flip Gordon, but I guess they have to justify these fairly useless belts. And not surprisingly, Colt Cabana is burying The Boys even though they are the champs.
3) Castle is displaying some more heelish tactics today. And in an interesting bit of strategy, Castle seems to have adopted the offense of the recently split tag team of Enzo and Big Cass. What I mean by that is that the only offense The Boys seem to be involved in is Castle throwing them over the top rope onto their opponents. Flip Gordon is the most impressive in the match so far.
4) Maybe Coast 2 Coast would be more interesting to me if they had any sort of personality, or uniqueness. Towards the end of the match, the Boys do some Twin Magic which is sorta stupid because all it does is set up a hot tag to Dalton Castle. After Castle shows off his amateur background with some impressive suplexes and throws we get some more flips and dives until the eventual Bang-a-Rang gets the pin.
5) We come back from commercial showing how Silas Young and Beer City Bruiser destroying Jay Lethal’s ribs at Best in the World. After Lethal got the victory in that match, Bruiser splashed Lethal’s ribs into a keg multiple times while Young held Lethal in place. Bruiser followed up with a frog splash through a table. And it is pretty obvious that feud is going to continue.
6) Matt Taven versus Ultimo Guerrero and his mullet. Guerrero is representing CMLL here where Taven and The Kingdom have been roaming around causing trouble. Of note, TK O’Ryan is down to one crutch now, but still has a very large cast on that broken shinbone. This match starts off much slower than I anticipated, but I am not sure it is due to Taven or Guerrero. Maybe Taven is practicing his WWE-style for a tryout. Start the unsubstantiated rumors now!
7) Taven locks on a Sharpshooter at one point. Not sure I’ve seen that out of him before. However, almost immediately after, Guerrero hits a Super-Gordbuster (called nicely by Colt Cabana), but Taven kicks out. Then Guerrero hits Taven with a Super-Powerbomb and Taven kicks out again. Taven then hits a big frog splash, but Guerrero kicks out. I get that ROH loves the Japanese big match style of kicking out of every big move to build up to the finish, but come on guys… Any of those three moves should have been the finish. If you were wondering Taven finally got the pin after a low blow.
8) Main event time is the first ever meeting between War Machine and the Motor City Machineguns. I know the MCMGs are quick and awesome, but they are also about half the size of War Machine. Fashion update, the MCMGs have dropped the Stryper-esque Yellow and Black attack color scheme of Search and Destroy lately. And War Machine have yet another pair of cool-ass headgear and new navy blue tights.
9) Early on the MCMGs try using their speed to control the pace, but War Machine hangs with them. This prompts a mid-match handshake between Sabin and Hansen and then they tag out to their respective partners. Rowe and Hansen seem to surprise the MCMGs with their speed and double team offense. Shelley and Sabin finally take over with some of their own innovative tag team offense and quick tags. However, they seem to be playing with fire as even though they have the advantage, Rowe never appears to be in danger of being pinned.
10) Hansen gets the hot tag and hits the insane number of corner to corner splashes on Shelley and Sabin into a commercial break. Back from break and the teams are going back and forth. War Machine continues to hit impressive power moves to gain advantage and then the MCMGs follow up with some of their classic double-team work. The surprising finish comes when the MCMGs hit a combination Sliced Bread/Power Bomb on Ray Rowe and get the three count. Impressive work by all four men.
The main event almost seemed like a bit of a wasted opportunity. If you want to push the fact that this was the first meeting of two very impressive tag teams, why not really build to it and put it on a PPV, not just a TV episode. Regardless, it was a very good main event to cap off another solid show by Ring of Honor.
See you next week!
