Thought Zero – I take a week off and what happens? The Briscoe brothers turn full heel and destroy Bully Ray and Tommy Dreamer. We all sort of knew Jay Briscoe was turning heel, but I thought they were going to keep Mark Briscoe as a face and have the two of them feud. Apparently not yet. So let’s move onto this week’s show…
1) Match number one is Silas Young versus Jonathan Gresham. This is part of the tournament to establish a number one contender for the ROH World TV title. Current champion, Kenny King, is on commentary. He doesn’t add a whole lot to the match though.
2) Silas and Gresham put on a pretty darn good match which was won by Young after interference from Beer City Bruiser and hitting Misery. The four-way for the TV title at Final Battle will be: Punishment Martinez versus Shane Taylor versus Silas Young versus Kenny King. That should be a fun and hard-hitting match. The Final Battle card is filling up nicely.
3) After the break, we get a recap of the Briscoes heel turn last week. And I must say, I am okay with the two of them as heels. I would much rather see them as a heel team than have a brother versus brother battle. Finally, even with a one-armed Mark Briscoe, they hit an incredible 3-D on Bully Ray.
4) War Machine come out for a match but get attacked by The Addiction. Meaningless little brawl here ends when Rowe tries to lawn dart Frankie Kazarian into Christopher Daniels. Daniels moves out of the way and Kazarian crashes into a young woman in the stands. She tumbles backward, holding her hand to her face and there appears to be blood. Everyone just sort of scampers away after that.
5) Caprice Coleman has Kenny King on The Pulpit (for the second time, I might add). Caprice starts the interview out nice and friendly and then dumps some reality on King, talking about how ROH is using him and how he isn’t a real king. He also says that Kenny King is using his daughter to appeal to the fans and that looks an awful lot like pimpin’. That is too much for King who threatens Coleman, rightfully accusing him of trying to manipulate him into a title shot, and then giving him a title shot. We get a lot of chess references and King tells Coleman “checkmate” on the way out.
6) That segment did exactly what it should have done – establish King as a babyface champion and showcase Coleman as a manipulator to get what he wants. Frankly, it makes Coleman look a lot smarter than everyone who was fighting to get into the four-way match for the TV title at Final Battle. And that is not a bad role for Coleman to be in at all.
7) Jay Lethal comes out to do commentary for the main event. He is announced as “The Franchise” by Ian Riccaboni. I know they’ve been searching for a new nickname for Lethal a little bit, including Silas Young’s use of “Golden Boy” for him. I didn’t like that one, and I really don’t like The Franchise. I understand it, but I am not sure you want to be associated with Shane Douglas, no matter how far out of the limelight he is.
8) The Main Event is Bullet Club (represented by the Young Bucks, Adam Page, and Marty Scurll) versus Flip Gordon, Scorpio Sky, and Coast2Coast. I do not think this will end well for the Gordon and company. Cody Rhodes also comes out, not dressed to wrestle. But he does take a moment to grab a microphone and call his Final Battle opponent Dalton Castle a choke artist.
9) Cody remained at ringside for a little while before getting thrown out. His offense? He climbed on the apron to do the Marty Scurll bird taunt. I think that ejection was a little premature there.
10) Very fast and high flying match with lots and lots and LOTS of flipping around. A couple cool moments in the match: Flip Gordon starts walking on his hands and showing off in the ring and Nick Jackson watches for a moment before hitting a low dropkick knocking him down hard. Adam Page hit a cool move, dropping one member of C2C hard from a fireman’s carry position then dropkicking the other members and using him to flip backwards onto the first guy. Flip Gordon dodged about 6 superkicks in a row with a matrix backwards bend. In a funny bit, Marty Scurll sets up a Bullet Club train of corner clotheslines onto Scorpio Sky. Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson, and Adam Page all hit clotheslines and then Scurll gets kicked in the face when he tries. This happens two more times and the crowd is just loving it. Flip Gordon then springboards from one top rope to an adjoining one and springboards from there to the outside. Everyone got to hit their highspots and finishers and such. This was all spotfest all the time but it was a fun spotfest full of energy and craziness. Good way to end the show.
Overall, another fun episode of Ring of Honor. And Final Battle is looking more like must-see every day. Until next week…