This is our first review of Ring of Honor for this blog and
I have to admit I haven’t managed to catch up with Ring of Honor for some time
so I was a bit out of the loop in terms of storyline. However what did surprise
was how easy it was to jump in, with Nigel McGuiness and Kevin Kelly doing an excellent
job on commentary explaining what was going into each match and story.
The American Wolves vs. The Briscoe Brothers
Now any who’s watched any Ring of Honor over its rich eleven
year history will know that the American Wolves and The Briscoe Brothers are
two of the best tag teams the promotion has ever seen. With a lot of a history
between not only the two teams, but the tag partners themselves, including
numerous World Title match between Wolves’ Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards. We
now had an added factor to this match, with Best in the World just two weeks
away, where older brother Jay Briscoe will defend his ROH World Championship
against little brother Mark, how would the Briscoe’s work together in this
match?
The match built up slowly throughout, starting with some
good quality grappling between Eddie Edwards and Mark Briscoe and going from
there. With both teams having control of the match for periods and both getting
in some interesting double team manoeuvres and reversals kept the match running
at a fast pace. There was a fantastic
section where the momentum switches for both teams were so quick it was
difficult to keep track of who was in control until a beautiful arm bar
transition from Davey Richards was broken up with a Froggy Bow from Mark
Briscoe.
The ending came when Davey ducked a punch from Mark who inadvertently
hit his brother. With Jay out of the equation, Richards got Mark in a Tombstone
Piledriver position, with Edwards delivering a swift kick to the head, followed
up by the Piledriver for the win. It was a good ending to a fantastic
television contest, it would have been nice to see these two teams go at it for
a little longer but with Pay-Per-View contests to build up it’s understandable
they went for this ending.
With the Briscoe’s costing each other the victory in this
contest, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in their contest at
Best in the World. In order from them both to stay high up the Ring of Honor
card prior to the pay-per-view it would be expected that one of them will have
to turn on the other during or after the bout, or at least develop some
bitterness to continue the rivalry, similar to what happened last year between
The American Wolves.
Best of the Rest
The SCUM storyline continued this week with Steve Corino
coming out with Jimmy Jacobs, Cliff Compton and Rhett Titus. Corino cut a good
promo on Nigel McGuiness, claiming McGuiness deliberately left Jacobs, Compton
and Corino out of Number One Contenders matches last week. McGuiness left the
commentary desk and got in ring, being joined by Jay Lethal and C&C
Wrestlefactory. With Corino still spouting McGuiness kept quiet instead just
continuing to stare out Corino whilst the SCUM and ROH competitors went toe to
toe in the ring. It was good idea to keep McGuiness quiet as it showed he’d
rather let the actions of his team speak and built the numerous match between
the two at Best in the World well.
Whilst the three biggest companies in the USA all have major
factions dominating their storylines at the moment, SCUM is closer in
comparision to Aces and Eights in TNA, than it is to WWE’s The Shield. Whilst
TNA on numerous occasion has made Aces and Eights look weak against it’s guys,
ROH has kept SCUM looking strong, even after losing former leader Kevin Steen. Therefore,
once SCUM get inevitably defeated by the Ring of Honor faithful, either at Best
in the World or later on, it will be a much bigger deal and help elevate their
opponent going forward.
The ROH World Television Champion, Matt Taven was also in
action. Taven’s manager Truth Martini, flanked by the Hoopla Hotties, offered
up an open challenge to the lockeroom for a Proving Ground match with Taven.
The challenge was answer by Pepper Parks. Parks hasn’t been seen on ROH TV
before, but McGuiness and Kelly did a good job of building him up on
commentary, as well as a nice pre-match promo from Parks. It was a decent match
between these two, but it felt like it could have been a lot better with neither
man really hitting top gear throughout the match. Taven picked up the victory
with an interesting and dangerous looking varations of the DDT. It did it’s job
of building Taven further into his Best in the World title defense against Jay
Lethal and Jimmy Jacobs.
Tommaso Ciampa had his in-ring return against a debuting
Rip Impact. The result of the match was obvious and this was pretty much a
squash as Ciampa dominated. Impact did get a surprising amount of offence in,
managing to reverse a Project Ciampa attempt. Ciampa sent a message to his Best
in the World opponent Michael Elgin by holding a vertical suplex for a good
time, which drew out Elgin to ringside. With Elgin’s distraction giving Impact
the upperhand, Rip headed for the top rope, only to be met with a devastating
knee to the head from Ciampa, who finished off the match with an Air Raid Crash
for the second rope. Not a particularly memorable contest but allowed the
Ciampa and Elgin rivalry to develop in what could be a fascinating story
between the two power houses. Elgin continued to put over the rivalry in an intense
backstage promo for Inside ROH later in the night.
Inside ROH also featured good promos from Kevin Steen and
Adam Cole. Steen built his rivalry with Matt Hardy in a fascinating interview,
where the hatred Steen has for Hardy came across well, finishing by saying he
would remove the cancer from ROH, that cancer being Matt Hardy. Adam Cole has
been teasing a heel turn since his Border Wars match with Jay Briscoe and this
looks like it’s about to happen. A new look Cole, revealed he’d realised all
that matters any more is wins and losses, as well as putting over his Best in
the World opponent Roderick Strong.
Finally…
What have we learnt from this weeks ROH on Sinclair?
1. American Wolves and Briscoe Brothers have been surprisingly overlooked by bigger companies.
2. Steve Corino has found a great role in the leader of SCUM.
3. Nigel McGuiness and Kevin Kelly are probably the best commentary pairing in wrestling today.
Announced for next week's ROH on Sinclair (Road Rage Edition)
World Championship Match: Jay Briscoe (C) vs. BJ Whitmer
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