ROH HITS & MISSES 9/30: War Machine, The Tempura Boyz, Gordon, Corey Hollis, Women of Honor Update, Cody, Kazarian

HITS

War Machine vs. Coast To Coast vs. The Tempura Boyz: Good job by Riccaboni and Whitmer at the beginning of the match explaining that this would be under tornado rules with all three teams being involved throughout basically meaning no tagging in and out but all six guys will be continuously involved in the action. Plain and simple, you put War Machine in a match and for my money I’m probably going to like it and that’s why this makes the “Hits” section. War Machine is the best tag team in the world. Rowe and Hanson complement each other perfectly. I enjoyed seeing Hanson do some flying throughout this match with his top rope corner front flip to the outside and his frog splash off the top as War Machine got the victory. War Machine cuts a promo afterwards calling out the tag division in ROH. We’ll see what happens going forward. In any case, seeing War Machine on ROH TV is always a good thing.

Corey Hollis vs. Flip Gordon: It’s quite simple what I enjoyed about this match. Flip still got his unique moves in and Hollis did a solid job of working on Flip’s arm throughout the match. Not only did Hollis work over Flip’s arm, but Flip sold the arm like this was an old school match from the mid-1980s. However, just like the good guys would do back in the mid-1980s, Flip is able to overcome the damage to his arm, hit his 360-front flip from the top and get the victory on Hollis. Good match and nice victory for Flip Gordon who is definitely on the rise in ROH.

Frankie Kazarian: Good short promo from Kazarian leading into the main event where Kazarian will wrestle Cody for the ROH World title. Kazarian stuck with the storyline that he, along with Daniels, will continue wreaking havoc on ROH. This wasn’t necessarily a grand slam but it was a solid hit as far as promos go.

Women of Honor Update (WOH): This was very unexpected but I thought it was a good idea. The WOH episodes are not very frequent. It’s easy to lose interest in what may be going on in the women’s division. We got an update from Ian Riccaboni on what’s been going on with WOH and I thought this was good. Kelly Klein’s promo and harsh treatment towards Riccaboni at the end felt real. I though BJ Whitmer getting on Riccaboni about being careful around Klein was funny. When I said funny, I mean I got a chuckle out of it but Whitmer certainly is preaching the truth and made a good point. The point being Kelly Klein is not to be messed with.

Cody vs. Frankie Kazarian: I’m going to fast forward in this match since this is where the excitement begins. Daniels comes out to get involved. When this happens Marty Scurll decides to make his way out to even things out. This sets off a series of shenanigans with Scurll and Daniels both getting some shots in on each other but Scurll gets the best of Daniels. With Daniels out of the way, Cody is free to be one-on-one with Kazarian where Cody hits his finisher and defeats Cody to retain the title. Good match overall but not much drama to me since we already knew what the overall outcome was likely going to be.

MISSES

I came into this week with expectations that we’d start seeing some fall out from Death Before Dishonor. Unfortunately, we got more content from the tapings before Death Before Dishonor. I’m not saying the episode was bad because as you can tell I have the episode loaded with a bunch of “Hits.” However, it still feels a little like the episode was a placeholder week. By placeholder I mean that it was still a good episode but for the most part in the end what occurred in the episode won’t have many long-term ramifications since we’ve got a fresh round of content coming I assume next week.

Final Thoughts

Although lots of “Hits” in this week’s episode, this episode was average. If you would’ve missed this week I don’t get the feeling that you would’ve missed anything major. Good episode but not must-see TV.

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.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: ROH HITS & MISSES 9/30: ROH HITS & MISSES 9/23: Honor Rumble, QT Marshall, Josh Woods, Coleman’s Pulpit