ROH HITS & MISSES 10/28: Cody vs. Scorpio Sky, The Addiction vs. Lethal & Kushida, O’Ryan vs. Gresham, Bully Ray Update, Coleman’s Pulpit

HITS

Frankie Kazarian & Christopher Daniels: Show starts off with these two picking up where we left off last week. Once again, short and to the point as they tell Jay Lethal and Kushida that they’ll deal with them later in the main event. This was good. It’s just a small tease and reminder of the main event for this week.

Cody vs. Scorpio Sky: Ian Riccaboni reminds us the Sky vs. Kushida match from a few weeks ago and how Sky had a good showing before The Addiction interfered in the match. Very good start to the match. Sky gets in some offense on Cody and Cody makes him look good in doing so. This match reminded me of the old days when you had the world champ come into a territory and when the champ came in the champ made the person they wrestled look great before defeating that wrestler. This was a very competitive where I felt Sky had a great showing. Cody does win with the American Death Lock. Additionally, going back to what Cody said a few weeks ago where he would take on the best, this certainly was not the best competition which I like because it’s obvious Cody is avoiding stiffer competition as the ROH World champ since making that declaration. I can’t overstate how good I thought Sky looked in this match against Cody.

The Addiction (Kazarian & Daniels) vs. Kushida & Jay Lethal: My goodness the one thing wrestling is missing today is real heels like The Addiction. Before the match starts, Kazarian tells the “marks” he and Daniels despise them all. We went to commercial after this and when we return Daniels is still ranting and calling the fans entitled like they are owned something. Daniels feels slighted and disrespected by the fans after winning the ROH World title earlier this year. Soon after winning, Cody defeated him and all of a sudden Daniels felt the fans were happy for Cody and had turned their backs on him. When the match finally gets starts, Daniels gets back on the microphone and threatens to not wrestle the match to which Kushida responds with a dive over the top rope to take out both Daniels and Kazarian. From this point it is on. I enjoyed the back and forth that we saw throughout this and I would be remise if I forgot to mention the back drop that Lethal delivered to Kazarian on the outside. The height Kazarian got on that back drop was incredible. I also realize that there are mats on the outside but that’s still a tremendous bump to take. Kushida and Lethal do get the win via submission. Prior to the submission Kazaian takes a heck of a Lethal Injection that looked fantastic. My question now is where do we go with The Addiction and them reigning havoc on ROH. As for the match, this was a fantastic main event.

MISSES

TK O’Ryan w/The Kingdom vs. Jonathan Gresham: I usually enjoy Gresham’s matches and I tend to be Luke warm on TK O’Ryan still at this stage. That said, this match was not enjoyable. The guys did not do anything terrible that would make it a bad match but over the course of the 10-12 minutes that this went on there was nothing that I got emotionally invested in. The match ends in a DQ when The Kingdom attacks Gresham as a trio. Motor City Machine guns do make the save. I’m sure a six-man deal will come of this or some sort of singles match or even tag but for right now, this was just something to fill up TV time that if you missed wouldn’t feel like you missed much.

Bully Ray Update: They recap the segments from Bully Ray and Tommy Dreamer from the last few weeks. I’m going to sound like a broken record, but I will repeat, there is nothing about this that has my interest. I feel like the focus going forward needs to be moving on from Bully Ray. Once again, this is not meant to disrespect him and his great career it’s just time to move on. The airing of this further tells me that he’s not done, and we will see more of him which I’m not in favor of.

Coleman’s Pulpit: This has become a favorite segment of mine but this was a toned-down version of the Pulpit after the last few. King played this one straight down the line without as much humor. I feel like King as a heel would be better in a setting like this but that’s not what King is at this time. All in all, not a terrible segment but it wasn’t as good as we’ve seen. If this was your first time watching Coleman’s Pulpit, don’t let this average segment affect your judgement of this normally good segment. This was just an off week in my opinion.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The main event was excellent and Cody vs. Scorpio Sky was also very good. Beyond that this was a below average episode of ROH. It’s been a while since I have said this about an ROH episode but I have to be honest. There wasn’t much that happened in this week’s show that will have long term implications unless you’re talking about the Bully Ray storyline that I’ve got little to no interest in.

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 ARTICLE: ROH HITS & MISSES 10/21: Scurll vs. White, The Addiction, Jay Briscoe confronts Mark Briscoe, Fatal Four-way