SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
HITS
Recap of SoCal Uncensored and The Kingdom: At the top of the show, we are shown a video recap of last week with SoCal Uncensored, The Bullet Club, and the alliance being set up with The Kingdom and SoCal Uncensored. Once again, nothing spectacular here but I continue to believe that short recaps are a good idea given the fast-paced day and age we live in where a week can seem like a month.
The Dawgs (Rhett Titus & Will Ferrara aka Little Willy) vs. Coast To Coast (LSG & Shaheem Ali): Beer City Bruiser is on commentary with an imposing Brian Milonas standing guard over the commentary table. Nice recap also of Coast To Coast’s huge win over War Machine from what feels like a month or two ago which helped prove Coast To Coast (CTC) was worthy to stick together as a tag team in ROH. As this is shown, Riccaboni makes sure to point out that CTC belongs in ROH after that huge win. Bruiser makes sure to downplay it and that CTS’s win against War Machine means nothing. This was a good match that saw CTC get the pin on The Dawgs when LSG hit Saintsplosion on Will Ferrara and then Ali hits Ferrara with the frog splash. As CTC is celebrating their win in the ring, Bruiser & Milonas attack CTC. Bruiser hits Ali with a crossbody and then Milonas hits Ali with his back senton. Milonas & Bruiser leave Ali laying as we go to the next segment. Good stuff here with the match and the attack at the end. This leads me to believe that Milonas & Bruiser may enter into a feud with CTC. In any case, we will need to stay tuned to see how this develops.
Marty Scurll: Scurll cuts a promo where he congratulates Dalton Castle on defeating Jay Lethal at the 16th Anniversary show. And as we all know, Scurll will wrestle Castle at Supercard of Honor in New Orleans April 7. Good short promo from Scurll as we build towards the next PPV.
Dalton Castle: Castle cuts a promo in response to Scurll. Castle emphatically tells Scurll that when they meet in New Orleans at Supercard of Honor there is no way that Scurll is walking out with his ROH World Championship. Just like Scurll’s, this was an effective short promo as we build towards their match.
HZK vs. Mayu Iwatani (Women of Honor Tournament Match): This match took place in Osaka Japan at a Stardom show which was cool. Credit Ian Riccaboni for something I believe is very difficult and that is doing commentary solo. I know Joey Styles did it in ECW years ago but it’s harder than Styles or in this case Riccaboni makes it seem. Coming into this match, I did not know much about HZK or Iwatani. I was impressed with them and thought they had a good match. Iwatani hit HZK with a bridging dragon suplex. Iwatani wins and will battle Deonna Purrazzo in the next round.
SoCal Uncensored without Scorpio Sky (The Addiction – Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian) & The Kingdom (Matt Taven, Vinnie Marseglia, TK O’Ryan) vs. The Bullet Club (The Young Bucks, Marty Scurll, Adam Page, Cody): The Young Bucks, Scurll, & Page all come out to The Bullet Club entrance music. Cody comes out to his own music and he is with Bury the Drug Free Bear & Brandi Rhodes. As the match gets started, the superkicks are broken out early as The Bullet Club delivers a superkick to all members of their opposition. From there, soon after this turns into a typical tag match with tag rules where guys need to be tagged in legally. Eventually, that changes although before doing so SoCal Uncensored & The Kingdom do a good job of working as the heel team and keeping Cody isolated to their corner as they work Cody over. Eventually this match breaks down into a 10-way with all 10 guys going at it. Bury The Drug Free Bear evens gets in on the action and he launches himself off the top corner rope to take out everyone below. I guess we are to assume Kenny Omega hijacked Bury The Drug Free Bear’s costume in Las Vegas at the 16th Anniversary because there are no signs of Bury and Cody having tension. Which that makes sense if the intention is that Omega was wearing the suit, but he was not really Bury all along. As we got to the end of the match, someway and somehow Marseglia is the legal man. Scorpio Sky runs out and delivers a missile drop kick to Cody, but Cody dodges the move and Sky hits Marseglia. Cody dumps Sky to the floor and Cody hits Crossroads on Marseglia for the win. Once again as Cody and The Bullet Club are leaving, everyone in Bullet Club seems to be getting along. Meanwhile in the ring, The Kingdom and SoCal Uncensored start throwing some hands as we go off air. With SoCal Uncensored and The Kingdom brawling at the end, I am guessing these two could be involved in a ROH World 6-Man Tag Title match at Supercard of Honor. That seems to make the most sense right now with these two teams. With all of that said, there still seems to be a lot of question with what is going on with The Bullet Club. Give that Cody and Omega are set to lock horns at Supercard of Honor, I am guessing we will have to wait until then to see how things with the Bullet Club shake out.
MISSES
Lack of Video Package for the HZK vs. Mayu Iwatani Match: Over the last few weeks, we were shown numerous video packages prior to the WOH tournament matches. This is especially helpful for many of the lesser known talents in the tournament. Unfortunately, we did not get a video package prior to this week’s match. I really think it would have been great especially for these two athletes who I think many members of the ROH audience may not know. I realize the package may have needed to be done differently considering there may be a language barrier, but I think ROH would have done both of these ladies much more justice by putting some type of highlight package on them and explaining a little bit about their backgrounds.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This will sound weird but although this week’s Hits & Misses had much less in terms of Misses, I thought this was a weaker episode of ROH. The ten-man tag was good. The WOH match was good also although I thought the video package was a miss. The first match was very good with Bruiser on commentary and the subsequent attack on CTC after the match. On another note, I did not realize after last week that we still had one more week of tapings to air from the Atlanta tapings. I am curious to see the new set of tapings that took place after the 16th Anniversary. Seeing those will obviously solidify the Supercard of Honor card in New Orleans. Not a bad show this week but it was not one of the better ones we have seen since the start of the year.
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 and you can check out his old school wrestling podcasts at tinyurl.com/BTTPod
NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: ROH HITS & MISSES 3/12: Battle Royal, Kingdom, Bullet Club, Shadows vs. Dashwood, Bruiser & Milonas vs. Isom & Nova, Taylor vs. Gordon
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