ROH HITS & MISSES 8/3: Young vs. Sabin, Helms vs. Scurll, Los Ingobernables De Japon vs. SoCal Uncensored vs. The Bullet Club

HITS

Silas Young vs. Chris Sabin: I was very much looking forward to this match. Although, I do have one gripe. Young still has not gotten a rematch for the ROH TV title that he lost in Dallas. Ian Riccaboni even pointed this out during the entrances for both men. Additionally, this match was to determine the #1 contender for the ROH TV title. I would think Young should get his rematch first before a match like this. Anyway, just a small grip of mine. With that said, I thought these two had a solid opening match. Coming into the match, I figured Young would win. I was shocked though by the outcome. That’s not a bad thing because being unpredictable sometimes is good. Sabin defeated Young when Sabin delivered his finisher the Cradle Shock to Young followed by Sabin pinning Young. Riccaboni pointed out that he did not want to call it an upset, but with Sabin being a tag team guy for a good bit of his career, one might have to see this as an upset. I definitely think it was an upset. He just pinned the former champion clean before that champ had a chance to have a rematch. Solid opening match from these guys once you get past the fact that Young really should have had a rematch for the title. After the match, Punishment Martinez came to the stage and “eyed” Sabin from the stage. We will have to stay tuned to see when Sabin and Martinez will do battle.

Maty Scurll vs. Shane “Hurricane” Helms: Over the last few weeks, ROH did a good job of building up to this match. There were a few backstage packages where Scurll attacked Gregory Helms. In today’s match, Shane “Hurricane” Helms comes to the defense and takes on Scurll. I enjoyed seeing these two battle each other. They were given a lot of time to me. I thought Helms looked good. Either he was selling his tail off as we got closer to the finish or he was really exhausted. In either case, the long-time veteran went out there and hung with the younger Scurll. My biggest grip with this match was the shenanigans again with the referee and then Scurll with the punt to the groin on Helms followed by Scurll with an inside cradle for the win. In a vacuum, this works fine but I feel like ROH relies either on referee bumps or other referee distractions in too many finishes. Do not get me wrong, I understand doing it sometimes, but I think it gets out of hand. This was still a good match and I enjoyed the short build up to it over the last few weeks of TV.

Recap of Jay Lethal Winning the ROH World Title: We got a less than 1 minute clip of Lethal winning the ROH World title followed by a brief clip of his comments and promo after winning the title. Good, short recap.

SoCal Uncensored (Frankie Kazarian, Christopher Daniels, & Scorpio Sky) vs. Los Ingobernables De Japon (Evil, Bushi, & Sanada) vs. The Buller Club (Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson, & Adam “Hangman” Page): I feel like a broken record when it comes to these multi-person matches in ROH, but it is a fact in ROH that when you have this many guys in a ring, you are not going to have a dull moment. This match was pure excitement. I am not even going to try to give you play by play of it. I will simply say it was a hit and the finish was really good although there was one little thing that was not good. First off, I complained earlier about referee shenanigans, but I thought when Todd Sinclair was misted by Bushi that was really good. Sinclair could not count the pin attempt by Daniels on Bushi because he was “blinded.” I also thought the interference by The Briscoes was excellent. During the finish, Mark had the attention of Paul Turner who came in for Sinclair once he was blinded. Daniels is standing in the middle of the ring doing some jaw jacking with Mark when from behind Jay nails Daniels with a huge chair shot to the back. This was great. Especially when you figure we are probably building towards SCU vs. The Briscoes at Final Battle or sooner. The problem was Turner turned around too quickly and he kind of knew something happened even though he did not see Jay hit Daniels with the chair. But the chair is sitting in the corner as Turner sees Jay leave the ring. The replay shot made it even worse. You can see Turner look at Jay and then try to look away as if he’s not supposed to see him.  Bushi hits Daniels off the second rope in the corner with his finisher. And with that, Los Ingobernables De Japon win. Although I enjoyed the match and felt the episode was a hit, it would be negligent to not mention that small point during the finish. I thought the finish was solid, but the execution was not the best. Other than that, this was a really good up-tempo match that told a nice story at the end with The Briscoes and SCU.

MISSES

Solid episode. It was not perfect but still a solid episode of ROH.

Final Thoughts…

I thought this was a good week of ROH TV. There were three solid matches that all got a considerable amount of time. We did not get a lot of backstage segments or promos which was a welcomed change of pace. I pointed out some of the minor misses in each of the matches but to say the matches were misses would not be fair at all. In summary, this was a good week that I think most will enjoy.

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 THIS RELATED STORY: 8/5 ROH TV RESULTS: Bullet Club vs. L.I.J. vs. SCU, Marty Scurll vs. Hurricane Helms, Silas Young vs. Chris Sabin for #1 contender to the TV Title