ROH HITS & MISSES 9/23: Best Friends vs. The Boys, King vs. Page, Jeff Cobb, Lethal & Gresham vs. Ray & Young

HITS

Replays and Video Packages: The first video package replay was with Bully Ray, Silas Young, Jay Lethal, and Jonathan Gresham. This one showed a quick one-minute video of what happened with these four guys last week and announced the main event tag match with them later. During the second recap, we were shown a video package of The Briscoes and SoCal Uncensored (SCU). They will battle at Death Before Dishonor. During the third video package, we get a nice video package of Sumie Sakai and Tenille Dashwood building up their Women of Honor match at Death Before Dishonor.

Best Friends (Chuckie T & Trent Barreta) vs. The Boys: I do not have much from this. The match was good. I suspected the Best Friends would pick up the victory since they are involved the 10-man tag against The Bullet Club at Death Before Dishonor. My suspicion was correct although not shocking.  Best Friends pick up the victory against The Boys in a good opening match.

Kenny King vs. Adam Page: Excellent match overall. There were a few comedic moments that I enjoyed more than others. I really liked how they weaved in what has become King’s signature gloat tactic when he takes a selfie with a fan in the first row. King takes the selfie but a short time later, Page hits his shooting star on King and then Page takes a selfie with the same fan. I cannot say I liked when they were fighting with the floatie that ended with Page suplexing King on the floatie and King selling it like it hurt for some unknown reason. Selling a suplex on to a large flotation type device is just silly. Once we got past the floatie and came back from commercial, the hard-hitting action picked back up. It is back and forth all the way till the end when King barely defeats Page as they countered each other on the mat rolling back and forth that eventually sees Page get pinned. I thought this was a really good match. King now goes into Death Before Dishonor where he will face Jushin Thunder Liger.

Brian Johnson vs. Dante Caballero: Once again this is built as a Top Prospect Tournament match but just like the previous few tournament matches, Jeff Cobb interrupts it. He attacks Caballero first. Cobb then turns his attention to Johnson and attacks him. Cobb then grabs the microphone and declares that the top prospect tournament is over because he is the top prospect. No argument from me. Cobb is a powerhouse and is a great addition to the ROH roster. I suspected from the start that there would be no tournament. I believe this week confirmed that and as I look back, I like how they introduced Cobb to the promotion in this way.

Jay Lethal & Jonathan Gresham vs. Bully Ray & Silas Young: This was a fantastic main event. The chop and slap fest alone from Bully and Lethal was worth the price of admission. The crowd was on fire throughout most of this. Gresham played the role of Ricky Morton perfectly during the match as he took a beating from Bully. Eventually, Gresham makes the tag to Lethal. Lethal cleans house. Young is out of it on the outside. Gresham and Lethal mock the “Wazup” move that Bully and D-Von use to do for years. Soon after Gresham hit a shooting star on to Young. But Bully pushes Lethal on to the pin attempt and on to referee Todd Sinclair which breaks the pin attempt. Bully then hits Gresham with a low blow which is followed by Young hitting Gresham with Misery. Young pins Gresham and the team of Young & Bully defeat Gresham and Lethal in a very good main event. I thought this made a lot of sense. Ray and Young will battle Cabana and Gordon at Death Before Dishonor. They head into the PPV with a little steam behind them in that match up.

MISSES

No misses from me, but I talk more about why in my overall thoughts below.

Final Thoughts…

There was nothing that happened this week that you needed to see before the PPV. The results of each match this week leading up to the PPV had no direct affect on anything in the PPV. At the same time, King won who will battle Liger and Bully & Young won who will battle Flip Gordon & Colt Cabana. While the matches had no bearing on what will take place at the PPV, you can still say it helped that King winning, and Young & Bully winning gives them some momentum leading up to this Friday night September 28. If I could pin down a miss it was the rather ridiculous floatie spot in the Page and King match. That match did not need that at all. It was still a good match but that was not needed and rather dumb. It was a solid week of wrestling, but nothing was must see. If you missed this week, you did not miss anything of critical importance.

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 PREVIOUS COLUMN: ROH HITS & MISSES 9/16: Lethal, SCU vs. The Briscoes & Martinez, Sakai vs. Tasha Steelz, King, Gresham, Lethal, & Bully Ray, Bullet Club