12/9 ROH HITS & MISSES: Young vs. Gordon, Page, SCU, The Briscoes, The Young Bucks, Daniels, The Kingdom vs. Castle, Cody, & Lethal

HITS

Silas Young vs. Flip Gordon: Gordon challenges Young to an “I Quit” match before the match begins. As the “Last Real Man”, Young accepts but attacks Gordon cowardly before Gordon officially accepts. Ian Riccaboni, Colt Cabana, and Caprice Coleman did a good job of explaining why this “I Quit” match out of nowhere was a good idea. The idea being that it prepares Gordon for his “I Quit” match with Bully Ray at Final Battle. The match was good. It was back and forth and going with the narrative of it preparing Gordon for Final Battle, it certainly made sense. Caprice Coleman even made a reference to Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard and their famous “I Quit” match from Starrcade 1985. While no “I Quit” match can live up to that in my eyes, it once again sells how much an “I Quit” match can take out of a competitor. I liked the finish of the match for the most part. I just think they could have done a better job explaining the outcome. Bully interferes and chokes Gordon from behind with his chain. Young then spears Gordon through a table in the corner of the ring. I assumed this meant Young was DQ’d but nothing was declared by the referee or the commentary team before going to commercial. It is the week before the PPV, and I expected some sort of shenanigans like this from Bully. Overall, this was a good way to go into Final Battle for Gordon and Bully Ray.

Adam “Hangman” Page: Quick and effective promo and video package from Page where he says that Cobb has not beaten anyone since coming to ROH. I said it last week and I will say it again, I am looking forward to these two battling at Final Battle. This is going to be a fantastic match.

SoCal Uncensored (SCU), The Briscoes, and The Young Bucks: Long story short here. SCU is in the ring. SCU is attacked by The Briscoes from behind. The Young Bucks come out to help SCU. The Briscoes then attack SCU from behind which sends SCU into The Bucks. The Bucks think SCU attacked them from behind. The Bucks then super kick everyone and go get a ladder. SCU gets a hold of the ladder though, they climb the ladder and hold up their Tag titles. In summary, I think these 3 teams are going to come close to killing each other at Final Battle and the Ladder War. This short confrontation was just a small sign of things to come from them. Nothing special here but effective in this segment.

MISSES

Christopher Daniels Promo and Marty Scurll: To me, nothing will top the Daniels promo where he talks about how he measured his life from a few years ago. This was good though. Daniels talks about fighting for not just this match against Scurll but for fighting for a chance to continue fighting. I still have my issues with this match from Scurll’s perspective. Like I mentioned last week, it makes no sense that Scurll would put his future title shot on the line because Daniels wants this match. Again, Scurll has nothing to gain and everything to lose. Daniels has everything to gain, but nothing to lose. It just does not make sense. Daniels’ promo is a hit but this stipulation and the reason this match is happening is a dud. That said, they will have a good match at Final Battle but the reason behind it lacks basic logic.

The Kingdom (Matt Taven, TK O’Ryan, & Vinny Marseglia) vs. Dalton Castle & Cody, & Jay Lethal: I am not sure there is a more meaningless title in wrestling than the ROH World 6-Man Tag Titles. While it made sense that this was a non-title match, I just feel like there is no direction in general for these titles. And while there were plenty of stars in this match, I did not have much interest in it. There were sub-plots within this match in regard to Cody & Lethal and Castle & Taven. While all that was good, I am just sitting here waiting to see what happens at Final Battle. Was it a good match? Absolutely. But by the time we got through these guys putting on a good match, we see the 6-man champs and TK O’Ryan get pinned by Cody. The titles just don’t mean much so there’s no loss in the champs losing. The greater point is why do these titles even exist when there is no direction for the actual champs? After the conclusion of the match, Cody does grab the microphone and he declares to Lethal that there’s only one thing left to do and that’s face off at Final Battle. Good stuff from Cody but this match and the 6-man titles…… meh.

Final Thoughts

This was another average episode. I cannot say this has been the best build to Final Battle, but it also is not the worst. There are a number of intriguing match ups going into the show. I can’t say that any of this was must see TV but I thought it was fine for it being the last show before the PPV.

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

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