ROH HITS & MISSES 6/17: Episode #300 with Fish, Lethal, Briscoes, Bully Ray, The Boys, Kingdom, Kazarian, Daniels

HITS

Beer City Bruiser & Silas Young vs. Bobby Fish & Jay Lethal: What a way to kick off the hour with these two teams going at it. There’s been some bad blood with Lethal and Young now for weeks. As a friend of Young’s, Bruiser has found himself involved in this feud. Add in Fish coming to Lethal’s rescue a few weeks ago and we have the set up for this tag team match. We get a little comedy in the beginning of the match with Beer City Bruiser appearing to be getting blown up and not being able to hold down his beer. As we work towards the end of the match, Fish is taken out by Young and Bruiser. Lethal then hits Bruiser with Lethal Injection but Young turns around and nails Lethal with his finisher. This match ate up the first 16 minutes of the episode which it felt like it was a lot quicker than that. All in all this seems like the right thing to do leading into Best in the World where I would predict after a few weeks now of Young getting the best of Lethal that Lethal will win at Best in the World. Good match and good way to open this week’s ROH.

The Briscoes & Bully Ray Recap and Backstage Segment: I really liked this short segment and recap. Jay Briscoe is still a very unhappy camper to say the least with having mist sprayed in his eyes. Jay feels The Boys and Dalton are to blame and he lets out a mild expletive tirade again. Bully Ray and Mark Briscoe are backstage with Jay in the dressing room doing their best to calm Jay down. They seem to convince Jay to chill out because they’re still the six-man tag champs and they’ll all have a chance at Best in the World to face Castle and The Boys. I say it every week. Jay Briscoe is a heck of a promo and he displayed it again here.

The Boys vs. The Kingdom (Vinny Marseglia & Matt Taven): The Boys come out to the stage to make their entrance but Marseglia and Taven aren’t waiting. Marseglia and Taven hit the stage and attack The Boys from behind. On a side note, if Marseglia isn’t crazy, he sure does come across as crazy. The attack goes on for a few minutes when out from nowhere Dalton Castle’s music hits and he comes down to the ring. Castle distracts Marseglia and Taven. The Boys are able to then get in some offense on The Kingdom. This doesn’t last long though. Marseglia and Taven quickly take over. Not long after Marseglia hits his finisher and The Kingdom get the victory over the boys leading into their match at Best in the World. At the end of the match, The Kingdom are having a mild celebration in the ring when Jay Briscoe hits the ring and he confronts Castle who’s attending to The Boys. Bully Ray comes down to the ring and Bully Ray is able to calm down Jay Briscoe who leaves the ring disgusted. I thought everything here was fine. Nothing was special but we’re leading into Best in the World and I thought this helps promote the PPV. We’ve got The Kingdom getting a win before the PPV and then they tease us with Jay Briscoe confronting Castle at the end of the match.

Joey Daddiego vs. Punishment Martinez: Nothing was wrong with the match. I understand them establishing Punishment Martinez as a force in ROH. Martinez gets the victory rather easy on Daddiego. The point of this match was obviously to continue building Martinez and they accomplished that goal. At the end of the match, Cheeseburger and Ferrara attempt to come to Daddiego’s aide. Martinez destroys them both. Jay White comes to the ring to help Cheeseburger, Ferrara, and Daddiego. White makes a statement, by briefly taking on Martinez, that he and Martinez aren’t done with each other. This was good. They built up Martinez and keep the fire burning between Martinez and White.

Cody & Page attack Daniels & Kazarian: After the match I talk about below in the Misses section, Cody & Page attack Daniels & Kazarian and leave them laid out as we go off air. While I thought the match below had no meaning to it, the ending of the show did with the attack on Daniels & Kazarian leading into Best in the World and the coming weekend for ROH.

MISSES

Chaos (Will Ospreay, Hirooki Goto, & Gedo) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Christopher Daniels, & Frankie Kazarian: Very entertaining match with 6 supremely talented guys. Everything they did in the ring was great. Everything they did outside the ring was great. Loved the finish where Tanahashi hits a frog splash and then Daniels hits his moonsault. Tanahashi, Daniels, & Kazarian get the victory. Unfortunately, in general the actual match meant nothing. The aftermath and what happened after the match that I mentioned above meant something. However, for these 6 guys if you are into episodic storytelling from week to week, this match was just a match for the sake of having a match with 6 very talented athletes.

Final Thoughts

Not a terrible episode of ROH TV. Also, not the best. While the main event was a good match, it didn’t fit into any ongoing storylines and felt like a match thrown together. Although as I said above, they did weave in the attack of Cody & Page into it after they finished the main event and I thought that was good. Everything else was good in the episode. Nothing was can’t miss TV but it was still a decent week.

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.