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Well, it’s WrestleMania weekend, arguably the hottest weekend of the year in all of professional wrestling (and sports entertainment). Like that aforementioned seven-hour spectacle Ring Of Honor is also setting up shop in New Orleans and they’ll be going head to head against NXT TakeOver for the first time ever. Is this the beginning of a new Saturday Night War? I don’t know but the advertising says that this event will feature the largest crowd in ROH history so there’s a landmark for you.
One year ago at Supercard Of Honor XI we saw The Young Bucks defeat The Hardys in a ladder match for the ROH tag titles one day before Matt and Jeff returned to WWE. Elsewhere on the card Dalton Castle challenged Christopher Daniels for the ROH World Championship in a losing effort. Tonight he enters as the defending champion. Last year also saw Castle’s opponent tonight, Marty Scurll, successfully retain the television title against Adam Cole. It’s been a year of upward momentum all around.
A1. Sumie Sakai vs. Tenille Dashwood (Women Of Honor Championship tournament semi-final, pre-show)
For the first time in their 16-year history ROH is going to crown a women’s champion. The first women’s match in company history took place on ROH’s fourth event, Road To The Title, way back in June 2002. The winner of that one? Sumie Sakai. In the years since then women have been featured only intermittently. Despite working with talents like MsChif, Sara Del Rey, and Daizee Haze in addition to allowing the Shimmer Championship to be defended in ROH rings, it wasn’t until 2016 that an official women’s division was established under the name Women Of Honor. The past two years of WOH saw wrestlers like Mandy Leon, Deonna Purrazzo, and Kelly Klein fight to give a sense of relevance to WOH while the division continued to be segregated to YouTube and the odd stand-alone episode of ROH television. Finally this past December at Final Battle a WOH Championship was unveiled with the first champion determined via a 16-person tournament.
At 46 years old Sumie Sakai has been wrestling for 21 years. She defeated Stardom competitors Hana Kimura and Kagetsu to advance to the semi-finals here. Tenille Dashwood debuted for WOH at Honor Reigns Supreme in February following an unexpected release from her WWE contract in October. She bested Stacy Shadows and Brandi Rhodes to make it to the semi-finals.
Prediction: Dashwood received a surplus of fanfare upon arriving in ROH not dissimilar to how Cody was presented when he debuted. Sakai is a terrific talent. It could be very heartwarming to see the veteran who won the first ROH women’s match become the first ROH women’s champion sixteen years later. That’s not this story, though. Dashwood wins with The Spotlight and advances to the finals later in the night.
A2. Kelly Klein vs. Mayu Iwatani (Women Of Honor Championship tournament semi-final, pre-show)
Kelly Klein has been the top heel in Women Of Honor since the division’s inception. She’s feuded extensively with Deonna Purrazzo and remains unpinned and unsubmitted in over two years (although usually due to nefarious means). In the first two rounds Klein defeated Bonesaw Brooks and Mandy Leon (after the referee failed to see Klein tap out first). Mayu Iwatani is a decorated champion in Japan, having held every title that exists in the Stardom promotion. She defeated HZK at a Stardom event in the first round and Deonna Purrazzo in the second round. That latter match was Iwatani’s first time setting foot in an ROH ring.
Prediction: All expectations had Klein and Purrazzo continuing their rivalry in the semi-finals before Iwatani picked up the surprise victory on TV. That leaves the outcome here less clear. We don’t really know too much about either of these women but Klein’s “undefeated” streak has been her driving character trait so it seems likely that she does something underhanded to steal another win here.
1. Jonathan Gresham vs. Chuckie T
A late addition to the card. Jonathan Gresham was out on injury for a while and Chuck Taylor hasn’t appeared on ROH television since his tag team partner Beretta went down with an injury of his own. Gresham was getting a bit of a push before his injury whereas ROH has never seemed to know what to do with Taylor.
Prediction: Gresham makes Taylor tap to the octopus.
2. Hangman Page vs. Kota Ibushi
With their partners battling in the main event it makes perfect sense to have these two meet earlier in the night. The last time Kota Ibushi competed in an ROH ring was September 2008 when he teamed with Hideo Itami to take Katsuhiko Nakajima & Naomichi Marufuji to a 35-minute time limit draw. In 2008 Adam Page was still a high school student three years away from making his pro wrestling debut (which would eventually be an ROH dark match where he teamed with Cedric Alexander in a losing effort). In the Bullet Club civil war everyone’s loyalties have been tested and everything’s been complicated. The closest allegiance out of anyone, however, has been between Page and Cody. It makes sense. They’re both southern boys, beer drinkers, and view themselves as criminally overlooked.
Prediction: Page has been on a tremendous roll as of late and I wouldn’t be surprised if he holds the TV title by the time the summer is up but Ibushi’s been on an even bigger and more consistent roll since the Golden☆Lovers reunited. Both men are entering injured here. For Ibushi it’s physical after suffering a concussion at NJPW’s Strong Style Evolved two weeks ago. For Page it’s mental as he remains haunted by an incident that occurred between himself and Joey Ryan at a Bar Wrestling event last month. Ibushi wins.
3. Tomohiro Ishii vs. Punishment Martinez
I fully concede that my knowledge of New Japan Pro Wrestling is limited. As such, my exposure to Tomohiro Ishii is more or less limited to his brief reign as ROH World Television Champion when he defeated Roderick Strong for the title in October 2015 before dropping the belt to Bobby Fish the following May. Punishment Martinez is Punishment Martinez. The nature of his gimmick allows for little character development. He’s impressive in short bursts but sometimes struggles to hold his own in longer matches. He challenged for the ROH world title on TV recently and lost, which is for the best. He’s better suited to the midcard scene at this point in his development.
Prediction: A glance through Ishii’s matchography indicates that he’s usually more of a tag team wrestler these days. In fact he’s only won one singles match in the past four and a half months. New Japan talent almost always goes over ROH talent in these encounters but I’m going to guess that this one was booked to give Martinez a notable win and help him rebound from the aforementioned world title loss. Martinez hits the South Of Heaven chokeslam for the win.
4. Tenille Dashwood vs. Kelly Klein (Women Of Honor Championship)
When the Women Of Honor Championship tournament was first announced back in December I put all my chips in on Deonna Purrazzo winning the gold. Clearly I was wrong. In my defense, though, they hadn’t announced all 16 tournament entrants yet. It took a slow unveiling over a period of weeks and the very last name announced was new arrival Tenille Dashwood. The former Emma has been presented as a huge star from the moment she arrived in WOH. She’s already demonstrated in NXT that she has the ability to make it to the finals of a tournament to crown a promotion’s first women’s champion. Of course in that instance she lost to Paige.
Prediction: Dashwood has been presented as a star. Klein’s first-round match didn’t even air on television. It’s also something of a rarity for a heel to win an inaugural championship tournament. After months of investment we want a feel good moment to cap things off. Dashwood hits The Spotlight and the referee counts three. Dashwood is your first Women Of Honor Champion and Klein’s unpinned streak comes to an end. I’m not crazy about someone from outside WOH walking in and winning the title over the established women who have been toiling away here for years but, hey, that could make for an interesting story to explore going forward.
5. Kenny King vs. Silas Young (last man standing match for the ROH World Television Championship)
This is the most heated blood feud in ROH at the moment. Silas Young captured the TV title in a four corner survival match at Final Battle in December after Beer City Bruiser clocked Kenny King with a beer bottle. King won the title back on the Feb.25 episode of television after Bully Ray ejected Bruiser and Brian Milonas from ringside. They faced off again at 16th Anniversary where Young got a visual pinfall over King while the referee was knocked out. By the time the ref recovered, King walked away the official winner. It seems like every other week on TV the cameras cut to the backstage area where these two are brawling through the arena. Young demanded another match and King suggested they make it last man standing. Ian Riccaboni and Colt Cabana were quick to point out on commentary that Last Man Standing is something of a specialty for Young. He’s previously picked up big wins in that format against Jay Lethal last September and ACH in July 2016.
Prediction: Bruiser and Milonas try to assist Young but Coast 2 Coast show up and the tag teams brawl off through the crowd. King’s been too cocky lately, going as far as posing for selfies with fans in the middle of championship matches. His hubris is his downfall here. Young lays out King for the ten count. With Klein’s streak coming to an end elsewhere on the show Young’s streak of winning last man standing matches should stay in play. Plus a humbling misstep will help King be more likable and relatable.
6. SoCal Uncensored vs. Flip Gordon & The Young Bucks (ladder match for the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Championship)
SoCal Uncensored captured the titles from The Young Bucks and Hangman Page in a street fight at last month’s 16th Anniversary show after they zip-tied Page to the ring post and received an assist from hired gun Shane Taylor. At the time the commentators questioned how long SoCal could hang onto the gold since not every defense can be a no rules, free-for-all. Fortunately for the heels, their first defense is just that. Originally The Kingdom were supposed to be in the challenging role here but Bully Ray struck them from the card and banned them from the building. He then gave the title shot to the Bucks and Flip Gordon instead based on the justification that he simply likes them more.
Despite vowing the complete opposite when he first took the position, Bully has quickly fallen into all of the worst tropes of various WWE authority figures. He appears frequently on television, dominates the microphone, and has a clear bias against half the wrestlers on the roster. He also only sees fit to enforce the rules when he feels like it. This means The Kingdom may find themselves having their championship match cancelled on a whim but Kelly Klein can cheat her way into a tournament semi-final match and Dalton’s Boys can pull out twin magic during their tag bout with nary a peep from our so-called Enforcer.
Prediction: Based on this tired cliché of a role it seems like the next predictable development is Bully turning heel. Does that happen tonight? Probably not. But The Kingdom will interfere and SoCal will retain the titles. When Bully does turn heel in the next month or two he’ll need some wrestlers to hide behind and who better than his old TNA buddies Daniels and Kaz? The relationship benefits them as well since ROH COO Joe Koff has threatened that they won’t be re-signed when their contracts expire this December.
7. The Briscoes vs. Jay Lethal & Hiroshi Tanahashi (ROH World Tag Team Championship)
The Briscoes have the best 2018 record of anyone in ROH at 5-0. Unfortunately they’re seriously lacking in strong challengers. Coast 2 Coast, The Dawgs, and Bruiser & Milonas are still in the growth stage, Best Friends are out due to Beretta’s injury, and they just soundly beat the Motor City Machine Guns for the titles last month. We’re sure to see the Briscoes and the Young Bucks again at some point but that’s likely a while away still. Fortunately for this event Jay Lethal was also directionless and without any logical opponent.
Prediction: The Briscoes retain. ROH spends the next month of TV trying to convince us that we’re booing them because they’re mean wrestling jerks, not because Jay is bigoted trash outside the ring.
8. Dalton Castle (w/The Boys) vs. Marty Scurll (ROH World Championship)
Dalton Castle climbed the ROH hierarchy to his first world championship reign due in large part to his character work and long, dynamic feuds with Cody and Silas Young. Now that he’s sitting at the top of the mountain his reign has been completely overshadowed by the cloud of Bullet Club. Despite our best efforts otherwise Lola Bradbury and I inevitably spend half of each episode of our podcast Talking Honor every week focusing on the various Bullet Club developments. This isn’t by design. There’s just so much to unpack and discuss within the various BC relationships and personalities. By comparison there simply hasn’t been that much to say about Castle lately. His title reign started off nicely at the beginning of this year with multiple people declaring their intention to take the championship away from him. He would go on to defend successfully against Martinez and Lethal while Cody and Taven got distracted with each other. That just left “The Villain” Marty Scurll. This is Scurll’s first world title match since joining ROH in November 2016. Like Castle and Cody, Scurll has a 3-0 singles record in ROH this year. (The only one better than those three is Kenny King at 4-0.) Unfortunately this feud never went any deeper than Scurll feeling like he should have been world champion already and Castle happening to be the champion now that he’s finally receiving his first shot.
Prediction: The Villain goes to his bag of tricks but Boy 1 sacrifices himself, shoving Castle out of the way and taking a handful of flour to the face. Castle lands the bang-a-rang and stays champion. On TV Scurll declares shenanigans and demands another shot only for Cody to announce that he’s finally cashing in on his contractually-obligated rematch. Tensions rise.
9. Cody (w/Brandi Rhodes) vs. Kenny Omega
Kenny Omega debuted for New Japan Pro Wrestling in November 2014 and immediately joined Bullet Club under the leadership of AJ Styles. In January 2016 the rest of Bullet Club turned on Styles and sent him, Doc Gallows, and Karl Anderson packing to WWE. Omega became the new leader and formed a tight sub-alliance with The Young Bucks. The trio would call themselves The Elite. Omega can be personable but he’s also rather quiet and shy by nature. As such he’s never really connected too deeply with other Bullet Club members like Hangman Page and Marty Scurll. Cody, by contrast, is a great salesman and adept at planting seeds of doubt in the back of people’s minds. Once he decided that he wanted to be the next leader of Bullet Club it was just a matter of turning everyone else against Omega.
Things came to a head in January at NJPW’s New Beginning In Sapporo when Cody attacked Omega. This in part led to Omega and Kota Ibushi reuniting as Golden☆Lovers for the first time in over six years. At first Matt and Nick Jackson seemed firmly opposed to Cody and his attack on Omega but, as Omega began neglecting their friendship for Ibushi, things became strained. At the NJPW/ROH joint show Honor Rising in February Golden☆Lovers defeated Cody and Scurll. Post-match Omega declared Golden☆Lovers the best tag team on the planet and this set off the Bucks, Matt Jackson in particular. Bullet Club was in full disarray.
The Golden☆Lovers are believed by many to be in a romantic relationship with each other. While this has never explicitly been confirmed, Omega is openly queer. Many people will point to myriad indications that Omega and Ibushi are in love with each other, even if they’ve yet to openly address this in public. Playing into these rumors Cody and his wife Brandi attempted to play mind games with Omega and Ibushi. First Cody would kiss Ibushi during a match in Japan. Then Brandi would force herself on Omega during ROH’s 16th Anniversary show. Cody claims that any talk of an Omega-Ibushi relationship is just a publicity stunt. Omega claims that 16th Anniversary wasn’t the first time he and Brandi kissed and probably wouldn’t be the last. This accusation left Cody seething.
We’ve come a long way from what seemed like a simple battle of Team Kenny vs. Team Cody for the leadership of Bullet Club. While Hangman appears to have sided with Cody, the complicated friendships of Matt, Nick, and Marty have left their loyalties unknown.
Prediction: Cody bleeds (again). Omega wins with the one-winged angel. It will be a hell of a match because you know they want to be in the conversation for best match of the weekend. The big story will be whatever happens after. The future of Bullet Club begins again this night. I doubt anyone can say with any conviction that they know with certainty how this is going to play out. Cody and the Bucks are running All In together on September 1. Being The Elite episode 100 premieres Monday.
I’m not confident about this prediction by any means but here we go. Kenny and Cody are both kicked out of Bullet Club. Hangman turns on Cody and aligns with Matt and Nick. Flip Gordon joins them as the newest member of Bullet Club. Marty Scurll is named the new leader. It’s revealed that he’s been playing Cody and Kenny against each other the entire time and orchestrating everything from behind the scenes. Bullet Club has had an Irish, an American, and a Canadian leader. It’s England’s turn.
Up next it’s Masters Of The Craft on April 15 in Columbus, Ohio featuring Castle vs. Scurll vs. Martinez vs. Beer City Bruiser in Defy Or Deny. Plus Cody vs. Matt Taven in a first blood match, Jay Lethal vs. Jonathan Gresham, and Coast 2 Coast vs. The Dawgs.
Hey, whatever happened to that Austin Aries guy wanting the TV title?
Find Harley on Twitter @talkinghonor and PWTorch VIP members can listen to Lola Bradbury and him discuss all things ROH every Monday on their podcast, “Talking Honor.”
Are you sure Jay Briscoe is a white piece of trash? Better check yourself brother!