McXal's Reviews

This taping takes place a week removed from Supercard Of Honor (the night before Masters Of The Craft 2018), and will capture all the fall-out from a monumental night in ROH history. We'll see the new Women Of Honor Champion in action as Sumie Sakai meets Stella Grey (in her TV debut) then Silas Young puts the TV Title on the line against #1 contender Flip Gordon in our main event. Ian Riccaboni and BJ Whitmer are in Pittsburgh, PA.

The Kentucky Gentleman is currently working solo whilst Trent Beretta is out through injury. He was successful in defeating Jon Gresham at Supercard and will have his sights set on further singles success in the absence of his Best Friend. Whitmer describes Josh Woods as 'struggling to get any kind of traction in ROH', which is pretty accurate. He's had some good matches, some bad matches and clearly has plenty of potential...but hasn't yet found his niche or any kind of hook to draw fans into his work.

The Goods grounds the carefree Taylor instantly and comes close to tapping him out with an armbar. Chuckie shows his experience; raking the eyes and taking cheapshots in the ropes. Exploder suplex by Woods, followed by more suplexes and strikes. Josh is sticking to the strongest parts of his game. Chuck uses missile dropkicks well...but then tries to go the turnbuckles for a third time and is trapped in a rear naked choke in the ropes. Taylor trips him from the arena floor to stop that and gets a nearfall with the falcon arrow. Ripcord Sole Food! No sold...into a TKO knee smash by Woods for a CLOSE two-count. CHAOS THEORY, into a cross armbreaker...only for Chuckie T to counter that to a roll-up and snatch victory at 06:23 (shown).

Rating - ** - On paper this felt like a slightly weird clash of styles and so it proved in reality. It was nice to see Chuck promoted as a serious and talented wrestler; using all his personality quirks and years of experience to get the better of then ultimately beat an opponent with more than a decade less time in the business. 

Cody calls Dalton Castle his favourite wrestler, albeit he spends most of the promo subtly undermining Castle's World Title reign. He and Brandi think it's time he got a World Title rematch.

The Kingdom gloat that SCU, the Bucks and Flip stole the show at Supercard Of Honor but all left empty-handed since they stole back the Six-Man Title belts. 

This is a first appearance on ROH television for Stella. She is an ROH Dojo graduate and hadn't been wrestling for a full year by this point, so this is a major opportunity. Sakai, who made her ROH debut way back in 2002, has a target on her back as the Women Of Honor Champion. It would be a major shock if Grey were to defeat her here...but should Stella pull off the upset she would immediately go to the front of the queue for a title shot. Jenny Rose is on commentary and makes it clear that she also wants a title match with Sumie.

Stella tries to maintain control of the champion...but loses it quickly and almost has her teeth knocked out with a missile dropkick Fisherman buster countered into a high octane spear by Grey. She follows that with a tornado DDT and a bridging exploder suplex for 2. Saito suplex by Sakai in response. Smash Mouth wins it for the WOH Champion at 03:35

Rating - N/A - As an enhancement bout for Sumie, putting her straight onto television as the new champion, this was absolutely fine. Stella showed heart and got a few spots in, without this feeling like anything other than a convincing win for Sakai. 

Jenny Rose leaves commentary and confronts Sumie with some footage of a mishap that occurred when they teamed together in Manhattan. They might be friends but they aren't 'always on the same page', and Rose demands the first WOH Title shot. Sakai says she is 'happy' to accept the challenge, and instantly saddened when Jenny walks away without a handshake.

SoCal Uncensored call The Kingdom 'children' who played 'hide and seek' at Supercard then stole their property. Daniels assures Taven and his men that they will face the consequences.

Marty Scurll smirks after footage of him defeating Dalton Castle (in Defy Or Deny) at Masters Of The Craft is shown. The Villain is once again the #1 contender and he wants his title shot at Best In The World 2018.

Bully Ray hits the ring next to address his actions at Supercard Of Honor. He runs down talents like Flip Gordon and Cheeseburger as 'spoiled and entitled' and says they don't belong in wrestling. Fans make a game of throwing streamers and trash at him, bringing out a touch of the old ECW Bubba Ray Dudley as he threatens to go into the crowd and punch then. The rant continues, now taking aim at Joe Koff (who is watching in the crowd), and ends with him putting his WWE HOF ring on and leaving. 

Dalton Castle has been World Champion for more than 100 days and is sick of people questioning whether he is 'World Championship material'. He lists off the men has beaten in defence of the belt to disprove that...

Gordon earned this title shot back at Episode 338 when he defeated Shane Taylor. He will enter fully aware of how dangerous a foe Silas Young can be. The Last Real Man is now a two-time TV Champion, with both of his championship victories steeped in controversy (and outside help from Beer City Bruiser). Shane Taylor joins commentary to watch this which presumably signals his own intent to pursue the Television Championship.

Young thinks trading holds and keeping the match grounded will be to his advantage, but Gordon's background in amateur wrestling means he is more than capable of holding his own. His speed is such that he easily dumps the champion to the floor, and he retains his composure sufficiently to back flip into the ring when Young steps away from a potential dive sequence. The Last Real Man steams into Flip with a lariat, apparently having decided to batter his challenger to defeat. Gordon tries to fire up...so Silas almost knocks him out with a right hand! Gordon goes aerial to deliver a springboard missile dropkick. Repeated IED's by Flip, a call-out to Austin Aries who is waiting for the winner of this one! SPRINGBOARD SPEAR gets 2! Young crotches Flip to stop him taking flight once more. KINDER SURPRISE knocks Silas to the floor for a tope suicida! 450 Splash misses, but Gordon lands on his feet and unleashes the Samoan Pop instead - still only for 2. German by Silas...NO SOLD! Killer Combo! Slingshot swinging neckbreaker scores a nearfall for the champ. The Plunge blocked...Star Spangled Stunner blocked too! Superkick/falcon arrow combo gets an even hotter nearfall for Flip. Silas deliberately collapses out of the ring to save his title reign. He lures Gordon towards the ropes and kicks the middle rope into his balls as Flip looks to step out after him. Silas starts pulling Flip around by the ear like a naughty school-boy...dragging him into MISERY! Young retains at 11:43

Rating - *** - A thoroughly decent (***1/2-level) TV main event which encapsulated everything I enjoy about both of these two competitors. Silas was a grumpy curmudgeon, but also a straight-up bad-ass at times as he continually devised new ways to try and pulverise Gordon for his high-flying antics. On the other side of the ring we saw Flip at his ultra-resilient, dazzlingly athletic best. This was actually a far more grounded effort from Gordon than we are used to seeing and he more than had the working chops to cope with it, proving he is way more than just a high-spot orientated guy.

TWO WEEKS - Briscoes vs Young Bucks for the World Title

NEXT WEEK - Dalton & The Boys vs The Kingdom main events.

Tape Rating - ** - One of those functional episodes of Ring Of Honor television which accomplish a great deal but don't necessarily give you a fix of top-to-bottom great in-ring action. Chuckie/Woods and Sakai/Stella were entirely skippable filler. The meat and potatoes of this episode was setting up future challengers and angles via the medium of spoken word. Cody wants a World Title rematch, SCU are hunting The Kingdom down, Jenny Rose will challenge for the WOH Title, Dalton and Marty look on a collision course for a Supercard Of Honor rematch at Best In The World...and Bully Ray hogged TV time only to put his heel-turned character onto television for the first time. Silas/Flip is worth checking out...but it's the only thing that really is.