McXal's Reviews

All of the content taped at this second 'Steel City Excellence' event of 2018 was captured before Survival Of The Fittest and before the Global Wars Tour, leaving us with only two real options. Either SOTF and Global Wars will exist in a non-televised, self-contained bubble with minimal relevance to the long-term picture...or these last weeks of television to build up to Final Battle will feel rather muddled. Neither are great! Nothing has been announced for this episode yet - but the main event ends up being Briscoes vs Young Bucks so it's hard to go wrong there. Ian Riccaboni and Colt Cabana are in Pittsburgh, PA...

We open the show with the announcement that Taven vs Castle is official for Final Battle, and The Kingdom getting set for tag action against The Boys. Taven tells the twins that he doesn't need a partner and sends TK O'Ryan away for commentary whilst he teaches The Boys a lesson...

It has become clear that Taven has a problem with Dalton Castle. He feels Dalton's injuries robbed him of the chance to become World Champion when their scheduled match during the War Of The Worlds Tour was cancelled. Then when they got to Fairfax in the aftermath of Best In The World, the referee missed a clear Taven pin on Castle, before Jay Lethal wound up winning the belt. Last week all that frustration boiled over when he and the rest of The Kingdom cruelly ended Dalton's triumphant to ROH with a brutal three-man Con-Chair-To. The Boys want some revenge on Castle's behalf tonight.

Taven KO's one of The Boys with the Real World Title belt before the bell, meaning this starts as a de facto singles match. By the time we reach the commercial break Matt has assumed total control. When we come back he is in the middle of hitting Just The Tip. Boy #2 returns to the fray setting up a few double-teams for the twins. Vinny Marseglia appears from under the ring and drags #2 back under with him. In the ring Taven hits the Climax for the win at circa four minutes shown (stopwatch issues!)

Rating - N/A - They kept it short and kept the amount of offence from The Boys to a minimum. As such this mostly felt like an effective squash for me...albeit it doesn't feel like the conduct of a viable World Title contender that Taven needed to use a weapon shot and outside interference to win here.

Jay Lethal vs Cody for the World Title is official for Final Battle. Cody calls it poetic that it will, once again, be he and Lethal in the ring at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Finally he gets the one-on-one championship rematch he's been calling for all year.

Ian Riccaboni is in the ring for an interview with Jonathan Gresham. Now that he has 'cemented' his spot as the top 'pure wrestler' in ROH, he issues an open challenge for the best technical wrestlers in the world to come and face him at Final Battle. ZACK SABRE JR IS ON THE TRON! ZSJ is coming to ROH for a long-overdue debut and accepts the challenge!

Christopher Daniels is on the phone talking about sending the 'signed copies' of documents to 'Joe'. It turns out Koff is offering new contracts to Frankie and Scorpio since they are now Tag Champions, leaving the injured Daniels to 'figure something out'...

The winner of this gets a spot in the fourway at Final Battle for the Women Of Honor World Title...but this is also something of a grudge match. Klein is still pissed at Jenny for chipping her tooth in combat earlier in 2018 - to such an extent that two weeks ago Jenny was able to pin her in six-woman action. Stakes and tensions are high here - who goes to Final Battle to fight for the title?

Klein slaps the sh*t out of Rose and the fight is underway. Jenny has to think fast to block K-Power but can't get her over for a German suplex and sustains a barrage of elbows in the corner. Somehow she dropkicks Kelly off the apron...but as the fight spills to the floor the Gatekeeper dumps her head-first into the guardrail. Sumie Sakai comes out and watches from the stage as Jenny press slams a prone Klein off the top rope. Spear gets 2...then Rose just snaps and starts punching and kicking at Kelly like a crazy lady. K-POWER! Klein has taken a huge beating, but wins the match at 05:01 (shown)

Rating - ** - Like all Women Of Honor matches, this all felt too abrupt and rushed to really resonate with their audience. But to credit both women, they really were busting their asses and for the most part effectively put over how much of a grudge match it was. The fact that ROH pushed Klein as the undefeated Goldberg of the WOH division for so long, then didn't pull the trigger by making her the first champion and have since relegated her to bit-part player is perplexing and only partially enforced by her Stardom commitments. This felt like ANOTHER attempt at starting to rebuild her again...

Jeff Cobb vs Adam Page with the TV Title on the line has also been confirmed for Final Battle. Page calls Jeff a 'disappointment' and suggests he won't survive when he faces a 'real challenge' like the Hangman in pay-per-view...

An orange, heart-monitor graphic shows on the screen before we go to commercial break...

These two teams doing battle once again. It isn't new at this point, but it's never any less exciting when the ROH originals and most successful tag team in the promotion's history face the trendsetting, international superstar Jackson brothers. This has added the spice of determining who faces SCU at Final Battle for the Tag Championship. Jay and Mark come in knowing they won the last meeting between these two teams, earlier in 2018...

The Briscoes don't take kindly to the emphatically pro-Young Bucks live crowd, dropping enough expletives to keep the post-production team busy. Nick and Mark tear into each other with a high velocity, evenly matched exchange...which eventually brings their brothers in to get involved too. Neckbreaker/somersault senton combo puts Mark on the ground. Jay storms in to help out, singling out Matt Jackson and repeatedly landing blows to his suspect back. Nick makes things worse for his brother - distracting Todd Sinclair whilst Jay and Mark repeatedly double team him. Matt does finally break free for a tag, bringing his brother into join him for stereo Sharpshooters. The Briscoes escape and hit the REDNECK BOOGIE on Matt for 2. Jay then locks on a Sharpshooter of his own trying to snap Matt's back in two even when the crowd loudly jeer his actions. Nick tags and hits a TORNADO DDT TO THE FLOOR! Blockbuster/backbreaker combo gets 2 on Mark. We return to a stalemate as the two sets of brothers try to bash each other's brains in. SUPERKICK DUEL! Jay brings a couple of chairs in as the Bucks line up the Meltzer Driver. Matt grabs one, Jay has the other...and at the same time they each LAUNCH their chair into the other brother's face! It's a double DQ at 10:05 (shown)

Rating - *** - Every bit as good as you'd expect given the quality of the four men involved, then a dodgy finish which serves an enormously clunky set-up for an SCU/Briscoes/Bucks triple threat at Final Battle. All the elements you're used to seeing these two teams bring into their matches was on display and brilliantly executed here. Jay and Mark bullying the Jacksons is always fun. Any time a match centres on working Matt's back injury he always does a killer job selling it. Nobody does hot tags better than Nick Jackson. The fact that they kept this relatively low key in terms of non-stop spots and still produced something this good says everything about how skilled they are

Jay and Matt lay into each other with chairs, knocking Todd Sinclair out in the process which leads to wild scenes as the four men trade chair shots and Superkicks like maniacs. They have to be separated as SCU's music starts to play and Kaz and Scorpio appear on the stage. They are fuming at the failure to determine a Final Battle challenger...and with Frankie still sore at losing the titles to the Young Bucks in Ladder War 6, he proposes SCU/Bucks/Briscoes in a Ladder War! 

NEXT WEEK - Jeff Cobb vs Josh Woods, the injured Chris Daniels vs Kenny King and the Tag Titles on the line as SCU defend against CMLL's Stuka Jr and Guerrero Maya Jr.

Tape Rating - ** - One of those functional ROH TV episodes where they keep launching PPV match announcements at you so quickly they all blur together. It's not completely bad television, and every match announced for Final Battle so far sounds really good. But it feels very much like a lazy sell, rather than an effective or hard one. Zack Sabre appearing on the big screen was probably the highlight for me as a long-time fan of his...