Gutteridge’s Ring of Honor TV Hit List: Dalton Castle vs. Roderick Strong, Jay White vs. Kamaitachi, and Shane Taylor and Keith Lee vs Victor Andrews and James Anthony

By Darren Gutteridge

ROH TV Hits

Dalton Castle vs. Roderick Strong: The annoyance of 50/50 booking aside, in that both men seem to blow hot and cold all year round in terms of wins and losses, this was an enjoyable main event. Both men worked very snuggly and stiff, which is par for the course with Strong but a nice addition to Castle’s arsenal. As he has been doing recently, Castle once again dropped all but the bare essentials of his flamboyance in order to take on a hard hitting, serious opponent. I don’t want him to become plain old Johnny Tightsandboots anytime soon, but it’s a vital string to the Castle bow that when it’s time to fight, the theatrics temporarily take a back seat.

The Motor City Machine Guns and Jay White vs. The Addiction and Kamaitachi: I’m giving this run of the mill tag match a big Hit based purely on the ending. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a big debut in ROH (to the point that I can’t remember the last one), so I’m glad they went for it with Jay White, giving him a clean pin on veteran and Tag Champion Christopher Daniels. All White has to do now is sort out his awful mohawk/mullet hairdo and he will be good to go!

Jay White vs. Kamaitachi: A nice debut for both guys. It’s obviously hard to get invested with zero exposure to either man, but both showed potential, and a surprising lack of mistakes given how early into their respective careers they are. I wish ROH would start hyping debuts though. It would make it that much easier to get behind debuting guys.

Shane Taylor and Keith Lee vs Victor Andrews and James Anthony: Again, a hype video last week would have made this better I feel. They had the footage in the bag of Taylor and Lee laying out War Machine at a house show, so why not use that? Regardless, this was a fun squash match, and the dive to the outside from Lee was unreal.

ROH TV Misses

BJ Whitmer and Kevin Sullivan: Kevin Kelly said “I thought Best in the World would be the end, but now I speculate that it was only the beginning.” That may be the most aggravating, nauseating and groan-inducing thing I’ve ever heard on a wrestling show. The wacky promo from a man in a purple bathrobe about evil heirs and chaos only pushed this further to the top of the list of “All time worst wrestling feuds”.

Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts or opinions on this article, share them with me via Twitter.com/TheGutteridge. You can also check out my website, FoulEntertainment.com