Okay, where are we? Jay Briscoe has been fake injured because he for real had a garbage mouth on the internet and needed a time out. Nigel McGuinness is the fake authority figure who made it so and Hunter “Delirious” Thompson was for real put in charge of making it make sense.
September 20, 2013 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Adam Cole def. Michael Elgin {ROH World Championship Match}
From Death Before Dishonor XI. This is the finals of a tournament to crown a new champ. Cary Silken, Joe Koff, and Prince Nana were the judges in case the match ended in a draw. What the hell is that? Who on earth could be excited at the prospect of Silken and Koff doing anything on the air? Elgin came in selling a neck injury from his semifinal match. This took it’s sweet time getting moving but once it did it moved fast. I liked very much the way they set up for the table spot, using the judge’s table so that the crash was incidental rather than of someone’s making. I liked Cole trying and failing to win against Elgin the way he won against Tommaso Ciampa earlier in the night. I like that Elgin basically just stuck to one powerbomb-centric game plan and that didn’t work. And I like that what did end up working for Cole was focusing on the injured neck, as he really rattled Elgin with the Panama Sunrise and then put him down at 26:11 with the straight jacket suplex. ****
June 22, 2014 – Nashville, Tennessee
Michael Elgin def. Adam Cole {ROH World Championship Match}
From the fifth Best in the World. It was an interesting time for Elgin in ROH. He beat Kevin Steen to earn a shot at AJ Styles’s IWGP Heavyweight Championship, lost that title match (which also featured Kazuchika Okada), then beat Styles to earn this match with Cole. Well, because of ROH’s weird TV broadcast schedule, he actually lost the title match to Styles and beat Styles on the same day in TV wrestling world. In real life, the contender match for the ROH title had happened earlier before Styles won his title, as NJPW wasn’t going to let their champion do a job. The sound mixing was trash on the last match but very good for this one. ROH is so hit and miss when it comes to production. Actually, the production in general took a big leap between the last match and this one, though maybe it had something to do with this being ROH’s first live PPV. This was interesting because it played very much off of their last match, but at the same time Cole was much more an established heel here so it had a different flavor. Matt Hardy & Mike Bennett interfered and the way Elgin fought them all off was fun. Eventually, War Machine had to make the save, but Elgin put up a good fight before that. I also really liked that Elgin almost lost the match by count out last time when a count out meant that Cole would become champion, and the same thing happened here, where Cole could retain that way. I don’t know how well this match works if you haven’t seen the DBD match, but I did see it and I really dug this. Also the overbooking was a blast. Elgin won with a triple powerbomb at 22:25. ****
September 6, 2014 – Toronto, Ontario
Jay Briscoe def. Michael Elgin {ROH World Championship Match}
From All Star Extravaganza VI. Toronto got to see one of their own win the title in person, and now because of that they must pay by seeing another lose it. To gay-hater Jay Briscoe. I guess the consolation was Canadian Kyle O’Reilly retained his title in the main event and this was only the semi-main. Briscoe got this shot on the back of not having been pinned in two years. This match was executed in a really lazy way. The commentators had to make excuses for why count outs and disqualifications weren’t enforced even though this was just a standard match. Also, a ton of the match was a walk-n-brawl, and not an interesting one. In a call that’s too cute by half, Kevin Kelly says on commentary that Elgin’s Sharpshooter is a nod to Riki Choshu (who invented the move)… in Canada… by a Canadian. Things picked up a bit when they got back into the ring, but not a ton. Briscoe hit a Jay Driller through a table on the floor, and a minute or so later hit one in the ring for the win at 24:01. Briscoe just doesn’t bring that much to a singles match unless 1) his brother is his opponent or 2) there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. That’s my experience of watching him, anyway. ***¼
June 19, 2015 – New York, New York
Jay Lethal def. Jay Briscoe {ROH World Championship vs. ROH Television Championship Match}
From the sixth Best in the World. Good lord, Briscoe held the title for a long time. Way to stick it to the libs, ROH. Lethal had been TV Champ for even longer. In an interesting twist, the storyline seemed to be that Briscoe wanted to take Lethal’s title more than the other way around because Lethal had been calling himself the real ROH Champion. This match happened in Terminal 5; I’ve seen a lot of really good concerts there. Both guys’ parents are at ringside and the commentators sell this as the biggest match in ROH history. Fuck Kenta Kobashi, I guess. I have to eat my words a bit about Briscoe already, because he and Lethal gutted out a hell of a main event here. They didn’t quite reach most-important-ROH-match-ever status, but it wasn’t fair to put that on them anyway. They did reach the level of epic-ness, so to speak, that is necessary for a main event title vs. title match. I do feel that this match buried Briscoe’s Jay Driller, as he hit it on the Lethal through a table and only got 2. It’s one thing to do that with a guy like Elgin whose whole thing is that he’s a semi truck. Lethal isn’t that. Lethal stole the move and followed it up with the Lethal Injection for the win at 27:13. ****¼
August 19, 2016 – Sunrise Manor, Nevada
Adam Cole def. Jay Lethal {ROH World Championship Match}
From Death Before Dishonor XIV. Lethal had lost the TV title to Roderick Strong the previous October, but kept this title for quite a while. He also turned babyface. Meanwhile, Cole had switched from the Kingdom to the Bullet Club, and he and the Young Bucks cut off Lethal’s braids and shaved his head. He kept those braids in his trunks and pulled them out to show Lethal at the start of this match. Both guys worked really hard here and the match was never boring. But there was something holding this back from being great and not just really quite good. I think the issue is that the story was that Lethal really hated Cole, and Cole was just playing mind games with Lethal. Cole’s real issue according to the commentators seemed to be with O’Reilly. Because of that, while Lethal kicking out of huge moves felt legit, Cole kicking out of them rang a bit hollow. What was giving him the drive to do that? His motivation was seemingly to screw with Lethal in order to win the title, not power through big moves like a babyface or a heel with a grudge. Not everyone should be kicking out of finishers all the time, and Cole doing it here felt phony. He hit two Last Shots (Ushigoroshis here, not the version he uses in NXT) and a Shining Wizard for the win at 27:02. ***¾
December 2, 2016 – New York, New York
Kyle O’Reilly def. Adam Cole {ROH World Championship No Disqualification Match}
From the fifteenth Final Battle. Cole had been doing what he could to hold O’Reilly down and screw him out of title matches up to this point. This had what I want out of a grudge match. It had great selling from O’Reilly. It had babyface blood. It had dramatic false comebacks. It had Cole bleeding late in the match once OReilly started getting his revenge. The match had a few things going against it though. It came after a few other big matches and the crowd seemed tired. Cole was more over than O’Reilly, which isn’t what you want in a scenario like this. One thing that I thought was a negative that became a positive was the thumbtacks. At first it really felt like overkill for this rivalry. But then the finish, which saw O’Reilly put Cole in a cross armbreaker on the tacks because that’s how badly he wanted to beat him… well that was just fantastic. Cole tapped out at 18:48. ****
January 4, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan
Adam Cole def. Kyle O’Reilly {ROH World Championship Match}
From NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 11. Before I start this I’ll say with confidence that there is a zero percent chance this is as good as their first match, as it’s smack dab in the middle of a huge card and I can’t imagine they were told to go all out. If you were ever curious what a ROH Championship match would look like as a hard fought midcard bout, this is your match. The crowd didn’t care about any of it except when they got to say BAY BAY with Cole. Cole won with three thrust kicks and the Last Shot at 10:14. No wonder O’Reilly is always so bug-eyed… he just finished his cup of coffee. ***¼
March 10, 2017 – Sunrise Manor, Nevada
Christopher Daniels def. Adam Cole {ROH World Championship Match}
From night one of the 15th Anniversary Show. Daniels really should have been champ back in 2002, and I’m not big on better late than never when it comes to wrestling. He won an eight-man single-elimination tournament to get this title shot, featuring only guys who’d debuted prior to 2007. Okay, that’s a pretty solid angle. He cuts a crying pre-match promo that feels pretty forced. Who was that for? Tears tend to be more powerful after a match. I guess I would have bought it if he was going to retire if he’d lost, but that wasn’t on the table. Colt Cabana immediately shits on it on commentary. Anyway, the match. It starts with the commentators saying that he was 0-8-1 in title matches coming into this. They played that up, with Cole controlling most of the match. And to be honest, it wasn’t that much to write home about. That is, until the last few minutes when Daniels started pulling out to win. He stole Cole’s finisher, hit him with the Styles Clash because of the Bullet Club (and I suppose ROH and TNA) connection, and then had Frankie Kazarian double cross Cole. Then he hit three Best Moonsaults Ever for the win at 21:55. That one really came alive at the end. ***¾
WWE, Impact, ROH, and AEW pillaged a lot of ROH’s talent in the years after this. That’s the downside of what’s to come. The upside is that they started a streaming service. Nevermind that most people agree it’s pretty useless when it comes to footage from before 2010. I’ll wrap things up next time, where it looks like things become kind of a mess.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
