Ring of Honor Review - August 10, 2016

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

​Jay White def. Will Ferrara

We were first introduced to White a few weeks back on ROH TV and he had a solid debut with back-to-back victories that night. He had an equally impressive outing on his show against Ferrara, who can always be counted on for a quality contest. That said, I was glad White won again to further his momentum. Although it was entertaining from an in-ring standpoint, it would have been random as hell had I not read online the other day that these two will be involved in a No. 1 Contender's Fatal 4-Way match at Death Before Dishonor.


Mark Briscoe Hosted the 'Chicken Shack' with ROH World Television Champion Bobby Fish

Mark Brisoce is one of ROH's more talented talkers, so perhaps it was only inevitable before he landed his own talk show. I wouldn't be shocked if it was designed to be a one-off so he could mimic Fish, but then again, I thought the same thing about Dean Ambrose and 'The Ambrose Asylum' and that ended up sticking, so who knows. At any rate, some of the comedy fell flat for me, but once they took a more serious tone, that was when they piqued my interest. I'm surprised Fish has yet to turn heel, but I guess that would mean splitting up from Kyle O'Reilly which apparently they don't want to do right now.

---

ROH World Champion Jay Lethal def. Colt Cabana

Where the hell was this match months ago? I assumed the non-finish to their match at Global Wars back in May would lead to a rematch at some point because Cabana never technically lost, and it took them three months to eventually do it. Worse yet, it has had very little build. Sure, Cabana has won a few matches here and there, but he hasn't been consistently chasing the world title. Nevertheless, this was an excellent match from the two that proved Cabana can still hang with the best of them. My only gripe with it was that the reveal of Lethal's new bald look was pretty anticlimactic with him taking off his hood before the bout like it wasn't a big deal. On the bright side, Lethal cut a strong promo afterward and explained why Adam Cole's world title ban should be lifted, giving into Cole's plan. The crowd loves both Lethal and Cole, so their title match should be stellar.


Overall Show

I really liked how the world championship match took up a majority of the show and received the good chunk of time it deserved. The post-match angle with Lethal and Cole was very well done and effectively set up their championship clash for the pending pay-per-view while the opener was entertaining and the subsequent talking segment furthered the TV title feud. All in all, a enjoyable hour of wrestling with more storyline progression than usual.