Ring of Honor Review - August 12, 2015

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

ACH def. Watanabe

ACH impressed me when I was first exposed to his work last summer and he still continues to amaze me to this day. I thoroughly enjoyed his outing against Watanabe, who deserves equal credit for having a good showing here as well. It was perfectly fitting in the opening slot and they kicked off the night on a high note. Granted, there wasn't much in the way of storyline significance, but as a standalone match, it was excellent for what it was. I'd like to see Watanabe positioned better in future episodes as while he's a great wrestler, he loses more often than not and he deserves to be showcased more.


War Machine def. J Diesel and Donovan Dijak

Although it was ultimately overshadowed by the main event tag match, this was still a good match, but why was the point of it? I guess the same could be said about the previous bout, but I felt like I missed something here given Jay Lethal's presence at ringside. Are they setting up one of War Machine members to contend for the title? I'm not sure how intriguing how that sounds, but it might make more sense as time goes on.

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Adam Page def. Tim Hughes

Well, the match lasted all of 30 seconds of less, so there was nothing to it as it was a basic squash match. However, the real story came afterward when BJ Whitmer called out Jay Briscoe. Again, am I missing something? When did they start feuding? I'm so confused? At least they effectively furthered the on-going angle with the Corino pairing, but this really should have been the moment where Steve Corino snapped and fought back. He nearly came to blows the last time he was face-to-face with Whitmer, so it would have made sense for him to finally fight back here.


The Kingdom def. reDRAGON

What a match! Not only was it was exceptional, but it had an actual story to it following the events of last week with Adam Role (who was very good on commentary) being torn between the two tandems. As one would expect, they put together a highly enjoyable tag team match and the crowd ate up every second of it. It was strong win for The Kingdom, but what was even better was Cole's performance during the post-match where he prevented The Kingdom from further attacking reDRAGON. I'm glad they didn't wait a while before getting to this point because far too often does a great story close out an episode of ROH TV but isn't addressed for a few weeks. Now the question is if it was continued on next week's installment as well.


Overall Show

As you could likely tell, I was confused about a few things in some of the matches that didn't make sense from a storyline standpoint, but that might be due to missing out on Death Before Dishonor a few weeks ago. Other than that, this was another fun hour of wrestling, highlighted by a superb main event with spectacular storytelling that has me looking forward to the next chapter.