Ring of Honor Review - December 12, 2018

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Flip Gordon vs. Silas Young in an "I Quit" Match Ended in a No Contest

Gordon will be taking on Bully Ray in an "I Quit" match at Final Battle this Friday, so this served as a warm-up of sorts for Gordon, who was already supposed to face Young on this show but wanted it to be contested under "I Quit" rules given their bad blood over the past few months. I appreciated that they didn't rely heavily on the stipulation while also making the most of the lack of disqualifications by battering each other with weapons and going to the extreme. In addition to Gordon's aggressive side being established, his feud with Bully was furthered effectively when Bully came down to the ring to help Young lay out Gordon. Unless I missed something, though, this matchup never had an actual finish.

ROH World Tag Team Champions SoCal Uncensored, The Briscoes, and The Young Bucks Brawled

It's cool that there has been so much build for the upcoming Ladder War at Final Battle in recent weeks. As stoked as I am for Jay Lethal vs. Cody for the ROH World Championship, Ladder War deserves to close out the show. At any rate, this was a simple yet solid segment with the three teams attacking each other and SCU standing tall on the ladders with their titles in tow. Look for that bout to be an instant classic, similar to the last Ladder War installment from two years ago (which I was also in attendance for).

ROH World Champion Jay Lethal, Cody and Dalton Castle def. The Kingdom

I loved the intertwining stories here with Lethal, Cody and Castle all having history with The Kingdom as well as with one another. Cody has faced both Lethal and Castle at Final Battle before and will going up against Lethal again at Final Battle this year in what is being billed as his final match for the promotion. They didn't tease a ton of tension here, and in fact, they managed to stay on the same page long enough to pick up the victory while Castle and Matt Taven brawled through the crowd. This was an entertaining encounter that set the stage nicely for two different matchups at the pay-per-view.

Overall Show

In addition to the two very good matches and the one segment with the tag teams, there were a slew of excellent video packages on this show promoting Christopher Daniels vs. Marty Scurll, Adam Page vs. Jeff Cobb, and the women's four-way at Final Battle. As I've noted in the past, Ring of Honor doesn't typically do the strongest job of getting viewers excited for their events based off what we see on the weekly television shows, but that has been far from the case with this pay-per-view. Every advertised outing on the card has received a substantial amount of build and I'm looking forward to all of them. Better yet, I'll be there live on Friday night to enjoy all the action in person, so I'm super pumped, to say the least.