Ring of Honor Review - July 27, 2016

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Bullet Club Attacked Kyle O'Reilly

Despite the recent departures of AJ Styles, Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson, The Bullet Group remain a hot group, but I was worried they would become watered down after they ruined the main event of Global Wars a few months ago. Thankfully, that has yet to be the case as they have been shown sparingly on ROH TV. This was a good use of them as they built sympathy for O'Reilly going into the main event by injuring him pretty badly, and I also appreciated how it set up an ongoing narrative for the rest of the show, which is typically rare for ROH.


War Machine def. Tough Guy Inc.

It looks like the tandem of Brutal Bob Evans and Tough Tim Hughes finally have a team name, unless they have this entire time and I just completely missed it. This was a glorified sqash match with War Machine dominating the duo and making short work of them. It made sense from a storyline standpoint because it allowed War Machine to let out their anger following their recent run-ins with Shane Taylor and Keith Lee, who they exacted a bit of revenge on afterward.

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The Cabinet def. Chesseburger, Will Ferrara and Moose

I'm sorry but The Cabinet does absolutely nothing for me. The name of the group is a blatant rip-off of JBL's posse from a decade ago, their message of "making wrestling great again" is played out, and Kenny King and Rhett Titus have zero momentum at the moment. Caprice Coleman is a solid hand in the ring and a talented talker, so perhaps he can add a little life to the stable. It was weird seeing Moose in action considering he's now with TNA, but I realize this was taped prior to that point. That said, I wonder how many more matches he will have on ROH TV before he's officially done.


ROH World Champion Jay Lethal def. Kyle O'Reilly

Lethal and O'Reilly have always worked well together, so the fact they produced a quality main event was no surprise. However, the story of O'Reilly working hurt enhanced my enjoyment of the match tenfold, as well the compassion shown by Lethal toward O'Reilly. I wasn't exactly sure before, but now I'm convinced Lethal is a full-fledged babyface. Of course, O'Reilly lost nothing in defeat, and Lethal has another strong title defense under his belt. The post-match attack from Bullet Club might take O'Reilly off TV for the foreseeable future, but why didn't Bobby Fish come out sooner to save him? The same thing happened in the opening segment. He was also advising against O'Reilly wrestling on this show, so unless he's turning heel and is secretly in cahoots with Bullet Club, that was an odd move.


Overall Show

ROH has done a better job of promoting their main events weeks in advance and I've praised them for that, but as I noted earlier, they did a great job on this show of supplying a narrative throughout the night with O'Reilly and his title shot. Additionally, his match with Lethal was entertaining and is worth watching. The other two matches were throwaway in my opinion, but seek out the main event.