Ring of Honor Review - June 27, 2018

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

ROH World Champion Dalton Castle Addressed the Audience

As much as I like Castle, I can't help but feel that he's been slightly underwhelming as the ROH World Champion over the past six months. He's definitely had a good run, but Bullet Club has overshadowed him in a major way. That said, I was pleased he was given the time to talk here and hype up his title defense for Best in the World this Friday night. By the way, while at the taping, The Kingdom interrupted Castle during this promo with Matt Taven bringing up how he never received his rightful shot at the strap, but for whatever reason, that part of this segment was cut from the broadcast.

Jay Lethal def. Chuckie T.

While watching this at the taping, I didn't understand what purpose it served other than giving Lethal a momentum boost ahead of Best in the World, but the commentators set the stage nicely by bringing up how Lethal is attempting to avenge all of his recent loses. Despite the goofy gimmick, Chuckie T. is great in his own right, and thus it should have come as no surprise that this was a very well-wrestled matchup with a nice pace. Lethal continues to roll on and his Best in the World bout with KUSHIDA should steal the show.

Bullet Club def. ROH World Tag Team Champions The Briscoes and Punishment Martinez

The build for Best in the World has been lackluster at best over the last month or so, but this was an excellent way to lead into two of the biggest bouts on the pay-per-view since The Briscoes will be defending the ROH World Tag Team Championship against The Young Bucks and Adam Page will be facing Martinez. Although this concluded a five hour-plus long taping, the crowd was incredibly hot from start to finish with there never being a dull moment. The babyfaces going over was the right move as it ended the evening on a high note and the heels lost nothing in defeat.

Overall Show

This was the first show from the New York City television tapings I attended earlier this month to make the air and the crowd came off as well on TV as we did in the arena. It was fun to watch to these matches back from a different perspective and I promise you that many more great matches are set to air in the coming weeks. As for this episode alone, it was a highly enjoyable hour of wrestling that did its part in hyping up Best in the World for Friday night.