Ring of Honor Review - March 23, 2016

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

ROH World Television Champion Tomohiro Ishii def. Cedric Alexander

It's funny. I've never been impressed by BJ Whitmer as a wrestler, but he's a riot as a character. Perhaps I got more of a kick out of him here because he wasn't involved with Steve or Colby Corino or Adam Page in any way. It also led to a better match with Ishii and Alexander for the title. I have seen very little of Ishii's work in ROH because he's an act mainly in Japan, but he is quite great and works well with whoever he steps in the ring with. The crowd bought into Alexander's near-falls and they produced a fun opener. Now that Ishii is in possession of an ROH-sanctioned title, I'd like to see more from him on ROH and video packages introducing viewers to who he is.


The Addiction Called Out The Motor City Machine Guns

I've always been a big fan of the Machine Guns and I'm psyched to see them back together again. The awesomeness of The Addiction speaks for itself, so that's a money match waiting to happen. Their back-and-forth on the mic here was kept short and sweet and I'm glad Chris Sabin explained his logic for reuniting with Alex Shelley even if it wasn't anything special. Hopefully they don't drag out this feud too long like they tend to do from time to time and we see these two teams clash sooner rather than later.

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The Briscoes def. Reno Scum

This was my first time watching Reno Scum and I immediately thought of Ink Inc. from TNA when I saw them. They more than impressed me in their outing versus one of ROH's greatest tag teams of all-time in The Briscoes and I'd love to see them featured more in the future. They're from the Vegas area, so it wasn't surprising that the crowd reacted as favorably to them as they did. Will The Briscoes be resetting their sights on the ROH World Tag Team Championship in the near future?


Michael Elgin and Hiroshi Tanahashi def. The Young Bucks

I was curious as to whether Elgin and Tanahashi would continue teaming beyond their alliance at the 14th Anniversary show, and I'm happy that they could be going forward. Elgin has never interested me much, but he appears to be more motivated when teaming with Tanahashi. Like most Young Bucks matches, there was little if any story to this match, but it was incredibly entertaining from an in-ring standpoint and the final few minutes were fantastic. I do wonder why The Young Bucks lose so frequently, though. They were signed to a pretty exclusive contract last year by ROH, meaning they should be kept special by winning more often than they're losing.


Overall Show

This was the first show from the Las Vegas taping and the set looked phenomenal. On top of that, the three matches and one talking segment were all excellent, making this a very enjoyable hour of wrestling on the whole. Once again, there was no fallout from last month's pay-per-view, but I've given up on that at this point. It's embarrassing we haven't heard from Jay Lethal since he retained his ROH World Championship over one month ago, but if nothing else, hopefully we hear from him next week when he defends his title.