Ring of Honor Review - October 17, 2018

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

The Kingdom Addressed the Audience

In case you missed it, The Kingdom attacked Jay Lethal following his successful defense of the ROH World Championship at Death Before Dishonor and Matt Taven took the title belt. He's claiming to be the real world champion, which is nothing new, but now he's officially entering the world title picture. Having The Kingdom bully ring announcer Bobby Cruise into listing off Taven's accomplishments to the audience was a simple way of putting heat on him, but I still don't think fans see Taven or The Kingdom as a main event act as of this moment. Here's hoping that will change with the right booking.

Kenny King def. Chase Owens

I honestly can't remember ever watching a Chase Owens match before. In fact, the only thing I know about him is that he's one of the irrelevant members of Bullet Club (sorry, I don't follow New Japan Pro Wrestling). That said, he had a solid showing here and it was a well-wrestled matchup. The story is that King now has victories over three Bullet Club members (Marty Scurll, Adam Page, and Owens), so it will be interesting to see who he targets next. Cody, perhaps?

Flip Goroan vs. Shane Taylor Went to a No Contest

Gordon has been at odds with Bully Ray for months, so before the bout, he took aim at Bully in a promo before being ambushed from behind by Taylor, who was then joined by Bully and Silas Young. The heels took turns beating up on Gordon, and while that alone would have been a solid segment, the babyfaces were made to look terrible when the commentators questioned why no one was coming out to save him. By the way, where's Colt Cabana at?

The Young Bucks def. The Addiction, Best Friends, and Los Ingobernables de Japon in a Four Corner Survival Tag Team Match

No, there was no title shot at stake in this match, but it was heavily implied that the winners would likely earn one coming out of this. Granted, throwing four teams together for no real reason was random, but I won't complain about getting an entertaining main event. It didn't last long at all, so although it would have benefited from more time, they made the most of it and kept the crowd engaged with the exciting action. Evil and Sanada sure felt wasted, though.

Overall Show

The main event was easily the best thing on the entire episode, but to be fair, it was fairly meaningless and served no purpose. Everything else, albeit decent, didn't pique my interest too much and thus this edition of ROH TV felt underwhelming to me. It's a shame because this kicked off the fresh batch of tapings from after Death Before Dishonor, but fingers crossed next week's episode will be better with the ROH World Tag Team and ROH World Television Championships being defended as well as Marty Scurll vs. Chris Sabin.