Ring of Honor Review - September 12, 2018

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Frankie Kazarian def. ROH World Tag Team Champion Mark Briscoe

I loved the unorthodox way in which this match started with the two brawling to ringside to open the show. It made the SoCal Uncensored vs. Briscoes feud feel that much more personal and it immediately heightened my interest in this encounter. It was a very well-wrestled matchup on the whole with the right result. SoCal Uncensored has momentum on their side going into the ROH World Tag Team Championship clash and the Briscoes bounced back afterward by laying out SoCal (with help from Punishment Martinez).

ROH World Champion Jay Lethal def. Jonathan Gresham in a 30-Minute Iron Man Match

First and foremost, I'd like to mention how excellent of a job Ring of Honor has done of building up this bout in recent weeks. Even though Gresham was the hometown hero here, I don't think anyone actually saw him as a threat to the title coming into this contest. Despite that, this had a big fight feel. With so much time on the clock, I wasn't surprised that the early goings were on the slower side, but once they picked up the pace down the stretch, it was a hell of a match. They created some stellar suspense with Gresham getting that submission victory over Lethal in the final few minutes and that was when the crowd really got into the action. Lethal tying it up in the last 60 seconds was great and then them going into overtime was awesome as well. This was strong stuff and the standing ovation they received afterward was well deserved. This was the total opposite of the Iron Man matchup from WWE Extreme Rules back in July (in a good way, of course).

Overall Show

The Iron Man match obviously took up a majority of the hour for this week's edition of ROH TV, but I appreciate the "less is more" format once in a while and I thought it worked wonderfully here. The above-average main event is well worth checking out in my opinion and I wish we would have more matches like this on the weekly show in the future, where world title matches can take place on ROH TV and not always be saved for pay-per-view. Plus, the opening matchup between Kazarian and Mark Briscoe was fun and successfully furthered that feud, so all in all, this was a very entertaining episode.