July 13th, 2018
Opening Match: Dalton Castle vs. David Starr
This match took place right after Castle lost the ROH World Title and like many ROH World Champions at the end of their reign, he was dealing with injuries. Castle can always compensate to some extent with his personality and charisma, which he did here. Starr also put his body on the line to help deal with Castle being limited, such as completely whiffing on a dive and landing in the third row. Ultimately, I would have just preferred more of a sprint rather than devoting time to Starr working over Castle. The action was good in spurts but the match as a whole didn’t come together the way they likely intended. Starr won in 14:26 with a crossface. **¼
Match #2: Penta El Zero M vs. Rey Horus
They began with Horus sending Penta to the floor, Horus diving, and Penta shoving Horus away in midair. Even at that point, you could tell that these two were out to prove something and they delivered an incredibly fun showcase match. Penta is having a terrific 2018 and his presence alone just carries something special that makes him an attraction. These two unsurprisingly worked well together and continued the theme they established early on of taking the action in unexpected directions. This contest seemed much more up the crowd’s alley than the opener. Horus won in 13:11 with an escalera from the middle rope. ***½
Match #3: Jeff Cobb vs. Joey Janela
I’ve watched Janela face off against stronger, more powerful wrestlers quite a bit and my general problem is that he rarely comes into these matches with a cohesive strategy. This time was different in that Janela pushed his willingness to take greater chances to compensate for the power disadvantage he faced. The moments in the contest where Janela pushed himself were by far the best. Even the longer duration gave the viewer the sense that if Janela just kept pushing, he would eventually outlast Cobb. Janela’s use of chairs ended up being his undoing. In some moods, I would find that lame, but by hook or by crook they found an engaging story here and kept with it for most of this match’s duration. Cobb won in 15:13 with the Tour of the Islands. ***¼
Match #4: PWG World Tag Team Titles: The Rascalz (Zachary Wentz and Dezmond Xavier) © vs. The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson)
The Bucks stressed before the match that they were going to focus on psychology and working over body parts. Early on, they stopped themselves from diving, for instance. It was a fun concept if you’re into that sort of thing, but everyone knew the action was going to break down into the expected madness at some point. You also quickly sensed that this match was devoted entirely to proving that the Rascalz could hang with the Bucks, which led to the fast-paced, crisp action you would expect. But at the end of the day, they needed something more to put this one over the top. An unnecessary referee bump down the stretch certainly wasn’t the missing ingredient. If anything, this contest allowed the Rascalz to prove themselves to the PWG fans and the fans seem to be warming up to them as champions. The Rascalz retained their titles at 17:25 when Wentz rolled up Matt. ***
Match #5: Trevor Lee vs. Rey Fenix
Lee does not strike me as an overly interesting heel. He called Fenix names, postured to the crowd a lot when in control, and toyed around with Fenix for far too long rather than trying to defeat him. Lee also loves mentioning he works for TNA, something he also did in AAW two years ago. I guess I’m just waiting for Lee to evolve to some extent. The action played out exactly how I expected and while Fenix certainly did some exciting things down the stretch, it wasn’t nearly enough to carry this contest. The somewhat shorter duration relative to the rest of the card helped. Fenix won in 12:24 with the Muscle Bomber. **½
Match #6: Matthew Riddle vs. Marty Scurll
Scurll will sometimes attack his opponents with his umbrella before the opening bell and follow with high-impact offense. This tactic always makes me hopeful that he will continue this aggression throughout the rest of the match and we’ll receive a fun sprint. However, as was the case here, sometimes the pacing completely halts and Scurll spends a copious amount of time working over his opponent’s fingers. That worked to some extent here based on the simple revelation that Riddle wrestles barefoot, but I still assert that this would have worked better as a sprint instead of Riddle trying to fight through Scurll’s dastardly heel tactics. The match just felt longer than eleven minutes and they could have used their time more wisely. Riddle won in 11:21 with the Bromission. **½
Match #7: PWG World Title: WALTER © vs. Brody King
Much like the Rascalz/Bucks title match, this main event was about proving that King could hang with WALTER. It may be true that WALTER is just a more refined version of King. So while I didn’t necessarily treat this match as a battle of equals, King delivered a fine effort. Your mileage will vary depending on how much you enjoy hoss battles. This match had the extended chop battles and agile big man offense, but there wasn’t much holding everything together aside from both of these guys being extremely likeable. As unintuitive as it sounds, I don’t think these two are the best opponents for each other. The matchup sounds cool on paper, but they both are looking to play the same role in their singles matches. King will only improve, though, and I could see these two having a better match down the line. WALTER retained his title at 18:23 with a piledriver. ***
-Show Grade: B
–You Need to See:
–You’d Enjoy Watching: Penta/Horus, Cobb/Janela, Rascalz/Bucks, WALTER/King
–You Should Avoid: