1. NEVER Openweight Title & ROH World TV Title: Will Ospreay [c] vs. Jeff Cobb [c]
This was a pretty fun opener with a whole lot of impressive athletic maneuvers that felt more like there was a good match somewhere inside it than an actual a good match. Jeff Cobb does cool suplexes and Will Ospreay goes up very high for them. Will also does this thing where he thinks he’s really good at selling now. Like he really goes for it. So that was a big part of this match. He also dropkicked Cobb’s… ear lobe? I’m not sure if that was the intention. They had their moments, but at even 12 minutes it felt kind of long – it was missing the tightness and a thread to follow of something like Rey Mysterio vs. Kurt Angle at SummerSlam 2002, not a fair match to hold it up to but a similar dynamic. Also none of their catch spots really worked out. Cobb gets me hot and bothered with all his old school suplex gaijin wrestler potential, but I’m still waiting for him to emerge as a guy I actually want to watch wrestle a lot. ***
2. 3-Way Match – IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title: Taiji Ishimori [c] vs. Dragon Lee vs. Bandido
At only 9 minutes this was a few minutes shorter than Cobb vs. Will, but as an exciting spot-based match they packed in a lot more content. It was just a whole bunch of unexplainable feats of human athleticism and cooperation, a bunch of wild-ass spots by living testaments to the human body’s capability. Bandido doing a double fallaway slam moonsault thing was wild too, and I loved the commentary call: “That’s not a real move!” I know Taiji works like this, but for the reputation Lee and Bandido have with me I was kind of struck by how nobody really used the ropes and rarely went to the floor – they kept it in the middle of that squared circle, baby. What a trip. ***3/4
Dragon Lee straight up says he hopes Hiromu is the first challenger for the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title in the post-match table talk, and I hope that means what it appears to mean.
3. 4-Way Match – IWGP Tag Team Title & ROH Tag Team Title: Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa [c] vs. Brody King & PCO [c] vs. EVIL & SANADA vs. The Briscoe Brothers
The PCO entrance in all its glory in MSG was… kind of amazing. His taking of a powerbomb to floor (not a table, just the floor) was also a proper insane thing, because really sometimes wrestling does just need some freak show shit. I fear for the man but I trust he knows what he’s doing. Now, outside of all that, this was a collection of random pairings of participants doing quick forgettable sequences for 10 minutes, as every 4-way match for the IWGP Tag Team Titles tends to be. Lots of action and signature spots and stuff, but honestly the Guerillas of Destiny might’ve been the best guys in the match and that scares me. Briscoes and EVIL/SANADA just kind of disappeared midway through it too. **
AXS really only showed Enzo swinging with Mark Briscoe after the match, then quickly cut to Toru Yano with the tag belts, which was swell of AXS. The whole Enzo and Cass thing is silly, mostly because there’s no good way to follow-up. Anything you do next reveals it to be the work it supposedly isn’t. Stop trying to play with the rules, ya marks.
The Tongans post-match rant is half cringey with the swears and half kind of incredible, as Tama legitimately just throws his ROH Bullshit Tag Belt across the room. He also calls it that.
4. 3-Way Ladder Match – ROH Title: Jay Lethal [c] vs. Marty Scurll vs. Matt Taven
Look I might’ve seen one Matt Taven match a while ago, a tag with Mike Bennett. Otherwise I have no frame of reference, but I can’t say he exactly pops off the screen. Scurll meanwhile relentlessly follows the Peter Principle, a guy who absolutely has a prime spot in wrestling but it’s not… this. Jay Lethal is a dude I respect, who I watched have an amazing run as an underdog guy in the mid-2000s and occasionally do all-time great Ric Flair and Macho Man impersonations, and who I’ve been told has had several good championship title defenses, but I just cannot get past that he has been at the top of ROH for what remains a dreadfully uninteresting time for them. There have certainly been worse periods in ROH history, but this is that special kind of uninteresting, where they are a lot like WWE in a way in that they have an abundance of presumably talented wrestlers but nothing actually happens with anybody and everybody just keeps kind of trucking by. They’re in a reset period post-Bullet Bros for sure, but I remain as engaged in this organization as I was when that crew was practicing their pitches for Tony Khan. So I both marvel at some of ROH’s success but refuse to participate.
Anyways, this was a 30-minute Triple Threat Ladder Match. *1/2
