Ring of Honor TV – November 29, 2017: I Don’t Like the Bullet Club
Ring of Honor
Date: November 29, 2017
Location: 2300 Arena, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Commentators: Ian Riccaboni, Colt Cabana
We’ve got three shows left before Final Battle and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I’m digging the heck out of ROH. They’re putting on good matches and telling interesting stories, which is a lot more than you can say about most wrestling shows these days. Let’s get to it.
The Bullet Club is in the back and ready for the eight man tag main event. They’re ready to face the spot monkeys and Flip Gordon will never flip again.
Opening sequence.
Jonathan Gresham vs. Silas Young
The winner is the final entrant in the four way TV Title match so TV Champion Kenny King is on commentary. Gresham gets sent into the corner to start but Gresham goes after the arm to slow things down a bit. A Beer City Bruiser distraction doesn’t get Young very far so Gresham sends him outside without much effort.
Back in and we hit a crisscross until Young grabs a sunset flip for two. Gresham ties his legs together to….I guess mildly annoy Young. Back up and Gresham pulls Young up by one leg and it’s time for a comedy spot. After nearly thirty seconds of waiting, Gresham pushes him back and scores with a dropkick. Back with Gresham slugging away with some really bad looking punches. A suplex puts Young down and a good looking high crossbody gives Gresham two.
The octopus hold goes on but Bruiser throws in a keg for a distraction, allowing him to sneak in and break things up. In other news: ROH referees are really stupid. Bruiser grabs the leg but this time Gresham takes him down with a suicide dive. Another distraction allows Young to avoid a second high crossbody, allowing Young to hit Misery for the pin at 11:19.
Rating: C-. The Bruiser stuff got really annoying with three different interferences. I can go for Young being in the title match but he needs something a little better than the Bruiser cheats and then Misery. Young is a good promo and a passable worker but more importantly he’s more interesting than Gresham, who is a technical guy with no personality.
The Kingdom is ready for their Tag Team Title match next week.
We look at the end of last week’s show with Mark Briscoe turning heel and helping to beat down Bully Ray.
War Machine comes out for a match but the Addiction jumps them in the aisle. The brawl is on with War Machine throwing the Addiction into the barricade, including a hard shot that takes down a plant.
It’s time for Coleman’s Pulpit with his first returning guest: Kenny King. Kenny is ready to be a fighting champion and doesn’t want to hear Coleman’s speech about reality. Coleman thinks King is being played for a fool because he’s just a pawn. He’s being pimped out, which King doesn’t care for. Somehow this gets Coleman a TV Title shot in Florida, which seemed to be Coleman’s idea.
We look back at Bullet Club beating down Dalton Castle from last week.
Flip Gordon/Scorpio Sky/Coast to Coast vs. Bullet Club
It’s the Bucks/Adam Page/Marty Scurll here. Jay Lethal is on commentary and Cody comes out for a bonus. Before we get going, Cody says Gordon’s dreams of beating the Bullet Club is the same as Castle winning the title: a pipe dream. Scurll takes LSG down by the wrist to start and it’s time for an early wrestling sequence. You don’t do that to a British guy though as he pops up with a bird pose, only to have Cody come up on the apron for the same. That earns him an ejection though and it’s off to Matt vs. Sky.
Neither can hit much of anything until Scorpio nails a dropkick. Nick comes in and of course the fans are mostly behind the Club. It’s off to Gordon, who refuses a series of handshake offers. Flip makes the mistake of doing his dancing handstand, allowing Nick to dropkick him in the ribs. Back up and Gordon keeps nipping up to avoid superkicks and because this is a Bucks match, Nick keeps trying the same stupid move over and over. A standoff takes us to a break and we come back with Gordon still refusing a handshake.
Matt comes in and grabs him by the hand though, allowing Scurll to break the fingers. Naturally, the partners just STAND AND WATCH ALL THIS, including the triple superkicks. The fans think this is awesome because they’ll cheer anything the Bucks do. Coast to Coast gets sent outside and it’s time for a bunch of dives, as you might expect. Gordon nails an even bigger dive and comes back in to face Nick….who promptly pokes him in the eye to take over. Sky gets sent into the corner and it’s time for a Bullet Club train of clotheslines.
Back from another break with Flip having to bail out of a 450 and getting superkicked down. Flip grabs a reverse Regal Roll but backflips into the chickenwing. Sky makes the save and grabs a dragon sleeper, only to have the superkick party begin. Ali and Matt slug it out on the apron until LSG hits his partner by mistake. A belly to back suplex onto the apron drops Ali, leaving Flip all alone in the ring. He tries his own dive, and, say it with me, lands on a bunch of superkicks.
More Bang For Your Buck doesn’t work and Gordon springboards into a mostly missed dive to the floor. Nick is caught in the Tree of Woe for a double Coast to Coast but Gordon’s 450 only gets two. Scurll does the chickenwing dance but gets kicked in the head. A blind tag brings in Ali….which doesn’t matter as it’s ANOTHER string of superkicks as the Bucks cut off another comeback. Matt superkicks Scurll by mistake but Page comes back in for a Rite of Passage/Tombstone/Indytaker combo to Gordon and Sky for the double pin at 20:07.
Rating: B-. Well that was maddening. This match was designed to push Gordon as a young up and comer but all I saw here was the Bullet Club superkicking everyone in sight and hitting a big team move for the win. As usual, the problem with the Club’s matches is the same: they’re never made to look like they’re in any kind of danger. Every time the good guys got something going here, it was a bunch of superkicks to cut them off again. Sure there were some exciting moments here and there but I should buy the idea that the underdog faces have a chance. That wasn’t the case here and it got old in a hurry.
Overall Rating: C+. This show was much more about the in-ring work instead of the storytelling but you can tell they’re especially working hard around this time. You also would have expected something from Lethal vs. Scurll here but that was barely discussed in the slightest. It’s still a good show, though it wasn’t exactly the same formula they’ve been using, or the one they should have been using for that matter.
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I think what annoys me the most about The Bullet Club besides their Matches (namely The Young Bucks) is people cheer them like babyfaces when they are presented as Heels and doing heelish things. I get them trying to be the cool heels like the nWo were but the nWo weren’t cheered as babyfaces and had trash throw at them every week on Nitro.