Ring of Honor
Episode 182
Air Date: 03/14/2015

ROH is now officially coming out of the 13th Anniversary show and building up to Supercard of Honor IX on WrestleMania weekend. I have done my best to avoid spoilers for these tapings so I am seeing these matches fresh for reviews. Before the first match, Kevin Kelly announces that Tommaso Ciampa is out indefinitely with broken ribs, an injury that was sustained during the main event at the 13th Anniversary show.

ACH and Matt Sydal vs. The Addiction (“The Fallen Angel” Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian):  The match starts with Matt Sydal and Frankie Kazarian engaging in some chain wrestling while Kevin Kelly buries ACH’s attitude. Kelly wonders whether Sydal will be able to put up with ACH over the long haul. That doesn’t show up as any sort of story in this match, however. Instead, the two teams simply swap control back and forth for extended stretches of time. ACH’s work was considerably crisper than Sydal’s work here. Sydal was often slow and sloppy, going laboriously from spot to spot. ACH & Sydal seem to finally take control for good when ACH hits a beautiful corkscrew plancha to the floor. Sydal climbs to the top rope to finish off The Addiction but a Knights of the Rising Dawn member hits Sydal in the back with a chair. The Addiction takes advantage and gets the pinfall on Sydal at 12:40. **

After the match, the teams shake hands to apparently put over that The Addiction were not involved in the KRD interference. Kelly and Corino try their hardest to make it seem like we should care about the KRD but fail miserably, at least with me.

I am much more interested in the ROH CodeLine, which you can call for free and find out whether Adam Cole’s or Roderick Strong’s father is an Elvis impersonator!

Jay Briscoe comes out to cut a promo. He’s carrying the ROH World Championship and the Jay Briscoe World Championship that again features Confederate flags. I wish someone would ask Jay when Delaware joined the Confederacy. Instead of addressing that important topic, Briscoe addresses the finish of the 13th Anniversary main event. “You can call me lucky; you can call me vulnerable. Just don’t forget to call me champ.”  He talks about his two-year winning streak:  “I try to stay humble but I can’t help but feel like I’m the baddest man in pro wrestling.”  That line, of course, brings out Samoa Joe to a great pop.

Joe gets on the mic and puts over Jay for awhile then gets to the point:  “You’re the baddest man in pro wrestling? You haven’t whipped my ass.”  Joe challenges Briscoe for a title shot at Supercard of Honor and the two shake on it. The crowd erupts into a “Joe’s Gonna Kill You” chant and Briscoe doesn’t get in another word. This honestly felt like it left Briscoe slightly emasculated. I suppose we need some reason to think Joe is going to carry the ROH title into NXT.

When we come back from commercial, we are supposed to get the main event match but instead Jimmy Jacobs is in the ring with a microphone. Joy. Jacobs says Joe has been gone from ROH so long that his last match there was against Tyler Black. He’s upset that Joe is just walking in and getting a title shot. “You walked out on this company and that worked out SO well for you.”  That line gets some heat so Jacobs doubles down:  “That’s real!”  But his best line was the one that followed:  “I’ve been here holding down the fort so there’s a fort for you to come back to.”  Jacobs says while Joe just gets a title shot, Jacobs is going to take one. He challenges Briscoe and says since Briscoe is always talking about how big of a man he is, there’s no way he will turn down a challenge. I guess this title shot is what Jimmy gets before he leaves for WWE creative. I can’t imagine anyone is dying for a Jimmy Jacobs/Jay Briscoe match in 2015.

The Kingdom (Mike Bennett & Matt Taven) vs. The Young Bucks (Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson):  Do you like movez? Do you like Maria Kanellis’ ass? Do you like matches where Bennett and Taven are on offense for long segments? Well, two out of three isn’t bad! The movez start early in this one with the Bucks getting all their stuff in. Maria, of course, gets involved to put The Kingdom back on offense. The portions where the Bucks were selling for The Kingdom were so dull that Kelly resorted to trying to get over the KRD angle again. Only in comparison to The Kingdom’s offense is the KRD interesting. Perhaps the best non-Bucks part of the match was that when Maria jumped up on the apron, the camera immediately cut to a shot with her ass in the foreground. This wasn’t quite as bad as the camerawork in New Japan when Maria was involved but clearly ROH is taking its cues from that work. The Bucks attempted to salvage the match with a hot ending. They set up for The Indytaker but The Kingdom counters and is in position to hit the spike piledriver. Taven jumps to go for the spike but Nick Jackson superkicks him on the way down. Bucks are set up for The Indytaker again and… we get KRD interference again. The Kingdom goes for the spike piledriver and hits it this time for the victory at 11:18. **1/2

ReDRagon comes out to the top of the ramp because, with this win, The Kingdom has earned a shot at the ROH World Tag Championships at Supercard of Honor. Kevin Kelly also announces that Jay Briscoe will defend his title against Jimmy Jacobs next week on ROH Tvs.

Final Thoughts:  This was not a good episode. The promos might have been the best part of the show as both matches featured long stretches that felt mostly like stalling and ended with interference by the KRD. I can’t think of anyone that could plausibly be revealed as the KRD that would make the payoff to this angle interesting. And it’s not like there’s a long time before the Supercard of Honor show. Of course, Joe vs. Briscoe may be enough to sell that show. However, I can’t help but be concerned that the KRD will play another large role on WrestleMania weekend. Anyway, when it comes to this show, I would suggest you skip it. There wasn’t anything here that you have to see.