H returns to traditional PPV Friday night for Best In The World, the seventh such event in company history. The event emanates from Concord, NC, the first time BITW has been held there.
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Headlining the show is ROH World Champion Jay Lethal vs. Jay Briscoe, a rematch from last year’s BITW event where Lethal downed Briscoe for the belt in a winner takes all match.
KYLE O’REILLY VS. KAMAITACHI
O’Reilly won with a brainbuster and armbar. Very good technically. The crowd reacted but didn’t go wild. Kamaitachi reufsed to shake hands and left. The crowd isn’t mic’d well as you can see them reactingbut dont’ hear it that well. Kamaitachi didn’t look as impressive as he usually does. But his role was to put O’Reilly over as the whole thing they pushed was how O’Reilly gets a shot at the winner of the main event tomorrow.
SILAS YOUNG VS. ACH
Yeah, we’ve got the same problem with the bad crowd micing whicnh hurts the matches. You can see people are into it and hear it lightly. This was a good match. ACH did a great springobard flip dive. Young missed a springboard move, and ACH won with jumping double knees, a brainbuster and a 450 splash.
They just introudced Jay White at ringside. He looks like a teenager in the crowd.
Mark Briscoe was hilarious on his pre-match interview.
MARK BRISCOE VS. RODERICK STRONG
With Strong leaving, Mark got the pin after a brainbuster and fisherman buster in a really good match. Strong was excellent here and Mark hung with him. Mark has shaved his head but came out with a wig to surprise Strong. Both worked at a hard pace, with Mark doing all kinds of cool stuff and Strong solid with everything he did. Mark survived the sick kick and gutbuster. Mark used a sick kick on Strong. I think if the crowd was mic’d this would have come across as excellent. Fans were chanting “Thank you Roddy” and he was shaking hands on the way out.
WAR MACHINE & MOOSE VS. YOUNG BUCKS & ADAM COLE IN A TORNADO MATCH
Excellent match. Non stop action and the crowd was pretty hot. Finish saw them use the Meltzer driver on Moose and all three kissed each other after winning. We’ll update this later because it was a crazy match with all kinds of big spots and a ton of superkicks. Once again it was hurt by the crowd micing. Hanson in particular did crazy stuff for a guy his size.
CHRISTOPHER DANIELS & FRANKIE KAZARIAN VS. CHRIS SABIN & ALEX SHELLEY FOR THE TAG TITLES
Another good match. Actually this at first had a hard time following the previous match. Kamaitachi came out and attacked Jay White at ringside. They were brawling and distracted ref Paul Turner and Daniels hit Shelley with a low blow and he was out of commission. Daniels & Kazarian then pinned Sabin after the Best Meltzer ever. You’d think at this point I was the booker and had an ego twice the size of Dusty Rhodes. Daniels & Kazarian & Kamaitachi left together so they are forming a group.
STEVE CORINO VS. B.J. WHITMER IN AN UNSACNTIONED FIGHT WITHOUT HONOR
Corino came out to Shinya Hashimoto’s theme music. Corino bleached his hair blond. The commentators said this is a match that nobody wanted to see happen. This match was crazy. It came from another era as Whitmer went to hardway him. Corino bled like crazy. Whitmer juiced and it was a bloodbath. The crowd loved it. Whitmer put Corino through a table with an exploder suplex. They beat each other with broken pieces of the table. The lights went out and Kevin Sullivan showed up, teased hitting Whitmer with the spike but instead spiked Corino and Whitmer pinned him. Because nobody does this kind of match, it really worked. They saved things like tables, never do blood like this and used rolls of quarters but didn’t over do the foreign objects like in TNA where the shots meant nothing.
BOBBY FISH VS. DALTON CASTLE FOR THE TV TITLE
Another good match. Castle dominated. Castle suplexed Fish on his head and they teased Fish being hurt, but he then went for the bang a rang and Fish turned it into a front rolling cradle for the pin.
The All Night Express and Caprice Coleman came out. They came out to Presidential music. Coleman noted they were never defeated for the titles. He claimed they had to pay for this segment. Said each watched each others back and said all three are underrated and underpaid and now they are uniting and are now the group is called The Cabinet. Coleman is the Minister of Information. Rhett Titus said this whole show has been young punks flip flying around and nobody looks like pro wrestlers, said guys need to do bench presses and squats, how the tag champs have no abs and how the Young Bucks skip leg day and keep doing superkicks. Said there is an Olympic gold medalist is selling T-shirts to make wrestling great again. The Cabinet will will make wrestling great, won’t skip leg day and will win all the gold.
JAY LETHAL VS. JAY BRISCOE FOR THE ROH TITLE
Great match. Shorter than you’d think but time got out of control. The crowd loved it, chanting “That was awesome” after the finish. Lethal retained with a diamond cutter and Lethal iinjection. So right after the match ended, they turned up the crowd mic and you could hear how loud they were. If they’d done that during the show every match would have come across better. Both shook hands after the match. Briscoe nearly go the pin earlier with the Lethal injection and Jay driller. Lethal did two tope’s in a row and Briscoe came back with two of his own and a running flip dive. A lot of near falls. Crowd may have been hottest in this match.