This past week has produced some of the best wrestling in a while; ROH returned to form with two excellent championship matches, Chikara hosted their annual, and final, King of Trios tournament, UK based promotion Progress featured an incredible match between Will Ospreay and Mark Haskins as well as the surprise appearance of indy dream Adam Cole/Roddy Strong teaming up to face the Sumerian Death Squad, The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic started to heat up with two good matches between Bull Dempsey/Breeze vs the team of Johnny Gargano/Tomasso Ciampa along with Samoa Joe/Balor vs The Lucha Dragons and TNA contributed a fantastic tag team match between The Wolves and Trevor Lee/Brian Myers. Even Smackdown played host to fun matches between Reigns/Ambrose/Uninjured Uso vs The New Day as well as another strong performance from Seth Rollins solidifying himself further as one of the best in the world in a 15 minute+ match with Ryback.
Unfortunately, many of these matches, at the time of writing, are not available on demand as of yet thus ruling them out of this week's matches of the week. We begin, though, in ROH with a match that would feature in any week's matches of the week.
Jay Lethal (C) vs Roderick Strong
ROH World Championship Match
Available to watch here.
After fans chanted for five more minutes after their 60 minute time limit draw at Death Before Dishonour, fans were again treated to an excellent contest between two of the very best in the world. An atmosphere absent from Philadelphia since the heyday of ECW underscored arguably the best TV match of the year as the ROH World Champion, Jay Lethal, defended his title against Roddy Strong.
I wont delve too deep into the particulars of this match as it is well worth a watch- the work rate of these two men is just incredible. Understandably, this match was considerably faster than their previous encounter and perhaps just as good. In my mind, this match solidified these two as the best workers ROH currently posses and will lead to further encounters between these two- hell, I could watch a 90 minute time limit draw between these two such is the quality of these matches.
The match ended when Lethal unwrapped his wrist tape to choke out Strong- referee Todd Sinclair spotted this breach of the rules and tossed it to the outside. Meanwhile, while the ref's back was turned, Lethal laid Strong out with the championship belt before Lethal connected with the Lethal Injection only for Strong to kick out at the latest possible opportunity. Lethal then delivered a second Lethal Injection to pick up the victory and retain his ROH World Championship after retaining his ROH TV Title last week against Hansen.
Lethal will pull double duty against both members of reDRagon at All Star Extravaganza VII- first, Lethal will defend the ROH TV Title against Bobby Fish. Then, in the main event, Lethal will defend his ROH World Title against another man who has taken him to a time limit draw in the recent past, Kyle O Reilly. All is not lost for Roddy Strong as he has the opportunity to redeem himself in a fatal four way match against AJ Styles, Adam Cole and Michael Elgin to crown the new number one contender to the ROH World Championship.
Returning to this match, I would argue this match is up their with Cena/Cesaro, Rollins/Neville and Strong/Nakamura for the best televised match of the year. In the face of the bombasticity of Monday night RAW, this match demonstrates that just a simple story in the ring is enough to satisfy fans.
The Wolves vs Trevor Lee and Brian Myers (C)
TNA World Tag Team Title Match
As ever with TNA, many things with the current product make very little sense. Like why is Drew Galloway, a man recently acquired by TNA, fighting to defend the honour of TNA despite only being there for six months. And do they not have anyone more suitable to be challenging EC3 than Matt Hardy? Peculiar booking decisions aside, the actual wrestling has remained remarkably good-in the context of the shitstorm that currently surrounds the product.
This week was no different.
After cashing in the Feast or Fired contract on last week's TNA, Trevor Lee and Brian Myers, representatives of GFW, defended their TNA Tag Team Titles against the team they defeated for the titles last week, The Wolves.
A frenetic pace in the initial stages really set the tone for this match- a brawl around the impact zone ended when The Wolves delivered a falcon arrow sealed with a kick. After Myers pulled Davey Richards to the outside, Trevor Lee delivered his incredible inside out power slam. Team GFW worked over Eddie Edwards for a while with a series of quick tags before a double foot stomp by Trevor Lee misses granted The Wolves an opportunity to get back into the match with a tag to Davey Richards. After delivering a superplex, Richards attempted creeping death to no avail- Edwards makes the tag and delivers a roundhouse kick into a german suplex. After missing a double foot stomp from the top rope, a jumping knee by Trevor Lee allows Myers to deliver an sto on Edwards. a second jumping knee is dodged by Edwards and connects with Myers instead- Edwards delivered a flapjack into a muay thai kick from Richards before The Wolves delivered a powerbomb into a back stabber. The pin was interrupted by Sonjay Dutt, member of the GFW invasion team, by pulling the ref to the outside. Luckily for team TNA, Earl Hebner was on hand to dispatch Dutt with one swift punch almost hitting Dutt's face before Richards delivered a tombstone piledriver punctuated by a kick by Edwards to pick up the victory and bring the TNA Tag Titles back home to TNA.
It is a very peculiar booking decision to hand the titles back to The Wolves after they lost them just last week and having Sonjay Dutt, someone who will be representing team GFW at Lethal Lockdown next week, dispatched by a 65 year old man. As always with TNA, poor booking decisions aside,
this was an entertaining match. At the young age of 21, Trevor Lee is at least ten years from reaching his prime.
Imagine Trevor Lee in his prime!
The guy is incredible now and has years of success in the wrestling business ahead of him, his dead lift suplexes truly are a thing of beauty. The Wolves, too, were better than they have been for a while in this match- various innovative double team manoeuvres illustrated once again that, on their day, The Wolves are one of the best tag teams in the world. In all likelihood, all four men will meet again at Lethal Lockdown next week when TNA battles GFW for control of the company as the invasion angle appears to be wrapping up prematurely.
Team Attack vs United Nations
King of Trios is available to purchase on Chikara's website.
I'll admit, King of Trios 2015 was the first Chikara event I have ever watched. And I loved it. Just look at the names of some of these guys; Max Smashmaster, Oleg the Usurper, The Proletariat Boar of Moldova, Gavin Loudspeaker, El Hijo del Ice Cream and many many more.
At the time of writing, the final night of the tournament is not yet available so I have only been able to watch night one and two. A match that stood out for me, as a major proponent of British Wrestling, was in fact the first tournament match up. Combining a series of comedy spots, high spots and fun wrestling, Team Attack UK, composed of TNA Boot Camp II winner Mark Andrews, Pete Dunne and Flash Morgan Webster, faced The United Nations, composed of Mister Azerbaijan, Juan Francisco de Coronado (of Ecuadorian descent) and The Proletariat Boar of Moldova.
And if the names of the United Nations do not entice you to watch Chikara, I don't know what will.
I'm not going to go into a great amount of depth about this match as the Lucha Libre rules make the matches incredibly difficult to convey with language, I will just detail some of my personal highlights from the match. Pete Dunne and Juan Francisco de Coronado got things under way with a frenetic exchange of holds- Coronado, after gaining some momentum, tags in his partner Mister Azerbaijan, named sexiest man in Azerbaijan for 12 consecutive years. Mister Azerbaijan gives the ladies in attendance what they want by pulling down the straps of his singlet- Pete Dunne reciprocates by pulling his straps down for a big-man-off. The sexiest man in Azerbaijan, unwilling to be out muscled, pulls Pete Dunne's straps back up before delivering an uppercut to Dunne.
Not long after, Mister Azerbaijan found himself in the wrong part of town and on the receiving end some brilliant team work by Attack UK, Mark Andrews applies the bow and arrow submission before catapulting Azerbaijan into a scoop slam by Pete Dunne. A distraction by Prakash Sabar, accomplice of The United Nations, leads to an extended period of punishment for Pete Dunne before a tag to Flash Morgan Webster, the Modfather, making his Chikara debut. Webster delivered a diving clothesline followed by an inverted senton to Mister Azerbaijan before a misdirected tope con hilo grounds his team mate, Pete Dunne. Mark Andrews lands an incredible tornado ddt on Coronado before missing a shooting star press due to the Proletariat Boar of Moldova pulling Coronado to the outside. Taking advantage of referee's preoccupation with the Proletariat Boar, Prakash Sabar, to the disgust of the crowd, delivers the non-pg bronco buster on Mark Andrews. The Proletariat Boar of Moldova connects with a devastating spear before Mister Azerbaijan spikes mark Andrews with a spinning pump handle piledriver. Mid way through the referee's count, Azerbaijan beckons Coronado over, team captain of the United Nations, to secure the victory which he does.
The unwavering adherence to kayfabe is astonishing and the reason why I enjoyed my introduction to Chikara so much. Sure, the goofy gimmicks aren't for everyone but the commentators really sell the gimmicks of these characters. The world of Chikara is unparalleled in pro wrestling today and completely dismisses any argument that PG wrestling is not entertaining.
In addition to analysis of the Matches of the Week, I will now be including links to other matches in the week that came close to making the list.
Finn Balor/Samoa Joe vs Lucha Dragons (NXT 09/09)
Ciampa/Gargano vs Breeze/Dempsey (NXT 09/09)
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