Image provided courtesy of Ring Of Honor.

By Nicholas Jason Lopez

“Notes In Observance” features random thoughts and analysis on recent television shows. Quick results can be found at the bottom of the post.

(Aired 1//27/16)

Menage A Trois

– With an eye to the future, we always applaud ROH for spotlighting new talent with the Top Prospect Tournament, since it gives them an early chance to impress fans and officials alike for the ultimate prize of an early career accolade. Even better, some tourney matches would play out on TV, like the one that opened up the show between Brian Fury (17-year veteran who trained Sasha Banks and Donovan Dijak) and Shaheem Ali. Fury had a look about him that looked like a blend of Damien Sandow and The Ascension while Ali reminded us of Shelton Benjamin in his early days. The two did some flashy suplexes, but the big story of the fight was Fury using his “veteran heel status” to use the Referee’s leg to block Ali from hitting a top-rope maneuver, turning the distraction into a moment where he could pull out his Pop-Up Sit-Down Powerbomb finisher to advance.

– A good portion of the show was dedicated to getting the dastardly Cedric Alexander/Veda Scott duo over, as Scott downplayed the good hometown reaction for Alexander by bringing up that their recent settlement cash could allow them to buy and sell anyone in attendance and in the back as they pleased. She also put Alexander in the same level as ROH World Champion Jay Lethal, Jay Briscoe, Moose and “Unbreakable” Michael Elgin, challenging ROH to throw “their best” at him. Smart time to bring out Cheeseburger, who everybody loves, to be Alexander’s opponent. In essence, it was a squash victory for Alexander, despite a few convincing attempts for Cheeseburger to get the upset win. Alexander heeled it up after defeating Cheeseburger with a downright vicious Lumbar Jack by beating him down, which drew out Jonathan Gresham, who had an upset win over Alexander a few weeks back. The second match didn’t last long, since Scott attacked Gresham before he could make Alexander tap and they double-teamed him and he was Lumbar Jacked too. We wonder just how far Alexander will go in this new role.

– We saw heavy hype for the 14th Anniversary Show when we got the main event announced with the logical in-ring segment between Matchmaker Nigel McGuinness, Lethal, Truth Martini, Taeler Hendrix, Adam Cole and Kyle O’Reilly. This was basically a smart way to keep the Cole-O’Reilly feud going while also giving them both a chance at Lethal’s Title. Cole had a viable argument since he recently beat O’Reilly and hadn’t been on Lethal’s long list of victims, though McGuinness only fed O’Reilly’s case by continuously referring to him as a “credible contender.” Besides for that, this was all well and good and we even got a great main event for next week set up when O’Reilly claimed he couldn’t wait until the big show to get his hands on Lethal or Cole, making McGuinness book a tag between Cole/Lethal and reDRagon. We’re all in.

– We again saw Silas Young threaten The Boys to come back to him and learn how to be men or else suffer the consequences. More of a reiteration of his last promo, but we didn’t mind. We love anything related to Dalton Castle.

– The three-way main event between Elgin, Jay Briscoe and Moose was pretty good in retrospect. Moose was tacked on to the match thanks to Stokely Hathaway approaching McGuinness “in the spirit of making three-way matches,” while Mark Briscoe sat in on commentary, giving us different viewpoints and Elgin gave a memorable performance here, showcasing his strength at various points of the match. The elements came together for some good results and high power moves told the story throughout. Briscoe getting the pinfall over Elgin was something different and actually spawned the ending promo where Elgin used the argument that Briscoe had his brother out there and needed Moose to also take him down, pitching a huge tag match where it’d be himself against the Briscoes and his partner was Hiroshi Tanahashi. Well, hot damn.

Quick Results

• ROH Top Prospect Tournament – Round 1 – Brian Fury def. Shaheem Ali via pinfall to advance 
• Cedric Alexander (w/Veda Scott) def. Cheeseburger via pinfall
• Jonathan Gresham def. Cedric Alexander (w/Veda Scott) via DQ
• Three-Way – Jay Briscoe def. Moose (w/Stokely Hathaway) and “Unbreakable” Michael Elgin via pinfall