A true banger and one of the better pure no-frills fireworks shows in recent memory.
There’s a lot here that seems like it shouldn’t come together quite as well as it does. Big Bullet Club tags in ROH beyond the core Styles/Bucks trio rarely come together as more than a collection of bits, War Machine aren’t totally there yet, and it’s a match in which Doc Gallows is a participants. So a lot can go wrong.
However, nothing really does.
This isn’t to say it’s some work of genius or that everyone is on their best behavior. It’s just so relatively compact and there’s so little waste that if anything doesn’t work, the match immediately shifts to something that does. Mechanically, it’s just about perfect in all the ways that really count, thanks to effectively just being AJ/Bucks vs. Roddy/Briscoes for at least half of the match. In terms of the construction of the thing as a whole, it’s as great as it ever could be.
In fact, it’s the best assembled multi man tag in wrestling since The Shield broke up.
The thing is just air tight.
Doc Gallows is only asked to do ninety seconds worth of wrestling in total. Karl Anderson and War Machine aren’t anywhere near as useless but they’re not asked to contribute much until it becomes a fireworks show in the last third of the match. The foundational aspects are also handled perfectly, opting for a double control segment match on account of how popular the Bullet Club are at this point with the ROH audience (or at least AJ Styles and the Bucks). Those segments are left in the hands of masters on both ends, with Roderick Strong first as the man in peril with the top trio handling things and then with one of the Jacksons getting their asses whipped by Roddy and the boys. It’s tried and tested on both ends, and delivers just as well as it ever did, if not even better.
The final fireworks show is then out of this world great and the real impressive part of the whole thing.
It’s a victory in every possible sense. In terms of execution, everyone is perfect. Roderick Strong is again the best wrestler in the match, and he’s allowed to go on several classic Roddy runs of offense. In terms of construction, it’s just as perfect. There are three or four big moments outside, two with someone coming off the top onto a pile, and they’re all given just enough space from each other that each stands out and blows everyone away. Both in terms of the big floor spots and the match in general, each things gets bigger, moves faster, and feels more urgent. It all builds to one of the most satisfying possible conclusions, in which one of the world’s most annoying men, Matt Jackson, is caught alone and gets his ass turned inside out and then handed to him. He takes the End of Heartache, Jay Driller, and Mark Briscoe’s Froggy Bow all consecutively, and the dream team takes it home. It ends as any fireworks should, with all the best stuff in a row.
A road map to follow for matches like this in the future, but one sadly lost somewhere in the glove box.
One of the most purely fun matches of 2015.
HANDWERK 