A few weeks ago I watched SummerSlam 2004 and tweeted about it. The only thing I initally remembered about the show was the main event in which Randy Orton won his first World Heavyweight championship. The rest of the card turned out to be a mostly pleasant experience. Booker T v John Cena, Triple H v Eugene and JBL v The Undertaker were all a bit of fun if you could look past their shortcomings (Cena's ropey wrestling, the offensiveness of the Eugene character, and JBL being in a WWE title match respectively) and the Intercontinental title three-way was good fun. Plus there was fun nonsense on offer from the Diva Dodgeball showdown (featuring a bunch of women you almost certainly don't remember or have never even heard of) and Matt Hardy v Kane for the right to marry Lita. Here's what I thought in tweet form...

Finn Bálor versus Rhyno with Kevin Owens on commentary? That's how you main event a wrestling show! And as far as undercards go? The debut of the Hype Bros is bad, but in a good way.


Hideo Itami promo, featuring Kevin Owens,  Finn Bálor and Rhyno

Tweet 1: Right then, you mugs. Let's watch NXT.
Tweet 2: Oh look, it's Hideo Itami and his broken arm.
Tweet 3: Disappointed he's not wearing one of those light-selling-duty casts Triple H wore that time Lesnar broke his arm.
Tweet 4: This Greg Hamilton lad is such a black hole of meaning.
Tweet 5: "NXT is very popular in Japan" - Hideo Itami, doing his duty
Tweet 6: Owens walks out. People cheer. His music cuts. Some lads boo. Great stuff.
Tweet 7: Enjoying Itami trying not to laugh at Owens' promo.
Tweet 8: It will eventually be revealed that Itami was taken out by Rikishi, who (obviously) did it for The Rock.
They fought.
Best in the World 2015 saw Jay Lethal defeat Jay Briscoe to become the new Ring of Honor world champion. He's the twentieth man to hold the title and the first ever to hold it in conjunction with another active championship. Yeah, Bryan Danielson won the pure championship from Nigel McGuinness during his world title reign but he retired it immediately. He didn't hold belts simultaneously and work as a double champion. 

Apparently Lethal will. Reports from ROH's latest TV tapings indicate that Lethal opted not to vacate the TV championship as he'd put too much effort into building it up. Matchmaker McGuinness then made the ruling that if Jay wants to stay a double champion he will have to defend the TV and world titles as separate entities. All of which makes sense from the point of view of Lethal's character and creates the chance to produce some fresh scenarios for championship defences and show-long stories at future events.
The double champ is here.
I'll be surprised if Lethal doesn't hold onto both belts for a while. It would be fairly pointless to go to the trouble of giving him a lengthy reign as TV champion (the longest ever, in fact) and not have him vacate the title only to lose it in a random title match after a few weeks. It would also be pointless to put the world title on him just to take it away quickly. That's not how things work in ROH. Wrestlers work hard to win titles and get to enjoy substantial reigns with them. It makes the titles and wrestlers, and by extension the matches involving them, mean more.
But at some point Lethal will lose the world championship, just as has happened twenty-two times before. Which is the point of this article: discussing the possible successors (as I perceive them) to Jay Lethal as the ROH world champion. As far as the TV championship goes I think he'll hold it for a few more months before losing it to guy who'd benefit from a surprise upset win, such as ACH, or being stripped of it after some form of shenanigans during a title defence.

With several years of action-packed shows to follow the sixth annual Money in the Bank show faced a tough job this year. It had a good frame of matches to work with in Cena v Owens II, the latest Ambrose v Rollins match and, of course, the Money in the Bank match itself, but it also had Ryback v Big Show and a pre-show which saw R-Truth defeat King Wade Bad News Barrett I. Was it any good? The answer, pleasantly, was a resounding yes.
The main card kicked off with a ten bell salute to 'The American Dream' Dusty Rhodes. His music played afterwards. The audience and some of the wrestlers clapped along. Vince was amongst those who joined in. Randy Orton was amongst those who did not.
That was followed by the typically great video package recapping the build to the highlighted matches. In this case that meant Ambrose v Rollins, Cena v Owens and the Money in the Bank match. The latter kicked off the show. Which surprised me. With there being only one Bank match, and it being guaranteed to be a highlight of the show, I would have thought it would be saved for closer to the top of the card. Then again there was also a ladder match going on last, so spacing them out did make sense.
Randy Orton and Neville both got loud cheers when they entered. Kane got half-hearted boos. Dolph Ziggler got a monster pop, which got even more monstrous when people noticed Lana was present to give him a good luck kiss. Kofi Kingston got huge boos when he skipped to the ring. Sheamus was booed too, but not as much (yeah, New Day has more heat than Shaymo). Roman Reigns, naturally out last, got a mostly positive reaction. The writing team have done a good job turning him around.
The lads.
The match started with everyone except Kofi pairing off and the New Dayer taking the chance to try and sneak up a ladder to grab the case. The rest of the field turned against him, throwing him out of the ring before slipping into a standard issue brawling segment. Sheamus came out of that on top after going wild with a ladder. He was phased out of the match a few minutes later to make way for an all too short exchange between Kofi and Neville, the highlight of which was Nev hitting a monkey flip only for Kingston to land upright and immediately start climbing a ladder.
Reigns put a stop to Neville v Kingston, power bombing Kingston onto a ladder and Neville onto Kofi. The crowd, it's worth noting, ate this up. Kane put a stop to Reigns' attempted briefcase grab with a choke slam before taking an RKO from 'The Viper'. Kofi returned to stop Orty climbing the ladder and took an RKO too. Neville then springboarded back into the ring, over Orton, and shot up the ladder. He was yanked off the ladder and took a mid-air RKO, easily the best of the three.

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