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.

Despite being accidentally kicked in the head Drew Galloway at the end of the previous evening’s show Heather Lynn was in the ring when the EVOLVE 37 stream started up. She introduced the show before coming over all woozy and in need of a sit down. Joanna Rose replaced her to handle the intros of the first match. If she wasn’t able to speak why did Lynn bother to turn up? I mean, yes, obviously it was to get over the kick she’d taken from Galloway, which in turn reminded everyone that Roderick Strong is a bit of a cad, but in real life terms why did she attend the show?  

EVOLVE kicked off the year with what has become an annual visit to Florida. The first of the weekend’s two shows kicked off with Joanna Rose welcoming us to the Orpheum (WWN’s preferred Florida location) and introducing “new” Open the Freedom Gate champion, Johnny Gargano. She said new even though Gargano had had the title for around a month and a half at this point. Once Gargano arrived she simply handed the microphone over and left the ring. She didn’t even bother interviewing him. I found myself wondering, not for the first time, what she’s paid for.