Observer reviews Lethal vs. O'Reilly from Charlotte

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supersonic
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Observer reviews Lethal vs. O'Reilly from Charlotte

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Observer:
The TV show that aired last week was the one with the Jay Lethal vs. Kyle O’Reilly title match. From a storytelling standpoint, it was the best U.S. television show I’ve seen in a long time. It was pretty basic stuff, just the work of Lethal and O’Reilly put it way over the top. O’Reilly was getting a title match and they started the show with it with the idea they wanted to give them the full hour for them match. Before the match, Adam Cole & The Young Bucks destroyed his shoulder. The storyline was that Cole was mad that O’Reilly was getting the title shot ahead of him. Cole vowed that O’Reilly would never get a shot at the title. They had two matches to bide time until he was ready and they showed them telling O’Reilly backstage not to wrestle and him being adamant he was going to do the match. There were two matches to stall things out and then they came out for the main event. Everyone pushed O’Reilly not too take the match. Nigel McGuinness, who is the figurehead authority person, said that he’d get the title shot as soon as he was healthy. Lethal, who was a complete babyface here, said he’d promise him a shot as soon as he was healthy. O’Reilly said a man’s got to go what a man’s got to do and insisted on taking the match. O’Reilly’s shoulder was all taped up and the two told a tremendous story of O’Reilly trying but selling the shoulder big and having to totally adjust everything he did, while Lethal was pained in trying to win the match quickly but didn’t want to be in the match under those circumstances and wanted O’Reilly to not wrestle or the referee to stop it. It was nothing like a match you’d normally see them in. O’Reilly was doing limited offense based on how important the shoulder is to so many of his moves. Todd Sinclair as referee wanted to stop the match but O’Reilly would beg him not to. McGuinness and announcer Kevin Kelly wanted the match stopped but they pushed that once it was in the ring McGuinness couldn’t stop it even though he wanted it stopped. They’d yell at Sinclair to stop it and O’Reilly would beg for him not to. Once Lethal called for Lethal injection but O’Reilly collapsed. Lethal at the end was wanted it stopped as well. They pushed that the Young Bucks & Cole had been kicked out of the building and banned from returning throughout the match. The match was ****1/4, perhaps better given the execution of the storytelling. Lethal did win and then the Bucks & Cole came back and destroyed Lethal again with a spike piledriver on a chair. This led to McGuinness announcing that Cole would never get a title shot because of what happened. The negative is that it was the same as the Lesnar thing last week on Smackdown where they say security is everywhere to keep them out and the guys just walk in the ring to interfere. If security is keeping them out, there should at least be a situation done that distracted security or a storyline reason they were able to sneak back in and get in the ring. With ROH it probably isn’t as bad in the sense you know they don’t have the kind of security and arena checkpoints as WWE, but it’s still a hole that could be addressed. The only negative to me about the angle was the setting. When you have a big arena with a small crowd and do wide shots and can see it, it diminishes the impact and doesn’t feel as big. You could say the same about PWG but when you see people jammed into a small place and standing everywhere it’s not the same as a 3,000 seat place with a few hundred people for a supposed world title match. The next week opened with Lethal, still disturbed, as a total babyface, saying it wasn’t right what the Bucks & Cole did in hurting O’Reilly and said that the main event was the Briscoes vs. Young Bucks, and everyone knows Cole will interfere, so he asked McGuinness to just make it a six-man and he’d team with the Briscoes. The crowd popped really big when McGuinness okayed it and they had a great match, particularly pushing that Jay Briscoe and Jay Lethal, who had been rivals, were teaming up. The Briscoes & Lethal won the match, but after, the heels laid out the Briscoes & Lethal and Cole shaved Lethal’s head. So that would lead to Lethal demanding a match with Cole and it being used as leverage to set up the title match which headlines the 8/19 PPV show
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