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Well... that's one way to kill a surprise.
Veda Scott comes out during the match, ranting about how R.D. Evans should be in this tournament, and just shouts "That's Rhett Titus in a mask!" The announcers accuse her of making wild accusations, and Corino insists that Rhett is working for a different company (he actually called it a "territory"- welcome to 2014, Steve). Everett gets the win. He looked pretty good.
VIDEO PACKAGE OF THE FORMATION OF THE DECADE- good.
DOES ADAM COLE ANSWER JAY BRISCOE'S CHALLENGE- kind of. He trolls Jay by building him up, then says he will give his answer next week. He did name-drop Matt Hardy in this segment, at which Steve Corino gave a long Tigger-esque hoot of delight.
ROH TOP PROSPECT TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Hanson vs. Cheeseburger- good squash
Cheeseburger is over with the crowd, has good facials and body language, and can sell pretty well. The problem is that he weighs about seventy pounds. He probably has a bright future as a babyface comedy jobber if he wants it.
ADAM PAGE vs. MARK BRISCOE- As the match was about to start, Decade came out and said that they haven't been appreciated by the office or the fans... but Mark Briscoe, who has been here since day one, will appreciate them. They try to recruit Mark Briscoe and jump Adam Page, but Mark fights them off. When we come back after the break, things seem to have devolved into a tag team match...
ADAM PAGE & MARK BRISCOE vs. JIMMY JACOBS & BJ WHITMER (w/Roderick Strong)- 4.75/10
VEDA SCOTT PROMO- she claims R.D. Evan is 14-0 right now, and he will be back in ROH next week. Veda is making an open challenge on his behalf.
KEVIN STEEN PROMO- hype for a match with Cliff Compton.
ROH TV TITLE MATCH: Tommaso Ciampa(c) vs. Silas Young- 5.75/10
Matt Taven came out before the match and wanted to shake Ciampa's hand, but before CIampa could accept the offer, Silas attacked Taven. That was kind of weird. I was certain he was going to attack Ciampa in order to both jump the monster babyface champion and to keep Taven's motive's ambiguous.
This did a great job of getting Ciampa's newfound(?) aggressiveness over to the TV audience, but let Silas get in some offense in a way that didn't hurt Ciampa's momentum. Jay Lethal, who has an upcoming TV Title match, was on commentary for this match, and he and Ciampa had a staredwon at the end of the show. Unfortunately, Lethal being on commentary meant that Corino decided to be extremely annoying.
This was a very busy episode of ROH, and while it wasn't particularly good in the ring, it did establish a lot of stuff for the new year.
