ROH Honorable Mention: Is The Bullet Club Cracking Up?
At Ring of Honor’s Manhattan Mayhem event, the curvilinear topsy-turvy hostilities between the familial duos of the Young Bucks and the Hardys came to a rather surprising new chapter.
Matt and Jeff Hardy have been on a quest to prove that the are the best tag team in all of time and space, embarking on a championship expedition around the world, smatching up tag team titles everywhere. The teams both took to social media, setting the stage for what seemed to be an unlikely contest between two teams that wrestle for different companies.
Despite being under TNA contract at the time, Matt and Jeff appeared on the jumbotron after the Young Bucks’ match at Final Battle and laid down the gauntlet for a match between the two teams at Supercard of Honor. In the weeks that followed, the Young Bucks used the Twist of Fate and Swanton bombs, signature moves belong to Matt and Jeff respectively, as a way to play some mind games. Even Vanguard 1 got in on the action, to disastrous, if not comedic results.
However, the Hardys’ departure from TNA/Impact Wrestling changed the way the two teams could interact and it did not take long at all for Broken Matt and Brother Nero to make a statement of their own.
After weeks of rising action between the two teams, the Hardys surprised the Young Bucks and the fans in New York that night, coming out at the conclusion of the Bucks’ successful ROH World tag team title defense against Lio Rush and Jay White. Despite being presumably exhausted from their match, the Young Bucks accepted the Hardys challenge and out the titles on the line right then and there. After a wild match between the two teams, the Hardys walked away from the ring as the new ROH World tag team champions.
As it is the champions wont to do, the Young Bucks rematch clause was invoked in a Vegas Street Fight that also featured Roppongi Vice, Trent Beretta and Rocky Romero, vying for the titles. In a wild match that featured a bevy of weapons, such as a tack sleeve and eventually a superkick to a mouthful of tacks, the Hardys snuck away with the titles without pinning the former champions, leaving room for the two teams to continue their issues. Furthermore, rubbing salt in the Bucks’ wounds, the Hardys absconded with the Bucks’ Superkick Party titles, much to Matt and Nick’s dismay.
— ROH – Ring of Honor Wrestling (@ringofhonor) March 11, 2017
Also at the 15th Anniversary show, the Bullet Club’s de facto American-branch leader Adam Cole suffered his own humiliation at the hands of Christopher Daniels. The only three time ROH world champion had the deck stacked in his favor heading into his title defense against the Almighty. Not only had Cole picked up pinfall victories in the lead up to the event, but he managed to tear The Addiction asunder when he recruited Frankie Kazarian to join the Bullet Club.
But as Robert Burns said, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry and so did Cole’s plans. During the culminating moments of the contest, Kazarian made his presence known, but not in the manner which Cole had expected. While referee Todd Sinclair lay unconscious, Kazarian implored Cole to hold Daniels in place so that Kazarian could deliver the emphatic nail in the coffin courtesy of shot from the one thing that had eluded him his whole career, the ROH World title. It was all a ruse and Cole’s machinations served to cost him the title as he was ultimately outsmarted.
With both Cole and The Young Bucks walking out of the show with bruised egos and sans their championship tchotchkes, unpleasantries between the normally friendly faction came to a head at the television tapings the next night. The entire incident was the focal point of the Young Bucks “Being the Elite” YouTube series, highlighting how the rift changed the dynamic between the three.
Despite the apparent issues amongst the three, all seemed well at a WCPW event, possibly even better than before. After Drew Galloway‘s successful defense of the WCPW Championship against Joe Coffey, Adam Cole, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson came into the ring and offered Galloway a Too Sweet, which he returned, apparently joining the group.
https://twitter.com/thesquaredcirc1/status/843977971618758657
With Adam Cole’s contract running out soon and Drew Galloway working as free agent right now, it bears watching how this plays out. The Bullet Club has seen a change in personnel before-especially after the departures of Finn Balor, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson and A.J. Styles, but this dissension in the ranks is a first for the group and could indicate a ripple effect that will affect the normally globally gregarious group.
