You can read my full write-up of the match here! open.substack.com/pub/mithgifs...

Retreating but unrepentant, Kevin uses a nervously laughing young fan to flip off Adam, Eddie, and an apoplectic Jim Cornette by proxy. He’s on a roll, starting his vicious scrabbling crawl to the top.

Unfortunately for Adam Cole, Kevin’s next match in his rampage is also with him.

Once he’s pinned Adam, though, he decides to add injury to insult, so he goes for the banned package piledriver. This forces Davey’s friend and former tag partner Eddie Edwards to come out and save the defenseless Adam, and Kevin absolutely *consumes* a kick from Eddie.

But Adam’s time is limited, and ten minutes after the bell rings, it runs out. Kevin is banned from using the package piledriver at this point, so he falls back on his F-Cinq to put Adam down. Which he does while hollering the name of his real goal, Davey Richards, the current ROH champion.

Oh, and here’s an example of Adam getting in some good offense in the middle of all the abuse: a really great backstabber that Kevin sells like crazy–look at the way his feet fly up in the air.

Someone in the audience apparently requests that Kevin have pity on Adam’s hair (not Adam, it seems. Just his hair). This of course leads to some impromptu hair-based offense on Kevin’s part, after noting “Oh, you like his long, flowy hair?”

But a lot of Kevin’s energy is saved for trolling the audience. Here we see him pulling out one of his favorite bits: threatening to do something cool and violent, only to end in comedic anticlimax.

Mind you, it’s not a squash at all. Adam gets a fair amount of offense in. But he does spend a lot of time getting thrown like a sack of potatoes, including against the ringpost.

That “sarcastic” blown kiss is a salute to a friend who’s here to make Kevin look unstoppable. A friend who’s here, maybe, to help Kevin find a little comfort in the midst of grieving a loss. And what brings wrestlers comfort? Why, clobbering the living hell out of each other.

There will be a steady flow of abuse between Kevin and the audience all through the match. On the other hand, his reaction to Adam, when he comes to the ring, is incongruously chivalrous. He holds the ring ropes open for him and even blows him a fond kiss.

This has understandably put him in a particularly black mood, and as a result he and the booing audience have a symbiotic relationship tonight. A few sarcastic streamers and a lobbed roll of toilet paper give him something to vent his fury at even before his opponent appears.

Kevin comes to the ring with his maternal grandfather’s initials on his wrist tape, the ones he will later have tattooed on his knuckles so he’ll carry them to the ring with him always. He’s either grieving or facing looming grief head-on, here in Norfolk, so far from Montreal.

Kevin is on his rampage to the top of the ROH ladder. Adam Cole is currently a good-hearted plucky dude, and about to become roadkill to Kevin’s juggernaut storyline, here in Norfolk.

I love how that’s still quietly hanging over everything. I hope they can keep it suspended for a while and build it slowly! (Watch her turn on Iyo immediately after WarGames, lol).

I’m hoping that’s how they do it! They’re both good themes but I don’t think they’d mesh well (and I can’t even IMAGINE Iyo would want a different one, it’s one of the best there is!)

I will add it to my Comixology!