ROH: A Beginner’s Guide Before Final Battle 2018
Stables, Tag Teams, and Divisions, Oh My!
Various groups can be seen battling for the top stop in Ring of Honor, and it can get a little bit confusing, especially as some of the groups cross over with New Japan Pro Wrestling. This will hopefully help in clarifying just who is who, and how they all relate to each other.
Bullet Club Elite/The Elite:
Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes, Brandi Rhodes, The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson), Marty Scurll, Hangman Page, Yujiro Takahashi, Chase Owens, & Kota Ibushi (sort of, as he’s just friends with them, while not being an official member)
Until recently, this group that spanned both Ring of Honor and NJPW was known as The Bullet Club Elite (who split off from the Bullet Club Firing Squad in a Bullet Club Civil War storyline), but it was announced recently that they will simply be known as The Elite now. In Ring of Honor, the primary people we see in the group are Cody Rhodes, Brandi Rhodes, The Young Bucks, Marty Scurll, and Hangman Page. Kenny Omega makes occasional appearances in ROH but is seen mostly in the YouTube series Being the Elite and NJPW. However, it’s nearly impossible to separate Omega from them, as what he is doing plays a major role with the rest of the group.
After Omega and Cody feuded for the better part of a year over leadership of the Bullet Club, Omega finally defeated Cody at the G1 Special in San Francisco, ending the feud. The two finally reconciled when they united to fight against Tama Tonga and his Bullet Club Firing Squad. Since then, the biggest storyline for them is that Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks are heading towards free agency at the end of the year. It has been heavily teased that Cody and the Bucks were going to go to WWE once their contracts up, but this does seem to be entirely a storyline.
Cody is promising to win the Ring of Honor World Championship from Jay Lethal at Final Battle and bring the title with him into free agency. The significance of this, especially if Cody wins, will be a very big story to follow. Given ROH’s willingness to work with other promotions, I would not be shocked to see Cody travel to several independent companies defending the title, should he win it. The stakes are high for the Elite – if Cody wins the title, their bargaining power goes up significantly. The world is at their finger tips, and you can bet that that Cody wants to be the ROH World Champion again.