RoH Death Before Dishonor 2024 Review
Ring Of Honor has been in the news recently thanks to comments from the company’s former owner, Cary Silkin, about the way Tony Khan has (and hasn’t) treated the brand since TK purchased it in early-2022.
Whether you agree with Silkin or not, the RoH roster continues to work hard in whatever opportunities they have, and I can appreciate that.
Their latest opportunity is Death Before Dishonor, one of RoH’s oldest events, with this being the 21st edition. We have a packed card tonight. Nine total matches, with six of those matches having titles on the line. Of the three that aren’t for titles, one of them is for a title shot at tomorrow night’s AEW Battle Of The Belts show, and another is a Texas Deathmatch.
Lots going on. Let’s get to the action.
Komander vs The Beast Mortos
Going back to what I mentioned in the intro, Mortos is someone who hasn’t been given a ton of true opportunities by Tony Khan, but when he does get something, he makes the most of it.
The opening moments of the match show the clear difference between the two wrestlers. Mortos gains the advantage right away with a flurry of power moves, but Komander takes the momentum back temporarily by using his speed and athleticism advantage.
I don’t mean this as a “LOLZ empty building” shot at RoH, but I really hate the way wrestling shows look on television when the crowd is darkened and only a small portion of the venue can be shown. It makes any company that does it look like the minor leagues. The shows of the crowd here look like there are four or five rows of people and nothing more. As of an hour before the show, only 70 of the 1,227 tickets for the arena setup were available, but it doesn’t look like there are that many people in the building right now.
That was a fun opener. As I said, it was a clash of styles, with both men allowed to look great at what they do. Mortos picks up the well-deserved victory, but Komander got his highlight reel offense in and looked solid. 3.5 Stars
Matt Taven & Mike Bennett vs Kyle O’Reilly & Tomohiro Ishii – RoH Tag Team Title Match
Fun fact… did you know that Kyle O’Reilly has either been teaming or feuding with Roderick Strong or Adam Cole, and the branches on their wrestling family tree, since 1986?
Ishii’s chest is bleeding after some stiff chops, and we’re probably two minutes deep into the match. I don’t even think the guy feels pain, so it’s all good.
Props to Taven and Bennett for not being chickenshit heels here. They’re taking it to Ishii. Yes, he’s eating a ton of their offense and spitting it back out at them, but they’re taking it to him regardless.
Taven and Bennett say that Ishii can’t be NECK STRONG because he doesn’t have a neck. Then, they decide to try a spike piledriver on Ishii, who… gets up immediately because he has no neck. The champions need to be smarter than that.
We had ourselves a really fun match until Don Callis and Kyle Fletcher made their way to the ring to distract KOR, causing him to take the pin. The champions retain their titles. Back-to-back matches that get 3.5 Stars from me.
Will O’Reilly continue the sport’s longest feud? Probably. He’ll be working with Roddy’s son at some point in the future, I bet.
Diamante vs Leyla Hirsch – Texas Deathmatch
In what I hope isn’t a sign of things to come, both women start the match by swinging a steel chair at each other that looks like it’s happening in slow motion.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t a sign. In the early minutes, Hirsch is tied up in the Tree Of Woe, with three steel chairs placed in front of her face, and Diamante dropkicks the chairs. That leads to Hirsch bleeding from the forehead. Then, not even a minute later, Diamane’s forehead is busted open, and now, Hirsch has dumped a bag of thumbtacks in the ring.
Do you want to see a German suplex onto thumbtacks? We got one here.
Do you want to see someone miss a top rope moonsault and land on thumbtacks? We got that here.
Do you want to see a chancla with thumbtacks stuck in the bottom of it? Would you then like to see that chancla slammed into someone’s forehead? We got that here, on both counts.
Do you want to see a Samoan drop from the ring apron onto a barbed wire board set atop four chairs at ringside? Would it matter if the person delivering the move had zero room to perform the move, and therefore, landed directly on the barbed wire board herself? Hey, we got that here on both counts, too.
Hirsch wins the match by performing a moonsault onto Diamante, who was duct taped to a table. She won, but her arm is hanging at her side. The replay shows that she got no distance on the moonsault, and that she smacked her arm HARD on the ladder as she was coming down. Ouch.
That match was ugly. Sometimes it was a good ugly, and sometimes it was a bad ugly. As I’ve said in the past, it seems we get a Tony Khan-led event every few months that features a match that leaves two women battered, bloodied, and bruised. See you all again in October!
3 Stars. Too much of that bad ugly for me to go any higher.
Wheeler Yuta vs Lee Moriarty – RoH Pure Wrestling Title Match
Christopher Daniels, Jerry Lynn, and Paul Wight are the judges for the match in the event that this goes to the 60-minute time limit. I like both Wheeler and Taigastyle, but I cannot tell you how much it would absolutely, positively stun me to no end if this match goes 60 fucking minutes with no winner.
The crowd reacts negatively to Wheeler’s antics, and on commentary, Caprice Coleman says that the crowd doesn’t understand the rules of the Pure division yet, but that they will eventually. You know, I’m pretty sure “this is too complicated for our fans to follow” isn’t the best strategy to go with. If you feel that things are too complicated, maybe they… I don’t know… shouldn’t be so complicated.
Lee Moriarty is so, so good in the ring. He’s easily in the running for being one of the most underrated and underutilized wrestlers in the business today. That’s not saying Wheeler sucks. As I said, I’m a fan of his, and he is the only person in Ring Of Honor history to win the Pure Title more than once (and he’s won it three times), to go with all of his screen time as a member of the Blackpool Combat Club. Not sure you can call him “underrated” or “underutilized” right now.
At the 17:36 mark of the match, both men have used all of their rope breaks, and they have both received warnings for strikes with a closed fist. Things are getting dicey now.
With no rope breaks available anymore, Moriarty was able to use the ropes to his advantage, gaining leverage on his pin, and we have a brand new champion. It’s about time Moriarty gets pushed, even if it’s on RoH, so it may not matter in the grand scheme of things.
This was a lot of fun. A lot. If you like the Pure style of wrestling, you’ll enjoy this. 4 Stars. Moriarty really shined, and I agree with the crowd in Arlington, Texas… he does, in fact, deserve this.
Billie Starkz vs Red Velvet – RoH Women’s Television Title Match
Starkz isn’t even 20 years old yet, and it feels like I’ve been following her career for a decade. That’s still crazy to me.
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but this crowd hasn’t been very impressive tonight. They’re not awful, but they’re not exactly good, either. It can’t just be chalked up to the small size, either. I’ve mentioned this a million times in the past, but you can watch any random episode of AEW television where there are only 2,000-3,000 people in the building, but it sounds like triple that watching from home. This has about 1,200 people in the building, and it has sounded like half of that for most of the show.
Hey, remember when Billie faked a serious neck injury at Supercard Of Honor and took advantage of a distracted Queen Aminata to become the inaugural RoH Women’s Television Champion? She faked another one here. That shit has to stop. It completely kills all momentum of a match, and what makes it worse is that we already can’t get through a Bryan Danielson match without it being stopped halfway through so that he can be checked out by Doc Sampson.
Red Velvet shows that she wasn’t falling for the bullshit, though, and she picks up the win. We have a brand new champion here. 3.25 Stars. Nothing offensive at all, but yeah, the momentum was killed by the fake injury spot.
Dustin Rhodes, Marshall Von Erich & Ross Von Erich vs Evil Uno, John Silver & Alex Reynolds – Winners to compete against The Undisputed Kingdom tomorrow night for the vacant RoH Six Man Tag Team Titles
Wrestling indeed does have more than one royal family, and the state of Texas features two of the greatest. It’s still super cool to see the Rhodes family and the Von Erich family coming together in 2024. Even cooler that it’s happening with multiple generations of wrestlers.
Smart strategy from The Dark Order, making sure that the Von Erich brothers are the ones in the match in the early stages. Keeping the dangerous veteran Dustin Rhodes out of the mix has been working for the relatively new heel Dark Order squad.
Dustin finally tags in, and the crowd is as loud as they’ve been all night. They liked the Von Erich boys, but they love Dustin.
While the match wasn’t a classic or anything, it was fun, and the crowd was appreciative of it. The match was an ode to the history of pro wrestling in Texas. Both families were represented well, and we even saw a cowboy hat and a bullrope come into play. Things definitely picked up when Dustin Rhodes was in the match. The Von Erichs aren’t bad, but I’m not 100% sure they’re “ready” for this type of spotlight just yet. I think they will be one day sooner than later, though. 2.75 Stars
Atlantis Jr. vs Lio Rush vs Johnny TV vs Brian Cage vs Shane Taylor vs Lee Johnson – “Survival Of The Fittest” Six-Way Elimination Match for the RoH Television Title
I don’t need to do play-by-play for this match, and I’m very thankful for that. I fully expect a shit ton of action here.
I was kind of right. Sort of. We’ll have a bunch of shit happening between two guys in the ring, while the other four are nowhere to be seen at ringside. Then, one guy will inevitably get thrown out of the ring and will be replaced by one of the guys at ringside, giving us a bunch of shit happening between two guys in the ring again.
Shane Taylor, the biggest man in the match, is the first to be eliminated, sent packing by Lio Rush. A lot of people had Taylor winning this, so that’s a bit of a surprise.
Damn, soon thereafter, Rush is eliminated by Lee Johnson. Another surprise, as Lio seemed to have a bunch of people picking him to win, too.
Outside of a spot where everyone was performing dives over the top rope and to the outside, the crowd is back to being pretty quiet for this match. As I type that sentence, Lee Johnson is eliminated by Brian Cage. We’re down to three.
The short-lived working relationship between Cage and Johnny Insert-Show-Name-Here comes undone, and Cage eliminates Mr. Insert-Show-Name-Here. Then, almost immediately, Cage himself is eliminated. Atlantis Jr. retains the title.
The match was fine. I’m just not a fan of matches like this where eliminations come fast and furious. I’m not saying I wanted this to be a 50-minute marathon or anything, but elimination-style or battle royals where people are taken out of the match one after another just aren’t for me. 2.75 Stars
Athena vs Queen Aminata – RoH Women’s Title Match
On December 10th, 2022, Athena defeated Mercedes Martinez to win the RoH Women’s World Title. Now, 594 days later, she is still the champion. It is the second-longest title reign in RoH history, behind only Samoa Joe’s 645-day reign as the World Champion from March 22nd, 2003 to December 26th, 2004.
It’s a damn shame that seemingly 99% of Athena’s title reign has been behind the Honor Club paywall, where most wrestling fans aren’t getting to see it.
I’m happy to see Queen Aminata in this spot. As soon as she made her AEW debut, you could see that she had the potential to be something special. Even if she doesn’t win the title here, just being involved in Athena’s world in RoH is a big step for her.
We had a phase of the match where it was nothing but stiff, physical strikes. Now, we’ve reached the phase where both women are taking turns locking in painful looking submission holds. I dig it. Good stuff so far.
After a distraction by Billie Starkz and Red Velvet, Athena is handed a microphone by Lexy Nair. As the referee tends to Starkz and Red Velvet, Athena hits Aminata with the microphone, then hits an O-Face for the win. Her record-breaking title reign continues on.
The challenger clearly proved that she belongs, and that she has a bright future, but this was not her night. Best match of the night so far. 4.25 Stars. Kudos to both women for busting their asses.
Mark Briscoe vs Roderick Strong – RoH World Title Match
I still miss Jay Briscoe. Just saying.
For some reason, Roddy’s RoH World Title reign in 2010 completely slipped my mind earlier today. I was thinking about this match, and was thinking that Roddy was competing for his first World Title reign. Whoops. Luckily, it came back to me an hour or so later.
Based on the time this match is starting, we’re looking at a show that will last about four hours. There is ZERO reason for an RoH pay-per-view in 2024 to be four hours long. Zero. Whatsoever.
Mark is sent face first into the ring post on the outside, and he comes up a bloody mess. The blood is just pouring out of his face, dripping down like a faucet. Goodness.
Roddy hits a Jay Driller on Briscoe for… a one count, and a full Crimson Masked Mark Briscoe has the crowd amped up. They’re giving Roddy “you fucked up” chants.
I love the physicality here. Roddy is a cruiserweight that hits like a heavyweight, and Chicken is always one of the most consistently hard-hitting wrestlers in the business. These guys are dropping some real bombs on each other.
Matt Taven and Mike Bennett come out to interfere, but they’re chased off by Kyle O’Reilly and Tomohiro Ishii. This allows Briscoe to regain the momentum, and after a Froggy Bow, he gets the pin and the win. The RoH World Champion continues his reign.
4 Stars
Not a classic show, but pretty much nothing but good stuff from start to finish. I can’t ask for much more than that.
