The 2023 ROH Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view will air live on Friday night from the CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton, New Jersey, and will be the fifth Ring of Honor pay-per-view held under ROH Chairman Tony Khan.
Khan was forced to make several creative changes to get to the final card for Friday night. A new report from Fightful Select confirms that original Death Before Dishonor plans called for rematches from the Supercard of Honor event held back in late May – ROH World Television Champion Samoa Joe defending against ROH Hall of Famer Mark Briscoe, and ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli defending against Eddie Kingston, who is now the NJPW Strong Openweight Champion. Joe and Castagnoli both retained their titles at Supercard of Honor.
Joe ended up needing to take quite a bit of time away from AEW and ROH, and was scheduled to do so as he was booked for media appearances for his role in Peacock’s new Twisted Metal series, including a stop at the San Diego Comic Con. However, those appearances were nixed due to the ongoing strike in Hollywood, and AEW got word that Joe would be available for the pay-per-view after all, and the immediate future.
Officials were planning to move on without Joe, but now that he was available plans were changed last week to include him on the show. Moving on without Joe would have saw Dalton Castle vs. Shane Taylor take place at Death Before Dishonor as the finals of the ROH World Television Title Eliminator Tournament. With Joe no longer booked for SDCC this weekend, they pushed the tournament finals up to tonight’s go-home TV episode, with the winner challenging Joe on Friday night, which is Castle.
Khan gave Kingston permission to work NJPW’s G1 Climax Tournament, and has said he initially hoped Kingston could fly in from Japan to work Death Before Dishonor, and then back to Japan, but it wasn’t possible. Khan had something totally different planned for Briscoe, but Khan said that wasn’t possible due to un-named reasons. They ended up filming a few weeks of promos for Briscoe vs. Castagnoli before Briscoe told them how bad his injuries were. Plans for PAC to challenge Castagnoli were put in place a couple of weeks ago when the company got word of the injury, but PAC’s title shot could not be finalized until the angle at Blood & Guts had completed.
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