My daughter’s third week of second grade has just come to an end. My wife and I decided to do online schooling for her this year, so she’s been using my office for her classroom. The transition back to my office is now complete, so it’s time to get some work done.
Ring Of Honor’s latest pay-per-view entry, Death Before Dishonor 2026, is about to begin.
2300 Arena (aka the ECW Arena) in Philadelphia is the home for tonight’s happenings. According to WrestleTix, there were three tickets available for purchase 12 hours before the start of the show, so I’m going to go ahead and venture a guess that this is going to be a fully sold out show.
There are nine matches on the main card, and if there was ever a sign that there are too many titles in the sport right now, every single one of the matches besides one features a title on the line. There isn’t a single reason anyone could ever give me that would justify Ring Of Honor in 2026 having a total of eight different championships. Tony Khan is a sick man.
Either way, let’s have some fun, shall we?
Dalton Castle & The Outrunners vs Jay Lethal, Blake Christian & Lee Johnson – Six-Man Tag Match for the RoH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles
Well, this wouldn’t be my choice to open the show, but here we are.
Eh, if I’m going to be completely fair, Castle and The Outrunners are going to have the crowd making noise, and I guess that’s what matters, even if they probably aren’t going to put on a classic match.
Turbo Floyd is wrestling with his title belt still around his waist. On commentary, Caprice Coleman mentions that Floyd has yet to take the title off since they won them three months ago. He says that the belt has fused with Floyd’s skin. That’s funny.
In the past, I’ve praised the work of Christian and Johnson. They’ve built up an impressive batch of in-ring performances together as a team. Adding Jay Lethal to their act as the battle tested veteran was a really good idea. They’re a lot of fun as a trio.
Christian finally takes the belt off of Floyd, and Caprice Coleman rants about the “putrid” smell now that it has been removed for the first time in three months.
With an assistance from Lethal behind the referee’s back, Blake Christian gets the pin for his team. We have brand new champions, and it is mentioned that Jay Lethal is the first man in Ring Of Honor history to hold all five men’s championships available in the company. That’s a pretty cool achievement, even with there being too many titles.
That was good. Not great, but good. When the challengers were on offense, it was fun, but unfortunately, that was about it. Balancing it out, and I’ll go with 3 Stars here.
Deonna Purrazzo vs Steph De Lander – Pure Rules Match for the RoH Women’s Pure Title
A lot of the Pure matches in RoH don’t feature a ton of crowd noise these days. Will this match join them?
Within three or so minutes, SDL has already used two of her three rope breaks, and two minutes later, she receives a warning for using a closed fist. As I finish typing that sentence, SDL uses her third and final rope break, and we’re only about five-and-a-half minutes in. The odds are truly stacked against her at this point.
The match didn’t even reach the nine-minute mark, and I’d say about half of that featured all the different stops for rope breaks and things of that nature. Why? What was even the point of putting this one on here? That was put together terribly. Both women did okay, but they weren’t given much of anything to work with. I’ll be nice and just say 2.5 Stars.
Red Velvet vs Zayda Steel vs Skye Blue vs Marina Shafir – Four-Way Match for the RoH Women’s Television Title
Marina Shafir is accompanied to the ring by Jon Moxley, and the crowd is appreciative for the chance to see both of them. Mox joins the commentary team, as he usually does when he appears in RoH.
Ugly start to the match. Cameras missed the first spot, and then picked up on all three women screwing up the timing of the next two or three spots. Lots of “let me stand here for three seconds while I wait for you to hit me, and then you stand there for three seconds while she’s late to hit you.”
“YOU SNEAKY BITCH!” – Mox, on commentary, to Skye Blue, who ran up behind Marina to try and roll her up for a pin.
“Hey there.” – Mox, on commentary, to Zayda, who was thrown over the announce table and fell into his lap. The man is on a roll out there.
After that not-so-great start to the match, all four women are working hard right now.
Red Velvet breaks up a submission attempt by Marina, hitting her with a Frog Splash and pins her for the win, retaining her title.
That goes back to the same complaint I’ve had about the way Marina Shafir has been presented as a member of the Death Riders. She’s a badass woman, yes, but she is presented as someone who isn’t afraid of men, constantly getting in their faces and getting physical with them. At the same time, she loses to the women far more often than not. Can you imagine if Chyna beat the hell out of men on Raw every week, only to lose to the women all the time? It’s stupid.
The match was building into something good, but probably could’ve used a few more minutes to work with. As it is, I’m going with 3.25 Stars.
Lee Moriarty vs Katsuyori Shibata – Pure Rules Match for the RoH Pure Title
Moriarty has held this title since July 26th, 2024. That makes him the longest-reigning Pure Champion in RoH history, nearly 100 days longer than the second and third-longest reigns combined.
I love the physicality in the early stages of this one. It isn’t just great technical wrestling that we’re getting. These two are beating the hell out of each other.
Less than ten minutes in, and Shibata has forced Moriarty to use all three of his rope breaks. On commentary, it is said that Moriarty has never used all of his rope breaks in a Pure Rules bout before. That’s pretty incredible. Unlike the other Pure match on this show, this match is being put together really well so far. Shibata is doing what he’s supposed to do. He’s forcing his opponent to use up his rope breaks to escape pain and punishment.
Moriarty botches a springboard move, tumbling to the mat and barely making contact with Shibata. Because this is the old ECW Arena, though, some faint “you fucked up” chants can be heard. This is the birthplace of that chant, after all.
Moriarty bridges and gets the pin to retain his title. That was really entertaining. I like that he was forced to change things up after using his rope breaks. This was another match that probably could’ve used some more time, but what we got was worth 3.75 Stars, making it the best match of the show to this point.
Mistico & Máscara Dorada vs Matthew Taven & Michael Bennett vs Sammy Guevara & The Beast Mortos vs Dante & Darius Martin – Four-Way Match for the RoH Tag Team Titles
Remember when people thought Sammy Guevara was a sure thing to be AEW World Champion? The last time he won a singles match on AEW television was over 15 months ago, and that match was 14-and-a-half months after his last singles victory on AEW television. Just an interesting stat I felt like pointing out.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but this match has been very hectic in the opening few minutes. Spot after spot after spot with a non-stop pace.
I jinxed it. As soon as I talk about the pace, the match slowed to a stop. We’re currently going back-and-forth with Guevara and Mortos. The crowd loves Mortos, but hates Sammy, so they keep tagging each other back into the match and soaking in the appropriate reactions.
At least it didn’t last too long, and we’re back to the spotfest style.
Even with all the spots, I like that it’s different types of spots. There’s a few different in-ring styles from the wrestlers in this match, and they’re using every single one of those styles.
Goodness gracious. We have a new leader for Match Of The Night. That was a wild contest that hit 100 miles per hour from the start, and almost didn’t let up at all until it was over. Mistico gets the pin to retain the titles for his team. 4 Stars, and I wouldn’t fight you much if you said that was too low.
After the match, the Don Callis Family hits the ring and attacks the champions and Top Flight. Hechicero, Brian Cage, Rocky Romero, and Trent are on the attack, but then the face tag teams in RoH hit the ring to make the save. There’s gotta be 20-something people in the ring and at ringside right now. With that many tag teams, you know what that means… it’s time to introduce a ninth championship in Ring Of Honor to give other teams to something to compete for!
Adam Priest vs Daniel Garcia – Continental Challenge Cup Play-In Match (Winner replaces Eddie Kingston in the Continental Challenge Cup)
Eddie Kingston is dealing with an injury, so he’s out of the CCC, and this match was a last-minute addition to the show.
To show you how unimportant Daniel Garcia is, Jon Moxley wasn’t seen at all during Garcia’s entrance. Marina Shafir was there, doing push-ups with Garcia and hyping him up, but then she left.
It’s partially due to the chaos of the previous match, but this might be the quietest that the crowd has been for anything on the show. They’re not deathly silent, but it’s a noticeable difference.
The match has been pretty good so far. Priest is rising to the occasion in one of the biggest matches of his career, and Garcia, despite how little people care, is still a really solid technical performer.
Priest puts Garcia in a Figure Four, but Garcia rolls over to reverse it, then Priest rolls it back over to reverse it. They make their way to the ring apron, and Garcia motions that they should keep going, so he rolls over, and both men crash to the floor knee-first. Ouch. Then they keep rolling and reversing, going halfway up the ramp, still locked together in the Figure Four.
After what was a really entertaining match, Garcia picks up the win, and he joins the CCC. His reward? A match against fellow Death Rider, Claudio Castagnoli, tomorrow night on Collision. 4 Stars. Great stuff from both men.
Lio Rush vs Action Andretti – Fight Without Honor for the RoH Television Title
It wouldn’t be a show in the ECW Arena without some sort of tribute to ECW, and tonight’s tribute is Lio Rush dressed up like Sabu.
They’ve found brooms and a dust pan under the ring. For once, weapons from beneath the ring make sense. It’s easy to have a bunch of bullshit under the ring, but it makes perfect sense for things like brooms and dust pans are there.
I get that it’s a Fight Without Honor, but so far, there has been too much “garbage” wrestling with the plunder, and not enough of the high-flying action that both men are so good at.
Lio is sent face-first into a steel chair propped up in the corner, and he comes up bleeding from the forehead. He looked like he hit the chair at 200 miles an hour. Gnarly spot.
Lio dumps some glass shards on the mat, then grabs a shard and drags it across Andretti’s face. Andretti ends up bleeding, as well.
The lights go out in the arena, and when they come back on, Hook is standing there. It’s a callback to ECW, when Taz and Sabu were feuding. That’s a really cool touch. Hook and Lio fight a bit before Lio sends Hook crashing through a door that was propped up in the corner.
Anthony Bowens runs to the ring to prevent Lio from opening a box to reveal another weapon. The distraction is enough for Hook to return to things, and he locks Lio in Redrum. Bowens and Hook put Lio on a table at ringside, and Andretti comes flying off the top rope, nearly getting too much air and almost Scorpion’ing himself on the floor.
Lio kicks out at one! It doesn’t make any sense, but the crowd popped. It was short-lived, though, as Andretti is able to get the pin and the win after Lights, Camera, Action to become the brand new RoH Television Title.
That really picked up in the second half. They were able to use more of the high-flying work, but even the hardcore stuff went from brooms to glass and barbed wire chairs. 4 Stars. That was really fun.
Bandido vs Nick Wayne – RoH World Title Match
Nick Wayne is looking to become the youngest men’s World Champion (he’s 21, but Rok-C aka Roxanne Perez was 19 when she became the first RoH Women’s World Champion) in company history.
On commentary, Ian Riccaboni drops a wild factoid, saying that these two have faced each other once before… back in 2022, when Nick Wayne was still 16 years old. Jeez.
This has been a good start. Two of the most athletic talents on the roster are fighting for the biggest prize in Ring Of Honor.
Bandido is currently 54 days away from breaking Jay Lethal’s company record for most overall days as the RoH World Champion. He’s also 44 days away from passing Nigel McGuinness for the second-longest RoH World Title reign ever, and 144 days away from passing Samoa Joe for the longest reign. There’s a lot on the line for him here. More than usual.
After taking a shot to the ring steps, Nick Wayne has become a bloody mess. He looks like a murder victim out there, made especially noticeable after the not-so-plentiful “crimson masks” that Lio Rush and Action Andretti had in the previous match.
Good Lord. These two have kicked things into an insanely high gear. We’ve reached the “kick outs and reversal spam” portion of the match.
Bandido rolls out of a pin attempt, and get the pin himself. He retains the title in what was an absolute banger there. On several occasions, it really looked like we were getting a title change, but ultimately, the lengthy reign of Bandido continues. Fantastic stuff. 4.5 Stars
Athena vs Hazuki – RoH Women’s World Title Match
Well, speaking of lengthy title reigns… it’s time for Athena. Today is the 1,350th day of her reign, which goes all the way back to December 10th, 2022. For the sake of comparison, this is 34 days longer than the recent WWE Universal Title reign that Roman Reigns put together.
It’s main event time.
I get that we’re talking about an insanely long title reign, but damn, Bandido and Nick Wayne should’ve been in the main event spot tonight, especially after the match they just delivered.
The crowd is way more quiet for this one than they were for the previous match. It makes me wonder how many of the fans in attendance have never seen Hazuki wrestle, and even if they have seen her before, how many of them think she has an actual shot of winning here.
Billie Starkz and Diamante are out relatively early on, and it doesn’t take them long to get involved in the match. This shit isn’t necessary, especially at this point in the match.
The first portion of the match seemed to be happening in slow motion. Thankfully, it’s picked up. Not a lot, but picked up nonetheless.
Man, there are lengthy stretches of time where you could hear a mouse fart in the arena.
LOL @ a “this is awesome” chant breaking out. It hasn’t been bad, but you can’t perform that chant when more than half of the match hasn’t led to any sort of reaction from any of you.
Ref bump, just to make things worse, bringing out boos from maybe nine people in the crowd. Billie Starkz and Diamante attack Hazuki while the referee sells death. Again, I say… this shit isn’t necessary. At all.
O-Face from Athena, and the champion retains her title. It was a tale of two halves, basically. The first half was average, and the second half was a banger. Do I just balance that out? I guess so. Let’s say this was 3.75 Stars. It could’ve been better with a crowd that cared, as well as with less from Billie and Diamante.
We’re really running out of names for Athena to face, though. This isn’t AEW, where you can count on new names and huge free agent signings to come in. It’s not like you’re going to see Bayley show up in RoH to challenge for the title, you know?
The show started off okay, but it really picked up as it went on, and we got a handful of really good to great matches. Better than your average Ring Of Honor show, at least.
It still didn’t need to go four hours, though.
