Ring of Honor Wrestling

[G. Badger]

On 5/21/2024 at 3:20 PM, Migs said:

I would add there's a lot of great stuff in 2016-2018 if you enjoy the Bullet Club guys. Everything tumbles off a cliff dramatically in 2019. 

Thanks for mentioning this because I was looking through my DVDs kinda scratching my head like, "why did I get some of these?"

I now remember really enjoying the Bucks & Cody six man matches that they'd show on TV quite a bit so I think I probably made some purchases with that feeling in mind.

Anyone out there have an opinion on the HDNet years? I was able to pick up a few of the Best of ROH on HDNet compilations. Any show recommendations?

[MikeCampbell]

I checked out Death Before Dishonor on a delay this morning (watching Rampage with my father takes priority on Friday nights). It was honestly a pretty good show, overall. The only real black mark on it was the six-way TV Title match. It was a complete trainwreck, which makes me wonder if Atlantis Jr. just isn't very good, to have a real match with any of them, or if TK just wanted to get as many dudes on the show as possible to justify their employment.

[Blehschmidt]

Taking the title off of Billie Starkz this quickly has to be to build her as Athena's opponent for Final Battle again, right? 

Otherwise, what's the point?

[Alucard]

the Leyla/Diamante Texas Deathmatch was a really amazing bloody hardcore brawl. They went all out, I loved it.

Meltzer's take:

"Probably one of the 2-3 best AEW Women's matches that I've ever seen. Certainly among the best American women's matches this year, maybe the best. It was just an awesome, awesome match."
 

[The Thread Killer]

On 7/27/2024 at 7:31 PM, Blehschmidt said:

Taking the title off of Billie Starkz this quickly has to be to build her as Athena's opponent for Final Battle again, right? 

Otherwise, what's the point?

That would make a great company slogan for Tony Khan’s iteration of ROH.

“Ring of Honor: What’s The Point?”

 

[Matt D]

It’s “Wrestling for the Sake of Wrestling.”

[RazorBladeKiss]

On 7/29/2024 at 10:15 PM, Alucard said:

the Leyla/Diamante Texas Deathmatch was a really amazing bloody hardcore brawl. They went all out, I loved it.

Meltzer's take:

"Probably one of the 2-3 best AEW Women's matches that I've ever seen. Certainly among the best American women's matches this year, maybe the best. It was just an awesome, awesome match."
 

Full agreement here. That moonsault at the end was awesome, especially coming off a ladder like it did. 

Kommander/Beast was a really awesome showcase too. That rope walking dive was beautiful. 

[G. Badger]

Finally getting around to watching some ROH on HDnet stuff from 2009. I'm liking it... Reminds me of the better stuff TNA was doing on PPVs. It's not at the level of the DVDs/actual events though. I could see being a little nervous that the quality was going down hill if you saw these as replacing the normal ROH at the time. Been watching some other 2009 ROH as well and they are definitely still putting on amazing matches...

 

 

[G. Badger]

Just finished my ROH 2009 project on my blog. 2009 was certainly a transition year for ROH and from reading, they were on shaky ground especially with Bryan & Nigel leaving. I think that everyone else really picked up the slack and it was a boon to have KENTA be a part of ROH for a good chunk of the year. There's a different group of folks holding the company up from a year or two earlier... not entirely brand new but most of these guys were getting the big time push with little safety net. Cherry picking matches prevents me from seeing that on the rest of the shows but there is a lot to like if you're thinking of watching these or other matches from Ring of Honor 2009. I thought Danielson vs Davey was a must see.

[G. Badger]

ROH YouTube posted this...probably the last great thing to come out of ROH or so I've heard. Definitely going to watch this for my blog but am posting here:

 

[TheBean]

Heard good stuff about this match. ROH posted on YouTube. Wanted to share it here:

 

 

[TheBean]

Bouncing around, doing research and came across this:

"Code of Honor Volume 1 - The Era of Honor Begins, a new book about the origins and earliest days of Ring of Honor is in the final stages of editing with a release date announcement expected to be imminent.

The book is written by Chris Mauerer aka former ROH talent and backstage official Shane Hagadorn.  He has spent several years working on the book and interviewing countless former and current ROH talents and officials.

The plan is for this to be the first of several books chronicling the promotion's history and legacy.  We are told there may be three volumes if everything works out as planned..."

By Mike Johnson on 2025-12-12  (pwinsider.com)

----

This looks pretty great for old ROH fans...even if only one volume is published. I saw a very small sample somewhere and looks excellent.

[Scarletlikesounds]

On 9/20/2025 at 3:19 PM, TheBean said:

Heard good stuff about this match. ROH posted on YouTube. Wanted to share it here:

 

 

The energy here is really infectious, I feel like you can really tell these two are having fun creating the match. Not perfect or a match of the year candidate like some had said it was but I would say a must watch if you're going through the year.

[Scarletlikesounds]

I really enjoyed the recent Shane Taylor vs. Mance Warner match, had such a great natural progression to it. Really made me wanna see Shane Taylor vs. 1 Called Manders, Manders can be a little dry for my taste but I bet he would bring the energy out for that one. Taylor is really damn good nowadays, which is funny because going back to his supposed earlier peaks in the company they're actually not anywhere near as good to me.

[Stiva]

ROH has been fun the last few weeks; I’ve really dug the whole show since the shift to the soundstage tapings. A novelty to actually see more than 3 matches announced for a PPV more than a week out too.

And I agree on Shane Taylor. If I could make one criticism, it’s that you could easily put the likes of STP, Red Velvet, Athena and Billie Starks on AEW TV every week and they’d be great. 

[El-P]

I dunno, I think they could use those tapings to make a much better formatted show. It still feels completely haphazard and not really well thought out in term of week to week content. But you do get cool match ups, and its fun to see random people popping up like in the Dark days (I do miss the completely "no fucks given" feel of the Dark announcing, since it wasn't supposed to be anything serious whereas ROH is). 

3 hours ago, Stiva said:

And I agree on Shane Taylor. If I could make one criticism, it’s that you could easily put the likes of STP, Red Velvet, Athena and Billie Starks on AEW TV every week and they’d be great. 

Oh yes indeed. I also can't wait until the Swirl get an actual push on AEW TV, hopefully. They are just way too good (especially Blake Christian).

[El-P]

That Ring of Honor taping at the golf field were tons of fun, and Supercard of Honor looks like a really cool card on paper. Bandido vs Blake Christian ? Oh yes. Time for Bandido to move on and let Vanilla Baby shine in a setting where he can, so that will give him some time to build. Athena I'd say is a good time for her to finally lose the strap too (although maybe they want her to win the first women Survival of the Fittest too).

Some really fun matches on this with Nigel vs Josh Woods in a pure match. Ace Austin vs Moriarty for the pure title. Sounds terrific. Purazzo vs Diamanté for the pure title sounds really solid too. Mark Davies vs Xelhua because why the fuck not. AR Fox vs Smeagolio Rush for the TV title. Red Velvet vs Viva Van ? Sure. Why not. One thing is the lack of the tag champs, as they have been noticeably absent from the latest tapings. Not enough Beast Mortos in general in AEW lately. 

[El-P]

And yeah, that ROH show was tons of fun. Lio Rush vs AR Fox was great. Bandido vs Blake Christian was some MOTYC stuff. Bandido retained and then got smacked around by Swerve. The trios title of STP vs Outrunners & Dalton Castle was the best Outrunners match ever and a terrific feel-good moment, and a very smartly worked match (considering the characters and their limitations). Castle did not do a whole lot, basically working the last hot tag, but holy hell what he did was incredible. And then Orange and Mark Briscoe showed up. Yeah, this is really a continuity of everything AEW, which is nice.

Mike Bennett & Matt Taven returned, so that's cool. They really belong in ROH working with younger teams. All the pure matches were good/very good, Deonna really found her footing again in this setting, Nigel vs Woods was all about Nigel being an old sneaky bastard and Ace Austin vs Moriarty was all about Ace not being that familiar with the rules, yet delivering a great performance nonetheless. Red Velvet vs Viva Van was pretty good, and it was nice to see Van get some time, I like her dating back to the NJPW Strong days.

Main event was half great spot, half really sloppy shit, but some spots were pretty insane (Yuka doing a springboard top rope splash though a table outside, Athena going through a pyramid of chairs, Athena doing her finisher off a ladder). The never-ending story with Billie keeps on going. She has to win it at the end of this year. Athena was ridiculously better than everyone else too. Part of me really wish she wasn't so comfy in ROH and would just be on AEW but hey, I'll take what I can.

[Stiva]

The ROH PPVs always end up being good but I thought this was the weakest for a while. Woods getting clearly knocked loopy in the opener was rough and there’s more than a few title reigns that are becoming meandering. Especially considering STP and Red Velvet should be regulars on AEW TV. I actually thought the Woods/Nigel match was going to see Woods win to be set up to beat Moriarty but obviously not. I’d put the World Title on RUSH and build to RUSH/Kingston but that’s just me  

[Matt D]

17 hours ago, El-P said:

The trios title of STP vs Outrunners & Dalton Castle was the best Outrunners match ever and a terrific feel-good moment, and a very smartly worked match (considering the characters and their limitations). Castle did not do a whole lot, basically working the last hot tag, but holy hell what he did was incredible.

I‘m not sure it’s better than that one FTR match but I thought it was maybe one of the best matches I’ve seen all year. It was great and took me by surprise.

[El-P]

42 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I‘m not sure it’s better than that one FTR match but I thought it was maybe one of the best matches I’ve seen all year. It was great and took me by surprise.

Yeah, I figured this is the kinda match you would love. Hey, I loved it too. Outrunners & Dalton Castle really are a perfect fit.