Ring of Honor Review - August 14, 2025

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Hechicero, Volador Jr., Difunto and The Beast Mortos def. Alex Zayne, AR Fox and Spanish Announce Project

It's been announced that Hechicero will get his shot at Bandido's ROH World Championship at Death Before Dishonor, so this felt like a showcase for him more than anything else. The action was enjoyable, but Hechicero was the focus as he should have been, hence why he picked up the victory for his team. Speaking of Bandido, he and a few others made the save afterward for the babyface team.

Willie Mack def. Gringo Loco

Loco has been all over ROH TV lately, but we haven't seen a whole lot of Mack on the show this year. Mack is the bigger name of the two, but Loco has been more of an Ring of Honor regular recently, so I was surprised by the outcome. We found out why immediately afterward with it being announced that Mack will challenge for the ROH World Television Championship on a special Friday night episode tomorrow night. This was a quality contest while it lasted.

Lance Archer def. Ren Jones

This was a classic Lance Archer squash with him dragging Jones to the ring after beating him up in the back and beating him within a minute. I appreciate that these are kept short and sweet, but he's been doing this shtick for so long that they aren't as fun as they once were, especially since they haven't amounted to anything for him. He'll get the occasional big match on Dynamite or Collision, but he always loses when it matters most.

Leila Grey def. Taya Valkyrie

It's funny how ROH pretty much gave up on giving the women Pure Rules matches because the ROH Women's Pure Championship Tournament hasn't started despite being announced earlier this year. I assume this will turn into a six- or eight-person tag team match eventually with Grey teaming with SkyFlight and Valkyrie teaming with Johnny TV and Maximum Male Models. This was perfectly fine for what it was.

NJPW Strong Openweight Champion Tomohiro Ishii def. "Main Man" Oro (Non-Title)

I always forget that Ishii is the NJPW Strong Openweight Champion because I never see him bring the belt with him to the ring for his matches in AEW and ROH, unless he does and I've just totally missed it. Apparently he's one-half of the IWGP Tag Team Champions, too, but he didn't have that belt with him here. At any rate, Oro is obviously the former Oro Mensah from WWE NXT. He was released earlier this year and I feel like he's a good fit for ROH. This was a nice match and Oro got to shine for a little bit in there against Ishii.

ROH Pure Champion Lee Moriarty vs. Xelhua in an ROH Pure Championship Proving Ground Match Ended in a Time-Limit Draw

I was wondering why Xelhua had a Pure Rules match two weeks ago on ROH TV and now we know why. I still know very little about him, but I appreciated that there was a brief video package that aired earlier in the episode hyping up this main event. It was a well-worked match, but the crowd did not care and I don't blame them. They also went with the lazy time-limit draw, which is what led to the last ROH Pure Championship match on pay-per-view back in July.

Overall Show

We now know we're getting Bandido vs. Hechicero for the ROH World Championship as well as Athena vs. Mina Shirakawa for the ROH Women's World Championship at Death Before Dishonor. We're also probably getting Moriarty vs. Xelhua for the Pure title based on what happened in the main event on this show. Nothing else is confirmed about the card to my knowledge, though that's par for the course for ROH these days. The wrestling this week was solid and it was an adequate edition of ROH TV on the whole, yet nothing you need to seek out.

SEE MORE: ROH Reviews