Ring of Honor Review - August 9, 2021

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Quinn McKay def. Mandy Leon in a ROH Women's Championship Tournament Round 1 Match

McKay lost her first two matches against members of The Allure, so there was no way she was losing here. Still, they told a solid story with McKay playing the perfect underdog babyface. This was another decent outing from these two, but it would have benefited from fans being in attendance to rally behind McKay. Leon has never been great and McKay is a work in progress, but this was what it needed to be. I'm curious to see how far McKay will get in the tournament.

Trish Adora def. Marti Belle in a ROH Women's Championship Tournament Round 1 Match

I'm very familiar with Belle's work from IMPACT, WWE's Mae Young Classic and the NWA, but I've honestly never found her to be that good. She has a nice presence about her and she's definitely improved over the years, but even here, I was far more invested in Adora before the bout even started thanks to her sit-down interview. This was a bit better than the opener with both women having good showings. Adora winning was the right call, and again, those pre-match interviews do an excellent job of getting viewers to care about all of these women in the tournament, whether they were previously familiar with them or not.

ROH World Champion Bandido and Rey Horus def. Violence Unlimited (Brody King and ROH World Tag Team Champion Chris Dickinson)

It looks like Bandido and Horus will remain friends, or at the very least allies, despite the breakup of MexiSquad earlier this year. I have no problem with that because they work wonderfully together. King and Dickinson are talented in their own right, so unsurprisingly, this was an entertaining, well worked match. Bandido pinned Bandido for the win, but I don't think it will lead to Horus getting a tag title shot because King isn't the other half of the champions. Chaos ensued afterward with La Faccion Ingobernable and Violence Unlimited going at it, likely setting the stage for matches we could get involving them at Glory by Honor.

Overall Show

It's great we finally got Bandido on the show for the first time since he won the ROH World Championship a month ago at Best in the World. He partook in an enjoyable main event, and the other two matches were solid on the whole. Last week's episode was entirely devoted to the kickoff of the ROH Women's Championship Tournament, and although it was a refreshing change of pace, I liked the mix on this show of men's and women's matches. After all, Ring of Honor does have Glory by Honor coming up and you want to put some effort into building those matches and furthering those feuds as well. This was a quality edition of ROH TV where the hour flew by per usual.

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