Ring of Honor Review - December 14, 2020

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

PCO and Mark Briscoe def. The Bouncers

I realize this was taped weeks ago, but Ring of Honor recently revealed that EC3 (among others) won't be able to appear at Final Battle this Friday due to not passing their COVID-19 testing protocol. That means Mark teaming with PCO now doesn't make sense with Jay apparently free. Maybe they can say in storyline that the match can't be changed because it was already made official? Either way, they made for a fun pairing and this was a quality opener. The pre-match interview with The Bouncers was well done and established that they're not the friendly beer drinkers they used to be and were ready to bring the fight. It's great they're bringing back that aggressive streak and they looked good in defeat.

Flip Gordon def. Josh "The Goods" Woods in a Pure Rules Match

Gordon is still doing the Mercenary gimmick, but all references to Villain Enterprises have been removed from his entrance, so it looks like it's officially dead as had been previously speculated. I know he's said some controversial stuff on social media over the past year, but I'm honestly surprised he was shown wearing a face mask with holes in it at the beginning of his sit-down interview before taking it off. Yikes! As for Woods, I've been super happy with the push he's been receiving lately. I enjoy his team with Silas Young, but this is a better use of him and he can still be linked with Young. He should be utilized as a singles star at this point, but Gordon is getting the ROH World Television Championship shot at Final Battle and thus it made sense for him to win here. This was very well-wrestled as expected and I've grown to really like the Pure Rules matches.

Overall Show

As noted, several performers had to pull out of Final Battle due to not passing ROH's COVID protocols, so the card had to be tweaked a bit. Still, I appreciated all the hype for the even throughout this episode, specifically the complete card rundown in the middle. The two matches were solid and served a purpose in hyping two different matches, so this was another excellent effort from ROH on the whole that left me looking forward to Friday's pay-per-view.