Ring of Honor Review - June 13, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

ROH Women's World Television Champion Billie Starkz def. Sandra Moone in an ROH Women's World Television Championship Proving Ground Match

Starkz continues to rack up wins in Proving Ground matches (which are almost always inconsequential, by the way) but hasn't defended her title too many times (if at all) since winning it two months ago. Starkz is obviously impressive, but if she isn't going to put the gold up for grabs at all, why bother creating a secondary championship for the women? This served as a showcase for Starkz. At least we know either Queen Aminata and/Red Velvet to likely next to challenge her.

Shane Taylor Promotions (Shane Taylor and Lee Moriarty) def. Nick Comoroto and Jacoby Watts

Comoroto popped up on Wednesday's Dynamite losing pretty quickly and decisively to Daniel Garcia. Watts wasn't with him, pretty much confirming that most of what happens on ROH TV doesn't matter in the greater AEW "universe" (or canon, so to speak). They got a televised entrance this week but lost yet again. Shane Taylor Promotions going over was the right call, but I'm not sure what the point of this pairing between Comoroto and Watts is if they're not going to win anything. The match was perfectly passable.

Red Velvet def. Viva Van

Velvet has been in AEW for years and I honestly haven't seen a ton of improvement in her in-ring work. She's still not very good and that was once again apparent in this, particularly toward the end. The last two moves she hit on Van looked terrible. I'd much rather see Aminata challenge Starkz for the Television title because we know how well they work together and that's bound to be the better bout.

Top Flight & Action Andretti def. The Dark Order (John Silver, Alex Reynolds and Evil Uno), Dalton Castle & The Infantry, and Lance Archer & The Righteous in a Four-Corner Survival Trios Match

Man, and I thought the three-way trios match we got last week was a mess. Four trios in one match is incredibly excessive. To their credit, they made it work a lot like last week with there typically not being more than two guys in the ring at one time (at least up until the closing stretch), so it was solid stuff. This would've been a logical match to do when, you know, Ring of Honor actually had six-man tag team titles.

Alex Windsor, Marina Shafir and Diamante def. "Legit" Leyla Hirsch, Lady Frost and Abadon

Windsor felt like a random partner for Shafir and Diamante, but it made sense once I remembered that she'll be facing Toni Storm in a non-title match on Friday's Rampage. Thus, this was designed to make her look like somewhat of a threat before then, so it served its purpose. They could have done that in a singles match, though. This was fine, but the rest of the women being involved didn't make much of a difference.

Harley Cameron def. Trish Adora

I find her character to be annoying as hell, but to give credit where it's due, Cameron recently had impressive outings against Toni Storm and Mariah May. Personally, I have no desire to see her featured regularly in AEW's women's division, but ROH might be the perfect place for her. She and Adora had a decent match. We'll see if this amounts to anything for Cameron or if it's simply forgotten about (per usual).

ROH World Tag Team Champions The Undisputed Kingdom (Matt Taven and Mike Bennett) def. Bade Dude Tito and Che Cabrera in an ROH World Tag Team Championship Proving Ground Match

Tito recently won the MLW National Openweight Championship and has spent quite a bit of time in New Japan Pro-Wrestling as well, but he felt like just another dude here. I'm not really sure why this needed to be as competitive as it was considering the outcome was never in doubt. That's also why I didn't understand why this was slotted as the main event. These Proving Ground matches for Taven and Bennett have largely blended together and do not make the group feel any more like a threat given how badly they've been booked in AEW this year.

Overall Show

If you've seen any edition of ROH TV in the last few months, you've essentially seen them all. Some have been better than others, but the general gist of ROH TV is that there's a bunch of squash matches and nothing really happens. Hell, the ROH World Champion never shows up, the two women's titles aren't defended often, the ROH Pure Champion has been gone for months, and the tag champs are spinning their wheels. It seems the brand exists just to exist at this point.

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