Ring of Honor Review - October 23, 2019

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Joe Hendry def. Dom Kubrick

Hendry has been in Ring of Honor for about two months now and I still don't get the hype surrounding him. I realize no one is call him a future world champion except himself, but he's done nothing to impress me so far. He's perfectly solid in the ring, but the singing shtick is stupid to me. This was a pretty standard squash match with the crowd only coming to life whenever Hendry went up to fans in the audience and interacted with them. He'll face Shane Taylor for the ROH World Television Championship on the Honor United tour.

Matt Kingdom Addressed His Future with Ring of Honor

(From my Death Before Dishonor Fallout review...) Taven has been in the news in recent months, and no, not because of his lackluster reign as ROH World Champion (well, that too). Rather, his ROH contract was set to expire this Tuesday, October 1st, and although WWE was reportedly interested in bringing him in, he announced in this segment that he's sticking with ROH. It's been rumored that ROH offered him way more money than he'd be making in NXT, so he opted to stay. He came across like a total babyface here, so I'm interested if this is a permanent move or he'll be back to being a heel on the next show. Let's not forget he shook Rush's hand at the end of Death Before Dishonor, so it's possible.

Tracy Williams def. Flip Gordon in a No Disqualification Match

(From my Death Before Dishonor Fallout review...) Apparently this match wasn't advertised in advance whatsoever, which is strange seeing as how it has been one of the better built feuds in ROH in recent memory. It feels like we see hardcore matches on every ROH show these days (what is this, IMPACT circa 2014?), but this was a really fun match with both guys putting forth a hell of an effort. I assume Williams winning decisively spells the end of their rivalry with Williams now moving on to something involving Bateman. I can't say that's a storyline that overly excites me.

Overall Show

Clips were also shown from Mark Haskins vs. Rhett Titus from the Global Wars Espectacular tour. Even though Death Before Dishonor happened over three weeks ago at this point, the fallout from the pay-per-view was intended to be the focus of this episode. What was featured was fine, but anyone who owns HonorClub saw the last two segments already, and Hendry's match obviously isn't worth going out of your way to see. A WOH World Championship defense was advertised for next week, but it's already outdated because Kelly Klein won back the title at Glory by Honor earlier this month. In other words, the weekly ROH TV show continues to be very flawed.