ROH Death Before Dishonor Review - September 28, 2018

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Kenny King def. Jushin "Thunder" Liger

I'd argue King officially turned heel following his victory over Adam Page on this past week's edition of ROH TV (where he used underhanded tactics to pick up the win), so despite this event emanating from his hometown, he was in full-blown heel mode here. Meanwhile, Liger never ceases to amaze me with what he's capable of still at his age. This was a quality contest where King came across as ruthless for putting Liger away even when Liger was clearly hurt.

ROH World Tag Team Champions The Briscoes def. The Addiction

This was well on its way to being a great tag team match before Frankie Kazarian's legitimate injury, which occurred halfway through and sidelined him for the rest of the bout. It basically became a Handicap matchup by that point, and as excellent of a job as Christopher Daniels did of fighting underneath as a resilient babyface, the crowd didn't seem to buy into the idea of The Addiction becoming the new tag team champs. I could see it happening either before or at Final Battle, though.

ROH World Women of Honor Champion Sumie Sakai def. Tenille Dashwood

The Women of Honor matches have slowly but surely become the best bouts on every show ROH produces. Sakai and Dashwood are two of the most experienced competitors in the division at the moment, so it should have come as no surprise that this was terrific. Although the crowd was mostly invested in the action throughout, there were audible boos for the finish, likely because they wanted Dashwood to take the title. I don't blame them because I would have put the belt on Dashwood here. Who else is there left for Sakai to beat?

ROH World Television Champion Punishment Martinez def. Chris Sabin

The story here was that Sabin's Motor City Machine Guns tag team partner, Alex Shelley, recently retired from the ring and Shelley wanted Sabin to find success in singles competition, specifically by chasing the TV title. Sabin didn't have much momentum coming into this show beyond that, but it turned into a real nice match with some fun moments. Martinez retaining the gold was the right call as he now moves on to a feud with the debuting Jeff Cobb, which should be fantastic.

Silas Young and Bully Ray def. Flip Gordon and Colt Cabana in a Tables Match

Say what you will about Bully being a regular on the Ring of Honor roster in 2018, but the guy knows how to elicit genuine heel heat. This rivalry between him, Gordon and Cabana has been running for months and I hoped this would be the blow-off. Unfortunately, based off all the overbooking, I doubt that will be the case. I enjoyed this on the whole and it helped that the audience in attendance was hot for everything they did, but the cliche conclusion with Gordon putting Young through a table only for Bully to make it look like he put Gordon through a table instead (due to the referee not paying attention) was a bit of an eye-roller.

Bullet Club def. CHAOS

All of Bullet Club (at least this version of it) is on the same page right now, which means there isn't exactly anything interesting going on with them (other than their angle with the Firing Squad, which hasn't even been mentioned in ROH). Yes, this glorified spot-fest had a ton of star power involved and was never boring, but from a storyline standpoint, it served no purpose and Bullet Club gained nothing from their victory. On the bright side, Nick Aldis had the chance to hype his upcoming NWA World Heavyweight Championship match against Cody and I thought he did a damn good job of that.

ROH World Champion Jay Lethal def. Will Ospreay

Ospreay has been away from ROH for some time, but he didn't miss a beat whatsoever in his first bout back by taking the ROH World Champion to the limit. This was easily the strongest match on the show, even if the outcome was never in doubt. That said, Ospreay hitting his finisher in the final few minutes was definitely a close call and the crowd apparently thought so as well based off their reaction. I loved this championship clash and the chemistry they had together. Lethal has been killing it during his latest reign as world champion, but it remains to be seen whether he can elevate Matt Taven (who resurfaced afterward) to main event status.

Overall Show

I'm not going to lie, I can't say I was heavily anticipating Death Before Dishonor weeks in advance, if only because the build had been lackluster and most of the focus was on All In earlier his month and not this show. Nothing felt significant storyline-wise, so I wouldn't recommend anyone go out of their way to watch this pay-per-view outside of the top two matches even if the event was solid overall.