Death Before Dishonor 2019 Thread (9/27 Las Vegas)

[BurningHammer]

Overall enjoyed the pre show PPV a lot, from a wrestling point of view.

Brody and Cobb built up to a very good match, Brody though really needs to work in his selling, he just has the same face throughout. Cobb though has come on leaps and bounds in that area.

On the PPV, Some matches really clicked, Jay Lethal and Gresham was fantastic, as was Taven and RUSH, with the tag match and Cabana (the guy should be a full time wrestler in ROH) and Marty being good to great, others were a little clunky like the four way and the women’s match. The Bar Room brawl probably should have been a little shorter but it was better than I thought it would be considering who was involved, same with PCO and Kenny King (ish at that finish though).

I believe the Gresham and Lethal are all square now when it comes to wins against each other. Happy they are still together as a team.

It needs a bit of work but Taylor’s style of entrance fitted well with what he is trying to portray, I think what would be nice is if the they keep the guys aligned to Taylor and his Team’ the same from now on or at least have a core two or three.

Commentary for the most part was great, especially when it came to reasoning the physics and psychology of matches and moves. Still think there needs to be more focus on play by play in terms just calling all the movement in the ring. As much as I think Joey Styles is overrated his focus on just calling how wrestlers just run the ropes and drop really added pace and dynamics to a match.

The intro video to the event was one my favourites in some time and really set a nice tone. If showed what level ROH should be delivering just at a basic level when it comes to production, as it really showed up the historical vignettes ROH produced themselves.

Biggest flaw and has been for some time is camera work and directing, to have replays that have better angles that the actual main shot is just poor in so many ways. The amount of times the camera was out of focus or not ready was shameful. You also had too many switches in camera shots, it needs to really calm down, it takes the emotion away from the matches in the end, a close up should matter it should be there to draw you into the match and won’t if you keep flopping back from it so many times,

Production errors on the tale of the tapes was also really bad at times, I mean Angelina love and 6’6, really!? How can this happen when you actually get a lot of the rest right. Timing with commentary and the match cards didn’t match up at times and that again just shows a lack of thought.

[alexsmellzzz]

https://twitter.com/sodutw/status/11799 ... 40386?s=21

Jesus Christ

[supersonic]

Observer:

ROH DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR POLL RESULTS

Thumbs up 36 (87.8%)
Thumbs down 5 (12.2%)
In the middle 0 (00.0%)

The biggest news regarding the Ring of Honor Death Before Dishonor show on 9/27 is the lack of interest in the show.

The company is clearly cold, and the show came at a time when WWE was pushing harder than ever and AEW was about to debut on television. ROH doesn’t have anything particularly interesting going on and was very much lost in the shuffle.

The volume of poll responses on the front page speaks volumes. As does the fact that in a 900-seat arena in Las Vegas, Sam’s Town, not only did they have a weak advance, but even with giving away tickets at the end to basically anyone who wanted them, they started the show with maybe 600 in the building and ended up with about 800.

Worse are the PPV numbers. The last ROH show, Best in the World on 6/28 in Baltimore did an estimated 3,500 PPV buys. Death Before Dishonor at press time is estimated at just under 800. The actual decline from the last show was 77.7 percent, and this is not a year-to-year drop but a drop from June to September.

Even more scary is that of those 3,500 buyers of the Best in the World how, only an estimated 115 purchased Death Before Dishonor. Roughly the same number of Death Before Dishonor buyers purchased All Out and roughly 75 purchased Clash of Champions. Now 115 out of 800 is 14.4 percent and 75 of 800 is 9.4 percent, so that is significant to a degree. But the crossover between this show and the last show is notable because even with that big drop, 675 out of 800 purchasers were not fans who bought the previous PPV.

[famicommander]

"Do not believe what your eyes see or your ears hear... tv ratings are consistent and no, you cannot see them."-Lavie on Twitter

For whatever that's worth.

[kovs27]

I was more surprised that Best in the World did so many buys. I figured ROH didn't do all that many PPV buys in the first place. The drop certainly isn't a good sign meaning people are using their money earmarked for wrestling elsewhere.

[famicommander]

The TV ratings being steady with the attendance and PPV buys being down means people aren't giving up on the product. They're just less willing to spend money on it right now. But it also means that many of them can likely be won back if ROH takes the appropriate steps.

[Lynx]

Are TV ratings really steady? To me that message from Lavie sounds a bit like sarcasm.

[indyfan]

We need to stop pretending everything is ok. 3500 buys in June and 800 buys September.

ROH needs to scale everything back. id even say stop touring. Do shows from the same venue like PWG does. forget these ridiculous pricing for admission.

Spoiler: show

And in what shitty booking is having Haskin lose to Dalton. ridiculous!!!

[maxx_powerz]

Guess they should have belted Cobb instead of Rush.

[alexsmellzzz]

We need to stop pretending everything is ok. 3500 buys in June and 800 buys September.

ROH needs to scale everything back. id even say stop touring. Do shows from the same venue like PWG does. forget these ridiculous pricing for admission.

Spoiler: show

And in what shitty booking is having Haskin lose to Dalton. ridiculous!!!

Yeah idk, Castle seemed to have some fire in him at that taping. But still, it’s not the same Dalton from years ago. He has never really recovered from whatever injuries he has had. He has to have some kinda hernia because he doesn’t do the strength spots anymore.

[alexsmellzzz]

Guess they should have belted Cobb instead of Rush.

Dude they should have had Marty win. It’s the person that the whole crowd wanted to win. And they gave it to weird ass Taven instead. And then they book Marty like he’s a midcarder when hes like top 3 most over guys in the company every single place they go.

Taven cut some face promo at that taping and the majority of the crowd booed the hell out of him. If ROH is going to continue to force Taven on us, atleast have some sense and book him like a heel. ROH is really just a ridiculous company.

[Montana]

Maybe it was just me, but DBD was horribly booked and promoted.... perhaps the worst PPV in recent memory for ROH. I have a few theories....

1) They thought Rush vs. Taven was a big enough match, they kind of let the rest of the card go
2) THey were too busy trying to resign talent, and seek out new talent, than booking the show.
3) Summer Supercard was a bigger/ better promoted show.
4) They have a preshow, that didn't hype the PPV at all! (not to mention they need more than 30 minutes to better hype the matches.


Either way, the show came out well, but like they had months to build some of these matches, and they did Briscoes vs. Bandio/Haskins... who team together how many times?!? Shane Taylor vs. Flip vs. Williams.... It's like they just inserted Shane into the flip/Williams feud. Jeff Cobb and Brody just randomly thrown together. King and PCO didn't seem to match up well. SIlas and Vincent teaming up?!?

At the end of the day, seems like most people agreed they liked the PPV... but kind of booking 101 to figure out the PPV card and backwards plan, where it seems like ROH basically did what they could at global wars to set it up.

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Death Before Dishonor XVII (9/27/2019)- Las Vegas, NV



JEFF COBB vs. BRODY KING- 5.75/10
This one didn’t really click with me. It was one of those matches where it felt like they were trying to earn snowflakes rather than tell a story. It was a disconnected bunch of spots with an emphasis on big guys flips and strong-style stuff. That fighting spirit German Suplexes right before the finish were particularly egregious.

BRIAN ZANE INTERVIEWS THE BOUNCERS- Didn’t like it. “We’re all going to the ER tonight” is nowhere near as good a message as “we’re going to kick your asses but not get our asses kicked by you.”

QUINN MCKAY INTERVIEWS DALTON CASTLE- very bad
Quinn McKay has nowhere near enough charisma to play the “hostess” role they stuck her in here, trying to hype up the main event before interviewing Dalton. Her attempt to interview Dalton was atrocious, as she wound up as his awkward sidekick while both of them did nothing for several minutes. Mercifully, Joe Hendry came out to interrupt them. Dalton has a thing under a cover, which Hendry prompts him to reveal. It’s a mimosa.
Hendry is wearing a shirt that says “2nd Best Dalton Castle” on it. He says he still believes in their tag team (they have teamed twice and are 1-1). Hendry says they’re going to do karaoke. He has a song about how he is better than Dalton and making fun of Dalton. Dalton threw his drink on him and left. Hendry then beat up the Boys. As a TV segment this might have been passable, but putting THIS on the pre-show to get people to buy the PPV was terrible. At least when AEW does something extremely dumb on the pre-show it’s clear that there is some sort of inside joke there. This just came across as a boring pro wrestling segment. To compare with AEW, AEW’s leave you feeling that they can do good pro wrestling for their little inside group, while this was a segment that made you think that ROH has no idea how to do an entertaining pro wrestling segment.

FINAL BATTLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Marty Scurll vs. Colt Cabana- 7/10
A solid beginning to this tournament. A key to this match was structuring it so that, just for a moment or two, I though there was a snowball’s chance in hell of Colt winning, and they managed to do that towards the end.

FINAL BATTLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: PCO vs. Kenny King (w/Amy Rose and his new entourage)- 4.25/10
Out of nowhere, this was made a no DQs match. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have faith in PCO to deliver in anything that isn’t a gimmick match singles match then just don’t book him in them. Either that or take the time to come up with a reason for these matches to be no DQs matches.
This “PCO short-circuits” spot really kills his gimmick for me, as it takes a guy who is supposed to be a sort of scary monster with freaky recuperative powers and turns him into a joke in the middle of a match, just for the sake of doing this goofy spot (and a spot where this poor old man dives out of the ring and onto the floor while adding absolutely nothing to the match).
Anyway, they used some weapons on each other and took bumps to the floor. Kenny King almost died when an attempted Arabian Powerbomb resulted in PCO’s full bodyweight nearly landing on Kenny’s head. The finish was Kenny King douse PCO with water. Then PCO reversed whatever Kenny tried to do a went for a chokeslam but Amy Rose shocked PCO with a cattle-prod, which PCO no-sold and beat Kenny King with a chokeslam, then kept choking him, because I am supposed to believe that PCO is a robot or something.
And don’t try to tell me “he’s the French-Canadian Frakenstein!” because that doesn’t make any sense here. Electricity was used to provide the required immense amount of power to bring the monster to life, but the monster does not run on electricity like a f*cking Prius! This whole thing was moronic, and resulted in a match where the babyface got cut off because he “short-circuited” and jumped out the wrong side of the ring, making him look like an idiot and making the heel look lucky, and then the babyface won because the heel’s plan accidentally made the babyface stronger, so no one comes out of this looking good. This whole “Frankenstein” sh*t has been taken WAY too literally, in exactly the sort of way that WWE ruins things like King of the Ring by taking the “king” part too literally.

ROH WOMEN OF HONOR WORLD TITLE MATCH: Kelly Klein(c) vs. Angelina Love (w/Mandy Leon)- 4/10
They had a match that was back and forth in a way that felt like it got in the way of the intended story of Mandy’s attempts to interfere rather than enhancing it. Eventually Angelina won, so now we’ve got yet another f*ck finish heel stable with a top title, and to make things worse, they took the title off of the top female worker in the company to put in on a third-rate rehash of a TNA gimmick from ten years ago.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it
The Allure go to humiliate Kelly Klein by drawing on her face with eye-liner or whatever that was, but then the lights go out for a long time and when they come on again, Maria Manic has teleported into the ring because G-d forbid she actually run out to the ring like a normal person. But no. We’ve got to give her magical powers that apparently only work during post-match segments.
She pulls Angelina off of Kelly and puts her in the Torture Rack. Security come down to break it up and she beats the crap out of them. It’s clear (especially with Ian’s commentary) that they’re trying to get her over a woman who is tougher than average because she can beat up men, but this fails for me for two reasons. First, they’re f*cking security guards. EVERYONE on a wrestling show can beat up security guards. Secondly, these guys are just doing their jobs, and there is no blood feud here so her spending so much time beating the security guards up afterwards makes her look like a jerk after a while. Anyway, your next title program is going to be a sad rehash of a gimmick that worked ten years ago against a woman whose entire personality is “me are strong silent monster,” and all we know about her is that she magically teleports. Oh goody.

JAY LETHAL vs. JONATHAN GRESHAM- 8.5/10
An absolute MASTERPIECE of storytelling. The limb-work, the selling, the emotion, the integration of the themes of storyline into the match… this was absolutely beautiful, and Ian and Caprice’s commentary enhanced the story even more. This is one of those matches was only about a 7.75/10 in terms of the action, but the story was 10/10. Make sure you watch this match!

BAR ROOM BRAWL: The Bouncers vs. Vinny Marseglia & Silas Young- 7.5/10
They had an excellent video package before this match to bring us up to speed on why this match was happening. This was important because this way, when the Beer City Bruiser attacked Vinny Marseglia from behind during Vinny’s entrance, I had no problem with it even though the Bouncers are the babyfaces, because Vinny has been doing that to them all feud.
Silas’ protégé Josh Woods was on commentary, and he does not have a voice cut out for promos. He also looked extremely nervous the few times the camera cut to him. It turns out that this nervousness was part of the storyline, though, as he was clearly not a fan of all of these weapons, didn’t think Silas needed to resort to them to win, and even more so was not comfortable with Silas allying himself with this psychopath Vinny Marseglia… and this match sure proved was a sick son of a bitch Vinny Marseglia is.
This match is not for the squeamish. There was a lot of blood, a lot of weapon use and one absolutely sickening spot that I’m not going to spoil, but I will note that as sickening as I found the spot, I also couldn’t help but admire the artistic notion behind it. In addition to the violence they did an excellent job of incorporating elements from the storyline into the match, and had the crowd solidly behind the babyfaces. A GREAT match. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but between this match and the promo he cut in the video package, I’m actually starting to see value in Vinny Marseglia.

ROH WORLD TV TITLE MATCH: Shane Taylor(c) vs. Tracy Williams vs. Flip Gordon vs. Dragon Lee- 6.25/10
P.J. Black provided guest commentary for this match. Shane Taylor came out with an entourage. He has also apparently “bought out his own contract” and is now fighting under the banner of “Shane Taylor Promotions” because he wasn’t happy with the promotion (or rather the lack thereof) that ROH was giving him.
Can we PLEASE not do stupid sh*t like the spot where the Dragon Lee runs PAST the pin in order to distract the ref so the ref stops counting and then break up the pin with a kick for a laugh? It makes the ref look dumb for not continuing the count and makes Dragon Lee look dumb for running past the pin to take the risk that the referee will buy into his shenanigans rather than doing the sure thing and just breaking up the pin. YOUR CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH DOES NOT NEED A LAUGH IN IT!
Props to Riccaboni for at least realizing how dumb this was and blaming it on the referee being a rookie rather than laughing and going along with it like Caprice did, which makes it feel like this is all a performance, but even Ian’s method opens us up to the question of why a rookie referee is officiating such a huge match. That makes ROH look dumb to use him when the Senior Referee is available… or at the very least, it will make ROH look dumb the next time Joe Mandak referees a title match.
This was a decent eight-and-a-half-minute four-way. It did a decent job of keeping the LifeBlood vs. VE (and specifically Flip Gordon) issue fresh in our minds and the tease of Dragon Lee vs. Taylor does have me interested, but on the whole this felt like the sort of match you book to build to the two singles matches on the big show rather than the kind of match you book on the big show itself.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Briscoes(c) vs. LifeBlood (Mark Haskins & Bandido)- 7.25/10
And of course they sent out the same referee who just ha a moronic screw-up in the previous match. This was a great match, but still felt disappointing considering the absurd amount of talent involved.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- EXTREMELY disheartening
F*cking Bully Ray is back and he beats up LifeBlood. Tracy Williams came out to make the save but Flip Gordon attacked him from behind, then left. Bully beat up LifeBlood some more, including dragging Mark Haskins in front of Vicky’s seat and daring her to do something about it. She slapped him, so he powerbombed Mark through a table. When Vicky jumped the guardrail to check on him, he had security eject her from ringside. They spent WAY too much time, on a f*cking PPV a man NO ONE WANTS TO SEE. LifeBlood is involved in a feud with Villain Enterprises that people actually care about and has given us great matches every time… but now it’s going to have to share time with f*cking Bully Ray. Yes, I realize that Bully and Flip teaming with each other could make an interesting story, but that is for no more than one match, and certainly doesn’t outweigh the negatives of Bully Ray stinking up the product as he has done since the moment he set foot in this company two and a half years ago.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Matt Taven(c) vs. Rush- 7.75/10
They fought on the outside forever without getting counted out, and Rush throwing the guardrail at Taven absolutely should have been a DQ. Other than those two issues, they did a great job of building a world title match around each guy trying to hit his big move, and a finishing sequence that was set up beautifully.


This was a great PPV outing for ROH, with most of the matches coming through and a very good number of clean finishes. There were definitely some decisions made that I found frustrating for several reasons (mostly involving the use of Bully Ray girlfriend’s BFF), but the good far outweighed the bad, and the Lethal vs. Gresham match is one I will remember for a very long time. Definitely give this show a look if you’ve got the time.

[supersonic]

https://twitter.com/trevordame/status/1 ... 70242?s=21

You guys laughed at ROH but you can't have a crowd turn on your show if you don't have a crowd. You can't get bad publicity if you get no publicity. Vince is playing checkers, my man Joe Koff is playing chess.

[BurningHammer]

I will happily take what ROH gave me over what the WWE did last night.

[Wilson]

https://twitter.com/trevordame/status/1 ... 70242?s=21

You guys laughed at ROH but you can't have a crowd turn on your show if you don't have a crowd. You can't get bad publicity if you get no publicity. Vince is playing checkers, my man Joe Koff is playing chess.

It's baffling how much ROH and WWE are making it easy to for AEW to swoop in and take their audience from them.

Also, I think I might be the person highest on the Rush/Taven match. Their performances seemed like clear departures from most of their other matches this year, and it felt like one of the biggest fights this year. The crowd was kind of okay in Sam's Town, but with a better one I think it would have been a match that would hang with the street fights from 2000s ROH. Taven has been a part of two or three of my favorite singles matches this year in the company.

[Montana]

I completely agree about WWE/ROH just making it easy for AEW. I'm pretty sure Vince is doing lots of external strategies, and spending lots of money, to stay ahead in the race. Meanwhile, almost completely ignoring the major flaws with their programming. ROH on the other hand, is like the opposite, feels like Ian is the only non-wrestler who puts in effort for the company. The booking and management seem to be in cruise control still.

As for Rush/Taven, i loved the match, and probably one of my favorite matches this year. Had the big fight feel, and felt like both guys brought their A-Game.

[BurningHammer]

ROH Death Before Dishonor XVII (9/27/2019)- Las Vegas, NV



JEFF COBB vs. BRODY KING- 5.75/10
This one didn’t really click with me. It was one of those matches where it felt like they were trying to earn snowflakes rather than tell a story. It was a disconnected bunch of spots with an emphasis on big guys flips and strong-style stuff. That fighting spirit German Suplexes right before the finish were particularly egregious.

BRIAN ZANE INTERVIEWS THE BOUNCERS- Didn’t like it. “We’re all going to the ER tonight” is nowhere near as good a message as “we’re going to kick your asses but not get our asses kicked by you.”

QUINN MCKAY INTERVIEWS DALTON CASTLE- very bad
Quinn McKay has nowhere near enough charisma to play the “hostess” role they stuck her in here, trying to hype up the main event before interviewing Dalton. Her attempt to interview Dalton was atrocious, as she wound up as his awkward sidekick while both of them did nothing for several minutes. Mercifully, Joe Hendry came out to interrupt them. Dalton has a thing under a cover, which Hendry prompts him to reveal. It’s a mimosa.
Hendry is wearing a shirt that says “2nd Best Dalton Castle” on it. He says he still believes in their tag team (they have teamed twice and are 1-1). Hendry says they’re going to do karaoke. He has a song about how he is better than Dalton and making fun of Dalton. Dalton threw his drink on him and left. Hendry then beat up the Boys. As a TV segment this might have been passable, but putting THIS on the pre-show to get people to buy the PPV was terrible. At least when AEW does something extremely dumb on the pre-show it’s clear that there is some sort of inside joke there. This just came across as a boring pro wrestling segment. To compare with AEW, AEW’s leave you feeling that they can do good pro wrestling for their little inside group, while this was a segment that made you think that ROH has no idea how to do an entertaining pro wrestling segment.

FINAL BATTLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Marty Scurll vs. Colt Cabana- 7/10
A solid beginning to this tournament. A key to this match was structuring it so that, just for a moment or two, I though there was a snowball’s chance in hell of Colt winning, and they managed to do that towards the end.

FINAL BATTLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: PCO vs. Kenny King (w/Amy Rose and his new entourage)- 4.25/10
Out of nowhere, this was made a no DQs match. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have faith in PCO to deliver in anything that isn’t a gimmick match singles match then just don’t book him in them. Either that or take the time to come up with a reason for these matches to be no DQs matches.
This “PCO short-circuits” spot really kills his gimmick for me, as it takes a guy who is supposed to be a sort of scary monster with freaky recuperative powers and turns him into a joke in the middle of a match, just for the sake of doing this goofy spot (and a spot where this poor old man dives out of the ring and onto the floor while adding absolutely nothing to the match).
Anyway, they used some weapons on each other and took bumps to the floor. Kenny King almost died when an attempted Arabian Powerbomb resulted in PCO’s full bodyweight nearly landing on Kenny’s head. The finish was Kenny King douse PCO with water. Then PCO reversed whatever Kenny tried to do a went for a chokeslam but Amy Rose shocked PCO with a cattle-prod, which PCO no-sold and beat Kenny King with a chokeslam, then kept choking him, because I am supposed to believe that PCO is a robot or something.
And don’t try to tell me “he’s the French-Canadian Frakenstein!” because that doesn’t make any sense here. Electricity was used to provide the required immense amount of power to bring the monster to life, but the monster does not run on electricity like a f*cking Prius! This whole thing was moronic, and resulted in a match where the babyface got cut off because he “short-circuited” and jumped out the wrong side of the ring, making him look like an idiot and making the heel look lucky, and then the babyface won because the heel’s plan accidentally made the babyface stronger, so no one comes out of this looking good. This whole “Frankenstein” sh*t has been taken WAY too literally, in exactly the sort of way that WWE ruins things like King of the Ring by taking the “king” part too literally.

ROH WOMEN OF HONOR WORLD TITLE MATCH: Kelly Klein(c) vs. Angelina Love (w/Mandy Leon)- 4/10
They had a match that was back and forth in a way that felt like it got in the way of the intended story of Mandy’s attempts to interfere rather than enhancing it. Eventually Angelina won, so now we’ve got yet another f*ck finish heel stable with a top title, and to make things worse, they took the title off of the top female worker in the company to put in on a third-rate rehash of a TNA gimmick from ten years ago.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it
The Allure go to humiliate Kelly Klein by drawing on her face with eye-liner or whatever that was, but then the lights go out for a long time and when they come on again, Maria Manic has teleported into the ring because G-d forbid she actually run out to the ring like a normal person. But no. We’ve got to give her magical powers that apparently only work during post-match segments.
She pulls Angelina off of Kelly and puts her in the Torture Rack. Security come down to break it up and she beats the crap out of them. It’s clear (especially with Ian’s commentary) that they’re trying to get her over a woman who is tougher than average because she can beat up men, but this fails for me for two reasons. First, they’re f*cking security guards. EVERYONE on a wrestling show can beat up security guards. Secondly, these guys are just doing their jobs, and there is no blood feud here so her spending so much time beating the security guards up afterwards makes her look like a jerk after a while. Anyway, your next title program is going to be a sad rehash of a gimmick that worked ten years ago against a woman whose entire personality is “me are strong silent monster,” and all we know about her is that she magically teleports. Oh goody.

JAY LETHAL vs. JONATHAN GRESHAM- 8.5/10
An absolute MASTERPIECE of storytelling. The limb-work, the selling, the emotion, the integration of the themes of storyline into the match… this was absolutely beautiful, and Ian and Caprice’s commentary enhanced the story even more. This is one of those matches was only about a 7.75/10 in terms of the action, but the story was 10/10. Make sure you watch this match!

BAR ROOM BRAWL: The Bouncers vs. Vinny Marseglia & Silas Young- 7.5/10
They had an excellent video package before this match to bring us up to speed on why this match was happening. This was important because this way, when the Beer City Bruiser attacked Vinny Marseglia from behind during Vinny’s entrance, I had no problem with it even though the Bouncers are the babyfaces, because Vinny has been doing that to them all feud.
Silas’ protégé Josh Woods was on commentary, and he does not have a voice cut out for promos. He also looked extremely nervous the few times the camera cut to him. It turns out that this nervousness was part of the storyline, though, as he was clearly not a fan of all of these weapons, didn’t think Silas needed to resort to them to win, and even more so was not comfortable with Silas allying himself with this psychopath Vinny Marseglia… and this match sure proved was a sick son of a bitch Vinny Marseglia is.
This match is not for the squeamish. There was a lot of blood, a lot of weapon use and one absolutely sickening spot that I’m not going to spoil, but I will note that as sickening as I found the spot, I also couldn’t help but admire the artistic notion behind it. In addition to the violence they did an excellent job of incorporating elements from the storyline into the match, and had the crowd solidly behind the babyfaces. A GREAT match. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but between this match and the promo he cut in the video package, I’m actually starting to see value in Vinny Marseglia.

ROH WORLD TV TITLE MATCH: Shane Taylor(c) vs. Tracy Williams vs. Flip Gordon vs. Dragon Lee- 6.25/10
P.J. Black provided guest commentary for this match. Shane Taylor came out with an entourage. He has also apparently “bought out his own contract” and is now fighting under the banner of “Shane Taylor Promotions” because he wasn’t happy with the promotion (or rather the lack thereof) that ROH was giving him.
Can we PLEASE not do stupid sh*t like the spot where the Dragon Lee runs PAST the pin in order to distract the ref so the ref stops counting and then break up the pin with a kick for a laugh? It makes the ref look dumb for not continuing the count and makes Dragon Lee look dumb for running past the pin to take the risk that the referee will buy into his shenanigans rather than doing the sure thing and just breaking up the pin. YOUR CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH DOES NOT NEED A LAUGH IN IT!
Props to Riccaboni for at least realizing how dumb this was and blaming it on the referee being a rookie rather than laughing and going along with it like Caprice did, which makes it feel like this is all a performance, but even Ian’s method opens us up to the question of why a rookie referee is officiating such a huge match. That makes ROH look dumb to use him when the Senior Referee is available… or at the very least, it will make ROH look dumb the next time Joe Mandak referees a title match.
This was a decent eight-and-a-half-minute four-way. It did a decent job of keeping the LifeBlood vs. VE (and specifically Flip Gordon) issue fresh in our minds and the tease of Dragon Lee vs. Taylor does have me interested, but on the whole this felt like the sort of match you book to build to the two singles matches on the big show rather than the kind of match you book on the big show itself.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Briscoes(c) vs. LifeBlood (Mark Haskins & Bandido)- 7.25/10
And of course they sent out the same referee who just ha a moronic screw-up in the previous match. This was a great match, but still felt disappointing considering the absurd amount of talent involved.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- EXTREMELY disheartening
F*cking Bully Ray is back and he beats up LifeBlood. Tracy Williams came out to make the save but Flip Gordon attacked him from behind, then left. Bully beat up LifeBlood some more, including dragging Mark Haskins in front of Vicky’s seat and daring her to do something about it. She slapped him, so he powerbombed Mark through a table. When Vicky jumped the guardrail to check on him, he had security eject her from ringside. They spent WAY too much time, on a f*cking PPV a man NO ONE WANTS TO SEE. LifeBlood is involved in a feud with Villain Enterprises that people actually care about and has given us great matches every time… but now it’s going to have to share time with f*cking Bully Ray. Yes, I realize that Bully and Flip teaming with each other could make an interesting story, but that is for no more than one match, and certainly doesn’t outweigh the negatives of Bully Ray stinking up the product as he has done since the moment he set foot in this company two and a half years ago.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Matt Taven(c) vs. Rush- 7.75/10
They fought on the outside forever without getting counted out, and Rush throwing the guardrail at Taven absolutely should have been a DQ. Other than those two issues, they did a great job of building a world title match around each guy trying to hit his big move, and a finishing sequence that was set up beautifully.


This was a great PPV outing for ROH, with most of the matches coming through and a very good number of clean finishes. There were definitely some decisions made that I found frustrating for several reasons (mostly involving the use of Bully Ray girlfriend’s BFF), but the good far outweighed the bad, and the Lethal vs. Gresham match is one I will remember for a very long time. Definitely give this show a look if you’ve got the time.

I’ve been meaning to ask Red, how have you felt overall about ROH this year from an in ring perspective?. I’ve felt on average it’s been underrated.

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Death Before Dishonor XVII (9/27/2019)- Las Vegas, NV



JEFF COBB vs. BRODY KING- 5.75/10
This one didn’t really click with me. It was one of those matches where it felt like they were trying to earn snowflakes rather than tell a story. It was a disconnected bunch of spots with an emphasis on big guys flips and strong-style stuff. That fighting spirit German Suplexes right before the finish were particularly egregious.

BRIAN ZANE INTERVIEWS THE BOUNCERS- Didn’t like it. “We’re all going to the ER tonight” is nowhere near as good a message as “we’re going to kick your asses but not get our asses kicked by you.”

QUINN MCKAY INTERVIEWS DALTON CASTLE- very bad
Quinn McKay has nowhere near enough charisma to play the “hostess” role they stuck her in here, trying to hype up the main event before interviewing Dalton. Her attempt to interview Dalton was atrocious, as she wound up as his awkward sidekick while both of them did nothing for several minutes. Mercifully, Joe Hendry came out to interrupt them. Dalton has a thing under a cover, which Hendry prompts him to reveal. It’s a mimosa.
Hendry is wearing a shirt that says “2nd Best Dalton Castle” on it. He says he still believes in their tag team (they have teamed twice and are 1-1). Hendry says they’re going to do karaoke. He has a song about how he is better than Dalton and making fun of Dalton. Dalton threw his drink on him and left. Hendry then beat up the Boys. As a TV segment this might have been passable, but putting THIS on the pre-show to get people to buy the PPV was terrible. At least when AEW does something extremely dumb on the pre-show it’s clear that there is some sort of inside joke there. This just came across as a boring pro wrestling segment. To compare with AEW, AEW’s leave you feeling that they can do good pro wrestling for their little inside group, while this was a segment that made you think that ROH has no idea how to do an entertaining pro wrestling segment.

FINAL BATTLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Marty Scurll vs. Colt Cabana- 7/10
A solid beginning to this tournament. A key to this match was structuring it so that, just for a moment or two, I though there was a snowball’s chance in hell of Colt winning, and they managed to do that towards the end.

FINAL BATTLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: PCO vs. Kenny King (w/Amy Rose and his new entourage)- 4.25/10
Out of nowhere, this was made a no DQs match. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have faith in PCO to deliver in anything that isn’t a gimmick match singles match then just don’t book him in them. Either that or take the time to come up with a reason for these matches to be no DQs matches.
This “PCO short-circuits” spot really kills his gimmick for me, as it takes a guy who is supposed to be a sort of scary monster with freaky recuperative powers and turns him into a joke in the middle of a match, just for the sake of doing this goofy spot (and a spot where this poor old man dives out of the ring and onto the floor while adding absolutely nothing to the match).
Anyway, they used some weapons on each other and took bumps to the floor. Kenny King almost died when an attempted Arabian Powerbomb resulted in PCO’s full bodyweight nearly landing on Kenny’s head. The finish was Kenny King douse PCO with water. Then PCO reversed whatever Kenny tried to do a went for a chokeslam but Amy Rose shocked PCO with a cattle-prod, which PCO no-sold and beat Kenny King with a chokeslam, then kept choking him, because I am supposed to believe that PCO is a robot or something.
And don’t try to tell me “he’s the French-Canadian Frakenstein!” because that doesn’t make any sense here. Electricity was used to provide the required immense amount of power to bring the monster to life, but the monster does not run on electricity like a f*cking Prius! This whole thing was moronic, and resulted in a match where the babyface got cut off because he “short-circuited” and jumped out the wrong side of the ring, making him look like an idiot and making the heel look lucky, and then the babyface won because the heel’s plan accidentally made the babyface stronger, so no one comes out of this looking good. This whole “Frankenstein” sh*t has been taken WAY too literally, in exactly the sort of way that WWE ruins things like King of the Ring by taking the “king” part too literally.

ROH WOMEN OF HONOR WORLD TITLE MATCH: Kelly Klein(c) vs. Angelina Love (w/Mandy Leon)- 4/10
They had a match that was back and forth in a way that felt like it got in the way of the intended story of Mandy’s attempts to interfere rather than enhancing it. Eventually Angelina won, so now we’ve got yet another f*ck finish heel stable with a top title, and to make things worse, they took the title off of the top female worker in the company to put in on a third-rate rehash of a TNA gimmick from ten years ago.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it
The Allure go to humiliate Kelly Klein by drawing on her face with eye-liner or whatever that was, but then the lights go out for a long time and when they come on again, Maria Manic has teleported into the ring because G-d forbid she actually run out to the ring like a normal person. But no. We’ve got to give her magical powers that apparently only work during post-match segments.
She pulls Angelina off of Kelly and puts her in the Torture Rack. Security come down to break it up and she beats the crap out of them. It’s clear (especially with Ian’s commentary) that they’re trying to get her over a woman who is tougher than average because she can beat up men, but this fails for me for two reasons. First, they’re f*cking security guards. EVERYONE on a wrestling show can beat up security guards. Secondly, these guys are just doing their jobs, and there is no blood feud here so her spending so much time beating the security guards up afterwards makes her look like a jerk after a while. Anyway, your next title program is going to be a sad rehash of a gimmick that worked ten years ago against a woman whose entire personality is “me are strong silent monster,” and all we know about her is that she magically teleports. Oh goody.

JAY LETHAL vs. JONATHAN GRESHAM- 8.5/10
An absolute MASTERPIECE of storytelling. The limb-work, the selling, the emotion, the integration of the themes of storyline into the match… this was absolutely beautiful, and Ian and Caprice’s commentary enhanced the story even more. This is one of those matches was only about a 7.75/10 in terms of the action, but the story was 10/10. Make sure you watch this match!

BAR ROOM BRAWL: The Bouncers vs. Vinny Marseglia & Silas Young- 7.5/10
They had an excellent video package before this match to bring us up to speed on why this match was happening. This was important because this way, when the Beer City Bruiser attacked Vinny Marseglia from behind during Vinny’s entrance, I had no problem with it even though the Bouncers are the babyfaces, because Vinny has been doing that to them all feud.
Silas’ protégé Josh Woods was on commentary, and he does not have a voice cut out for promos. He also looked extremely nervous the few times the camera cut to him. It turns out that this nervousness was part of the storyline, though, as he was clearly not a fan of all of these weapons, didn’t think Silas needed to resort to them to win, and even more so was not comfortable with Silas allying himself with this psychopath Vinny Marseglia… and this match sure proved was a sick son of a bitch Vinny Marseglia is.
This match is not for the squeamish. There was a lot of blood, a lot of weapon use and one absolutely sickening spot that I’m not going to spoil, but I will note that as sickening as I found the spot, I also couldn’t help but admire the artistic notion behind it. In addition to the violence they did an excellent job of incorporating elements from the storyline into the match, and had the crowd solidly behind the babyfaces. A GREAT match. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but between this match and the promo he cut in the video package, I’m actually starting to see value in Vinny Marseglia.

ROH WORLD TV TITLE MATCH: Shane Taylor(c) vs. Tracy Williams vs. Flip Gordon vs. Dragon Lee- 6.25/10
P.J. Black provided guest commentary for this match. Shane Taylor came out with an entourage. He has also apparently “bought out his own contract” and is now fighting under the banner of “Shane Taylor Promotions” because he wasn’t happy with the promotion (or rather the lack thereof) that ROH was giving him.
Can we PLEASE not do stupid sh*t like the spot where the Dragon Lee runs PAST the pin in order to distract the ref so the ref stops counting and then break up the pin with a kick for a laugh? It makes the ref look dumb for not continuing the count and makes Dragon Lee look dumb for running past the pin to take the risk that the referee will buy into his shenanigans rather than doing the sure thing and just breaking up the pin. YOUR CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH DOES NOT NEED A LAUGH IN IT!
Props to Riccaboni for at least realizing how dumb this was and blaming it on the referee being a rookie rather than laughing and going along with it like Caprice did, which makes it feel like this is all a performance, but even Ian’s method opens us up to the question of why a rookie referee is officiating such a huge match. That makes ROH look dumb to use him when the Senior Referee is available… or at the very least, it will make ROH look dumb the next time Joe Mandak referees a title match.
This was a decent eight-and-a-half-minute four-way. It did a decent job of keeping the LifeBlood vs. VE (and specifically Flip Gordon) issue fresh in our minds and the tease of Dragon Lee vs. Taylor does have me interested, but on the whole this felt like the sort of match you book to build to the two singles matches on the big show rather than the kind of match you book on the big show itself.

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Briscoes(c) vs. LifeBlood (Mark Haskins & Bandido)- 7.25/10
And of course they sent out the same referee who just ha a moronic screw-up in the previous match. This was a great match, but still felt disappointing considering the absurd amount of talent involved.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- EXTREMELY disheartening
F*cking Bully Ray is back and he beats up LifeBlood. Tracy Williams came out to make the save but Flip Gordon attacked him from behind, then left. Bully beat up LifeBlood some more, including dragging Mark Haskins in front of Vicky’s seat and daring her to do something about it. She slapped him, so he powerbombed Mark through a table. When Vicky jumped the guardrail to check on him, he had security eject her from ringside. They spent WAY too much time, on a f*cking PPV a man NO ONE WANTS TO SEE. LifeBlood is involved in a feud with Villain Enterprises that people actually care about and has given us great matches every time… but now it’s going to have to share time with f*cking Bully Ray. Yes, I realize that Bully and Flip teaming with each other could make an interesting story, but that is for no more than one match, and certainly doesn’t outweigh the negatives of Bully Ray stinking up the product as he has done since the moment he set foot in this company two and a half years ago.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Matt Taven(c) vs. Rush- 7.75/10
They fought on the outside forever without getting counted out, and Rush throwing the guardrail at Taven absolutely should have been a DQ. Other than those two issues, they did a great job of building a world title match around each guy trying to hit his big move, and a finishing sequence that was set up beautifully.


This was a great PPV outing for ROH, with most of the matches coming through and a very good number of clean finishes. There were definitely some decisions made that I found frustrating for several reasons (mostly involving the use of Bully Ray girlfriend’s BFF), but the good far outweighed the bad, and the Lethal vs. Gresham match is one I will remember for a very long time. Definitely give this show a look if you’ve got the time.

I’ve been meaning to ask Red, how have you felt overall about ROH this year from an in ring perspective?. I’ve felt on average it’s been underrated.

Not sure as I'm quite behind and haven't seen 90% of the TV, but I think it's been better than the past two or three years for sure.

[BurningHammer]

Not sure as I'm quite behind and haven't seen 90% of the TV, but I think it's been better than the past two or three years for sure.

Yeah apart from maybe one month it’s been pretty consistent quality wise all the way through, especially recently people have really stepped it up.