ROH Glory By Honor night 1 and 2

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Glory By Honor 2021: Night 1 (8/20/2021)- Philadelphia, PA


SILAS YOUNG PROMO- This was a good heel promo, but why on Earth would you send a heel out to insult the fans as the first thing you do on a live show? I get trying to get them to cheer Rey Horus to stick it to Silas, but I would hope that the fans would be primed to cheer on their own after such a long absence of live ROH. Maybe they reacted poorly to the dark match?

REY HORUS vs. SILAS YOUNG- 6.5/10
Ian theorized that a win here over #3-ranked Rey Horus would immediately put Silas Young in the top five of the TV Title contendership rankings, so we’ve got some stakes here (you need to be in the top three to be able to challenge for the title, and in addition to bringing Silas closer to- if not putting him in- that spot, a loss would certainly drop Rey Horus out of it).
Silas won a good action opener after turning Rey Horus’ mask sideways to blind him. They had very good babyface/heel dynamics throughout.

SIX-MAN MAYHEM IN WHICH THE WINNER IS GUARANTEED A TOP-FIVE SPOT IN THE ROH WORLD TITLE CONTENDERSHIP RANKINGS: Mike Bennett vs. P.J. Black vs. Demonic Flamita vs. Dak Draper vs. Eli Isom vs. Danhausen-6.75/10
Dalton Castle and the Boys came through the crowd after everyone had made their entrance and got in the ring to cheer for Draper. Eli Isom told them to leave. Dorkhausen was also cheering for Draper. I wish someone would tell Dorkhausen to leave. Dalton went to the commentary booth. The Boys all followed behind him in a line, and are also now being called “chicks” to play in with the Dalton’s bird theme. Ian proceeded to ask Dalton about goofy sh*t he has been doing around the area like going to a shrimp-eating festival and ringing the “decoy Liberty Bell.” How about instead of this dumb crap, you call the action in the ring?
Lots of the usual action here, although I liked that they didn’t go all out with the dives and instead focused on individual match-ups. It made the big Tower of Doom spot feel a lot bigger than it would have if we’d already seen people go flying into each other a bunch of times. They had some good focus on the Isom vs. Draper match-up, which has turned into a rivalry in whatever this story is with Dalton Castle. Danhausen was shockingly inoffensive during this match, with only one spot that I thought was really stupid (the spot where he thought he won just because he rolled into the ring when everyone else was down, then tried to put a “curse” on Todd Sinclair. Also, you’d think that trying to put a curse on a referee would constitute harming a referee and result in disciplinary action by ROH). Flamita got the win, pinning Out-hausen. He makes sense as an upcoming challenger for Bandido, so this was a good step to get him there.

THE ALLURE vs. VITA VONSTARR & MAX THE IMPALER (w/Amy Rose)- 5.75/10
Chelsea Green joined Ian and Caprice on commentary for this match. This was basic tag team stuff with the basic psychology (although it was harder to get invested than usual because the person playing the “babyface” in peril was actually a heel). Vita eventually tagged in Max, who ran wild on Mandy. Angelina came at them from behind so they decided to chase her away. Thankfully they left the ring right by Vita so Vita could tag in and get the pin on Mandy instead of her team losing by count-out because her partner decided to chase after the non-legal opponent.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- hated it
Max came back. Meanwhile, Vita choked the already-defeated Mandy out with a chain. Amy Rose then had Max put Mandy through a table. Mandy is a jerk, so I don’t feel too bad for her, but it also felt completely unnecessary. This felt like something that happened because the booker wanted to have a table bump rather than something that happened for any natural reason. The announcers said that Max had some reason to want revenge on the Allure, but if that’s the case, then why not have them get it by pinning Mandy here and then eliminating Angelina from the women’s title tournament when they meet in the next round? Why is Vita involved and why do it in a way that feels like overkill?

EC III vs. BRIAN JOHNSON- 6.5/10
The crowd is completely behind Johnson because apparently he’s from Philly. So what? My neighbor and I are from the same down, but if the dude is a jerk, I’m not going to like him.
EC III won via submission, working over Johnson’s hand. Johnson wrestled as the babyface here. He was still his loud and obnoxious self, but he didn’t do anything that would make it awkward if the fans kept cheering him (compare to Britt Baker in AEW, who is a heel, then cut a complete and total babyface promo in her home town before wrestling the match like a total heel)… until the end when he used a low blow. WHY do people do this?! And especially in Ring of Honor! You can just not cheat for one night! And even worse, after Ethan kicked out of the roll-up that followed the low blow, he jumped right back up and took control again. Just cut that stupid low blow out and this would have been much better!
To be fair, Ethan’s gimmick being what it is, it is possible that they assumed the fans would even cheer if Johnson cheated and wanted that to happen so Ethan could come to some sort of conclusion about honor not being real (at least among the fans), and if that turns out to be the direction that this goes, I will withdraw my criticism. Until then, however, the criticism stands.

MARK BRISCOE vs. BATEMAN (w/Dutch)- 5.5/10
This was supposed to be a tag match with the Righteous facing the Briscoes but “due to COVID protocols” it became a singles match, which I assume means that Jay has to quarantine due to a possible COVID exposure. Mark won clean but got jumped afterwards. Mike Bennett chased the heels off with a chair.

ROH PURE TITLE MATCH: Jonathan Gresham(c) vs. Rhett Titus- 6.5/10
Josh Woods was on commentary for this match because he faces the winner at Death Before Dishonor 2021. Tracy Williams and Jay Lethal were at ringside supporting both men. Gresham won a disappointing match cleanly with a roll-up. This was a perfectly fine professional wrestling match, but that’s all it was, and that’s not okay for a title match, and especially not in ROH.

POST-MATCH STUFF- good
There was a stare-down between Gresham and Woods as Gresham went to the back, but the real news here was Gresham telling the camera that his belt was the “real ROH World Title.”

STREET FIGHT: La Faccion Ingobernable vs. VLNCE UNLTD- 7.75/10
This started out as a regular match but was thrown out and restarted two minutes in because no one wanted to follow the rules. This would be fine, except that for some reason they decided to have the person who suggested restarting it as a no DQs match be Rush instead of giving the obvious big pop line to one of the babyfaces. Stuff like this and the way the title change was handled has me worried that either Rush is strong-arming Delirious to benefit himself, or Delirious is even worse at certain things than I thought. Yes, Brody got the pop-line after that, but why give the heel a line like that at all when you could just give it to the babyface?
Ian read a Tweet from someone named “Technico Lucha Fan” claiming to love LFI. Oh yeah? Then get a new f*cking Twitter handle.
Okay… can we stop it with the f*cking Doug references during weapons matches? Please?
This was a standard weapons match, but nothing particularly cray or spectacular. They did a good job of making Brody King in particular look strong.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Shane Taylor, who had been on commentary for this match, decided to go after Kenny King, who had cost him the ROH World Title… six months ago. Better late than never, I guess. LFI intercepted him in the aisle, but the rest of Shane Taylor promotions came out to make the save.
Security came out and did a shockingly efficient job of separating them. Taylor then saw Homicide in the ring holding a ladder in a way where he could quickly throw it onto STP if he felt the need, so he started jawing with him. Shane Taylor vs. Brody King seems like a PPV match worth building to.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Bandido(c) vs. Flip Gordon- 8/10
EC III was on commentary and said a bunch of useless, empty bullsh*t. He’s apparently a heel now, having turned because… um…
Flip and Bandido had a great athletic match, which Bandido exercising some demons, by king out of everything Flip had used to beat him in the past, coming back, and the getting the win. A fine first title defense for Bandido.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
EC III came down to the ring to have a stare-down with Bandido. Brody King came out and insisted that he should be the next challenger. Ethan shoved him, starting a brawl. While they were brawling, Demonic Flamita came out and attacked Bandido from behind. Brody King (having been separated from EC III by security) pulled Bandido to safety.


This was a decent show from ROH. The wrestling certainly could have (and, because this is ROH, really should have) been better, but nothing was bad, either. I have some other thoughts about card construction, but I’m going to save them until after tomorrow night’s show, because part of it relates to the construction of the weekend as a whole.

[Big Red Machine]

ROH Glory By Honor 2021: Night 2 (8/21/2021)- Philadelphia, PA


DANHAUSEN vs. DALTON CASTLE (w/the Baby Chicks)- 1.75/10
Dak Draper was on commentary for this match. Ian questioned whether aligning himself with Dalton Castle has actually helped him. Draper insisted that it did. The angle seems to be that Dalton is lying to Draper about being busy and thus Draper isn’t getting anything out of it, but I remember at least one match where Dalton could have broken up a pin but allowed Draper to win instead, so he clearly is helping Draper. And even if he weren’t we haven’t seen any evidence- or even really any hint- of any negatives for Draper, either.
The match started out with several minutes of f*cking Danhausen making a former ROH World Champion look like an ineffective goof. Dalton needed distractions from both the Baby Chicks and Dak Draper to cut Out-hausen off. We got more dumb comedy with Dalton’s Baby Chicks pecking at Danhuasen’s dumb “teeth” gimmick like they were bird seed. They’re f*cking humans! Baby Chicks is just a name! At least we didn’t have to suffer through the indignity of Dorkhausen actually beating Dalton Castle.

PURE RULES MATCH: World Famous CB vs. Leon St. Geovanni- 4.75/10
Josh Woods did guest commentary for this match. Ken Dixon showed up on commentary to cut a promo wondering why ROH was wasting time with these guys. He’s not wrong, but he’s also a pot calling these two kettles black. Woods and Caprice made him leave. They did a great job of making this feel like a shoot, but I just don’t understand who could possibly care about Dixon, LSG, Cheeseburger, or the Bouncers at this point.
The match itself was a perfectly fine seven and a half minutes of wrestling, but does that really serve a purpose on this show? Are these of these two actually going anywhere?

BACKSTAGE, QUINN MCKAY LETS MARK BRISCOE KNOW THAT JAY WON’T BE ABLE TO COMPETE TONIGHT- terrible
Mark says he’s happy to wrestle in a handicap match but Quinn says that management has said that he must find a partner or else he won’t be booked. As luck would have it, Brian Johnson had been fuming around outside because he wasn’t booked. Quinn and Mark engaged in a horribly cartoonish exchange, prompting Mark to go outside and engage in an only slightly less cartoonish exchange with Johnson. Quinn, apparently completely unable to read the room, went up to Johnson and peppily congratulated him in getting booked. Johnson responding to this by yelling at Quinn to “GET BENT!” was the only enjoyable part of this.

ROK-C & MIRANDA ALIZE vs. CHELSEA GREEN & WILLOW- 7/10
Maria Kanellis-Bennett joined the commentary team for this match. During Willow’s entrance, Ian Riccaboni insisted that “everyone is on their feet” when that was quite clearly not true.
This only went 7:45, but I thought it was quite great, especially for that time. Just good, solid, babyface vs. babyface stuff. I have only seen Alize and Rok-C in their tournament matches and hadn’t ever seen Willow before, but I came out of this match thinking a lot more highly of all three of them than I did going in. This match made me want to see rematch that goes twice as long to see what these women can really do when given time.

ROH WORLD SIX-MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Shane Taylor Promotions(c) (w/O’Shay Edwards & Ron Hunt) vs. Incoherence- 8/10
Oh look. Yet another set of challengers for these belts who haven’t done a damn thing to earn the title shot. At least this time I think the challengers at least have a slim chance of winning (and coming in full time), but that slim chance is about 2% at most, and I honestly won’t care if they do past the fact that it means that Frightmare will be in ROH full time.
UltraMantis Black came out with Incoherence and got quite the reaction. So did STP, which surprised me a bit. Not because he’s not great, but simply because he really hasn’t gotten that sort of reaction before. UltraMantis did commentary instead of managing Incoherence. He immediately started talking about a “Soviet space satellite” or something like that.
Taylor, who, as noted, had just been getting lots of cheers, established his teams as the heels by yelling “you realize this isn’t CHIKARA, right, bitches?” If the idea is for Taylor to be a heel then that’s good, but on commentary Ian has been talking about they are fighting champions who are happy to give people opportunities and how the fans love STP and are demanding more of them, so I don’t think he’s actually supposed to be a heel.
The match was quite awesome, with Incoherence looking great against the much larger team and STP looking great for being able to keep up with the much smaller and quicker team. I would love to see more of Incoherence in ROH after this (although admittedly mostly just Frightmare and Hallowicked) and would love to see STP get booked in bigger spots against better opponents (you’d think Taylor would want some revenge on Kenny King for screwing him out of the world title, right?).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
EC III came out to stare at Taylor. Taylor yelled at him, so he went to the commentary booth instead. I have no desire to see STP face some random team EC III throws together.

DEMONIC FLAMITA & FLIP GORDON vs. MARK BRISCOE & BRIAN JOHNSON- 5.75/10
Johnson apparently has a broken hand after last night. Well no wonder he wasn’t booked. How is he even cleared?
Johnson cut a promo on EC3 on his way to the ring. Total babyface stuff, which makes some sense because EC3 cheated to beat him last night, but Johnson is so grating that making him a babyface will require walking quite the fine line.
Johnson and Briscoe didn’t quite get along at first but started to get along later on, but that unraveled when Flip pushed Mark into Johnson. They had an argument, which resulted in Johnson walking out on Mark, leaving poor Mark alone against the two heels.
Fortunately for Mark, it wasn’t long until Flip did something inexplicably stupid. He threw a chair into the ring and ordered Flamita to hit Mark with it. WHY? If you want to hurt the guy, why not do it legally now that you’re up two on one?! That way you not only get to hurt him, but you also get the professional and monetary benefits of getting the win. And if you think you haven’t hurt him enough when you finally beat him, there is nothing stopping you from hitting him with a chair AFTERWARDS.
Flamita considers doing it for a moment, but then decides not to. He and Flip get into an argument, resulting in Flamita walking out on Flip. While the ref was trying to get Flamita back, Mark Briscoe hit Flip with a Jay-Driller onto the chair. When the ref turned around, Mark pinned Flip for the win. In other words, we had the babyface cheat to win, which pissed away some potential heat you could have gotten on a heel while completely protecting the babyface, and doing so in a way that also resulted in Flamita, who is clearly being built up for an ROH World Title shot, being on the losing end of a match that he didn’t have to. This was made even worse by the fact that Flip had been 5-0 in his last five tag matches against Mark (a fact I only knew because they highlighted it before the match), so Mark beating Flip here completely squanders a potential story you could have used that fact to tell.
Oh, also it takes the guy you just turned heel and added “Demonic” in front of his name, and it makes him look like a babyface. The announcers tried to do damage control and said “he just doesn’t like being told what to do.” EC III responded to this by saying that the company needs new leadership. That’s intelligent thing he’s said since showing up in ROH.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- A bunch of people came out to check on Flip, including P.J. Black. I don’t know if there was legit concern for Flip or if this was some sort of angle.

THE FOUNDATION vs. VLNCE UNLTD- 8.25/10
It was Kenny King’s turn to do commentary. He didn’t say anything useful. These two factions had an awesome eight-man tag. Gresham and Deppen in particular shined.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it
VLNCE UNLTD attacked Lethal after the match. Rhett tried to save him so Rhett got beaten up, too. These guys are total heels now. What even makes them different from LFI? That they don’t cheat during matches, and only do heelish things after the match, I guess?
When Homicide had Lethal up for the Cop Killah, Ian noted that Homicide had done the same thing to Lethal at the 19th Anniversary Show when this faction debuted… and what has really changed since then? This story hasn’t gone anywhere. It has just been a treadmill of inconsequential brawls between the factions. Yes, there have been some title changes, but those haven’t actually meant anything to the story. They’re just the illusion of movement.
Dickinson got on the mic and cut a pretty good promo saying that they were the top faction in the company and challenging any three pure wrestlers from the past, present or future to take them on. I really hope this is leading to a Danielson appearance. And whatever happens, while I’m sure the match will be great, they’ve lost my trust that the match will actually mean anything.

LUCHA RULES MATCH: MexiSquad (Rey Horus & Bandido) vs. La Faccion Ingobernable (Dragon Lee & Rush) (w/Bestia del Ring)- 7.5/10
Silas Young is on commentary. He’s unhappy because ROH is selling Rey Horus’ shirt or some such nonsense. Why should Silas give a sh*t? This is the sort of thing that wrestlers seem to think it’s a good idea to do because they’re trying to be a heel and thus complaining about something unreasonable, but instead of making them less likable, it just makes them less believable because they come off more like a cartoon or someone playing a character whose job it is to make me dislike them.
Rush jumped the bell on Bandido. I don’t even think Dragon Lee knew this was coming, because he was facing the other way and stretching on the ropes when it happened, completely unaware that his brother had started a fight.
Rush hit Bandido with a chair on the outside, rolled him into the ring, and just started punching him in the face. Even Dragon Lee came over to get him to stop, and Rush responded by goozling Dragon Lee and threatening him. Rey Horus took this opportunity to charge at Rush, which made him look cowardly because why didn’t try to attack Rush before while Rush was beating on his friend and tag team partner?
Dragon Lee forearmed Rey Horus down, then went over to Rush and we got some shoving, but then Rush hugged him. This bit was interesting (even if the execution with Rey Horus was poor), as it made Rush look quite unbalanced, as opposed to his usual cockiness. It’s nice to see that losing a big match (and a world title) negatively affects someone’s psyche. They did another spot that played in to this later where Rush grabbed and threatened to punch Todd Sinclair) which really should at least be a fine, if not a suspension) and Dragon Lee had to make nice to Sinclair to try to convince Todd not to disqualify them.
This was a lot of big, crazy, Lucha stuff without feeling spotty, and they never lost the “this is a fight” atmosphere. Rush got the pin on Rey Horus after hitting the Bulls Horns, beginning the process of rebuilding him for his rematch against Bandido for the ROH World Title. I’m assuming Rush’s knee injury is a work. Either that or he’s absolutely insane for taking a dropkick to it while he was injured so badly he was limping.

QUINN MCKAY COMES OUT TO MAKE SOME ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR- A fine (and productive!) way too focus the audience’s attention elsewhere while you put up the cage for the main event.
LFI (Rush, Dragon Lee, and Kenny King) are getting a six-man tag team title shot. Not sure what they’ve done as a trio to earn this, but at least this time it seems possible that the belts might change hands.
Also, Bandido will defend his title in a four-way elimination match against Brody King, Demonic Flamita and EC3. I don’t love just rushing to a four-way, but I guess if you’re not running that many live events then it’s not the worst thing in the world to not build up and blow off the title chases individually.

STEEL CAGE MATCH: Matt Taven vs. Vincent- 8.5/10
Mike Bennett was on commentary for this match. If I had a nickel for every time he said “mind games” I’d be able to buy this promotion so I could book it properly.
Even before the match started, the door came off its hinges. Vincent came out with the blood-covered Matt Taven shirt from Final Battle. Vincent attacked Taven as he was trying to enter the cage so they could brawl around ringside first. You’d think that Vincent’s goons would use this as an opportunity to interfere, seeing as how the whole point of the cage was to stop them from doing so, but apparently not.
They eventually got into the cage, at which point idiot Vincent decided that he had to be the one to lock the chain on the door instead of letting one of the referees do it, thus giving Taven time to recover. Bateman eventually came out to slide Vincent some barbed wire. Taven was distracted by his presence, letting Vincent cut him off. Mike Bennett came running into get at Bateman but got his ass kicked, making him look like a chump. I have to give Bateman some major props, as each time he handled the barbed wire, he made sure to at least once sell like he had just accidentally caught his hand on it. It did a great job of putting the barbed wire over as being dangerous.
They did all of their stuff and it was bloody and very violent and they had good nearfalls and all of that stuff you’d want in a big grudge cage match (ROH’s first since 2014, and I’m really disappointed in myself for not being able to instantly recall who was in the previous one). All of Vinny’s buddies got the chance to try to help him out (which pretty much defeated the purpose of the cage). This was too much for Taven to overcome and Vincent got the win. With this win, he also earned a world title shot. Fine. He’s someone for Bandido to beat and then Taven can get his revenge and then Vinny and his useless entourage can leave.


This was a GREAT show from ROH in the ring, but the booking once again leaves me convinced that none of the booking problems in the company will be solved anytime soon. I said in my review of last night’s show that I would share some thoughts about the booking of the weekend as a whole, but a lot of that has turned into an idea for an article looking at the roster and arguing that it needs to be reduced, so I will just say for now that the number of people who are upper-midcarders or above who didn’t wrestle on both shows of this weekend is surprising, and that I did like the idea of having VLNCE UNLTD wrestle both of their rival factions in eight-man tags over the weekend. That’s the sort of little touch that I think adds a nice, artistic flair to booking. The problem, unfortunately, is what while Delirious is still able to pull stuff like that out of his pocket from time to time, his basic stuff is so uninspired that it makes that stuff look like two brightly-colored lines that are almost lost on a field of gray.