ROH Death Before Dishonor 2023 Preview & Predictions

This Friday it's the most afterthoughtiest Ring of Honor PPV in history, Death Before Dishonor 2023!

I kid, I kid.  Tony Khan has a lot on his plate right now, from back-to-back PPV-level shows in August to last night's Blood and Guts Dynamite (which I got to see in person and it was AWESOME), but this ROH show has been rather haphazardly tossed together, thanks partly due to one guy being unavailable and another being injured.  The original main event was to be Claudio Castagnoli defending the ROH Title against Eddie Kingston but with Eddie being in Japan for the G1 Climax that was out.  Thus Mark Briscoe was slated to get the shot instead and he got hurt.  So now it's Claudio vs. Pac, which might actually be a better match than either of the other two.  There are also five other title matches and a couple fun undercard bouts.  Let's get into it.

ROH TV Championship: Samoa Joe vs. Dalton Castle

Yeah, this one doesn't blow my skirt up as they say.  Castle won a four-man Eliminator tournament to get this shot but he's never really been my cup of tea as wrestlers go.  He's amusing and all, but hard to take seriously as a title contender.  I imagine Joe gets a pretty one-sided win here.

Pick: Joe retains

ROH Pure Championship: Katsuyori Shibata vs. Daniel Garcia

This should be a fine contest, both are legit grapplers.  Garcia's title shot comes from a tag match on Dynamite where Garcia stole a pin over Shibata.  The title has jumped around pretty consistently over the last year, with each champion only getting 3-4 months with it.  I could see that trend continuing I guess.  Maybe Shibata regains it in December?

Pick: I'll go with Garcia

ROH War of The Worlds 2017

The biggest show of this year's War of the Worlds tour is in the book. The third annual tour for New Japan stars in North America, and each of the four cards in the past week easily looked  to be Pay-Per-View caliber. Upon first glances at the four final cards, it looked to me that the New York City show was looking to be the least stacked, the whole show felt very thrown together last minute and banking on New Japan stardom to sell (which it id, but that's irrelevant in my argument). After the show was over, and glad that I shielded myself from spoilers, I found myself torn where the show was on the spectrum. Good? Great? Average? Maybe if I go through each match, I'll be able to piece the answer together easier.

Silas Young vs. Bobby Fish vs. Kushida vs. Dalton Castle
This was a very good opening match. It was ROH's trademark insanity to get the crowd up and ready to go for the rest of the show. However, several problems I have with the show overall can be found in this match. Look at the talent involved in this match; New Japan's Junior Ace, and a trio of Ring of Honor's biggest stars who hold at least a dozen World and Television title matches between them (Fish himself a former Television Champion). Putting these four in an opening, nothing match is very confusing move. Another glaring problem with this show was the length of the matches.Nine matches on the card, the longest of the matches went under fourteen minutes. I would have liked less, longer matches between the talent we had on this show. The way the event went, many of the matches felt both rushed to get to the end, while also coming off as really empty for content. Ultimately, Dalton Castle would win a short, but fast paced match, setting an unfortunate one for the night.