Alright, we’re on to the next Ring of Honor show after Unscripted. This is Glory By Honor I, held on October 5th, 2002 at the Murphy Recreation Center. As a reminder of who the champions are, all the belts are held by The Prophecy, with Christopher Daniels & Donovan Morgan winning the ROH World Tag Team titles in that tournament, and Xavier beating Low Ki for the ROH World Title. Our hosts are Jeff Gorman and Chris Levi, with Steve Corino having left the announce booth as part of his (concluding) feud with Rudy Boy Gonzalez. Continue reading →

A little background coming in:

At the Four-Way Iron Man match for the Ring of Honor title (I still need to get that event, by the way), Low Ki came out with the win, and became the Ring of Honor World Champion. Coming into Unscripted I believe he’s gotten a few title defenses under his belt, before facing Xavier (who made it into the quarter-finals at Road To The Title before getting beat by Red).

However, the start of the show is going to be a tournament to crown the first ROH Tag Team Champions – and unlike Road To The Title, we’re actually going to crown the champions at this show!

On the one hand, it’s another tournament show, and as I’ve said before, Tournaments tend to be meh, just because of the nature of the format.

However, since this is a Tag Team tournament, the tag team part may work in the tournament’s favor. I’ll be keeping an eye on this as I watch the event. Continue reading →

Previously On Ring Of Honor…

At Round Robin Showndow: Low-Ki, American Dragon and Christopher Daniels, throughout the night, had their round-robin tournament. Daniels made Dragon tap, but tapped to Low-Ki, who in turn tapped to Dragon, leading Daniels to cut a promo saying that this settled nothing, and refused to wrestle unless the ROH Title is on the line (which is rather tricky since at the moment there wasn’t an ROH title). Additionally, Da Hit Squad squashed Prince Nana and “Towel Boy” Eric Tuttle, with the Christopher Street Connection running in for “the save” ultimately leading to a beat-down on Simply Luscious… again. Spanky gets a win over Jay Briscoe and the difficulties between Divine Storm (Chris Divine & Quiet Storm), The SAT (Joel & Jose Maximo) and Amazing Red and Brian XL after the Ultimate Elimination match at the last show lead to a 3-way tag between the 3 this time (in what is apparently another mindless spot-fest. ).

At A Night of Appreciation (for Eddie Guerrero): We learned the guy that HC Loc was talking to on the phone was fellow ECW Alum Tony DaVito. Da Hit Squad squashes the CSC again (with Luscious getting beat-down again). Jay Briscoe finally gets a win over ECW alum Tony Mamaluke. James Maritato debuts and beats Scoot Andrews and Xavier. AJ Styles debuts and gets beat by Low Ki. Loc and DaVito debut as the carnage crew and squash a couple of jobbers. Paul London makes his debut during the Texas Wrestling Acadamy gauntlet match between American Dragon, Spanky, Michael Shane, Paul London, and John Hope – which Spanky wins. For the main event, Eddie and Amazing Red beat the SAT – and after the match we get a quick Squash between Eddie and Brian XL (who Eddie nicknames Little Bow Wow), after Brian disrespects Eddie.

This leads us to ROH: Road To The Title – a tournament to determine who has a shot at being ROH Heavyweight Champion at the following event. Continue reading →

ROH: The Era of Honor Begins

Background:
ECW was dead to begin with. Prior to its demise, one of its main distributors for tapes of its events was RF Video, run by Rob Feinstein, who had made a fair amount of cash distributing video of events of independent wrestling promotions, including ECW (which became their biggest seller). To boost revenues following , Feinstein started a new promotion to fill the gap left by ECW’s demise, using both ECW alumni who were not currently under exclusive contract with WWE (or other promotions) and young candidates from wrestling schools like Shawn Michaels’ Texas Wrestling Acadamy. As a change from the ECW style, and to differentiate itself from the WWE, and from promotions local to South Philadelphia which had co-opted the ECW style (CZW, XPW*) central to the concept of Ring of Honor was the “Code of Honor” rules which, Kayfabe-wise, all wrestlers were supposed to follow, be they faces or heels.

Now, not all wrestlers did this, and at least one wrestler made it his gimmick not to follow it. However, this was ROH’s big thing at first, they run it down in the event, so I might as well get it out of the way now before I start the summary.

The Code of Honor (as of Era of Honor Begins)

1. You must shake hands before and after every match.
2. No outside interference — no interfering in others’ matches or having others interfere on your behalf.
3. No sneak attacks
4. No harming the officials.
5. Do not get yourself disqualified

Now that I got that out of the way, time for… The Event Continue reading →