Ring of Honor Announces Four Matches for Death Before Dishonor 2026
Ring of Honor announced the first four matches for their upcoming Death Before Dishonor 2026 event, which will be filmed live from the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Friday, August 21st.
ROH announced that Nick Wayne will make his first attempt to wrestle for the Ring of Honor World Championship against Bandido. Wayne recently saw his ROH World Television title reign end on May 9th against AR Fox.
Wayne will meet Bandido, who’s been one of the most successful wrestlers in the world in 2026 so far. His reign as ROH World champion will eclipse the 500 day mark by the time he wrestles Nick Wayne in Philly, making him just the third man to reach that plateau in the belt’s illustrious history.
Not to be outdone, Athena will attempt to make her 38th defense of her Ring of Honor Women’s World Championship as she takes on STARDOM’s Hazuki. Of Athena’s 37 defences, only four have been this year, most recently on June 11th against former World of Stardom and IWGP Women’s champion, Syuri.
Her challenger, Hazuki, has had a very successful career so far, having previously held the High Speed Championship, the Goddesses of Stardom tag belts on three occasions, and the Artist of Stardom trios straps on four. Many years ago, she even tried to win Ring of Honor’s former women’s belt, the ROH Women of Honor Championship, however she lost that challenge to Sumie Sakai.
Additionally, ROH announced that Lee Moriarty will defend his ROH Pure Championship in a rematch against perhaps the greatest ROH Pure champion ever, Nigel McGuinness. These two had a classic Pure Style match back in December of 2024 for the same belt. Lee Moriarty won that first meeting. Since then, Moriarty has continued to fend off more and more challengers including Blue Panther, Xelhua twice, and Jonathan Gresham. His reign will surpass 750 days by the time his match with McGuinness takes place. For his part, McGuinness has wrestled six times since his first contest with Moriarty, sporting a 3-3 record, including a 5-4 loss to Moriarty in a non-title 30-minute iron man match.
While this match would already be highly anticipated by many fans, Nigel McGuinness added a massive stipulation. The 50-year-old said that if he loses this upcoming match, he will never compete in a Ring of Honor ring ever again.
Finally, Deonna Purrazzo will defend her ROH Women’s Pure Championship against Steph De Lander. Purrazzo has set a pace as champ, defending the belt three times since May: Diamante, Viva Van, and Olympia. As the belt’s first holder, the New Jersey native has done everything she can to bring prominence to the belt as a fighting champion.
She will take on Steph De Lander, a woman who wrestled to a no contest against Purrazzo for the belt on June 22nd. Since then, she made swift work of Rachael Ellering in a Pure Rules match on ROH TV last week. Now she’ll attempt to unseat Purrazzo as the top dog of the women’s pure division.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on ROH Death Before Dishonor as soon as we hear more.
