ROH are returning to TV with weekly taped shows, with plans to start airing those weekly episodes as of September 12th. Along with it’s return to TV we will see the first contest for the 16 man tournament for the returning ROH Pure Championship, the tournament will then run for the next 8 weeks. The ROH Pure Championship has long storied history with ROH, with the title being held by some of the top wrestlers in the world, including Doug Richards, Jay Lethal, Samoa Joe and John Walters. The title was last held by Bryan Danielson after he defeated Nigel McGuiness back in 2006, he then unified the title with the ROH world title and AJ Styles was first person to hold the title.
The Rules of of Tournament are as follows; Every match begins and ends with the Code of Honor handshake. Each wrestler has three rope breaks to stop submission holds and pinfalls. After a wrestler exhausts his rope breaks, submission and pin attempts on or under the ropes by his opponent are legal. Closed-fist punches to the face are not permitted, but chops, slaps and kicks are all legal. The first use of a closed fist will get a warning and if it happens a second time the competitor will be disqualified. As in standard ROH matches, there will be a 20-count when a wrestler is on the floor. Outside interference will result in automatic termination from the roster for the wrestler that interferes.
The tournament will consist of be two blocks with 8 competitors in each block and will be held under a single-elimination format. Round 1 matches have a 15-minute time limit, the block semifinals have a 20-minute time limit, the block finals have a 30-minute time limit and the tournament final has a one-hour time limit. There will be three judges for each match, and time-limit draws will go to a judges’ decision, one of the Judges has already been announced in ROH Director of Operations Gary Juster. Gary Juster served as Judge for the famous NWA World Title Match between Ric Flair and Sting on the first “Clash of the Champions” broadcast in 1988 so he has plenty of experience.
All 16 competitors have now been announced for the tournament they are; Jay Lethal, Jonathan Gresham, Dalton Castle, Matt Sydal, Tracy Williams, Kenny King, David Finlay, Rocky Romero, PJ Black, Josh Woods, Delirious Silas Young as well as independent stars Tony Deppen, Wheeler Yuta, Fred Yehi and Rust Taylor. The first match to air will be a first round block B match and is between Matt Sydal and Delirious, with the rest of the bracket being announced on next weeks, ROH week by week show, available to watch on their Youtube channel. Highlights of the matches will be aired on their weekly TV show but you can catch all the matches in full on honour club.
ROH have not run show since back in February, having cancelled their Anniversary as well as the past and present shows they had scheduled for March due to the ongoing global health crisis. ROH chose not run any shows until they were sure they had all the protocols in place to safely run shows again. Unfortunately the effects of Covid 19 will still be felt by the company as stars such as Mark Haskins, Joe Hendry, Doug Richards, Ren Narita and Yuji Nagata who were all originally scheduled to compete in the Pure tournament, were unable to do so due to being unable to travel.
Andrew More
@GBOtaku82
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