Thirteen entrants have now been confirmed for Ring of Honor’s Pure Championship tournament.
It was announced on this week’s episode of ROH Week By Week that Kenny King, Dalton Castle, and Rust Taylor will be taking part in the Pure title tournament. Taylor is making his ROH debut.
Taylor also wrestled in two matches on NJPW’s Lion’s Break Collision series.
The Pure title tournament will feature 16 participants in total. Jay Lethal, Jonathan Gresham, Matt Sydal, David Finlay, Tracy Williams, Josh Woods, Wheeler Yuta, Rocky Romero, PJ Black, Tony Deppen, King, Castle, and Taylor are the wrestlers who have been confirmed for it thus far.
It was announced earlier this month that ROH was returning to television production and that the Pure title tournament would be a focus of the new episodes. On ROH Week By Week, it was said that the tournament will begin airing in a few weeks.
Last week, ROH revealed the rules for Pure matches:
- 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; only open-handed slaps or chops to the face are allowed. Punches to other parts of the body are permitted, excluding low blows. The first use of a closed fist will get a warning; the second will be a disqualification.
- 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.
- There will be two blocks, single-elimination format.
- Round 1 matches have a 15-minute time limit.
- Block semifinals have a 20-minute time limit.
- Block finals have a 30-minute time limit.
- 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.
The Pure title tournament was originally supposed to begin in April but was put on hold when ROH halted events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to international travel restrictions, originally announced entrants Yuji Nagata, Doug Williams, Mark Haskins, Slex, Joe Hendry, and Ren Narita will no longer be in the tournament.
The Pure title is returning after being out of use since it was unified with the ROH World Championship in 2006.
