A year ago, a lot of people would tell you that ROH was in the right path, with growing attendance numbers, a great number of new subscribers to honor club and a lot money made on merchandizing. The sky was the limit for ROH.
Now things don’t look so great for ROH but what made this turn of events happened? and can ROH turn things around?
NJPW U.S. Expansion
Before NJPW decided to book their own shows in the U.S. ROH was the only place you could see your favorite NJPW wrestlers perform live. ROH has depended a lot of the NJPW stars in the last couple of years. Now that NJPW is booking their own U.S. shows a lot of people don’t feel the need to watch or attend ROH shows.
The G1 Supercard show opened the eyes for a lot of people in regard of the direction ROH was heading. The ROH part of this show was mostly criticized by fans and critics and the Enzo and Cass ‘’incident’’ didn’t sit well with NJPW.
To make things worse for ROH, a lot of NJPW talent has informed the main office that they don’t want to be booked in ROH shows anymore.
The formation of AEW
The Elite where a huge part of the recent success of ROH. Once they left and AEW was born all the attention and hype ROH once had went directly to this new promotion.
ROH depended too much in The Elite and not having a plan B has turned out to be a huge mistake from their part. ROH knew for the longest time that The Elite were leaving but ROH did nothing about it.
The big hype machine that is The Elite and AEW has overshadowed ROH and other promotions in a short amount of time. ROH has not been able as of right now to win the hype it once had.
Perception
ROH always had this look of being a ‘’indie promotion’’ but in reality, they weren’t a ‘’indie promotion’’ for a long time but kept the same look.
ROH needed to grow from that look and now that choice of keeping that style has made it impossible for them to grow to a certain degree. They are one of the biggest promotions in the U.S. but because of their decision of keeping the ‘’indie look’’ a lot of people perceive them as an indie promotion.
Another thing that doesn’t help ROH was the fact that is really hard to find their programming on TV and you need a ROH honor club subscription to be able to follow them. Not having a good TV has turned out to be one of ROH biggest weaknesses.
The Booking
The booking in ROH has also not been so good in the last couple of months. Fans are not happy in the creative direction ROH has been going in the last couple of months.
Matt Taven has yet to connect with a large part of the ROH audience, but he does have a strong fanbase that will defend his current world title reign.
This feud between Flip Gordon and Bully Ray has been going on way too long and for some strange reason these two wrestlers end up fighting again and again and people are just tired of this feud.
But not all is negative in ROH in this department the booking of stars like Bandido and Rush has been good so far but with some minor issues here and there.
