Something that has come out recently is that Ring of Honor won’t be renewing the contract of Kelly Klein or their current Ring of Honor Woman’s champion and would be letting her go when her current deal runs out. Klein and her husband BJ Whitmer stated that ROH was firing her outright. This is in line with a lot of things Klein has been saying against ROH that they are not a safe place to be and that they do not have any kind of concussion protocol for there wrestlers.
This is there woman’s champion saying this. Does anyone else see a problem with this?
I have never been the biggest fan of ROH’s women’s division. Even in their beginnings of the “Women of Honor” it just seemed like a bunch of training school students and a bunch of Japanese women like Sumie Sakai to be their teachers. I’m not looking for overblown training School drills in these matches and it didn’t take long before I was passing them over. Nowadays they built the division around Klein and ROH’s version of what TNA already did with the Allure. I saw that once before and I don’t want to see it again only with ROH running things instead of TNA.
This latest mess doesn’t seem to help matters lately. Telling your world champion they wouldn’t be bringing her back because she said she thought she was actually fired doesn’t make anyone look good to the fans you hope that pay you money to watch wrestling.
It seems like there is a lot of issues that need to be fixed. First is ROH itself. If there is truth to what Klein was saying then It needs to be handled and taken care of. Get someone to overlook things and create a better environment for the wrestlers. Not some on-screen president or something, but a person who has some REAL power behind the scenes. Whether that is Joe Koff or whoever they can get from Sinclair to look things over. If there is an issue get someone to put their eyes on it and improve things to make it safer for all the wrestlers, not just the women. I don’t know who it could be but if there are issues, maybe try to fix them.
As for Klien herself, if she is that unhappy and has made these things public, maybe ROH is doing the right thing a letting her go. If she is that unhappy then let her go somewhere else and have her drop the title and take her off the ROH opening. It doesn’t look that good to have your woman’s champion voice these issues, si take the belt off her before much of anything else.
As for ROH’s in-ring product, especially with the “Women of Honor.” I get that ROH builds itself as a place to train younger talent and stuff like that, but don’t send out trainees for matches and then put them on television. Worse when you call the attention that it is so and so’s first match or whatever. We as fans aren’t here to watch someone train to be a wrestler, so don’t tell people that we are. People like Cheeseburger run gyms and train wrestlers, both men, and women. Let him worry about that stuff. Don’t put women on TV for matches until they have had some experience first and aren’t just being led around to get them trained.
Ring of Honor needs some improvements in their women’s division no matter who you like to believe with this. Let’s see if they can actually get there.
