Exclusive: ROH’s Silas Young Talks About News Of Company Closure “For The Foreseeable Future”; Feeling Within Locker Room, Is There Heat, and More

Last Wednesday, Ring of Honor announced that following their upcoming Final Battle PPV on December 11th, the company will be going on a “hiatus.” The plan is to return to live events in April of 2022 with their annual Super Card of Honor event, however they will do so without any wrestlers under contract.

It was also reported that ROH talent contracts will not be renewed if they’re expiring at the end of the year. However, talents whose contracts extended beyond 2021 will still be paid as they remain under contract through March 31, 2022. All ROH contracts will cease to exist after that date, as the company will undergo a “reimaging” going forward.

ROH will record their final set of TV tapings in Baltimore next weekend. This will set up their remaining television episodes ahead of Final Battle in December, which will be their final event.

Ring of Honor Star Silas Young recently sat down with our own Roundtable Pro Wrestling podcast to discuss last weeks news of ROH’s upcoming hiatus and “reimaging.” He revealed that ROH talents found out about the planned hiatus during their company “town hall meeting” that they do leading up to TV Tapings. He added that basically they know what we know,

“We actually have some TV tapings coming up this next weekend since the pandemic era, the TV tapings have been done a lot differently with no fans for almost two years and a lot of COVID protocol. We do a Town Hall Meeting leading up to these TV tapings and, basically, during that meeting, we found out that after Final Battle, Ring of Honor is basically going to cease to exist for the foreseeable future.”

“A lot of us know what you guys know.. It’s been said that there are plans for a reboot that will be Supercard of Honor, which is WrestleMania weekend. I guess the idea is to do that.”

“To be honest, working for Ring of Honor for as long as I have, there are a lot of really talented guys there, and come the end of the year, depending on contracts, no one is getting paid past when your contract expires. My contract is set to expire on December 31. Come for the first of the year, I don’t know if I’m getting paid. Guys who have longer contracts, say to the end of 2022, from what I know, they’ll only be getting paid until the end of March 2022. Whether they have to negotiate a buyout or whatever, I’m not sure. That’s about as much as I know about guys getting paid. From what I heard, and this isn’t set in stone, but basically, Ring of Honor was paying everybody for two years.”

“To not have shows with fans, I’m super thankful for that. It’s never a good time to be let go. I understand why it’s happening. It’s a business decision and you can only lose money for so long. “

“We all found out Wednesday afternoon. Myself and a lot of guys on the roster, we’ve been talking and communicating and I said, it sucks that it’s happening, but will it be weird to go back and do these tapings knowing things will be over soon and will it be weird to do final battle knowing these things will be over soon? It’s one of those things where you have to try and look at it from a positive perspective. I would rather know ahead of time that I’m losing my job so I can have a backup and take precautions as opposed to a lot of guys who get a phone call or something UPS’d saying ‘You’re done.’ It sucks, but the way they did it is pretty good. “

“Guys who had exclusive deals like myself, Ring of Honor has been good to us to allow us to start working Independent dates pretty much as of that phone call. It sucks, but it’s nice they gave us some notice and it’s nice they are allowing us to start working again to recoup losses.”

Silas went on to talk about the feeling within the locker room about ROH’s announced temporary closure, and whether or not there is any heat in the back over it.

“Right now, it’s great in the sense that you have WWE, TNA [IMPACT], AEW, even places like MLW. There are some good Indies you can work for but nothing that is comparable to getting a guaranteed check every month. I think it’s going to be really hard, but as far as any heat, yes and no.”

“There are people who are definitely pissed, we’re all pissed, no one wants to lose their job, but I don’t think anybody is taking it too personally like this is being done on purpose. Ring of Honor is owned by Sinclair broadcasting, the biggest broadcasting group in the US. It’s a business, they run like a business and it’s about what’s profitable and what’s not. Not running shows with fans for two years has to be extremely unprofitable.”

“I have no heat. I’m not happy about it and I sure as hell wish we were still working. I was looking, going into 2022, it was feeling like things were opening up and we would maybe get back to a traveling schedule.“

“I do believe Joe went to bat for us and tried to keep things going. He’s a huge fan of pro wrestling and I felt like I was treated well by the company. I have nothing bad to say about them. It’s a boardroom full of executives and it’s all about what’s cheap and what makes money. It sure as hell doesn’t make you feel good.”

(Please credit Bodyslam.net and The Roundtable Pro Wrestling Podcast when using this news.)

 
 

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