Ring of Honor was a place for those who wanted to enjoy wrestling at its many peaks. This influential company has shaped what modern wrestling is. It’s like going to a local bar and discovering a band that makes the experience of music feel more than the smoke, the billiards table, and the bottles of half-finished beer and liquor. Ring of Honor was something special.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like it.
Quick – what comes to your mind when you read the name “Ring of Honor“?
Do certain title reigns, matches, and rivalries come to mind? Do you think of legacy, work-rate, and crushed or fulfilled dreams?
I think of those things. As a ROH newbie, I expect it of the brand – through its ups and downs, I think of what is to be remembered as excellence. I think of buying DVDs of past events, researching news on online forums, and matches taking place in smaller structures. This company was the factory that manufactured some of the best wrestlers of the modern age. This is excellence. This is honor.
If you enjoy Seth Rollins, you have Tyler Black’s tenure in ROH to thank. Are you still a fan of CM Punk? ROH helped craft him. If you were a fan of the AEW, TNA, or WWE runs of AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, and Bryan Danielson, ROH gave them that platform.
This is the place where Samoa Joe and CM Punk had a memorable trilogy. It’s where El Generico and Kevin Steen had wars with ladders before they were Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. Before Daniel Bryan yelled “YES!”, he put on technical wrestling masterpieces against Nigel McGuinness over a decade before the one with Zack Sabre Jr.
When Khan purchased Ring of Honor from Sinclair, we expected that. The pay-per-view events that resulted in 2022 when Tony was still putting things together provided the template for what was to be anticipated. The universally beloved FTR/Briscoes Trilogy is a testament to that.
The point is that Ring of Honor was a place for those who wanted to enjoy wrestling at its many peaks. This influential company has shaped what modern wrestling is. It’s like going to a local bar and discovering a band that makes the experience of music feel more than the smoke, the billiards table, and the bottles of half-finished beer and liquor. Ring of Honor was something special.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the product and I think Tony Khan could do a worse job at it. But I think we should be able to expect a bit more from this brand.
Sure, there are champions whom I love, such as Eddie Kingston, Katsuyori Shibata, Adam Page and the Young Bucks, and Samoa Joe. Oh, and a little vicious someone named Athena – a Female Wrestler of the Year contender for my money.
What’s frustrating is that I wish the content would reflect that. After this year’s Death Before Dishonor, an admittedly great show, it seemed to be on the rise again. People were speaking positively of it and were hopeful for the future of the product, that it’d stand toe-to-toe with its Elite sister program under the Khan umbrella.
I remember the excitement in the air when Tony Khan broke the news that he purchased the promotion, with the expectations that the company could rise to greatness. I mean, the news was broke before having former rivals from the beginning in Bryan Danielson versus Christopher Daniels. Chris Jericho was, at one point, the ROH World Champion.
Yet it seems the main conversation is (rightfully) about Athena. It’s not hard to see why – she’s putting in the work of her career, brutalizing opponents while crafting this unique and sadistic character who has recently adopted Billie Starkz, Lexi Nair, and the legions of minions she’s claimed along the way.
But the weekly program is stuck behind a paywall, despite Tony’s best efforts to put the historic company on cable television. Even having the titles and talents on TNT and TBS hasn’t helped. For some reason, it seems from the outside that Warner Bros Discovery does not want the red and black brand.
I think Tony’s motive for including these things on AEW programming was to generate hype for the product and have fans sign up to make Honor Club successful, have ROH trending, and keep its name in the conversation.
Yet, when booking titles and stalwart talents, complaints oft ensue, at least online. Fans claim they want AEW’s actual champions and talents on the weekly shows and events, leaving Tony at an impasse. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.
It’s a difficult situation, where no one side is either right or wrong. People want it to be successful, but not in the way of other things.
It’s kind of like pineapple on pizza – people are either very against it, or they love it. Fittingly, in scenarios both ROH and pineapple pizza, I’m a “take it or leave it” guy, hence why I’m writing this.
AEW has no problem having outside belts being defended – Pro Wrestling Wave, New Japan Pro Wrestling, Impact/TNA, and even AAA have had their titles defended on air. While not as often as ROH gold, they are defended. Perhaps it’s due to ROH frequency that people are turned away.
Listen, I’m not a stats or numbers kind of guy. You put math in front of me, odds are I will have an existential breakdown and start crying. But, the trend of fans wanting ROH to mean something, to exist as something that can viably be invested in, they are hard to ignore.
The need for Ring of Honor to be important again is very real. You don’t simply save a stray animal from the side of a busy highway, only to chain it in a dark place where not many can see it. But you can’t have it running amok, unconstrained. There has to be a happy medium.
So, tinfoil hat time: I think Tony knows this. I’ve been wondering this for a while, is he running these stories and matches on AEW periodically to keep ROH in TV rights discussion?
This is evident with the effort put in to employ strong storytelling when he can. Take Eddie Kingston’s seemingly eternal rivalry with Claudio Castagnoli; a feud I love, that capped off with Eddie Kingston’s journey since joining AEW pay off at this year’s Dynamite Grand Slam in New York where he finally dethroned the Swiss wrestler to finally become the ROH World Champion.
I can’t help but think that, and that he’s still trying to generate interest. Because behind that paywall, there are talents that deserve to be seen. Hungry young competitors among veterans who are eager to shine again.
What would be the solution here, if television rights aren’t secured and the talents don’t have as much time to build and grow? A common criticism I see lobbed at the product is that it feels like what AEW Dark and Elevation were. While they were fine in their respects, directing new eyes to independent talents that are otherwise under the radar, that’s not what Ring of Honor is.
So, what then? Should they cut the weekly television, or make monthly specials? Do we simply have to wait for pay-per-view events to watch? Or should we just ditch it and let there be an archive of Ring of Honor lore, preserved in a digital library?
I hope not. There’s a lot of promise. Willow Nightingale, Billie Starkz, Skye Blue, Nick Wayne, Daniel Garcia, and Ethan Page are already there. Why not give them another platform to shine, while AEW shines with its many talents?
Tony Khan has a lot on his plate, so while he contends with the oceanic plethora of sports content to manage, this may be hard to manage. But with the care that goes into pay-per-views, it’s clear he has a lot of care for the product. It just doesn’t reflect.
I don’t have the answers. I don’t think anyone does. This is not a “How ROH Could Be Better” type of article (because frankly, I wouldn’t know how), nor is it pointing fingers. This is just me laying out my thoughts on a promotion I enjoy and want to see more of. For all I know, this may just be a situation where someone needs to throw a dart and see where it ends up.
For their sake and the fans, I hope that lands somewhere in the right place and we can get to the Ring of Honor that we know and love.
