Petey

It'd be more of a "historic" move if ROH was still hot and PPV didn't seem like a dying business. But it's 2014 and ROH, even though it seems to be better than it was a few years ago, doesn't have the same buzz about it that it did in 2005-2006, and PPV's just scream old news.

This times a thousand! I fully endorse that type of fantasy booking.

If only Rick had gone on to win the World Title that night.

I just watched Sting/Luger v. Steiners last night and I really enjoyed it. Just four super over guys laying into each other and the crowd totally eating it up. It's not better than Bret/Hennig, but I loved it.

Was (is?) Vince mad at people for trying to cover themselves or not trying to cover themselves?

It sucks but it was only a matter of time.

JR just burying him on commentary is tremendous.

I saw Joe v. Kobashi live and loved the hell out of it. ROH was just on fire at the time and the New Yorker was a terrific venue for a wrestling event. It was one of those "dream" matches that no one ever thought would happen. That said, I understand people being underwhelmed with it after seeing/hearing the hype. It's probably my favorite match I've ever seen live but taking that experience out of it, it's merely decent-good and not some 5* classic.

I think the problem was that the independent talent pool started to dry up in the late 90's and it was becoming more difficult to replace departing ECW "stars" with equal or close to talented wrestlers and that's why he went back to Raven and Sandman instead of building up new talent. In that WWE.com article they did about the plans for ECW if it survived, it sounded like the plan was to transition the company into a similar style to what wound up being ROH since Paul thought the hardcore style was dead. I think Heyman even name dropped some of the guys that went on to work for ROH during its infancy. I don't know how true that is, but if ECW had survived another two years, it'd have been interesting.

When did the promotions lose their early TV time slots?

Interesting article. Thanks for posting it. Always fascinated to see the origins of the newsletter/dirtsheet stuff.