Ring of Honor Wrestling

[Mad Dog]

I vote for don't have them. If you can't have a division of quality women then don't bother. It feels like their division is made up of castoffs that no one else wants.

[MikeCampbell]

Have they done anything with those six man titles yet?

[Migs]

Have they done anything with those six man titles yet?

 

The Kingdom won them at the last PPV, and all they've aired one taping's worth of TV since then (where the Kingdom won a squash). So, too early to tell.

[Migs]

ROH trailing so far behind on pushing women is a turn off too. Either don't have them or push them.

I vote for don't have them. If you can't have a division of quality women then don't bother. It feels like their division is made up of castoffs that no one else wants.

 

They also present the division in the worst way possible, where it gets it's own TV episode once every few months and then never gets mentioned. The angles thus have no flow, and it makes that episode of TV a huge bummer (because they're not going to progress any of the other stories at all).

[Migs]

Since I haven't been paying attention to their TV much in the past... do they always spoil weeks worth of TV on their website?

 

Spoiler on the winner of the Decade of Excellence tournament:

http://www.rohwrestling.com/news/challenger-set-roh-world-title-match-15th-anniversary-show

[rzombie1988]

A lot of the complaints I had about ROH in 2013 still seem to be extremely relevant today.

 

Giving people title runs and main event slots based on loyalty is straight out of the 70's.

 

I think another important thing is the ROH style isn't as impressive in 2017 as it was in 2002. The flips, All Japan tribute matches and big moves were a lot more cool and original then, while it is the norm right now. And ROH loves their generic flippy dudes, likely making it hard for them to gain any followings.

 

One idea that I've always had to keep WWE from picking off talent is to have more masked guys who are covered up. One of them gets hot and WWE wants to sign them? Stick someone else under the mask. Most of the crowd won't know the difference and it won't make a big difference.

[Mad Dog]

I really liked what they did in 2014 and up until October of 2015. When it became apparent that they weren't going to seriously push Moose or Castle I started to lose interest. Then the product got stagnant as 2016 progressed and the lazy use of TV didn't help that. Now it feels like it did during Cornette's run.

[Mrzfn]

One idea that I've always had to keep WWE from picking off talent is to have more masked guys who are covered up. One of them gets hot and WWE wants to sign them? Stick someone else under the mask. Most of the crowd won't know the difference and it won't make a big difference.

 

ROH fans are pretty smarky by nature. Hard to think something like this wouldn't backfire instantly.

[MikeCampbell]

Since I haven't been paying attention to their TV much in the past... do they always spoil weeks worth of TV on their website?

 

 

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. When Adam Cole won the TV Title from Roderick Strong in 2012, they put a video of the title change on the homepage of the website, even though it was at least two weeks away from airing. But, when they officially split Cole and O'Reilly earlier in the year, they still had them teaming up at house shows/DVD tapings until the show aired.

[Mad Dog]

 

ROH trailing so far behind on pushing women is a turn off too. Either don't have them or push them.

I vote for don't have them. If you can't have a division of quality women then don't bother. It feels like their division is made up of castoffs that no one else wants.

 

They also present the division in the worst way possible, where it gets it's own TV episode once every few months and then never gets mentioned. The angles thus have no flow, and it makes that episode of TV a huge bummer (because they're not going to progress any of the other stories at all).

 

 

The problem with their women's division is when they do get someone that's pretty good like a Mary Dobson they are instantly job fodder for shitty Kelly Klein or Mandy Leon. That's really the problem with Women of Honor. Their top talent is Kelly Klein, Mandy Leon, Veda Scott and Taeler Hendrix. Out of those 4, the only one I would ever seriously considering using as a top of a division talent is Taeler.

[bradhindsight]

Veda's been long gone. They seem to be booking around Klein, Leon, Hendrix and Purazzo. There's been some talk of late of contracting them as well. While they've had their own hour-long TV episodes to bookend around TV tapings and PPVs (as well as taping a couple matches at TV tapings for their YouTube page), I still think they'd be better off giving them at least one match per 4 episode taping block.

 

They wrestle regularly on the house shows, which is another step in the right direction.

[bradhindsight]

The ROH 50 Greatest Wrestlers Ever project is now LIVE - here's the thread with links to the forms and discussion:

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/36930-the-honor-roll-rohs-50-greatest-wrestlers-ever-project-voting-now-open-through-228/

[sek69]

Veda's been long gone. They seem to be booking around Klein, Leon, Hendrix and Purazzo. There's been some talk of late of contracting them as well. While they've had their own hour-long TV episodes to bookend around TV tapings and PPVs (as well as taping a couple matches at TV tapings for their YouTube page), I still think they'd be better off giving them at least one match per 4 episode taping block.

 

They wrestle regularly on the house shows, which is another step in the right direction.

 

Purazzo appeared on NXT, Impact, and ROH within weeks of each other, which is kind of amazing when you think about it.

[sek69]

Wow, news just dropped that Kevin Kelly is leaving now as well.

[Mad Dog]

Wow, news just dropped that Kevin Kelly is leaving now as well.

 

I would consider that to be good news.

[SirEdger]

Wow. A completely different broadcast team for ROH in 2017 then.

 

Is Kevin Kelly leaving the business?

[TonyPulis'Cap]

This is the latest from the Observer site:

 

UPDATED: According to several sources, Kelly is not necessarily gone from the company but he left his full-time position which in part is due to the time away for his job with New Japan. He is no longer an employee, but ROH still plans on using him as a freelancer in between Japan dates.

His ROH off camera job, which he left, was said to be a high stress job due to his job with New Japan.

There are still plans for him to work on camera with ROH in the future at this point.

[TonyPulis'Cap]

Outside of the Kevin Kelly news - and for what it's worth I largely enjoyed his run there - after watching last weeks TV last night, I thought it was a really fun show. I'm not sure if anything will have long term ramifications on the quality of the overall product, but as a TV episode, it was really good. And on a commentary note, I quite liked the opportunity that presented itself with different guys in the booth for different matches. In particular I thought Alex Shelley was excellent.

 

The show coming from Centre Stage helped it to feel fresh, and I don't know if ROH ever sweetens the audio on their TV - previous weeks with some fairly dead crowds would suggest they don't - but the Atlanta crowd was really into everything and came off a bit less smarky than some of the other places they run.

 

I thought having three matches rather than four helped all of them to breathe more, and in different ways, I enjoyed them all. The opener was a fun energetic spotfest with fresh guys and helped set up a tag team title match for next week. That segment flowed nicely into the Adam Cole promo as well, which I thought was decent.

 

I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoy Marty Scurll, and thought that this weeks match was a huge improvement as a showcase than last weeks match he had. Him and Juice Robinson matched up really well. I also liked that they set up another match for next week with the six man contenders match, which given the people in it, should be enjoyable.

 

Being able to marry up the TV taping and live event schedule is something ROH has struggled with for years, but I do think that over the last few months they have been able to do a better job and I liked them being able to hype the two Texas events for this weekend, with matches announced that seem to fit with the story lines being progressed on TV.

 

Lastly, I thought the Lethal/Briscoe match was a strong TV main event where they worked it differently to the longer matches they've had on PPV. At first I wasn't liking the fact that Lethal kicked out of the Jay Driller early - which used to be a kill shot finisher - but taking that move at the beginning of the match, and the clash of heads before it, meant that Lethal was off his game for the rest of the match and wasn't able to ever really come back into it. I thought that was a really strong story for the match.

 

So, very enjoyable this week, and excited for more of the shows from the Atlanta round of tapings.

[SirEdger]

Yeop, loved the main event with Jay Lethal & Jay Briscoe. The little things!

[WrestlingPower]

I've long thought that ROH didn't have enough TV time to keep the live events in the scope of the show. They almost need a 2nd hour that's more of a magazine style show to show highlights of live shows & hype future ones. I've never been clear on if they are just "lazy" & prefer to post produce shows 3-4 at a time or whether there's a turnaround issue that prevents them from going to the effort of trying to update the episodes to be more than just what was done at the tapings. At the very least they could try to drive more people to watch their youtube updates. For example could it be that hard to produce 55 minute shows and then tack on a 5 minute update to the end of each with more fresh clips?

 

I'd like to get more clarity on the Kevin Kelly situation. It seems like no one is being very specific in their reporting on how often he will continue to be used. Like are they going to replace him or will he continue to do all the TV and that's it? I'd also be curious to hear whether there really was heat with Delirious or if some office person made demands over his workload & desire to work for NJPW. You would think if ROH & NJPW had a great relationship he should be able to do both.

[stomperspc]

Presumably if Kelly was a fulltime employee he was technically a Sinclair Broadcasting employee. I believe Meltzer said way back when New Japan first brought Kelly into do their English announcing that the deal was not made through ROH, meaning that that New Japan was paying Kelly directly. If that is the case, his New Japan announcing job would be a second job in the eyes of Sinclair. I could see why the company would have trouble understanding why an employee should be allowed to take a week off to go work his second job, even though ROH and New Japan do have a relationship. If Delirious or Joe Koff just decided on their own that Kelly can’t go and there would have been no other issues with Kelly going, then I agree that is strange. However, I can definitely see from a corporate standpoint how the ROH and New Japan jobs would be looked at separately and Kelly taking a week to go work for New Japan would be akin to you or I taking a week off from our main job to go work a second job. Unless we were taking vacation to do so, I doubt that would fly.

 

It is probably difficult to explain to someone outside of wrestling that ROH and New Japan work together and it is good for ROH for Kelly to have that job. All they are likely to hear is that one of their full time paid employees is taking significant time off to work for another company that both hired him directly and pays him directly.

[sek69]

I don't know if there's any substance behind it, but there's been rumblings for a while that people were growing frustrated with Delirious's direction for the company. It's been cited as the reason guys aren't re-signing and why Corino left. Plus ROH sent a letter to WWE over Corino visiting the PC while still technically under contract so now WWE won't talk to guys until 60 days after their ROH deals end, which surely has pissed some guys off looking to take the next step.

[Mad Dog]

That's been kind of the word for over a year now from what I've seen. I think that's why Kevin Kelly had taken over talent relations to try and get morale back in line.

[WrestlingPower]

I totally see what Stomper is saying. Not sure if NJ or ROH is to blame. Ideally if they really are "partners", NJ should have gone thru ROH to book the English announcers. It's always seemed weird to me that they treat the AXS show completely separate from NJ World shows. If ROH is their primary entrée into the US, either NJ should have booked Kelly & Corino thru them or ROH should have insisted that be brought in line somehow. I can see how it would create confusion if the exact same announce team is doing both ROH & NJPW but yet officially it wasn't part of the working relationship.

[bradhindsight]

Plus ROH sent a letter to WWE over Corino visiting the PC while still technically under contract so now WWE won't talk to guys until 60 days after their ROH deals end, which surely has pissed some guys off looking to take the next step.

 

Well - there are provisions in contracts against tampering so if the WWE did contact someone like O'Reilly before his deal was up, ROH is smart to enforce this, otherwise it could be held against them later if they willingly let *some* guys talk early and others not. The WWE clearly (maybe due to the TNA lawsuit from before) felt they did something in the wrong to immediately put the 60 day provision in.