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Ring of Honor Wrestling


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14 minutes ago, sek69 said:

He does a ton of videos on his YouTube,  I suppose humor is subjective but he does have that Borat sense of "dude makes you think he's an idiot but actually gets some pretty funny jokes in" style of humor. 

That is all fine, but how does that translate to pro wrestling? Or make him appealing on a wrestling show? How does this inform how he wrestles in the ring? I am just trying to understand why he would be someone a major promotion would be interested in bringing. Not everyone can be Orange Cassidy, who was always great at basic pro wrestling like sympathetic selling and fiery comebacks, and he could incorporate his character into his in-ring work. Plus, OC is really an exception and they are exceptions for a reason. 

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ROH has been dead in my eyes since around the time they first got that HDnet show so that was what....10+ years ago? It's been so entirely irrelevant to me as a fan despite being a real close follower until right around the Age of the Fall and rise of one Tyler Black, which is when I tuned out and then anytime I've looked into ROH in the meantime the shows have been so lifeless and the roster would be worse and worse. 

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1 hour ago, joeg said:

Yeah I don't know about that. ROH is dirt cheap for Sinclair and they average around 700k viewers a week. Its the exact sort cheap, low maintence programing that a media company built around syndication  would want. 

Except, here we are... Everyone is being released and I'm anticipating a fire sale for the ROH branding and footage next year. Doesn't exactly sound like Sinclair is "all in" on ROH anymore - not that they ever really were in the first place.

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12 minutes ago, MoS said:

That is all fine, but how does that translate to pro wrestling? Or make him appealing on a wrestling show? How does this inform how he wrestles in the ring? I am just trying to understand why he would be someone a major promotion would be interested in bringing. Not everyone can be Orange Cassidy, who was always great at basic pro wrestling like sympathetic selling and fiery comebacks, and he could incorporate his character into his in-ring work. Plus, OC is really an exception and they are exceptions for a reason. 

He can push merchandise. You don't have to push him because he can keep himself over. I don't think he's a guy that makes or breaks you but I don't see the harm in him as a low level guy that loses and is popular. 

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As a fan I stopped following ROH regularly around the time Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards were having their terrible shit faux-MMA matches for the title in the main event. A very close friend of mine was really into Chikara and I started watching that more, a decision I have never regretted. It was so weird for me to stop following RoH. For a generation of hardcore fans like myself, who came online in the mid-00s, just after the Monday Night Wars had ended when a lot of the posters here first came online, so most of the discussion at that time would center on why wrestling had lost popularity, how HHH was destroying Monday Night Raw, why WCW had lost, whether Shawn Michaels and Undertaker were hall of famers...and RoH. Joe and Punk. Bryan Danielson and indeed, Low Ki. Ring of Honor was like the only "popular" discussion topic then that was actually positive and exciting, and I quickly became immersed. It took me some time to be able to watch some of those matches because RF were not shipping those tapes to India and I was a kid who couldn't afford them anyway. Then I learnt torrenting and during a brief period for a year or so in 2007-08, YouTube might as well have been Alibaba's cave. It was when it still worked on buffering and not streaming, there were video length limits, but because I guess promotions were not paying full attention to it, there would be entire shows sometimes on YouTube uploaded in parts. Remember watching the Joe-Punk trilogy on YouTube. I followed Danielson during his title and I was so invested for his success when he signed with WWE.

For that generation of internet hardcore fans (especially younger, more impressionable fans like me) that got online back then, ROH really was the platonic ideal of current pro wrestling, as silly as that sounds now. It is so weird that it seems to be ending with a complete whimper, after a protracted, extended slow death where it stopped being the cool niche within a niche for a long time before it's evident demise. Of course, the pandemic was no one's fault, but if RoH was cooler and had been more relevant at the time the pandemic started, maybe Sinclair doesn't just shut it down indefinitely. I am sure fans over the next few days will talk about when it started going down south. I stopped following a long time back, but I am seeing people on Twitter question Bully Ray's booking of RoH too. I did not know when exactly Bully Ray booked RoH, but no one seems to have one good word to say about it. It definitely seems like it went cold for a while, then got hot due to the Elite but who never really liked RoH, so that was weird?? And as soon as AEW became a thing and RoH lost the Elite, they immediately lost whatever momentum and buzz they had. 

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Fightful reported that ROH COO Joe Koff told the roster that he had multiple meetings to try to go to bat for the company but at the end of the day Sinclair made the call.

I'm guessing if this is the end, TK probably makes a bid for the library not only for All In but because he's stated several times he is working with WarnerMedia to create a AEW streaming service (and it's also why they do so many Dark/After Dark tapings so they have more than just TV shows and PPVs on it). 

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I think their efforts to expand past northeast cities along i95 and past northeast talent is what started the downturn. The company had been struggling to break even on live events ever since and its been over a decade. Its a shame as the past year or two they really did a good job of getting previously unknown workers over.  

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2 hours ago, MoS said:

For that generation of internet hardcore fans (especially younger, more impressionable fans like me) that got online back then, ROH really was the platonic ideal of current pro wrestling, as silly as that sounds now. 

I don't think that seems silly. I regularly say that ROH in 2006 is my favorite year for a product ever, and so much of that is because the show encapsulated everything I loved about pro wrestling, and all without feeling derivative.

Back then, where could you turn to see in-ring action you couldn't get anywhere else? ROH. What company had been delivering on its programs having conclusions and limiting the nonsense that plagued Monday nights? ROH. Where could you see a no-roped barbed wire deathmatch on the same card as a technical wrestling clinic? ROH.

It says something that so many of the industry's biggest names over the last decade spent a good chunk of the 00s in ROH. Punk, Bryan, Joe, Styles, Rollins, Owens, Zayn...

The shows were great even into the end of the Gabe era, but if I could pinpoint one specific thing that began the downfall, it would be, as @strobogo said, the HDNet era. The shows were great as bi-weekly events, allowing the core talent to go out there and bust ass each show, allowing the breathing room for stories and feuds to build and build. Swapping to a weekly presentation required a fundamental reworking of the company's approach to booking, one that never quite worked in that format. It wasn't "special" anymore, if that makes sense, and it was hammered home by the booking just getting worse and worse until I'm supposed to think of Eddie Edwards as a shooter.

Again, as said, that was over a decade ago. And the shows have just never recovered. The magic was gone. 

If this is the end, then I'll remember those glorious early years where the company redefined what American pro wrestling could be, when a platform with a large reach was given to hungry talent looking to make their mark.

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The crazy thing about ROH is that they enjoyed their most successful years in the mid-to late 2010s well past their peak. Of course that was on the back of their NJPW relationship and working alongside The Elite who were handling the majority of their own creative. When it came to ROH building their own stars it seemed really directionless and by the time they'd put the belt on somebody like Dalton Castle or RUSH the moment had past.

The MSG show was a huge turning point in the company. Not only did it effectively end their relationship with NJPW but the future looked very dim with Matt Taven as champion. In 2019 ROH only seemed to make the headlines for the wrong reasons like the Bully Ray and Kelly Klein incidents. I can't remember fans praising any of the shows or matches and when they'd book a big match-up like RUSH vs. Cobb it was on a random UK show that barely drew any fans when it should have been the big Final Battle match.

I was late to the party when it came to ROH and got in around the tail-end of the HD-Net era and the start of the Sinclair. I have to agree with you Laz that the TV format just seemed to hinder ROH and fans started moving onto PWG, Chikara and Dragon Gate USA. Every now and then the American Wolves would have a great match with Future Shock or something like that but slowly but surely guys like Mike Mondo, BJ Whitmer, QT Marshall (LOL) and Rhino would soak up television time while guys like Kyle O'Reilly would be better utilised in PWG for example.

Then for whatever reason the shows just never clicked. They had a lot of talent on their roster but the shows never seemed to be building towards anything and there didn't appear to be much meritocracy.

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1 hour ago, Blehschmidt said:

The thing that always baffled me was that they have had a streaming service for the last several years, and almost none of those early shows that people actually want to see were on it. That just seemed like a huge missed opportunity to make some money.

It drove me nuts. The entire Sinclair Era they refused to utilize the entire back catalog of their most valuable footage. They kept swearing they would get those shows up and it never happened.

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37 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

It drove me nuts. The entire Sinclair Era they refused to utilize the entire back catalog of their most valuable footage. They kept swearing they would get those shows up and it never happened.

I checked their shop site and the have a NJ/ROH DVD up there from 2014 listed as Collectors Series. So perhaps this is the first of a few DVDs of older stuff they're going to re-release?? Not that it'll save jobs or the organization.

From someone who was watching the current show up until a few months ago, they just had too many people for 1 hr of wrestling a week. The Pure Title tournament showed they only needed a limited number of guys to have a show for weeks. I'm fuzzy on the numbers but the story line was easy to follow and viewers didn't go weeks without seeing a certain wrestler. It got a good amount of attention from people who didn't actively watch the company anymore AND got favorable reviews.

Then unfortunately they went right back to business as usual once they got more talent COVID tested and some restrictions loosened. 

Based on that statement released, I could see them going back to having a dozen contacted guys and then getting talent on a per show basis. Enough to put on a tv show and do "events" like Anniversary shows, Glory by Honor, Final Battle. Then really working on making their back catalog available on their service and doing the collector's series of dvds for old farts like me.

They probably should have done this a few years ago after the Elite exodus.

 

Edit: Another thought I had was:  do a show of "Best of" episodes/matches from the past. They did this the first few months of lockdown and I enjoyed it. You got to see old stuff as well as more recent footage based on a specific wrestler. They could do this like the AJPW Samurai TV Classics show. Just start with Era of Honor Begins :) In all honesty, they could have a mix of new matches and "ROH Classics" episodes and it would probably do as well as it has been at a fraction of the cost.

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7 minutes ago, Blehschmidt said:

If we are keeping the Briscoe's out of a job, I hope this means the end of Jay Lethal anywhere I have to see him too.

I'm guessing it does, if no one major has bothered to sign him by now.

He never landed in AEW even though he has friends there.

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According to Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated, the Ring of Honor tape library (the Sinclair-owned archive from 2012 on) is available to the highest bidder and has been available for over a year. The tape library includes the footage to All In. AEW owns the trademark to All In, but ROH has the footage to the event.

From the Fightful article linked above. Poor writing or does Sinclair only own the video library of anything since they time that they bought ROH?

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