Hello folks! This was originally written back on March 25th for the first edition of the Social Suplex Newsletter. As they have now published the second edition (which you can find my piece on Dynamite surpassing Nitro here) I will publish my feature onto GrapPro. I’ll do this after every Social Suplex Newsletter released. Be sure to read all of the great writers and all of their work on the Social Suplex Newsletter.
ROH Supercard of Honor Moves Away From WrestleMania Weekend
Ring of Honor announced recently that their Supercard of Honor event would not be held during WrestleMania weekend but instead on May 2 at the Adrian Phillips Theater at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
The first Supercard of Honor was held in 2006 at the Frontier Fieldhouse in Chicago Ridge, two days prior to WrestleMania 22 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois. The next three years were all held same weekend and same city as WrestleMania until 2010 when ROH held it at the Manhattan Center in New York when WWE was in Glendale, Arizona. ROH would go back to Mania weekend for 2013 and would continue the tradition up to G1 Supercard at Madison Square Garden in 2019.
The event would return in 2022 running Supercard of Honor XV, the final event under Sinclair Broadcasting before Ring of Honor was purchased by Tony Khan of All Elite Wrestling. Tony Khan would continue the tradition with the 2023 and 2024 Supercard of Honor events being run same weekend and city as WrestleMania.
This year will be the first time the event was held in the month of May since 2010, as the two Supercards that ran outside of Mania weekend in 2010 and 2011 both ran in May.
Leaving WrestleMania Weekend
There’s a lot of discussion as to whether this is a good idea or not. Some enjoyed the tradition of Ring of Honor running the weekend of WrestleMania to put on a major show in front of the people who fly out to the area for WrestleMania and want to see more than just a WWE show. A lot see the appeal of showing the ROH product to these fans in hopes of getting them to jump aboard to follow the Ring of Honor product. If you hold a great event it could steal some magic from WWE.
However, running the event in the backyard of your competitor also feels a bit small time. Detractors will say that ROH continuing to do this around WrestleMania weekend is embarrassing, ROH pretending it’s still an independent wrestling promotion trying to gain attention. Piggy backing WrestleMania weekend just emphasizes how small you are compared to WWE, and it’ll lead to constant comparisons. You can’t just run as an ROH show anymore.
I think it’s a good thing to separate Ring of Honor from WrestleMania weekend. ROH isn’t the top independent promotion anymore. It’s essentially a dumping ground for All Elite Wrestling, their live event replacement for AEW Dark, with most of the matches meaning very little in the grand scheme of either promotion. This isn’t the same company that used to run Roderick Strong versus Eddie Edwards for the ROH Men’s World Championship or even the company that had the Young Bucks face the Hardy’s in a ladder match. You’re just going to look small trying to run this at the same weekend of WrestleMania weekend. It would be better to do it, if you do it all, at a time when your ROH product is extremely strong.
That said, what’s more interesting to me is the fact that this feels like Ring of Honor finally trying to carve their own identity away from not just WrestleMania weekend but All Elite Wrestling as well.
Ring of Identity
As I said previously, ROH often suffers from the fact that it doesn’t have much of its own roster. The ROH and AEW talent flow freely between the two promotions. ROH champions are often disrespected in AEW by always losing when their title isn’t on the line. The ROH Men’s World Championship was last won by Chris Jericho on an episode of Dynamite. A lot of wrestlers on ROH are former AEW mainstays who couldn’t find room on the show. The most original ROH act has been Athena and Billie Starkz and that’s just starting to creep into AEW now.
If Ring of Honor wants to build their own identity, starting with Supercard of Honor would be a good way to do it. This event is away from WWE and away from AEW. AEW doesn’t hold their pay per view until May 25, a full three weeks from Supercard of Honor. Currently their other events end up close to AEW PPV (Death Before Dishonor in July is quite close to All In/All Out, while Final Battle ran last year only a week prior to World’s End for AEW) so I’m curious if down the road we see Death Before Dishonor and Final Battle given some space between it and the next AEW pay per view event.
Eventually ROH will be able to get something other than HonorClub for their weekly production. Once that happens, ROH President Tony Khan can start thinking of ways to truly separate ROH from AEW and make the two feel like original products that compliment each other. Tony can either try to just give it a unique roster, or he can give the whole company a unique aesthetic, either as a development promotion for AEW or something else.
I know the company is unlikely to spend a lot of money until they get better distribution but my hope is for this Supercard of Honor to be the jump off point to ensuring Ring of Honor can develop its own identity with its own talent and its own voice. My hope is they look into doing ROH centric tapings completely separate from the AEW TV events. Bring back Dark, do whatever, but ROH should be in its own world separate from that. Smaller venues, multiple tapings per day, everything they can to give it a different feel from AEW.
While I do think they need to do this to separate AEW from ROH, I also think there’s one way ROH can “team back up” with All Elite Wrestling before a major event.
The Weekend Wars
While I agree that Tony Khan shouldn’t be trying to run ROH in WWE’s backyard, he should consider running it in his own backyard.
Every AEW pay per view should be a major weekend event for anyone coming out to travel, or anyone in the area. Take Dynasty for example. Dynasty will be held at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Sunday, April 6. Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5 should be wrestling events that weekend all over Philadelphia, and Tony Khan could make it themed so pro wrestling fans know which events are AEW/ROH approved.
You could run the ECW Arena (the 2300 Arena as it’s now known is about 15 minutes away from Liacouras by driving) on that Friday and Saturday. One event could be AEW Collision for the Saturday night, but I’d rather they run ROH that night there. Friday and Saturday afternoon could be for independent promotions that Tony Khan knows would respect him enough to book good quality shows.
Essentially it’s ROH/AEW creating their own weekend and bringing the independent wrestling spirit to them by giving free rental on the days they book the arena so fans know if they come to the PPV that weekend they got multiple shows to watch with a bit of a “Tony Khan Seal of Quality” one could say. No worries of inexperienced WWEID wrestlers with Gabe Sapolsky poking around seeing who he can pay to take bumps for a t-shirt.
While I did advocate for ROH and AEW to not being doing events together anymore, I think if Ring of Honor was already running their own TV tapings (hopefully with a new TV/streaming deal) and was no longer the AEW Dark replacement, it would start to feel special again when ROH works that AEW pay per view weekend. It also ensures the independent spirit of Ring of Honor, even if it doesn’t exist in authenticity, it can still exist by having indie companies work the same weekend as ROH during that AEW pay per view weekend.
Symbolic Gesture
Seeing that Supercard of Honor poster with the champions on it, you could see Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Dustin Rhodes, and Athena all front and centre on it. Jericho, Sammy, and Dustin are definitely not thought of as Ring of Honor stars and are instead considered AEW stars. Athena, on the other hand, does actually feel like an attraction for Ring of Honor as the ROH Women’s World Champion.
Athena though it feels like could be coming to the end of her reign, and looking at finally jumping back to All Elite Wrestling to take aim at Mercedes Moné. Should that be the case, it would mean Ring of Honor really doesn’t have much of an identity aside from AEW talents who can’t get the TV time they want so they work in ROH instead.
That’s not entirely a bad thing, and maybe this show can be the jump off point for ROH to really build an identity of their own with their own talents that rarely appear on AEW, and especially don’t appear as ROH champions to lose to harder pushed AEW talent.
From Athena to Red Velvet to even Sammy Guevara, I think there’s been some great work done by people who couldn’t find a spot in the past year on AEW TV and are instead making ROH their home. I see moving Supercard of Honor from WrestleMania weekend to their own show on the Boardwalk as a symbolic gesture that it’s time to separate ROH from AEW, at least in perception, and allow ROH to build its own identity with its own shows, hopefully separate going forward from AEW tapings.
Even if they do, I think if AEW puts more time into planning their pay per view weekends, and uses it as an opportunity to pull in choice indie promotions and ROH on the same weekend in a smaller venue, it can create a real party/event weekend atmosphere so ROH doesn’t have to piggyback a WWE event. They can instead be an attraction for an AEW/ROH/Indie weekend of events.
Once you do that? You can truly build a Supercard of Honor that feels like the traditions of Ring of Honor without any association to another promotions weekend of events.
