I guess there has been some talk about what Ring of Honor is in 2024.
The current talk is that All Elite Wrestling will eventually rebrand ROH as AEW: ROH to ensure the AEW brand is attached to it. The hope is that this allows for ROH to be more viable for TV deals and drawing locally.
This has sparked discussion on how AEW has handled Ring of Honor since the purchase in 2022. There are a lot of ROH loyalists upset that ROH is essentially used as a replacement for the AEW Dark program that used to air on YouTube to provide extra matches off television for the AEW product.
I will start by saying I understand that when your favourite company is purchased it’s always a depressing feeling. Very rarely does someone buy the company to make it better than the company they already own. There’s too many egos involved and the idea is never really to do that. They usually express a goal to make it equal or elevate it beyond its current position, but never to make it the primary driver of success which it was before sale.
The dream is for someone to buy it, take it out of its financial and creative issues, and run it independently so it has a chance to be a success again. Unfortunately, that’s rarely ever the case in North America.
Take No Prisoners
The World Wrestling Federation purchased Stampede Wrestling in 1984, at that point a company of 36 years. The WWF didn’t run their own independent shows as Stampede Wrestling or even try to rebrand as WWF: Stampede Wrestling. They just wanted the timeslot and some of the stars. Not only that, but WWF didn’t properly pay for it and just gave it back in less than a year.
Jim Crockett Promotions in 1988 purchased the Universal Wrestling Federation from Bill Watts, selling the territory, tapes, and allowing them to have several of the talents. The original idea was to keep the two companies separate to eventually run a Wrestling Superbowl matchup between the two companies. This never happened. The titles got unified. The talents got amalgamated into the JCP roster and most of the UWF alumni got handled poorly in the process. In less than a year, JCP themselves sold to Ted Turner and the company became World Championship Wrestling with most of the UWF history becoming quickly forgotten.
We all know how WWF handled the purchases of WCW and ECW. Poorly. You can find many, many other resources on what happened with that purchase and why it was handled extremely poorly. Essentially, WWF had the opportunity to create the greatest interpromotional war in the history of pro wrestling and screwed it up so poorly that when they ran an interpromotional pay per view called Invasion they called the main event “The Inaugural Brawl” where Team WCW/ECW (The Alliance) faced Team WWF. It was the only Inaugural Brawl to happen.
ECW did get a big of a resurgence in the now WWE by becoming a third brand to essentially bring up new talent or drop talent who were having trouble getting over on the other shows. ECW would one day be dropped and become NXT. Some people have fond memories of what gets called WWECW, but it’s mostly because a one hour wrestling show is much easier to watch than a two or three hour, so it’s easy to stay engaged when you don’t have to invest so much time into it. I guess if you were a CM Punk fan it was a good time for a year or two.
This wouldn’t be the last purchase of WWE, as in 2020 they purchased EVOLVE and Dragon Gate USA from Gabe Sapolsky. EVOLVE had started working with the WWE back in 2015 to basically be their feeder for NXT and a pipeline from the independents to WWE. WWE even ran their 10th anniversary show on the WWE Network on July 13, 2019, which just so happened to be the very same day All Elite Wrestling was running the Fight for the Fallen charity show.
There was supposed to be an NXT Evolve show to begin in 2021. It never happened. Nobody really cares about this either. Good to remember that.
Respect is Earned
So now you have AEW purchasing Ring of Honor in 2022, which they were the highest bidder against WWE. Ring of Honor has been often considered the crown jewel of independent wrestling promotions in the 2000s, with an attempt to be more in the 2010s after the sale to Sinclair Broadcasting. Many of the top stars in WWE and AEW came from Ring of Honor, and it felt like the one place in North American pro wrestling touring company to emphasize pro wrestling excellence over being a pretend entertainment variety show.
I detail the history of American companies buying up rival wrestling promotions because what’s happening to ROH is honestly better handled than most if not all. They handled better than any of WWE’s purchases, save for maybe the WWECW revival. That got an ECW Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania with national media attention because Donald Trump was attached to it. That’s pretty important I guess. It was handled better than the UWF sale to JCP. It actually still runs their own shows, with their own pay per views, and their own champions.
But it’s okay if “better than the absolute low” doesn’t satisfy you. AEW has handled ROH in a way that definitely feels like they are waiting for their new television deal with Warner Bros Discovery, in the hopes to get more money to support the promotion. Right now it merely exists by name and runs just to keep the idea alive.
One of the things that disappoints ROH fans is how often that the ROH championship titles only change hands on AEW television. It’s obvious that’s done so a larger amount of people see the title change and hopefully choose to subscribe to ROH on Honor Club, the only way to watch ROH’s weekly shows. It’s also why they will likely rebrand to AEW: ROH, to create more brand synergy.
Man Up
The greater complaint of ROH becoming AEW: Dark does need some examining, because I don’t think people are being honest on the discussion. I watched ROH. I watched Sinclair Broadcasting ROH. The weekly shows with Danhausen doing his dumb schtick *and* wrestling, and Beer City Bruiser taking a spot on the roster. I watched hoping Eli Isom and Dak Draper would be stars one day. I watched hoping Brody King would become ROH World Champion and that Rush would stay one of the top stars. I had hope for Marty Scurll being the booker. I watched those pandemic shows.
They were not better than current ROH.
Death Before Dishonor 2022, 2023, and 2024 blow away every Sinclair Broadcasting Death Before Dishonor show. You have to go back to Death Before Dishonor VIII in 2010 to find one on the same level or better. The women’s division in current ROH isn’t just a way to get Mandy Leon on television. The commentary is excellent, as Ian Riccaboni is the best play by play man in the business. Caprice Coleman does an excellent job as an efficient and competent colour commentator who doesn’t use all of his airtime to crack jokes or get himself over.
There are people who complain that ROH is just going to become a development promotion for AEW and personally? I hope it happens. I think that’s the best possible thing for ROH to succeed. It should be the place for people not ready for AEW to hone their skills and get reps. My hope is that with the next television deal, ROH is able to run more events per month so it becomes a place for wrestlers to essentially get their house show circuit reps. There’s a lot of wrestlers who have good potential that I have feel just need to unlock it through competition. Lee Moriarty as ROH Pure Champion is evidence of that.
ROH should be about development. It should be for the young wrestlers, and for the veterans lost in the shuffle. It should be a place to get better and to have time to get better. And once you’re ready? You start working AEW more than ROH and move on up. I do want a cohesive, clearly defined ROH roster once the new TV deal is signed, but I’m also fine with people moving in and out no different to a CMLL or NJPW star coming to AEW for a few spot shows.
New Horizons
I understand people have this dream of ROH being its own promotion that can be equal or rival AEW but it’s not happening. It’s never happening and was never going to happen. ROH had a 17 year head start and AEW surpassed them in national relevance in their first year. ROH isn’t on that level. But they can be on a level beneath the highest professional level and be treated it like AAA baseball to Major League Baseball or the American Hockey League to the National Hockey League.
It’s not the dream of Ring of Honor in the 2000s, but it’s certainly better than the ROH that All Elite Wrestling purchased in 2022. It’s better than AEW: Dark, it’s better than Jim Cornette booking the Head Bangers and Mike Mondo, and it’s better than Danhausen having one of the worst matches I’ve paid money to see on pay per view against Brian Johnson. It can be better, and I hope it becomes better in the future, but that doesn’t make it some embarrassment to the history of ROH or an awful handling of a wrestling promotion acquisition.
Next time someone gets hyperbolic like that, just ask them: Where’s NXT: Evolve?
