Ring of Honor: Then and Now

This newsletter is going to focus on the hottest independent promotion today, Ring of Honor, also known as ROH. I have recently had the opportunity to watch ROH's second show and compare it with one of their shows from this year. I am comparing ROH Round Robin Challenge with ROH Chi-town Struggle.

First, let me start by saying that the majority of independent promotions never go anywhere. They stay indy, they go out of business, or they change their name and take a hiatus. The point is, when someone starts up his own wrestling company, it's almost a given that such a company will fail. Give it enough time, and any wrestling promotion, big or small, will fall flat on its face. Ring of Honor, however, is the exception. I have yet to see ROH as a promotion come to the point where it's "they have to improve or go out of business." I've seen the WWE at that point for a while, and TNA has been there once or twice, but ROH? Never. I'm going to tell you why.

ROH, when they first started, were an upstart out of nowhere. I think they were lucky if they had 100 people at their shows. However, for such a small audience, in Round Robin Challenge, Low Ki and Bryan Danielson put on a fantastic main event and the fans were chanting "ROH, ROH, ROH," during the match. I would like to point out that such a chant had not been heard previously during the event, even though the Amazing Red had wrestled, Homicide had wrestled, CW Anderson had wrestled and Little Guido (as James Maritato) had wrestled. Eddie Guerrero had been with the promotion for their first show, and would return for the third. He didn't appear at this one, but ROH still attracted enough big names, in 2002, to make them seem legit. Big names do help, but you need more than that.

At TNA's second show, Low Ki, Psicosis, Jerry Lynn and AJ Styles competed in a double elimination match for the X-Division title. Three of these wrestlers had been with big promotions. Jerry Lynn and Psicosis were established stars. AJ Styles was a wrestler for NWA Wildside with a huge upside. Low Ki was an unknown at the time, even though he had established himself in ROH. (Ring of Honor started in February 2002 and TNA started in June 2002.) All four wrestlers, however, put on a show that had the fans chanting, "TNA, TNA, TNA." Sound familiar? In both cases, Low Ki vs. Bryan Danielson and the four-way match, the fans of both had chanted the promotion's name. I'll try and explain what happened to make this possible.

In the TNA match, it should be noted that their first and second show were taped the same night. AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, Psicosis and Low Ki had all wrestled previously that night. Jerry Lynn, in particular, had done a lot of travelling to help out TNA in their first show. He was, at the time, the biggest lightweight name TNA could get. He had been with ECW and with the WWF, so there could be no doubt of his ability. When Lynn and Styles were left alone in the ring, however, both men put on a clinic of what wrestling should be. There were something like 20 consecutive 2-fall counts. Jerry Lynn had already established that the cradle piledriver was his finisher earlier in the match, and AJ had used the Styles Clash. Both men went for their finishers against each other. AJ Styles actually started out as needing only pinned once whereas Jerry Lynn needed pinned twice (it was a double elimination match); AJ pulled out a Spiral Tap and became the first-ever X-Division champion. There have been very few X-Division contests since then that have matched or surpassed that match. The fans chanted for wrestling. They chanted for atheletic ability. They chanted because they weren't cheated into thinking that a headlock is somehow a tactic to wear an opponent down. They weren't made to believe that a simple fireman's carry slam can defeat anyone. They were given what they had paid for, and, as the main event in a four-hour show, the TNA fans let TNA know exactly what they felt.

ROH fans were the same way. Between Low Ki and Bryan Danielson- a match that was refereed by Ken Shamrock- there were hard strikes. There were devastating moves pulled off. There were tons of submissions. There was Bryan Danielson hitting his favorite move, Cattle Mutilation, and there was Low Ki hitting the Ki Crusher- not once, but twice. Danielson kicked out the first time. The second time, Low Ki came away with a win. At the end of the show, the arena was fairly ready to explode with the energy that raced all through it. Before the wrestlers from Ring of Honor had showed up, the building was just a building. Just a gray construction of cement that bore no remarkable features at all. If you were to pass it on the street, you would have not been that impressed with it. Inside, however, once the night was over, the building had turned into a temple for ability. Low Ki and Bryan Danielson- dare I say it?- had laid everything they had at the feet of a sacred altar and been rewarded for it. Today, Low Ki is now Senshi, TNA's X-Division champion. Bryan Danielson is Ring of Honor's world champion. Both men have been trusted by their respected companies to wear titles because they can produce the kind of reaction that they produced at the Round Robin Challenge show.

Fast forward to June 2006. Chi-town Struggle, where Colt Cabana challenges world champion Bryan Danielson for the title in Cabana's hometown of Chicago. In the four years in between, Ring of Honor has not signed a TV deal, they have not aired a single pay-per-view, but they are now financially independent on the sales of the DVDs. A who's who in wrestling have been in ROH- Jushin Liger, Naomichi Marufuji, Kenta Kobashi, KENTA, Paul London, Brian Kendrick, CM Punk, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Matt Hardy, Christian Cage....and on the list goes. Wrestlers have seen what ROH can do and they have wanted to be a part of it. The fans' reactions at Chi-town Struggle are really indicative of what makes the promotion so good.

The fans at ROH today react positively to even a halfway decent move. They fairly erupt for a fantastic move. Ring of Honor has had time to see which wrestlers are atheletic and which are not. They have accumulated the atheletic ones and it has showed in ROH's bottom line. But, and I would like to point this out- other promotions have had ROH's wrestlers and have not used them as well. The WWE currently has CW Anderson under contract and he is doing house shows. They have Matt Hardy, and he has not had (to my knowledge) a world title reign in over a decade of working for Vince McMahon. In ROH, Matt Hardy was given the respect he had earned in the business through his years of service. In the WWE, he is being looked at as just another guy with long hair.

The formula starts to come out when you see it that way. Atheletic wrestlers + proper usage = profit. It's quite simple, really. Fans have seen all kinds of weird angles and storylines between WCW and the WWF, and now that everything under the sun has been done, they want to go back to atheletic contests. Wrestling as a sport, as it began at the start of the 20th century and continues today in the Greco-Roman style. Wrestling without nonsense. Just guys going in there and getting it done.

When KENTA faced Austin Aries at Chi-town Struggle, there could not have been a more perfect description of what ROH stands for. Here you have two men who just went at each other, giving it everything they had. You had two guys were experienced in the ring, and knew what they were doing. This was not a match between an established superstar and a rookie just coming out of training school. This was a clash of titans, and I don't think either of them weighed over 250 pounds. Quite simply put, these guys put on an amazing match- and it's what ROH fans have come to expect. Other matches- AJ Styles vs. Paul London (the draw), Paul London vs. Bryan Danielson (2 out of 3 falls), Samoa Joe vs. Homicide (ROH Do or Die), and, of course, my favorite, the main event from Round Robin Challenge- have all shown one thing in common. Ring of Honor is wrestling as it always could have been, had gimmicks, storylines, writers and other various nonsense not been a part of the equation.

And Ring of Honor is growing. There can be no question for a company who started out with an audience of less then 100 people to now a company who makes enough money to sign the NWA World Champion to an event, among other things. You may not agree, you may not like Ring of Honor, but it's undeniable from any aspect of the company's product you see: Ring of Honor is not only the future of wrestling, it is also the present.