Ring of Honor’s 2014 story thus far can be labeled by one keyword – momentum.
It began at Final Battle 2013 in New York City. Amid weather conditions the promotion set out to put on as good of a show as it could. It featured the farewell of Triple Crown winner Eddie Edwards, the return of the fans favorite person to hate Matt Hardy, the final meeting in the feud between Kevin Steen and Michael Bennett in an oddly stipulated Stretcher match and the ROH World Championship debacle on paper looked like it could end, as Adam Cole defended against Michael Elgin and the “Real World Champion”, Jay Briscoe.
I reviewed the show which you can read here, and felt like I more than got my monies worth. I’ve read some people say it was their favorite Ring of Honor event of the year, others say it was their favorite wrestling event as a whole of the year! It had a little bit of everything and the pacing was really good booking wise, getting the fans pumped from the get go by sending Matt Hardy out there to a blizzard of heat as expected.
The big talking point emerging from the show was the conclusion, which featured the return, of Chris Hero.
Emerging through the crowd while “Chris Is Awesome” thundered through the speakers, “The Knockout Artist” slid into the ring from behind, knocked Matt Hardy out with the Rolling Elbow, following this up by laying Adam Cole out for the count as the Hammerstein Ballroom cheered in jubilation and Hero announced, he was back.
Everyone said it, “man isn’t it great to have Chris Hero back in Ring of Honor?”
We all thought it. Fresh off his WWE release, Hero was a hot topic, and the day of Final Battle he worked Combat Zone Wrestling’s Cage of Death before making the drive to New York City for the grand return, a moment that ended ROH’s year on a high note and we all thought surely would send them into the New Year with at least some fresh match-ups in the wings.
What we didn’t see coming, was the return of a former ROH Pure Champion, in “The Phenomenal” AJ Styles.
AJ Styles was one of “those guys” you’d see in Ring of Honor when it began. He wasn’t there from the very beginning but he wasn’t far off. Styles was a top independent name on the card, featuring for then NWA:TNA on PPV, and establishing himself as the one and only, “Phenomenal One” in professional wrestling.
During his initial Ring of Honor run, Styles is fondly remembered for his Night of the Grudge match with Paul London, feud with Jimmy Rave, tag team with Amazing Red, becoming the inaugural ROH Pure Champion and his attempts to become the ROH World Champion, which never amounted to anything but multiple challenges.
When word of his return broke, accompanied by a hype video, in the words of Good Ol’ JR, “business picked up”, both in-terms of ROH’s momentum and in-general, as the TV taping featuring Styles’ return would be a sell-out, many fans who attended noting others were turned away at the door due to them reaching capacity, a rare occurrence for an ROH event nowadays.
It’s a shame nationally syndicated shows can’t rate on Nielsan’s scheme or that Ring of Honor doesn’t release some figures on who is watching and where their strongest markets are in-terms of TV viewers, but if I were to take a guess, between those who signed-up to watch on the website and the fans with ROH available to them via television screen, It’d be one of it not the most watched episodes of Ring of Honor Wrestling since Sinclair’s purchase in 2011.
So straight off the bat of a New Year, you have the return of two recognizable names, two guys who people will want to see on television, and considering they can’t see them on RAW, Smackdown, NXT or Impact, they’ll have to either watch your show or buy the independent events they feature on across America. They’re two big assets to the business of the company, because both names are able to draw, Styles more-so than Hero.
Hero is interjected immediately into the title scene, also circling around him is The Decade angle, a nice return to Ring of Honor in recent months is that a talent can have multiple angles running simultaneously, where in the Cornette era there’d be the one focal angle and everyone else would just be going from opponent to opponent with no or little direction.
Styles is booked for the 12th Anniversary Weekend, show in Dayton, Ohio and Ring of Honor’s TV taping in Baltimore, Maryland, in April. He’ll be used as a special attraction, who viewers will want to see, both old and new, with the aspiration that they’ll get a glimpse of what Ring of Honor has to offer as opposed to what it was in late 2011 where the first impression failed, leaving a sour taste in many viewers mouths.
So how do they top this? What do they do to keep momentum high? They do HonorCon.
In the 1990’s, Paul Heyman had an idea where fans of ECW could come out once a year and ask wrestlers questions, get autographs, hang out with the stars for a day or maybe even two, and at that time events like these weren’t the norm, so it was viewed a bit as “ground breaking”, and its success is featured in the ECW Unauthorized documentary Barbed Wire City, which I reviewed for PWPonderings last year, which you can read here.
Ring of Honor opted to do a similar event of their own, titled HonorCon. They tried to do that silly hashtag as a means of marketing which just about everybody does nowadays, and they built it around Q&A panels similar to how Heyman would do with ECW talent back in the day. They sold rare merchandise, let fans get autographs and pictures with the talent and capped it off with a big announcement, one many of us were talking about.
Joe Koff, alongside a suited Delirious – who made a fine, totally coherent speech, might I add – came into the ring and built up the announcement, starting off with two minor ones, those being that Ring of Honor are in negotiations with action figure and trading card companies on future products, and that they’ll be running Future of Honor shows, which Kevin Kelly has detailed as being a coming together of ROH’s wrestling school, certain outside talent and some main roster stars under a “Future of Honor” banner.
So with that out of the way, the lights dimmed and attention turned to the screen on the ROH entrance way which funnily enough is never really used. And in a few short minutes, the announcement many of us were hoping for came, and in the fashion of a well produced, HD video.
Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling are doing two crossover shows in May. On 1o/6 Global Wars from Toronto, Ontario, Canada and The Ted Reeve Arena, and on 17/6, War of the Worlds from the Hammerstein Ballroom, Manhattan, New York, which has already seen the initial ticket allocation sell-out, forcing ROH to release upper balcony tickets with Kevin Kelly saying on his podcast that the seating layout would be adjusted to accommodate more fans.
Many have asked, “well, what does this do for either company?” And that’s a good question to ask.
Obviously, straight off the bat, there is an obvious interest. Not one match has been announced for that New York show and already the guts of 2,000 tickets have been sold-out, with 500 expected to sell-out in advance of the show. That is the sort of thing that creates buzz, gets people talking, and if it gets buzz and gets people talking then it gets attention, and if gets attention then it gets money, and money makes business grow.
As for NJPW, they want to get a foothold in the American wrestling market, especially with their events being available to viewers through uStream iPPV. Their last outing in America was an admitted failure. They’d a hard time selling tickets and it wasn’t a very profitable venture, in any terms. With one event already showing good attendance numbers and more tickets being made available and the Toronto show selling well due to only row 5, 6 and GA tickets left, it looks as though both promotions will draw the eyes of the wrestling world.
And not to mention, the potential matches are endless. Tanahashi vs. Styles, Okada vs. Elgin, Steen vs. Liger, Gedo & Jado vs. reDRagon, Karl Anderson vs. Tommaso Ciampa, Cole vs. Nakamura and the list goes on, get your fantasy booking hat out and take your picks.
Ring of Honor is “Flyin’ High” thus far in 2014, and with a string of big and exciting show coming up, including the Raising The Bar double-shot in Milwaukee and Chicago, Flyin’ High live event in Dayton, Ohio later this month, Supercard of Honor Weekend in New Orleans, Louisiana, an April TV taping which AJ Styles is booked to appear on, the aforementioned crossover shows with NJPW in May and what may come of that, there’s reason to be excited.
The TV show has also improved on last years offerings. Last year at times you knew you could miss the show every week because anything worth watching was being kept for the big events, but so far we’ve seen each live event get a stacked card and it looks to be continuing with the Flyin’ High event in Dayton on 22/3. My only issue with the TV show is a personal gripe, which is that they stop showing matches from the big events for free.
Everyone will make comments on the booking. “Michael Elgin should be ROH World Champions, hes being booked great everywhere else, why isn’t he ROH World Champion?”, “Not enough tag teams! Who are reDRagon going to defend the belts against?” or “Why is Matt Hardy still being booked?” and so on so forth, but that’s all subjective. I’d love for Elgin to be champion, sadly he came up at the same time as Adam Cole and I feel Cole’s been doing a pretty good job.
I’d love for more tag teams to be in the mix right now. reDRagon will have defenses against Adrenaline RUSH and Outlaw Inc it seems, at least it’s implied in this conversation between Nigel McGuinness and Eddie Kingston, The Young Bucks will have their chance during Raising The Bar Night 2, but sometimes not everything can be as good as we’d hopes. They did upload an album from their seminar yesterday however, and some faces are recognizable.
And Matt Hardy still being booked was exemplified at the 12th Anniversary Show – people love to hate Hardy. He’s an easy target. No, he won’t shock us with some amazing matches or go flying to the outside, but what he will do is add a different type of character to the show along with some name value. People recognize Matt Hardy, and Hardy’s eats up peoples hate and utilizes it for the betterment of his ROH character.
Right now Ring of Honor is riding a wave of momentum. They’ve finally got the TV show laid out well, the live events are drawing some good attention and interest, attendance levels are up and these impending couple of months on paper look like they could bolster that momentum even further. It’s a nice thing to have, and hopefully, it continues.