Tonight, in just a few hours, AJ Styles and Chris Hero will wrestle on a Ring of Honor event, “Flyin’ High” in Dayton, Ohio. It will be the first time they wrestle against each other in ROH. It will not be the first time they have wrestled each other in 2014-that was for Canada’s SMASH Wrestling independent promotion. Regardless, Styles and Hero coming together to wrestle in the ring is in some ways symbolic of the first quarter of 2014-a moment in time where both of them have proven to have important connections to the independent scene and to each other.
Both wrestlers share aspects of the same story-departing from a major promotion to make it on their own. For one, that promotion was the gateway to success on the biggest stage in the industry. For the other, his promotion had been a home base for a majority of his career.
Chris Hero, who wrestled under WWE contract for two years as Kassius Ohno, had wrestled all over the independent scene and had been contracted to ROH before he left to try his hand at “making it”. He spent time in FCW and NXT developmental portraying a character personality not unlike the one he used in ROH. However, it seemed WWE never could find the “right place” for him in their promotion and he was let go.
AJ Styles left TNA after contract negotiations failed, leaving Styles to be a true independent contractor in a vast sea of professional wrestling companies. For all the talk ( and the latest T-shirt) of AJ Styles “Coming Home” to Ring of Honor, Styles’ real home was in TNA. He was viewed by a majority of fans and experts as TNA’s truest “homegrown” “star”. Sometimes it did feel that way for Styles in TNA, but other times, Styles was passed over for a plethora of WWE-castoffs and former stars that made TNA their way station or oasis from troubled waters instead of their top priority.
Both Hero and Styles did not give up or go away. Both became something of a phoenix in their careers in 2014. Hero’s time in WWE allowed him to write his own ticket in the first few months of “free agency”. He was booked everywhere. He was put in main event matches and challenged for titles. He won the EVOLVE Title last month and this past week won the WXW 16-Carat Tournament in Germany (which had also been a very important place in Hero’s pre-WWE independent career). Hero is doing just fine coming out of his run with WWE.
The same could be said for AJ Styles’ momentum, more so once people realized his departure from TNA was not an elaborate work or angle. Styles worked all over North America and now his name has popped up in terms of a potential relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling. Lo and behold, he was just announced to appear for ROH on the ROH vs. NJPW super shows in Toronto and New York City this May.
Now these two men wrestle each other in Ring of Honor, a place which to be fair, has far more exposure and reach than SMASH wrestling. Far more people will see this match than their one for SMASH, counting the live crowd in Dayton, customers who will purchase the Video-On-Demand and DVD of the event and those who will watch it on the Sinclair-syndicated television show. This match could be the one that defines their run in 2014, but at the very least, it should be the one that celebrates it-where they came from, where they are now, and where they are going for the rest of the year.
More information on the show can be found here. Of course, stay tuned right here to Pro Wrestling Ponderings which will provide updates and results for tonight’s show on the website.