Ring of Honor's Increasingly Low Standards

Is signing this asswipe really worth it, ROH?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Once upon a time, Ring of Honor was known for pioneering advances in in-ring quality in the United States. It was the first notable company to feature wrestling that was most like the various styles found in All-Japan Pro Wrestling, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and Pro Wrestling NOAH. Over the company's first decade in business, it featured Low Ki, Bryan Danielson, CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Homicide, Claudio Castagnoli, Chris Hero, El Generico, Kevin Steen, Nigel McGuinness, Tyler Black, and countless other wrestlers who laid the groundwork for what wrestling would become over the next decade or so. So many of its influential alumni went onto WWE and helped transform it. Of course, the company had its misses, but the sins of guys like Mike Bennett weren't that they couldn't work, but that they were different kinds of workers than what made the company famous. Even in the later years when ROH lost its founding fathers, it still was able to replenish the ranks with guys like Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, Tommaso Ciampa, Donovan Dijak, Hanson, and others.

Using that history as context, it's baffling that at the co-branded Madison Square Garden show with New Japan that it would decide to debut The Beautiful People, Enzo Amore, and Colin Cassady. Among those four people, the only one who can remotely work to the standards set forth by ROH is Angelina Love. Add that to the prominence Bully Ray attained over the last year and I have to wonder where ROH's standards have gone. Do the people in charge care that they're signing people who bring their in-ring quality down so much and who really don't have much to add otherwise?

If Bully Ray were the only one, fine, he can still cut a promo. He might be a MAGA CHUD who loudly bullies people junior to him in the business who don't follow what he sees are arcane unwritten rules, but look at who cuts the checks. Sinclair, more than even FOX News, is Donald Trump's propaganda arm. So his presence, while mostly unwanted, has some value. At this point, what does Velvet Sky bring? She's not particularly good at anything you'd need to be a successful pro wrestler. WWE takes on a lot of projects in its Performance Center. That company wouldn't even give her a tryout, and this was even when Bully Ray, whom she is dating, was still there. If the talent vacuum cleaner that is WWE wouldn't even take a flyer on her, what would that say for any other company?

Amore and Cassady, who debuted in what appears to be the most clumsily executed "arena invasion" worked shoot ever, were only valued in WWE because they could talk. By the time both were at the end of their ropes there, that talent had been figured out as a repetitive one-trick-pony sort of deal. Of course, Cass got fired from a company that doesn't ever fire people because he couldn't work, went off-script, and generally was unpleasant to be around. In a company that people derisively call the Big Trump Fundraiser because of the McMahon family's ties to the President, he rubbed people the wrong way with how vocally he supported the current administration. Amore got fired because he was being investigated for rape and didn't bother to tell anyone, leaving WWE to find out from the media. WWE can stand a lot of things, even rape, given that Vince McMahon has accusations against him and he harbored Pat Patterson for years who has accusations against him from people who WORKED for the company. But it can't stand provable bad PR.

Basically, ROH is bringing in all these people who don't offer any appreciable value other than people know their names. The initial returns on investment prove how worthless the signings were. The Beautiful People were introduced to silence. Amore and Cassady were met with confusion. If the initial impacts were so flaccid, what's going to happen when these people are called upon to wrestle? If you thought Bennett was bad in ROH because he was a misfit, then what's going to happen when Sky, Amore, and Cassady get into the ring and show that they're outright awful? This is the imprimatur that Hunter "Delirious" Johnston, Joe Koff, and their higher-ups in Sinclair are putting on the company, and it's an incredibly rotten one. The legacy of ROH includes excellent wrestling: Joe vs. Punk, Danielson vs. Takeshi Morishima, Steen vs. Generico, Cole vs. O'Reilly. That legacy will endure long after ROH is done, but that doesn't mean the bullshit that the company is bringing onto itself won't hurt it in the short term and possibly kill it in the long.

And what of New Japan? That company's officials had to have seen the reactions to the Garden. All of its matches and wrestlers were received warmly. The ROH exclusive stuff, not so much. So how long will it be before New Japan decides that it doesn't need ROH to succeed in America? Or even worse for ROH in terms of its domestic stakes, what if New Japan decides to partner with All Elite Wrestling? If ROH loses that partnership and has to survive on its own, what will it stake as its reputation? It can't be that it's where the best wrestling lives anymore, because it decided that having the Beautiful People, Bully Ray, Enzo Amore, and Colin Cassady on the roster was worth it. The fact that it's now running worked shoots means that it is trying to imitate WWE. You can't surpass an industry titan like WWE by doing the same thing its doing with its own castoffs.

Like I wrote, ROH's legacy will last as long as wrestling exists in this country. Even if the later days get forgotten, people will still remember when it was hip, fresh, on the cutting edge. They'll know that it was the place where Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins, Cesaro, Sami Zayn, and so many other wrestlers came from initially. Hell, it might even get credit for others who never worked for it like Dean Ambrose given how scatterbrained the wrestling fan mind can be. However, that doesn't excuse the current administration for wrecking that reputation and running the company into the fucking ground.