Ring of Honor turns twelve years old this weekend and celebrates the anniversary with two shows held in its birth city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Twelve years is a long time and there have been a lot of highs and lows since then, as one would expect for a promotion that has been around for so long.
It began as an attempt to create another viable commercial wrestling entity to fill the vacuum of the end of ECW. It started as a mom-and-pop, shifted to Cary Silkin’s ownership in the wake of scandal and then was sold to a corporate television conglomerate in 2011. Ultimately, ROH has stayed in a similar place in the hierarchy of United States professional wrestling groups, but its influence has been felt in similar ways to ECW. The best indicator of that influence-ROH was noted recently in an excellent article published on WWE’s own website, with the largest wrestling company in the world admitting freely that quite a few of its current top Superstars had their roots working for Ring of Honor.
ROH had been the home of men who became WWE champions, TNA champions, WWE backstage agents and international superstars. It has been the host to a who’s-who of professional wrestling’s elite from both past and present. If someone created an alphabetical list I’m sure it would end up being very substantial.
The likes of CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Cesaro and Seth Rollins were in ROH. Jamie Noble had his career benchmark set in his 11-month run in ROH during 2005. Chris Hero was here, left to become Kassius Ohno in WWE’s developmental territory and then came back this year to be a Hero once again. Colt Cabana did similarly several years ago. Samoa Joe set the bar for what an ROH champion should be, wrestled what will probably go down as his most important career match against Kenta Kobashi in 2005 and used that momentum to find himself a spot on the TNA roster for years to come. Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles and Low Ki all wrestled for ROH and TNA at the same time both companies began-and all of them made their marks in ROH history.
On the other hand, ROH has welcomed in talents that didn’t quite make the cut either there or elsewhere. Names like Biohazard and Fast Eddie are now footnotes in ROH history that only the most hardcore will remember. There was Ken Shamrock’s cool involvement as a special ref early on in ROH, but then later on Daniel Puder, and even later on, Dan Severn, demonstrating that some guests from the world of Mixed Martial Arts were best left to the octagon.
Then there is the reach of the promotion throughout the years. ROH has toured all over North America and into Europe and Japan. It had a television series on HDNet and now the Sinclair syndicated series. It put on broadcast and internet Pay Per View as well as Video-on-Demand services. Some shows and services have been massive successes, other attempts have been hit-and-miss and still others outright failures.
Creatively there have been some serious highs and also some major down periods. Gabe Sapolsky’s 2004-2007 run will likely be remembered as THE Golden era for creative in ROH, but was also blessed to have the greatest top-to-bottom roster depth of the most recent independent boom. Sapolsky’s burnout at the end of his run will be less remembered and praised. Adam Pearce and Jim Cornette’s booking runs were each hit-and-miss. There was gold to be found in Pearce’s run with the likes of Kevin Steen and El Generico feud, Tyler Black and Austin Aries, and The Kings of Wrestling and the Briscoes usually at the center of that goodness. Cornette’s run, regardless of the circumstances, was the nadir of the promotion’s booking. Right now there is a lizard-man at the helm, and while the ROH vs. SCUM angle hardly lit the world on fire, there is a new groove since mid-2013 with the ROH World Title tournament, and the ascension of Adam Cole as its newest and coolest heel champion.
ROH’s in-ring presentation has always been its greatest strength. Sometimes the events and actions outside the ring from those involved in the company have made it the butt of jokes across the internet and sometimes rightfully so. Say what you will about the varying degrees of success it has at public relations attempts, ROH still knows its bread is buttered in the ring. It’s not the same as it was in 2002, or 2007 or 2010. Yet the name Ring of Honor and the initials ROH are still around in 2014 and for what it’s worth, still serve as a torch for the idea that wrestling fans need and deserve options in their viewing diet. ROH is still that place to find joy in wrestling as wrestling, and to discover and to cultivate the younger wrestlers so that years from now, another WWE.com article can be written about it. It would say that yes, ROH was important and it mattered. In 2014, it still does.