The Rise, Fall, And Rise Again Of Ring Of Honor (Part 2) | partsFUNknown
Ring of Honor during the 2010s had a lot of ups and downs and now with the success of Tony Khan's Supercard of Honor we shall continue our look at Ring of Honor's history with a trip back through some of their toughest times. Let us know your favorite match from this era in the comments below!
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Ring of Honor during the 2010s had a lot of ups and downs and now with the success of Tony Khan's Supercard of Honor we shall continue our look at Ring of Honor's history with a trip back through some of their toughest times. Let us know your favorite match from this era in the comments below!
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
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SportsTranscript
00:00 As mentioned off the top of part 1, Ring of Honor has always needed a strong identity
00:09 if it was going to thrive. During its early years, Ring of Honor's identity was tied
00:13 to great wrestling and great wrestlers, but as time went on other factors began to shroud
00:18 the audience's perception of the company despite those involved still delivering great
00:22 wrestling. As we continue our drive down ROH memory lane, we must buckle in as things are
00:28 about to start getting a little bit bumpy.
00:31 If we simply pick up where we left off in part 1, Ring of Honor marched into the 2010s
00:36 with many of their most iconic stars having left the company, but plenty of fresh faces
00:40 stepping in to replenish the shelves. The likes of Samoa Joe, Bryan Danielson, and CM
00:45 Punk were long gone, but instead the ROH roster was populated with wrestlers who would play
00:50 a big role in defining the industry in the decade to come. Stars like Tyler Black, Kevin
00:54 Steen, El Generico, Davey Richards, and Eddie Edwards stepped up, carrying the main event
00:59 scene with great matches and rivalries. And while they were on top, you had young, prospering
01:04 stars like future Shock the System buddies Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly working their
01:08 way up the card. A roster like this should have no trouble carrying on from those who
01:12 came before them, and to their credit, they didn't. Their work was tremendous, but it
01:16 was what was happening out of the ring that shaped the identity of Ring of Honor during
01:20 this time. I'm Tempest hailing from PartsFunKnown, and this is the Rise, Fall, and Rise Again
01:25 of Ring of Honor Part 2, The First Fall.
01:31 There are a number of Dominos that fell in sequential order during the late 2000s and
01:35 early 2010s, but you can trace them back to Domino numero uno, that being the decision
01:40 to part ways with booker Gabe Sapolsky on October 26th, 2008. This was one of the first
01:45 major changes in ROH's creative direction, and it led to WWE not-general manager Adam
01:50 Pierce holding the position until August 15th, 2010, when he was replaced by Delirious. How
01:55 anyone was able to make it past the language barrier with Delirious is beyond me, but it
01:59 does make his run as booker that much more impressive. However, more than just the creative
02:02 direction of the company was changing. As we mentioned last time, Ring of Honor needed
02:06 to make money. Newsflash, I know. But in January of 2009, ROH signed a two-year contract to
02:12 air a weekly wrestling show on HDNet. This change was also accompanied by the arrival
02:17 of Jim Cornette as executive producer. Cornette has maintained that Delirious remained the
02:21 head booker during his tenure, but it was hard not to see Cornette's influence on the
02:24 show. It's not as if all of Cornette's input was bad, but he no longer had his finger on
02:28 the pulse of pro wrestling by the time he joined Ring of Honor.
02:31 Whether you agree with his tastes in wrestling or not is irrelevant when you consider that
02:35 those Cornette clashed with were stars like Kevin Steen and The Young Bucks, all of whom
02:39 have undoubtedly connected with large audiences and achieved great success in wrestling. When
02:43 it was his job to capitalize on the star power of these guys, well, he didn't quite do that,
02:49 and it was part of the cause for the downturn in support Ring of Honor received around this
02:52 time.
02:53 No one cause led to fans turning off the product, but it was a combination of boring booking,
02:57 these creative differences, and, well, technical issues. Loads and LOADS of technical issues.
03:03 On May 21st, 2011, Keri Silken sold Ring of Honor to the Sinclair Broadcasting Group,
03:09 marking the true end of an era for the promotion and leaving ROH in much less sturdy hands.
03:14 Jim Cornette and Gary Jester worked out the deal with Joe Koff, who would become the new
03:18 COO of Ring of Honor. The idea at the time was the extra exposure from Sinclair Broadcasting
03:23 would allow ROH to tour their new markets and attract around 750 fans. At one point
03:28 in time that may have worked, but wrestling simply wasn't popular enough at the time to
03:32 support this model.
03:33 Fans were uncertain about the future of Ring of Honor from the top on downwards, but few
03:37 things brought them as much frustration as trying to watch a Ring of Honor IPay-per-view
03:41 in the early 2010s.
03:43 This again is where I will stress the importance of a positive identity with fans. Independent
03:47 wrestling is a niche medium, and not many people will want to go out of their way to
03:51 watch something they can't find with a simple YouTube search, let alone something they have
03:54 to pay for.
03:55 So if the perception of your company becomes that you're totally inept when it comes to
03:59 the subtle but luxurious art of pay-per-view broadcasting, that doesn't give potential
04:03 new fans much of an incentive to check out your shows.
04:06 During the early 2010s, Ring of Honor's major shows were rife with production errors, both
04:10 technical and physical, with pay-per-view feeds going dead and lights going out in buildings
04:14 with a sense of regularity that was a little too much for Ring of Honor fans to handle.
04:18 During these years, this was the identity of Ring of Honor to fans, which was very unfortunate
04:22 given just how much talent was on display.
04:25 Contemporary rivalries were birthed here, like Adam Cole vs. Kyle O'Reilly, Kevin
04:29 Steen vs. noted orphanage builder El Generico, and Eddie Edwards vs. Davey Richards.
04:35 Despite all the technical issues, if you committed to watching Ring of Honor during this time,
04:39 you were still rewarded with a ridiculously hard-working roster made up of many of the
04:43 best wrestlers in the country at the time.
04:45 In addition to these fresh faces, names like Roderick Strong and The Briscoes also made
04:49 ROH a more permanent home, continuing to be featured across multiple eras.
04:54 This was my first exposure to Ring of Honor.
04:56 While the promotion may not have had the same aura it once had, ROH was still an alternative
05:00 to WWE with a much more exciting style of wrestling than what was being presented in
05:04 either WWE or TNA at the time, although over the next few years, the top promotions in
05:09 North America would start to take notice of this style and integrate it into their own
05:14 promotions.
05:15 In the early 2010s, however, you still had John Cena and Randy Orton holding both WWE
05:19 World titles at the same time, and Sting wrestling Jeff Hardy at Victory Road.
05:23 If neither of these options piqued your interest, there was Ring of Honor still a not-half-bad
05:27 third option.
05:28 The TV product was still smaller and more intimate than WWE or TNA, but it had an underground
05:33 vibe more akin to what full-sale NXT was going for.
05:36 Only here, it was because of budget constraints and not because WWE wanted to fit in with
05:40 the cool kids.
05:41 Again, not flashy and often kinda boring, but building to major shows where the big
05:45 matches would take place, the Ring of Honor TV could easily be compared to NXT TV, which
05:50 definitely had its fans despite not being the most exciting show overall.
05:54 If that was your thing, you had Ring of Honor.
05:57 The big shows delivered too, when they weren't derailed by technical tomfoolery of course,
06:01 but fans still got to see matches like Davey Richards vs. Michael Elgin at Showdown in
06:04 the Sun 2012, still considered to be one of the best matches in company history, and one
06:09 of the best matches ever.
06:11 You can list however many examples you want of the excellent work that took place in Ring
06:14 of Honor during the 2010s.
06:15 Kevin Steen and El Generico had one of the most iconic feuds in Ring of Honor history,
06:19 with brutal main events at Final Battle 2010 and 2012 before Generico left the company.
06:24 But that would again start to become the new theme of the promotion.
06:27 Sooner or later, everyone was leaving.
06:29 There were very few who stayed with Ring of Honor all the way to the end, and as the 2010s
06:32 began to roll by, the top stars of ROH were becoming the top stars of WWE and TNA.
06:37 Being the third biggest promotion in the United States meant that they were going to lose
06:40 out on many of their homegrown talent when their contracts came up, simply because other
06:44 companies were willing to open the checkbook just a little bit wider than Sinclair Broadcasting.
06:49 Years after CM Punk, Samoa Joe, and Bryan Danielson made their way to WWE and TNA, Tyler
06:54 Black, Kevin Steen, and El Generico became WWE's Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, and still
06:59 El Generico because he's off somewhere building orphanages.
07:01 Meanwhile, I think a guy named Sami Zayn got really inspired and became the spiritual successor
07:06 to Generico in WWE.
07:08 Paralleling the success of their WWE counterparts, Eddie Edwards and Davey Richards made their
07:12 way to Impact where they would become five-time tag team champions.
07:16 There was a bit of a perception of ROH being something of a feeder system for WWE during
07:20 this time, which WWE seemed to accentuate with the relaunch of NXT in 2012.
07:25 NXT was WWE's super-indie, their answer to Ring of Honor, and in those early years,
07:30 the show was carried by a lot of Ring of Honor alumni.
07:32 Rollins was the first champion, while Cesaro, formerly ROH's Claudio Castagnoli, tore
07:37 up NXT with Sami Zayn during the early years of the brand.
07:40 This led to Zayn's rivalry with Kevin Owens, and by 2015, there was a familiar sheen to
07:44 NXT for ROH fans.
07:46 Ring of Honor had its competition standing over it, but with the departure of Jim Cornette
07:50 in late 2012, the promotion started to make the climb out of the bad reputation pit.
07:54 The production value of ROH began to improve, and while they wouldn't be able to reach
07:58 the levels of production demonstrated by WWE and TNA, they were able to connect to their
08:02 audience once again in the same way they always had.
08:06 During the perfect time, ROH introduced New Japan Pro Wrestling as their new partner,
08:10 resulting in the two promotions exchanging talent for the rest of the decade.
08:14 This was a huge boost for Ring of Honor at the time, as New Japan was going through a
08:17 renaissance the likes of which wrestling fans in the United States were not at all accustomed
08:22 to, and now they were able to see the likes of Shinsuke Nakamura take on Kevin Steen,
08:26 and Kazuchika Okada take on Cedric Alexander in North America, all because of Ring of Honor.
08:31 One of the keys to ROH's success has been a believable argument that they had the best
08:35 wrestling product in America at the time.
08:38 When that was an easy argument to make, odds are Ring of Honor's identity was looking
08:41 pretty good.
08:42 When it wasn't, well then we had the Ring of Honor that we'll get to in Part 3.
08:46 As ROH got some of its mojo back, shows like All Star Extravaganza, Supercard of Honor,
08:51 Best in the World, and Final Battle became must-see viewing for hardcore fans.
08:55 It was still usually a 50/50 shot whether the pay-per-view would actually work, but
08:59 if you managed to see what was advertised, you were in for a good show.
09:02 These were the days of Jay Briscoe as World Champion, proving a tag team guy can also
09:06 work as a top singles champion in the modern era, while Adam Cole reached the top of the
09:10 ROH mountain a record three times, and the returning Jay Lethal reigned as World Champion
09:14 for 427 days.
09:17 There were loads of things to latch onto at the time if you were a Ring of Honor fan,
09:20 but the promotion's biggest success to date came as a result of one group, well, one subgroup
09:25 of one group.
09:26 As ROH forged its way past the halfway point of the decade, a group of foreign talent were
09:31 redefining what it meant to be cool heels in Japan.
09:34 Bullet Club exploded in popularity, and by 2015 there was a full integration of Bullet
09:38 Club into Ring of Honor programming.
09:40 But saying ROH's success came because of Bullet Club would only be half true, as the real
09:44 upswing in popularity came more specifically from The Elite.
09:49 The Young Bucks were able to catch lightning in a bottle with their Being The Elite series,
09:52 allowing a new way for fans to connect with many of Ring of Honor's top stars.
09:56 The cast and its popularity continued to grow as the years went by as Adam Cole, Adam Page,
10:01 Marty Skrull, and Cody Rhodes were all integrated into The Elite.
10:04 With The Elite as the focal point of their programming, and New Japan by their side supplying
10:08 some of the best wrestlers in the world for their biggest events, Ring of Honor was starting
10:12 to make serious moves as 2015 turned into 2016 turned into 2017.
10:16 While the upswing in business meant that Ring of Honor was capable of dealing out big money
10:20 contracts, they were still losing many of their top stars to WWE with NXT now being
10:24 considered the "in promotion".
10:26 In a very short period of time, ROH lost Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, and Bobby Fish, and had
10:31 earlier lost Roderick Strong all to WWE.
10:34 One system can only be shocked like that so many times, so when The Young Bucks stood
10:38 their ground in ROH, choosing not to sign with WWE, it gave the ROH fans some security
10:44 that at least for the time being the top stars weren't going anywhere.
10:47 Well that's just depressing now isn't it?
10:50 With The Elite at the helm, ROH were able to draw 3,500 people for The Young Bucks vs
10:55 The Hardyz at Supercard of Honor 11 in 2017, a pretty good number for the company at the
10:59 time, before packing 6,000 people into Supercard of Honor 12 a year later to see Cody Rhodes
11:05 vs Kenny Omega.
11:06 They had strong competition from NXT as they battled for the hardcore fans' cash, but
11:11 by 2018, Ring of Honor had surpassed Impact to become the second biggest promotion in
11:15 the states, and had as much acclaim as anyone that their in-ring product was the best and
11:19 their world champion was the best wrestler around.
11:22 After a shaky start to the decade, Ring of Honor had once again found its identity, and
11:26 this time they had the support of the fans.
11:28 Ring of Honor was growing and they needed to expand their business, something they seemed
11:31 extremely cautious about doing.
11:43 So in response to one little tweet from Dave Meltzer, Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks set
11:47 in place a plan to run the biggest independent wrestling show ever, and to do it with Ring
11:51 of Honor's help.
11:52 They couldn't have known it then, but ROH running this event is about as ironic as Bret
11:57 Hart walking Shawn Michaels through how to put him in the sharpshooter.
11:59 [outro]
12:15 [outro]
12:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]