That Was Then 12.08.06: Proud To Be A ROHbot

I hope everybody enjoyed the epic nine-part feature that I just ran. At least for me, it makes life so easy when you have nearly three months’ worth of columns written in advance. Kind of a necessity though, since I’ve been out of the country for several weeks. Betcha had no idea, did you? Fwahahaha.

But I’m back, and for my first column back on US soil, I’d like to write about my favorite promotion of all time, Ring Of Honor. We are now mere days away from Final Battle 2006 and Homicide’s final shot ever at the ROH World Title. This is it, he doesn’t win and he’s quitting. In thinking about this upcoming event which will no doubt be a major turning point for ROH whether of not Homicide gets the title, I though back to something Ari wrote in his One Year Anniversary Column over at Column Of Honor about how when it comes down to it, no matter how smart we like to think of ourselves as being, we’re all just marks. He wasn’t disrespectful in his assessment, but the point was that even though we hit the websites at least once a day, probably more, and think we know everything that’s going on backstage, we’re still marks, just a different kind of mark. Obviously we’re not sitting around the lunch table at work talking about what a jerk Edge is for using his MITB title shot against John Cena after he went through that grueling Elimination Chamber match. What we mark out for is the backstage news and how it will affect what we see on TV. I guess a good analogy is that the real fun for us is the road trip and barbecue, and the baseball/football game itself is a mere formality. When it comes to WWE and TNA, I definitely think there’s a lot of truth in that.

But not with Ring Of Honor. Ring Of Honor is the last promotion around that lets me feel like a mark again. It’s really difficult to explain unless you follow it, I guess. For me, ROH made me feel like a new fan again. After WCW and ECW died in 2001, I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that the quality of WWF (later WWE) programming took a sharp downturn in overall quality. Time went by and the promotion that I was cheering wildly as it stood upon the ashes of its rivals that had perished mere weeks apart had now become a lazy dictator who gave us what it wanted rather than what we wanted, in large part because it knew we had nowhere else to turn. And they even had me believing. Within two or three years, I was all but ready to totally give up on WWE and just live vicariously through my tape library from that point on, but after having my WWE tolerance extended slightly due to Benoit and Guerrero getting the titles, I discovered this ROH group that the workrate freaks had been praising for quite some time.

I immediately fell in love with the promotion because, in addition to the amazing workrate in nearly all their matches, which is not matched anywhere else in the country as far as I’m concerned, the way the storylines were booked…get ready for this…made sense! After years of Katie Vick, Billy & Chuck getting gay married, Undertaker infidelity, the Kiss My Ass Club, Hulk Hogan hitting Rock with a truck, Goldust having Tourette’s, and Edge and Booker T feuding over a shampoo commercial, it was really refreshing to get back to what made me a fan in the first place: just basic competition-based feuds and storylines. That is Samoa Joe’s entire ROH gimmick. He’s not out there eating raw fish and wrestling barefoot, his whole thing is that he took pride in the fact that he was a really good wrestler, going so far as to say “I am pro wrestling” on nearly every DVD, and during his nearly two year long run with the ROH Title, the angle the whole time was that Joe was the champion, other people wanted to beat him, but nobody could. Finally, Austin Aries was able to beat him 100% cleanly to win the title in the shock of the year. It didn’t require every member of Generation Next running in and beating him up with every stupid, contrived weapon known to man, or Vince McMahon shoving his dick down Joe’s throat and then telling the ref to ring the bell or anything like that, it was just a totally clean victory and one of the biggest moments in the history of the promotion, and Joe shook his hand and strapped the belt on him after the win, putting Aries over.

There’s another great angle, Generation Next. Their gimmick was that they were a bunch of young guys who came to ROH and announced that they were going to take over all the top spots and there wasn’t anything anybody could do about it. People tried, but Gen Next kept beating them, and now they are the top dogs in the promotion. That’s it, they just wanted to be the top wrestlers in a wrestling promotion. They weren’t cheerleaders or gay punk rockers or anything like that, they were just wrestlers. While WWE is doing ridiculous “Hollywood” angles that would get kicked so far out the door of any Hollywood producer’s office that they could walk back to Titan Towers, driving even their core audience away in droves, ROH is just doing straightforward, old-fashioned wrestling storylines, just updated for the 21st century. “I’m a really good wrestler, go ahead and beat me if you can.” “We’re a bunch of really innovative young wrestlers, and we’re coming to take your spots. Beat us if you can.”

Even the nontraditional angles are done in a way that they connect with the fans. CM Punk vs Raven in 2003 is a perfect example. For those who weren’t privy to the angle at the time, CM Punk is straight edge: no drugs, no alcohol, no nothing. He hates Raven because he is and does everything that Punk refuses to allow himself to sink to, and he considers himself above not just Raven, but everybody else because of his ideals and the standard he’s set for himself. Almost everybody’s going to identify with one guy or the other, because both the “straight edge” people and the “drugs, alcohol, and everything else” people probably have strong feelings about each other and, even thuogh Punk was the heel, he got just as many people in the audience cheering him as Raven did. This eventually led to Punk turning and becoming possibly the biggest babyface hero in the history of the company.

Which brings me to my next point, ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky actually listens to the fans and how they react to what he’s giving them, then adjusts his booking accordingly. While Vince McMahon shoves John Cena down our throats and his audience shrinks so much that all that’s left is John Cena fans just so he can say “Look, our entire fanbase LOVES John Cena!”, Sapolsky is willing to book the wrestlers how the fans want them booked. Jimmy Rave was first brought in as a babyface prettyboy kid who had the ability and was one day going to break through and be a big superstar, but the fans totally shit on him, and Gabe smartly turned him heel, put him with Prince Nana, and before you know it he was a major heel and was main eventing show after show for ROH…just like Gabe planned him to! Or how about the CZW angle? Chris Hero’s ROH Title shot back in January was booked to be a one time deal, and that’s all, but it got such a reaction both live and on the internet that Gabe knew he was on to something, and put almost all his booking plans for the year on hold to run the CZW feud for six months, drawing some of the biggest crowds and merchandise sales inn company history in the process. And I would be willing to bet that some of the haters who showed up at the Philadelphia National Guard Armory to support CZW became ROH fans too, and now they’ve got more paying customers as a result.

However, the one thing that always keeps me coming back to every ROH show I can get to, even if it means driving from New York to Boston for a show on Friday, driving back that night, then going to a show in Philly the next day, is that I really don’t ever know for sure what’s going to happen. We as internet wrestling fans have conditioned ourselves to truly believe that we know everything that’s going to happen before it does. To a certain extent, we’re right. But it’s easy to know what’s going to happen when WWE sends out their promotional posters for PPVs three months in advance. ROH plays poker very well, and even though a lot of the time we think we know what’s going to happen, we really don’t. This has happened countless times, but the most recent example that springs to mind is in New York City back in September. Bryan Danielson had torn ligaments in his shoulder and chest, and all signs pointed to him losing the title to KENTA, and even I was convinced. I knew he’d put on a show, but thought it would be a reasonably short formality in light of Danielson’s injury. What we ended up getting was a 40 minute classic (which I’m still calling Match Of The Year) and Danielson went over clean by submission. I marked out in much the same way I did when I was 14 and Marty Jannetty won the IC Title from Shawn Michaels back in 1993.

All kinds of stuff like that happens in ROH, though. Who would have ever thought Delirious would win Survival Of The Fittest? Who would have EVER, in a million years, predicted that CM Punk, having already signed with WWE, would win the ROH Title in his “last” match, and then turn heel on the crowd that had pushed him to that pinnacle and embark on a two month reign of terror as the guy who was going to “sneak out” of ROH with the title? Oh yeah, that’s another thing: they’ll often book stuff to reflect the real life behind the scenes happenings. And that is one of the true secrets of the success of ROH’s booking. Back in the 80s and 90s, all the fans knew about wrestling was what happened on TV and were easy to work. But now with the access to all the behind the scenes information, WWE (and to a certain extent, TNA) have not adjusted their product to cater to the internet age fans, who just can’t be entertained anymore because they always know what’s coming. Sapolsky smartly incorporates a certain degree of backstage happenings into his booking, not enough to be Russo-esque in that it goes completely over the heads of the uninformed fans, but enough that he’s able to successfully work the “smart” fans in a way that Russo never could.

And now, as we rapidly close in on December 23rd, all the smart fans paying attention have no doubt that Homicide will win the ROH Title in front of his home crowd. But we don’t really know that for sure, do we? It may seem like a lunatic idea, but Danielson could walk out with title, and beating Homicide in his last title shot in front of his home crowd would make him a monster heel, at least in New York. For all we know, Homicide may already have given notice. After all, he’s a big star in TNA now, and may want to go concentrate on that. There may be other factors going on backstage at ROH that we don’t even know about because stuff like that doesn’t always get out to us from the Sapolsky camp.

We really don’t know, but one thing I do know is that I’ve got my ticket, I’ll be there. Ari’s got his ticket, he’ll be there. Though I won’t speak for Ari, I know that I’ll be there because, even though I’m an internet writer with a huge tape library, two weekly columns, and signed pictures from Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, and Mick Foley hanging on my wall, I’m just a big mark. But if you’re a real wrestling fan, is there really any other way to be?

ADDED BONUS!!!

Just for kicks, here’s links to the big History Of Ring Of Honor feature I’ve done in several parts. If you’re a wrestling fan and have wanted to get into ROH, but didn’t know the history of the feuds and storylines, and didn’t want to spend the money on all the DVDs to get up to date, check them out and then think about going to a show. Trust me, you won’t be sorry.

2002
2003
2004 Part 1
2004 Part 2
2005 Part 1
2005 Part 2