That Was Then 5.11.07: A Tale Of Two Companies - Part Two
Posted by Sam Caplan on 05.11.2007
Having just passed its fifth anniversary, ROH has patiently and properly built itself up and is now ready to break into the PPV market.
Today I am going to tell you the tale of two wrestling companies. One was in a mad rush to become a top player in the North American wrestling scene and, despite having a talented roster and the legacy of a 54 year old wrestling confederacy, was constantly plagued by a flawed business model, questionable booking, and all-around lack of interest. The other began as a humble niche product which never aspired to rule the wrestling world, but by putting on a quality product and narrowly avoiding what could have been their demise time after time, gradually grew their fanbase and earned respect with the hardcore fans and finally became a legitimate PPV entity at their own pace instead of rushing to rule the world overnight.
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The second part of our story is about a mom and pop promotion based out of Philadelphia called Ring Of Honor. Unlike TNA, ROH had no aspirations to become a national power overnight. On the contrary, they were simply created by RF Video owner Rob Feinstein as an outlet for his DVD business, which had lacked a good place to set up shop since ECW closed down. Beginning in February of 2002 with a core main event group consisting of Low Ki, Christopher Daniels, Bryan Danielson, Homicide, and future WWE Champion Eddy Guerrero, Ring Of Honor began building a reputation as a promotion in which workrate and strong matches were more important than storylines and angles, something which appealed to a lot of hardcore fans who didn't like the over the top storylines playing out in WWE and no longer had any other options since WCW and ECW died.
ROH had a good business model: rather than being marks for TV and PPV and going broke trying to rush into a situation they couldn't handle so early in the life of the promotion, they would instead run their live shows, tape them, and then distribute them on DVD. Though they started off drawing small crowds at the Murphy Rec Center in Philadelphia, the crowds slowly but surely grew and allowed them to expand into other markets. Their growth also allowed them to start bringing in other top indy talent, such as former ECW World Champion Steve Corino, the Backseat Boyz, and a young strong style wrestler by the name of Samoa Joe, a man who would come to be the wrestler most closely identified with ROH. Originally brought in for a one-time appearance against Low Ki, he had such a great showing and got such a good crowd reaction that he was brought back, and the more he wrestled, the more over he got with the ROH crowd. Finally, ROH management realized that they had a star in the making on their hands and put the ROH Title on Samoa Joe in March of 2003. He would go on to hold that title for 21 months, defending against all the top talent in the company while also becoming the first ROH Champion to defend the title outside of the company and internationally.
Aside from Samoa Joe, ROH was starting to develop other homegrown talent in the early years, including Paul London (who soon left for WWE), Jay & Mark Briscoe, Special K (a group of party boy raver kids), CM Punk, Colt Cabana, BJ Whitmer, and others. By early to mid-2003, they had built a core group of people who people would identify with the promotion instead of just thinking of them as "indy workers". Corino still made frequent appearances and they also brought in another former ECW World Champion in Raven. Raven, whose participation in the party lifestyle of pro wrestling is something he will readily admit to, began feuding with the straight edge CM Punk, who looked down on Raven and his lifestyle. The Raven-Punk feud became the first truly memorable feud in ROH that even non-fans were hearing about. Homicide also began a long-running feud with Steve Corino that would continue on and off for years. Samoa Joe began feuding with ROH Tag Team Champions Jay & Mark Briscoe as they took turns challenging for one another's titles, and CM Punk would turn to a feud with the Prophecy after he finished up with Raven. ROH was doing great from both a creative and in-ring standpoint as 2004 began, and they started to turn a lot of heads with their product, which was a true alternative to what we were seeing in WWE and TNA.
Though it seemed that Ring Of Honor was existing in its own little bubble separate from the rest of the industy, free from the politics and problems which often plagued what could loosely be considered its competitors, the whole promotion nearly came crashing down in March of 2004. ROH owner Rob Feinstein was caught in a TV sting about adults who use the internet to hook up with underage sex partners, and the news spread around the industry like wildfire. Within hours, everyone in the business knew what had happened and this turned a major problem for ROH, who now had to deal with TNA pulling all their contracted talent from ROH because they didn't want to be associated with them while they were trying to land a TV deal of their own. This left ROH in a tough position creatively, as it had several of its top stars taken from them with no grace period to have them written out, and other people voluntarily removed themselves from their scheduled appearances until it could be shown that Feinstein was no longer associated with the company. A scheduled show in Maryland was cancelled because the local promoter wouldn't let ROH use his license once he found out about the Feinstein situation. ROH was in a very difficult situation which could have easily killed the company.
Thankfully, investor Cary Silkin bought the company out and set about legally separating it from parent company RF Video. Once that was accomplished and the last ties to Feinstein were cut, they began to rebuild the promotion and try to regain some of the momentum they had lost in prior months. The first thing they had to do was fill the top spots which were occupied by AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels, who had both been pulled by TNA. They found a clever way of bringing in a group of wrestlers and having them immediately become main eventers by forming Generation Next, a group which stated that instead of working their way up the ranks, they would just come in and take all the top spots and there was nothing anybody could do about it. They immediately legitimized themselves with dominant victories over Special K, the Briscoes, John Walters, and others and had all become credible upper card talent in the span of a few weeks. In addition to this, Samoa Joe and CM Punk had a famous trilogy of matches over the second half of 2004 which drew in a lot of fans who had heard how good the series was and were intrigued by Joe and Punk going to two one hour draws. A lot of people bought DVDs simply to see these matches and got hooked on the entire product as a result. Though the Feinstein Incident threatened to kill ROH before its third year even got under way, ROH finished 2004 strong and the product only continued to improve in 2005. They started moving into more markets than ever and ran more and more frequent Friday-Saturday doubleshots in nearby markets. The product continued to improve both from a workrate and creative perspective and 2005 featured some of the biggest angles in ROH history, including CM Punk finally winning the ROH Title, only to turn on the fans of ROH and hold the title hostage while threatening to take it with him to WWE. 2005 also saw a string of incredible matches from James Gibson and Spanky, who both sought to redeem themselves after being routinely misused in WWE, the return of AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels, the beginning of the Colt Cabana-Homicide blood feud, the Generation Next vs Embassy feud that culminated in Steel Cage Warfare, and the infamous match between Samoa Joe and Kenta Kobashi.
2006 somehow improved on the product even more. In terms of overall business, they began expanding into even more markets and now almost exclusively ran doubleshot weekends. In addition to the regular doubleshots, 2006 saw ROH's first triple shot weekend, as they ran Detroit and two nights in Chicago to piggyback off of Wrestlemania, which was also in Chicago. They ran their first shows overseas as they had a two night stand in the United Kingdom, and also continued to develop relationships and talent exchanges with both Dragon Gate and Pro Wrestling NOAH out of Japan, a relationship which would continue to benefit them as time went along. 2006 also saw ROH finally settle into a permanent home in New York City at the Manhattan Center, a respected venue in which ROH would make its home and would present some of its biggest cards. In terms of the product itself, 2006 was their best year yet creatively. The first half of the year saw the 2002 Philadelphia indy promotionaly wars come to life as ROH battled CZW on nearly every show, which drew record houses of not just ROH fans, but also CZW fans who came to cheer their hometown boys only to get hooked into ROH as well. That feud culminated at Death Before Dishonor IV when ROH, led by Homicide, defeated CZW in its own Cage Of Death to blow off the feud. This led right into the main storyline for the second half of 2006 in which Homicide vowed to win the ROH World Title before the end of 2006 or he would leave the promotion. It wasn't just about the ROH World Title, as the ensuing months would see Homicide tie up every last loose end left over from his entire ROH stint, as he defeated Steve Corino, the Briscoes, Adam Pearce, and finally defeated Bryan Danielson to win the ROH World Title in his hometown of New York City.
Sadly, 2007 saw the departure of most of the rest of ROH's longtime main event roster as Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Colt Cabana, Austin Aries, and Homicide were all gone from the promotion by the middle of May. But ROH announced its biggest step yet, as they would tape their first ever PPV show on 5/12 at the Manhattan Center in New York City. While comparisons were immediately made to ECW Barely Legal, ROH showed that it had learned from the mistakes of ECW and, instead of running a live PPV which would require a production truck and buying satellite time, they would instead tape the PPV as they always do and edit it for PPV broadcast. Though this is a big move for ROH, they are not viewing PPV as their new main source of revenue, instead considering it a supplement to and advertising for their DVD business.
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The wrestling landscape over the last few years has been a funny thing, in that countless promotions have popped up in the years since the end of the Monday Night Wars and tried to fill the void left by ECW and WCW, but of those, only TNA and ROH have lasted in any significant form. The most interesting thing to me about the development of both companies, which have both basically been around for the same length of time, is that while TNA was willing to do anything it had to do to jump right into competition with WWE, even if it was to the detriment to its own product, ROH has been content existing in its own little bubble and not openly competing with WWE and, to a lesser extent, TNA.
ROH has always been very smart in how it conducts business. Their locker room is completely free of any kind of politics, they have carefully avoided positioning themselves as competition to WWE and TNA and having to deal with the problems involved in such a position, and they present their workrate-oriented product as a true alternative to the storyline-focused products of the other guys. They are also lucky enough to have a great booker in Gabe Sapolsky, who understands what the fans want and is both willing and able to give it to them without trying to push his creative vision down the fans' throats like WWE and TNA have both so often been guilty of. They have never been marks for TV, understanding that their DVD business model affords them more freedom to do what they want that they would if constricted by TV standards, and have been perfectly content making their living from DVD sales and live gates until the opportunity presented itself to make the jump to PPV, and even then did it in a way that made sense for business rather than rushing to live PPV to grab for the glory.
The thing that is particularly vexing about TNA's situation, on the other hand, is that they have far more financial backing than ROH does and that would allow them to put on a product far and beyond anything ROH could ever do (forgetting for a moment the fact that they have hired ROH's entire main event crew and done nothing with them), but their fixation on being a national company has held them back from being a truly successful product time and time again. Jeff Jarrett could have built up his product slowly to the point where it was financially successful and then think about going national like ROH did, but he wanted to jump over the normal growth period and force himself into the limelight. While that is not necessarily a bad goal to have, it has meant that TNA has skipped over a lot of the growing pains a normal promotion will go through during the course of normal development, and ass such he's spent years on first trying to sell TV networks on a promotion that had no history of success or even any proof that it would have any longevity beyond their startup capital, then on trying to sell those same networks on a promotion which as been around for several years but has still never turned a profit because he's been too busy trying to sell it to TV networks to find time to improve the product to the point where it was strong enough that it could compete with WWE on Monday nights.
As TNA approaches its fifth birthday and announced that it would finally run more than one or two house shows in the month of June, ROH has just passed its fifth birthday and has not only run far more markets than TNA and has also expanded internationally. They have also consistently turned a profit, which is something that TNA has never done. This coming weekend is an important one for both companies, as Ring Of Honor will have its first PPV taping on Saturday night in New York City while TNA will have its annual Sacrifice PPV on Sunday. While Sacrifice has a strong card on paper, at this point I have no faith in the creative team to do anything positive with the show, and indeed expect the same backwards booking that's landed them in the spot they are now. On the other hand, I have my ticket to ROH Respect Is Earned and I have no doubt that ROH will deliver as always in what is not only their first ever PPV taping, but also their fourth consecutive sellout in their most important market.
I may be an atheist, but if there were a god I would thank him profusely for letting me live in New York instead of Florida.
