The Up & Under 02.13.08: Sitting in the Dark

Watching Independent wrestling is, like all things, a matter of perspective. In the past few weeks, I have had a number of conversations during which my growing frustration with different parts of the Ring of Honor product have been expressed. Be it the continued mishandling of Chris Hero’s booking or my perception that Mike Quackenbush looked weak in his loss to Bryan Danielson or Roderick Strong’s increasingly uninteresting run as a heel, there are a lot of things about the last year in ROH that have left me feeling irritated and downright turned off as a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a big advocate for the company and think it remains hands-down the most overall well-run Independent wrestling promotion. Unfortunately, though the company made great strides in expanding its sphere of influence in the past year or so, things remain far from perfect, and perhaps even far from ideal, despite what some might have you believe.

I must admit that lately Ring of Honor has comprised a much smaller portion of my wrestling viewing. Taking the time to watch other companies, like CHIKARA, IWA Mid-South, and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla has become a part of my routine, with each having put on world-class shows and matches in 2007. In some cases, these companies have put on matches that for whatever reason Ring of Honor has failed to make happen. In 2002, we saw Samoa Joe and Low Ki go heads-up in ROH. For years, fans longed and pined for a rematch, but Ring of Honor balked every time. This year, one needed to look no further than PWG to see those two lock horns. Mike Quackenbush has long been considered one of the technical masters on the Independent circuit, and this year ROH finally made a singles match between him and “American Dragon” Bryan Danielson happen. Too bad that it was only three years after IWA Mid-South put the two in the same ring in the 2004 Ted Petty Invitational.

And those are just the tip of the iceberg. The list of incredible performers that ROH doesn’t give the time of day is both lengthy and growing. Sure, in 2007 we got debuts or returns from great talents like Kevin Steen, El Generico, Tyler Black and a small band of CHIKARA’s top talent, but still waiting for the ROH spotlight are Eddie Kingston, Chuck Taylor, Josh Abercrombie, Joey Ryan, Arik Cannon, the Iron Saints, Icarus, and Josh Prohibition. With Kingston and Chris Hero taking each other to the limit in wild brawls across the Independent landscape, why not cash in on the much-talked-about rivalry? The problem seems to be that ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky, by his own admission mind you, doesn’t really watch other Independent companies. How can this be? How on earth can ROH hope to continue to grow and develop in the coming years if the man in charge of making the machine run isn’t focused on seeing what is working well for other companies?

I can’t imagine that anyone reading this needs me to list off the number of major ROH stars to leave the company over the last two-and-a-half years, but I’ll do it anyway to further my point: CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Homicide, Colt Cabana, Christopher Daniels, Spanky, AJ Styles, Low Ki, Alex Shelley, Matt Sydal, James Gibson, Jimmy Rave, Jay Lethal, Abyss, Jimmy Yang. That’s a veritable who’s-who of ROH’s main event scene since mid-2005. Save for Bryan Danielson and Austin Aries, there really isn’t a single key player left from as recently as early 2005. Consider this: when Ring of Honor had planned to main event Final Battle 2007 with a Four Way Elimination match for the ROH World Title, there was a lot of reminiscing about the first time such a match took place at Redemption in August of 2005, about two-and-a-half years ago. All four of the competitors in that match are gone from the company, with the last straw being Christopher Daniels’ unceremonious exit from the company this past April.

With main event performers having left Ring of Honor at an alarming rate in the last two years, how can ROH’s booker not be keeping a more watchful eye on the talent carrying the other major American Independents? I am not proposing that Chuck Taylor be brought in for an immediate run as ROH World Champion, but wouldn’t the product be better served with him on the card instead of another SHIMMER showcase match? I understand that Joey Mercury is a “name” guy, but during a time when Ring of Honor has announced a series of cost-cutting initiatives, why bring in such a high-profile, and presumably high-priced free agent, when fans would have been just as happy to see the ROH debut of Arik Cannon. Furthermore, how in the world does the team of Matt Cross & Bobby Fish get booked while Josh Abercrombie & Nate Webb’s outstanding Trailer Park Boys gimmick gets left out in the cold? And for the record, that’s not a jab at Cross, as few wrestlers in ROH history have been so horribly underutilized or miscast.

And that’s just another part of the problem. One need only look as far as his work in IWA Mid-South or UWA Hardcore to see what Matt Cross’ best efforts can yield. In his early ROH outings, he was an undersized guy who was still able to out-think and out-maneuver larger opponents. More recently, he has been turned into just another spot artist, a low-rent version of Jack Evans as Austin Aries tried to recapture lightning in a bottle by slotting in replacement players from Generation Next into his Resilience. Perhaps I am wishing too cruel a fate on Joey Ryan, whose gimmick is amongst the best in wrestling, a man who would most certainly be doomed to repeated losses to the thoroughly uninteresting Hangmen Three faction.

Don’t even get me started on Kingston, a man whose promo skills would be second only to the incomparable Jimmy Jacobs on the ROH roster. His continued invisibility to the Ring of Honor brass is as unexplainable as it is inexplicable. Fan support for bringing in Kingston has gotten so raucous that ROH now systematically eliminates any and all threads about him from their message board. Does that seem silly to anyone else? Instead of chastising your fans for wanting to bring in some new blood, why not cater to the people who attend your live shows and buy your DVDs by bringing a nearly universally respected talent into the company? I know I’ve never run a wrestling company, but the math on this one seems pretty simple to me: if your fans want you to bring in Kingston, and your fans are the ones who buy your products, wouldn’t making them happy lead to you making more money? But no, of course Ring of Honor knows best. But thank god that Deranged got brought in for another go-round over the summer.

Ring of Honor is a company that has prided itself on not insulting its fans’ intelligence, a claim that is often made of World Wrestling Entertainment and Total Nonstop Action. Unfortunately, that mentality hasn’t kept ROH from simply insulting its fans outright with months of fifty-fifty booking in the Faction Warfare angle and putting Pro Wrestling NOAH talent over homegrown competitors at nearly every turn. For instance, Claudio Castagnoli earned hard-fought victory over NOAH star Naomichi Marufuji in November, becoming only the second ROH wrestler to pin the former GHC Heavyweight Champion in an ROH ring (the other was then-ROH World Champion Bryan Danielson all the way back in December of 2005). Unfortunately, Ring of Honor couldn’t even wait two months to give Marufuji his win back, as he not-so-shockingly went over Castagnoli in a late-December rematch. Honestly, how difficult would it have been to let Castagnoli hold onto the rub from that initial victory into 2008? Or why not go even further and give Castagnoli two straight victories over NOAH’s “ace”? Marufuji is in no danger of losing heat as a result, while Claudio has everything to gain with back-to-back victories.

I was recently accused of ‘sitting in the dark’ because of my belief that CHIKARA had leapfrogged PWG as the second most prominent Independent in the United States. I thought that my argument in that case was well reasoned and thoroughly thought out. I could be wrong, just as I could be wrong in all I have written here. Perhaps I am. Perhaps all of this is just idle frustration from one fan. It remains possible that Eddie Kingston is simply mediocre and Chuck Taylor is an untalented clown. Maybe the fans of PWG, CHIKARA and IWA Mid-South are crazy and guys like Scott Lost and Icarus and Nate Webb could never hope to get over with the enlightened Ring of Honor crowds.

When Kevin Steen & El Generico came to Ring of Honor for the first time in 2005, they jobbed out in a few matches and were hastily sent packing. When they returned a year ago, they came in, were booked against the top team in the company, put on a fabulous performance in the ring, and were quickly accepted by the fans. Though both men improved in the year-and-a-half between stints in ROH, at least some of the fault for their first runs failing has to lay with the booking. When people are booked to look credible, the fans tend to view them that way. The problem with Gabe Sapolsky thinking someone isn’t ‘ROH material’ is that he need only book them that way to prove his point. How about when ROH gets around to bringing in Kingston and Taylor and Abercrombie, because mark my words sooner or later they will be brought in, they get Steen & Generico’s 2007 treatment and we see if they really can get over.

In the end, I could be wrong on all counts and then I truly would be sitting in the dark. The Ring of Honor roster could remain mostly intact throughout the next year and Kingston and Taylor and Abercrombie and Cannon could just simply not be “ROH material”. If I were a betting man, though, I’d say that the truth is that the blind loyalty of many ROH fans has left them sitting in the dark, with the Ring of Honor brass hoping that they won’t dig around hard enough to find the switch. I for one believe that if Ring of Honor isn’t incredibly careful with its plans over the next year that even the company’s most hard line supporters will find the room to be incredibly well lit.