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RING OF HONOR in 2022... in AEW


Peck

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5 hours ago, Chaos said:

It might. Aren't they working the Impact show at the same time as well?

Forgot about that, makes it all the more baffling that Deonna isn't working both when the Briscoes are doing high profile matches on both.

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15 hours ago, DreamBroken said:

Forgot about that, makes it all the more baffling that Deonna isn't working both when the Briscoes are doing high profile matches on both.

I still wonder if we might see a Deonna appearance.  Double duty can't be easy when neither spot is really light house show fare.  I suspect nothing less than a war between the Briscoes and FTR.  It's hard to imagine them phoning it in later, but the Good Bros are likely or potentially an easier task.  On the Deonna front, obviously they would have loved to have her, but this show does seem more of the pilot than debut episode if you know what i mean.  Or a soft launch as opposed to the grand opening - sorta, maybe, kinda.  That said, I have little doubt that this will be high quality entertainment. 

Waiting on the unification between Champ Champ and the Interim isn't so bad.  

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1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

We gotta keep a running track of what Mark is eating in these videos. 

Being the country boys that they are, I'm assuming he was eating leftovers out of a Cool Whip container and not actually eating Cool Whip.  Growing up, it was Cool Whip or Country Crock containers for leftovers.

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ROH seems to be still operating under Ring of Honor Wrestling Entertainment, LLC. So separate from AEW but owned by Tony Khan. AEW is co-owned by Tony Khan and Shahid Khan

ROH will most likely end up becoming the third biggest promotion in USA over time.

 

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1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

Yes sir, and with a piece of masking tape with what's inside written on it in marker. 

That shit scares me.  The masking tape seems like a nice gesture in a way, but whatever is underneath that lid I don't need to know about.  

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12 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Yes sir, and with a piece of masking tape with what's inside written on it in marker. 

My mom never did that.  That's why my dad once ate a bowl of meat sauce thinking it was chili.  

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13 hours ago, Blue Dragon said:

ROH seems to be still operating under Ring of Honor Wrestling Entertainment, LLC. So separate from AEW but owned by Tony Khan. AEW is co-owned by Tony Khan and Shahid Khan

ROH will most likely end up becoming the third biggest promotion in USA over time.

 

Back where it belongs. ?

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It's interesting to hear Meltzer's analysis, amongst a few others, saying 'why wouldn't you promote a show as AEW, rather than this lowly ROH, you'll draw more'.  I'm generalizing, but I assume a few have heard this.  That kind of argument is fair, but missing the important point that if they can actually boost the label there is potential for a variety of exciting crossover possibilities.  Both for new singluar or tandem talents and the somewhat inevitable or eventual ROH v AEW.  The latter is logically further down the road.  Clearly, they'll need time to establish some of the new roster (like the huge missed opportunity in 2001).  The more immediate possibility is the crossover of fresh new singles and teams providing fresh opportunities.  What WWE has so miserably failed to capitalize upon when advancing ready (and somewhat over) NXT talent to the mainland.  If you build say a Bandido or Willow Nightingale or John Gresham (to where s/he readies whatever part of his/her game that needs seasoning) and move them to AEW you presumably have a fresh new face ready to catch fire.  Not to say they've been hurting for fresh talent (thank you WWE).  Also, doesn't the catalogue mean more if the current product is of note?  

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Yeah I have to agree with your POV. Especially odd to hear him say that when the argument is essentially the same as why would WWE try and run a WCW show, just name it WWE and it would draw more. Which is what they did and he hated that. As did most of the wrestling world.

He's right in that AEW is a more popular brand. But there are a ton of advantages to keeping it separate. Developmental purposes obviously. But also not muddying the lines of the quality AEW is known for. You run an "AEW" Supercard of Honor and there's no Punk or Darby or Mox or Danielson or Young Bucks or Hangman matches you're kind of setting your audience up to be disappointed. This is essential NXT now. Its owned by the same guy, but entirely different brand. Possibility for talent cross over, but it's a separate thing.

The true test is, while yes using it to season and develop talent, can they find a new audience niche to market it to? It can't just be generalized high quality pro wrestling like AEW is. Has to be different. Almost an alternative. Is super professional traditional grappling (basically the original ROH brand) enough to distinguish it? Maybe. We'll see.

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Here is what Dave wrote in the WON - basing it on the history of wrestling and UFC (giant text block)

Spoiler

Keeping the brand alive is a very different question. Obviously Khan knows both MMA and pro wrestling history on this subject and nobody has ever done this and made it work financially. This includes multiple attempts by much larger and financially stronger companies like WWE and UFC.

There have been many ideas to do this but it always fails for a very simple reason. The existing powerful brand that bought it is so much stronger to consumers than the company bought. While using the intellectual property makes sense, keeping the brand alive makes no sense. Today, even in the case of using ROH as a developmental brand, and obviously there is the talent to fill up cards between guys under AEW deals with such a large roster and some free agents that are and will be available, it still makes no sense to call anything Khan produces anything but AEW.

Right now people watch pro wrestling on television, buy PPV shows and attend live events with the biggest drawing being the brand name. Airing a television show using the AEW brand name, or running a live event using the AEW brand name, will draw multiple times the audience of using the same talent with the same costs on the shows but calling it ROH. This isn’t to say they can’t incorporate ROH champions into AEW, but then you have the issue that WWF had after buying WCW, where you had so many titles that they were becoming meaningless and nobody cared about most of them.

ROH touring did work at one point when they were hot under The Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, etc. But those same names drew far more television viewers and live event viewers and PPV buyers when they were part of AEW. As a brand name today, ROH is probably No. 7 in value in a market where only two brands can really draw past a certain level. It is behind WWE, AEW, NXT, Impact, New Japan and GCW. You could even argue PWG, which consistently drew far larger gates with nobody under contract than ROH could.

Keep in mind that even WWE has stopped running events or selling tickets to the television tapings for its NXT brand, and its NXT talent badly need the live events because they are developmental. Obviously in their eyes, and it’s a company with enormous profits, they believe touring the brand not to be economically feasible any longer. Even running low-cost small events in Florida, talked about heavily in recent months, hasn’t been done. But Khan has not talked about his strategy with the brand.

But historically, when a larger company bought a smaller one, whether for the tape library or whatever, these are all of the major results of the past 40 years:

*Bill Watts buying Leroy McGuirk’s Tri-State Wrestling. Instead of keeping the name alive, he brought his larger Mid South Wrestling into the territory.

*Jim Crockett Promotions working with the Central States office to be a developmental territory was quickly dropped for not being economically feasible. He worked with Championship Wrestling from Florida for joint shows but when his talent was the draw and the smaller group couldn’t draw, he just ran JCP shows in Florida. He did purchase Watts’ promotion largely to get his syndicated television network, and with the purchase came a lot of wrestlers. The idea was to keep UWF alive and exchange talent and do a promotion vs. promotion feud. But very quickly, when UWF shows weren’t drawing, one of the reasons Watts sold, the entire UWF brand name was dropped and the television shows became labeled NWA and UWF touring stopped. That one could have worked as a promotional vs promotional feud perhaps.

*Vince McMahon bought Georgia Championship Wrestling for the TBS time slot, then immediately shut it down. Crockett then bought GCW, and in a second deal at the same time, shut down Championship Wrestling from Georgia, a weaker promotion on TBS because it made no sense to keep the weaker brand alive

*Vince McMahon bought WCW with the idea of keeping it alive as a second brand, but gave up on that idea based on fan reaction right as he was starting the angle. He did a promotion vs. promotion feud that for a few months, but decided it wasn’t working and rushed a company vs. company blow-off match to end it. In 2006, after two successful PPVs using the ECW brand name, he restarted ECW as a touring company, but even with WWE backing, ECW touring smaller buildings in front of 1,000 fans wasn’t cost effective and it was dropped as touring. It was kept alive longer as a television product with them being the minor league brand of the Smackdown tour, but ratings fell and the entire ECW brand ended up being dropped.

*Strikeforce purchased Elite XC for its television deal with Showtime and CBS, and then shut it down

*UFC had the longest runs of running a second weaker brand. First they purchased WEC and had to keep them alive based on having exclusivity for UFC with Spike, but wanting to keep the IFL off Versus (which later became NBC Sports Network). They purchased WEC to keep a competing group from a national TV outlet. IFL later got TV on MyNetwork TV and failed. WEC was successful with Joe Silva’s idea of building it around lighter weight fighters when UFC’s lightest division was 135. It actually worked, as Urijah Faber became a major star, drawing big live crowds in Sacramento and record ratings for Versus, and even a very big PPV number which shocked everyone against Jose Aldo. At that point, UFC realized there was potential in those divisions, but that the WEC name was limiting and that Faber, Aldo, Donald Cerrone, Benson Henderson and others would be far bigger stars and earn the company more money in UFC, so WEC was shut down.

*UFC purchased Pride for the Japanese market. That was great for the tape library but there were so many issues with the Pride brand being owned by foreigners and having a bad name due to a Yakuza scandal that they couldn’t do anything with it in Japan and decided not to do anything with it in the U.S., where it had some television and PPV exposure, so shut it down and brought the fighters they could to UFC.

*UFC purchased Strikeforce. The idea again was to keep Strikeforce on Showtime and a separate group. UFC and Showtime made a deal that all Strikeforce stars would never go to UFC and they’d be a separate entity. But in time, UFC felt it could make more money with Strikeforce stars like Daniel Cormier, Nick and Nate Diaz, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Josh Barnett, Luke Rockhold and many others by putting them as UFC roster members. All became much bigger and more marketable stars in UFC, and the inevitable happened with the Strikeforce brand shutting down.

*The one success, at least so farm, is Bushiroad, the parent company of New Japan, buying Stardom. But Stardom is an all-women’s company and New Japan is an all-men’s company. They are different products and Stardom will never be a New Japan developmental league, and New Japan will never send talent to help Stardom do bigger PPV shows. Stardom wrestlers are not kept from maximizing their popularity because of the lower ceiling than New Japan, as was the case in every other example. And while this is not proven long-term, this exception in the purchased group being a success and the reasons why prove the rule.

Khan knows all of this very well. Perhaps he thinks he’s got a way to do this successfully. The idea of doing small loss shows to give talent more ring time, if you can do it with small losses, is not a bad idea. It would be a good idea long-term right now for WWE even though they choose not to do it. If the ROH name was on par with the AEW name as far as value, perhaps the different name and the ability to manipulate and feud brands at some point would make it worthwhile. But I don’t see an ROH vs. AEW feud being big money and all talk of an AEW vs. Impact feud starting when AEW sent talent to Impact in 2020 and 2021 went nowhere. So unless Sinclair is going to pay heavily to keep ROH television, which I doubt they would do, any developmental group would do far better and lose less money using the AEW name.

That being said - in the next issue he did say that a short term feud could work

Quote

That said, after ROH is established for a while if it has good distribution and starts having success, the idea of an AEW vs. ROH feud does make sense short-ter,.

The concept of feuding with the idea of interpromotional matches usually works big at the start, although in most cases there is a winner and loser and the result long-term is the loser is gone at the end, particularly when one entity controls both. That doesn’t mean that is how it will happen here, only that is historically what has seemingly always happened in the past.

 

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Meltzer's doing a good job of setting up TK doing the 'impossible'.  It's great to get that history, but few of those scenarios seem to make a whole lot of sense as comparisons.  It's difficult to see much sense with those MMA examples (Pro-wres/MMA fans would surely have better insight there than I).  I like that Dave mostly withholds his opinions regarding what the companies did with their purchases.  Of these historical examples it seems like the Watts/TriState and McMahon/GCW situations made complete sense to where each was at that particular time.  JCP certainly lost some opportunities with UWF.  Running two brands in 87 doesn't seem like it would have made much sense, but it's hard to argue that JCP/Dusty didn't completely dropped the ball with how to bring in the new talent.  JCP's aquisition of Kansas and Florida, really even the UWF, seem like senseless purchases, but I don't know the ins/outs there.  WWE buying WCW and revamping ECW were clear losers for clear reasons not mentioned.  Before you even begin to examine the numbers it's a pretty clear illustration, creatively, how to effectively kill a product.  I think NXT is one of the better and more interesting comparisons.  Tho, it's hard to tell where touring, at least with the Helmsley version, might have gotten them.  The road didn't seem to reveal itself prior to the pandemic/product dismantling.

I will be very surprised if this version of ROH doesn't surpass Dave's worrysome seemingly low expectations.  We don't know enough about distribution nor pretty much anything to speculate a whole lot concering the finances (not all that interested in that convo anyway).  If the product is up to snuff with superfan-cum-pretty-fantastic-bookerman TK's vision success will be hard to avoid.  Yeah, sure, burnout's a potential factor, but I don't see it as an imminent danger for the reasons others have laid out.  Dave does now seem to at least see the potential for a future interpromotional feud, but the more current and significant benefit is the potential elevation of new fresh talent.  

Edited by HarryArchieGus
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Personally, I don't want an inter-promotional feud. I wouldn't mind a "supershow" here and there with talent from AEW and ROH interacting, but that's about it. We all know Tony owns both companies, we don't need to try to pretend one is attempting to take down the other one. 

 

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8 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:

I had a small worry we'd seen the last of Tull.  What a nice surprise!  Also nice to see Ninja Mack locked into a match.  I hope to see him developed in the system.  Who could possibly be under the Blanchard learning tree?

Wardlow

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1 hour ago, Blue Dragon said:

Chavo is now Bandido's manager.

This is good, politically. It's a good look to get Chavo a role somewhere after the minor drama that went down. It's lower profile than with Andrade but TK extending an olive branch to someone who felt wronged by him is a good sign to everyone else that he's about the resolution and not the drama. (The Big Swole shit is the alternative and I don't think anyone liked how that shook out).

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2 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

This is good, politically. It's a good look to get Chavo a role somewhere after the minor drama that went down. It's lower profile than with Andrade but TK extending an olive branch to someone who felt wronged by him is a good sign to everyone else that he's about the resolution and not the drama. (The Big Swole shit is the alternative and I don't think anyone liked how that shook out).

There was drama as to why Chavo was removed from Andrade?

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24 minutes ago, Wyld Samurai said:

There was drama as to why Chavo was removed from Andrade?

Chavo had a tantrum over being removed from the AEW website's roster page without notice.  He pretty quickly aired his self created dirty laundry to some press after calling TK and failing to receive a return call in what he considered due time.  An exhausted and annoyed TK addressed it at the post PPV mediascrum saying he'd had an unusually busy week (PPV plus Dynamite, Rampage and Universal Studio tapings), but that he planned to call Chavo back. 

Whiny little Chavo ought to go full Fonzie mode at the ROH show and bleed a couple buckets as a thank you for still having a job. 

Edited by HarryArchieGus
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