Trivia / Ring of Honor

• Ability over Appearance: Appearance matters in ROH, evidenced by the Top Prospect Tournament always having a disproportionate number of tall chiseled well groomed men, but ability matters more and work rate matters most, evidenced by few of them ever winning the event. From pudgy Joe to tiny Gibson, anyone can theoretically become a star, as far as appearance goes. An infamous case regarded Kevin Steen, who was paid to take time off and lose weight before getting a title shot at Davey Richards and not only failed to do so but actually returned fatter, yet demonstrated his work rate was still sufficient, was granted his title shot anyway, and won.
• Breakup Breakout
  • Always common in wrestling, but special mention goes to Jimmy Jacobs and BJ Whitmer. After a run as tag champions, the two engaged in a hot year-long feud with each other - and while Jacobs reinvented himself with a fresh and innovative Emo Teen gimmick, Whitmer relied on bloodbath wrestling to keep his popularity up during their feud. While Whitmer seemed poised for greater things, especially during the feud with CZW, he completely lost his momentum and direction after taking a definitive loss to Jacobs - who went on to be successful as the leader of Age of the Fall.
  • Also seen with Age of the Fall in Jacobs' feud with Tyler Black- it propelled Black into the main event picture, while Jimmy's momentum was stunted.
  • Every member of Generation Next has been successful, however initial leader Alex Shelley was the only one who didn't win an ROH belt, something even his less seen partner KUSHIDA was able to do, until Shelley was able to win the tag team titles two years after Chris Sabin returned.
• Career Resurrection: Wrath of the Racket for Jim Cornette, as far as being an onscreen figure again, which he would be in ROH for another nine years on and off and OVW even longer.
• Creative Differences
  • Adam Pearce said he lost the book due to "a difference in ideology".
  • Michael Elgin thanked ROH via Twitter for helping him get back into the United States after he was stranded in Canada, but said it didn't make up for lies and damage done to their relationship. He has since expressed a desire to return to ROH but refuses to be signed to an exclusivity contract, of which he had first fought against...then spoke in favor of...before deriding it again. All in all, his later ROH appearances tend to be one-offs, with all kinds of rumors about what his issues with management could be—though he has an apparently solid friendship with Delirious, so he's not entirely opposed to "creative".
  • Paul London's returns were not long-term because from HD Net onward ROH defined itself by its tag team division and thus wanted London alongside Brian Kendrick, his best known available partner with whom he tagged in virtually every other place that asks him, while London himself would rather continue his singles ROH career, as when he and Kendrick were previously in ROH they were rivals.
  • For the G1 Supercard event, ROH arranged for a "jumping the barricade" angle with former WWE stars Enzo and Cass, but didn't tell co-promoters New Japan in advance.^note Enzo was to grab Mark Briscoe and Mark was to shove Enzo and that would be it. It was kept secret from the talent and was not shown or referenced on the broadcast. Enzo had previously crashed WWE's Survivor Series after they fired him, so it played off of that. Viewers might or might not see it, but it would go viral. Somehow how a "quick shove" turned into a three-minute brawl with the twice-"retired" Bully Ray entering the mix. This distracted a bit from Hiroshi Tanahashi i.e. one of New Japan's most-beloved faces, which pissed off the company and some of its fans. Suffice to say, New Japan later announced plans for an American expansion on their own, and that there were no more planned events with ROH in the near-future.
• Creator Backlash
  • Ever since his unceremonious firing, Gabe Sapolsky has cut his ties with the promotion. He even told Kevin Steen to "leave [Gabe's] name out of your ROH storyline", when Steen cited Sapolsky as being one of those unjustly let go by ROH.
  • Let's say that Jim Cornette is not happy with the promotion's current direction. Well, he still likes the wrestling matches, defending the athletes when Roddy Piper proclaimed his dislike of their style of wrestling, but doesn't like anything else.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • Matt Taven has been the beneficiary of a slow, steady push from pretty much day one, when he won the 2013 Top Prospect Tournament and the ROH Television title in rapid succession. Over time, he's become the leader and long-term centerpiece of the Kingdom faction, had a constant stream of various title reigns, including a period where he was a champion in ROH and CMLL at the same time, successfully defended those titles against various opponents who were bigger stars than him, and starting in fall 2018, he got the latest iteration of the "I'm the real World Champion, I made my own belt to prove it" angle, which typically precedes winning the ROH World Championship for real—and actually winning the title at the G1 Supercard, joining Christopher Daniels as the only other ROH Grand Slam Champion in history. Despite all this, he's never really caught on with the fans, either as someone they Love to Hate or a cool heel, and while he doesn't have full-blown X-Pac Heat, the response to his entry into the main-event picture has been more apathetic than anything else.
  • Since the very beginning of Women of Honor, Kelly Klein has been the anointed "It Girl" of sorts, in spite of having a fairly lukewarm reception with the fans in comparison to nearly everybody else. This might have backfired on ROH, when the company unceremoniously dropped Klein after allowing her to perform while suffering from a concussion.
• Demand Overload: The secondary reason their internet pay per views continued to lose sync, freeze and crash was that too many people were viewing them. The primary reason was because Sinclair disregarded the original website blue print and decided to go with cheaper models used by smaller promotions who did not get nearly the amount of viewers as Ring of Honor, leading to chortling from the Chikarmy, whose promotion had long since figured this out. After prompting Sinclair for more money (so they could settle the issue), Sinclair decided to shoot a show just prove it could now handle the traffic. Unfortunately they gave away this show for free, which led to an even larger number of viewers and another crash.
• Doing It for the Art
  • Love or hate the Insane Clown Posse, they agreed to work for free.
  • When ROH was in trouble following the Feinstein scandal, Mick Foley sometimes showed up for free and Bobby Heenan also expressed interest in helping out. Ricky Steamboat, by contrast, only showed up for a paycheck but then took a liking to the promotion and did everything he could to ensure the company would make a comeback before he left.
  • Necro Butcher didn't think much of his ROH contract but took it anyway, because making a lot of money wasn't the reason he had decided to stay around.
• Executive Meddling
  • Ring of Honor pulled Jay Lethal from Family Wrestling Entertainment events twice before deciding they didn't want any of their contracted talent working for the promotion, regardless of how important their angles may have been to FWE. ROH eventually relented in the case of AJ Styles, who quickly became FWE Heavyweight Champion.
  • Although it took ROH six years to make an official stand against them, TNA was notorious among the fan base for its ability and willingness to alter ROH shows long before then. This did not change even after TNA was no longer TNA, when Anthem managed to encourage Matt Hardy, who was set to do some cross promotion for ROH and TNA rebranded Impact Wrestling, to go back to WWE and threatened every network carrying the pay per views ROH managed to get Hardy on with legal action, successfully kicking ROH off Dish Network.
• Fan Community Nickname: Their dedicated Internet fanbase is either affectionately or derisively named "ROHbots". The company itself prefers to refer to its fans as "Honor Nation".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Every single show prior to 2010 is now out of print for three big reasons: the use of licensed tracks, the changes in DVD production teams, and the rise of compilation DVDs. Though ROH then decided to begin to release compilations of time periods in addition to those of wrestlers, so most shows no longer have to pieced together.
• Market-Based Title: The Murder City Machine Guns, Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley, used "Motor" instead of "Murder" while in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla. When the PWG deal came during the Sinclair ownership era, "Motor" became preferred in ROH too.
• Money, Dear Boy:
  • While most who chose TNA during its conflict with ROH did so out of disgust with Feinstein's actions, AJ Styles said he was leaving a piece of his heart behind in ROH but had to do what was best for his family, which most translated as "TNA is paying better". When that was no longer the case^note TNA's financial troubles led to them offering AJ, their most loyal, hardworking worker, their top face and champion (at the time), the man many proclaimed to be the heart and soul of TNA, a renewal contract with a forty percent paycut, AJ came back to much happy fanfare and revitalized his career. He did end up leaving again for WWE, though with a proper send off this time and significantly less ill will.
  • This is also what keeps The Young Bucks coming back. Initially the Sinclair suits did not think the constantly traveling California team was worth the money but later decided not only would they pay to fly them in but pay The Young Bucks to work fewer dates!
• Milestone Celebration: Instead of another anniversary show, the "Fifth Year Festival'' held in its place was a six day tour starting in NYC, New York and ending in Liverpool.
• No Budget: Despite being a television company, Sinclair Broadcast Group gave Ring of Honor no budget for production, the end result being two years onscreen in less quality than Ohio Valley Wrestling. (However, anybody who knows Sinclair's business practices knows this is par for the course.)
• Old Shame:
  • At the first Glory By Honor, October 5, 2002, the Insane Clown Posse squashed the Outcast Killaz (Oman Tortuga and Diablo Santiago), with the crowd going back and forth between cheering ICP and booing them. Even though ICP had volunteered to work for free that night, ROH was so embarrassed by this that the match was left off of the home video release, though it later appeared on the ROH Uncensored Vol. 1 DVD. The match is not even listed on ROH's results page. To put this in perspective, has ROH included botches in sizzle reels. They rarely go that out of their way to hide something. Likewise, the Christopher Street Connection being flattened in 2 minutes in the first show was left off later DVDs because having another team beat up a pair of Camp Gay heels was no longer a good look.
  • Speaking of homophobia, after the Briscoes turned up in GCW and started having matches involving Effy, the latter explained in an interview that they were pretty ashamed of their previous incidents, and that several of the LGBTQ+ members of the GCW roster were helping to educate them on issues.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • At twelve and thirteen the Briscoes were in the ECW arena trading Japanese wrestling tapes, not even dreaming of wrestling in Japan themselves but knowing they eventually would.
  • Sumie Sakai, of USA pro wrestling. She traveled to IWA Puerto Rico just to get chance to wrestle in the US despite already having a career in Japan. When she learned USA's pro wrestling wasn't very respected it made her want to stick around even longer, to help improve its reputation.
  • Michael Elgin. Twice over. First by becoming a professional wrestler and second by joining Ring of Honor, the promotion he wanted to join in the first place. The other wrestlers would talk about Elgin's persistence in getting signed in their promos.
  • Kyle O'Reilly. ROH's deal with New Japan allowed him to accomplish his dream of having a match with Kazushi Sakuraba.
  • Moose. Kazuchika Okada is his favorite wrestler. He thought Hathaway was just joking when informed he'd be facing off with Okada one on one.
• Real Life Writes the Plot
  • Especially when main eventers up and leave for WWE. CM Punk's departure was probably the most dramatic, as he won the title in the match that was scheduled to be his last - unknown to the fans, Punk was actually still available for a half-dozen or so more appearances, and his performance as a Dirty Coward Smug Snake champion threatening to steal the belt and break the title's line of succession for his own ego has reached legendary status. An altered version of the storyline ran in WWE to critical acclaim, well, until WWE altered it too much.
  • The particularly short six man tag title reign of Dalton Castle and The Boys was due to Castle needing to rehab a back injury, which had the side affect of making ROH look really Bullet Club reliant, since the Hung Bucks were the most convenient team during the War Of he Worlds UK tour. But ROH was still determined to push Castle and managed to get a good angle to do so out of this setback.
  • Though no official reason has been given for the hiatus, it's likely the cyberattack that practically crippled Sinclair Broadcast Group in the fall of 2021 played a major role, in addition to the company losing money hand-over-fist from their equally-disastrous tenure as owner of the formerly-Fox owned regional sports networks (rebranded by Sinclair as Bally Sports, tying in with the casino and in turn the latter's sports betting apps). This ultimately led to Tony Khan buying ROH from Sinclair and relaunching it as a complement to AEW.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The Christopher Street Connection used The Village People's "In the Navy" and "YMCA," and The Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men."
• Reality Subtext: AJ Styles's lament about never getting to be world champion and the Pure Title no longer existing are a direct reference to the fact Gabe Sapolsky openly admitted the original plan for the Pure Title belt was a unification match between Styles and World Champion Samoa Joe before the first TNA pullout.^note Styles's reign with the Pure Title in fact went unrecognized after he left until his return, which was complicated by the fact he was the inaugural champion. The title unification match did eventually happen, way behind schedule, with Nigel McGuinness and Bryan Danielson in their places.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor
  • In 2004, Teddy Hart was released after a fight with CM Punk caused the rest of the roster to band together and agree to keep him out until they finally relented and let him return five years later. As infamous as that was, this was overshadowed by Rob Feinstein getting caught for attempting to meet up with an underage boy with express purpose of getting him to consent to sex, also in 2004. And no, RF's status as a founder and owner of the ROH's distribution method did not save him from being booted out along with Teddy.
  • After 2010 his departure, Adam Pearce was barred from returning to ROH by the Sinclair Broadcast Group due to a human resources complaint from an employee of theirs he once went off on.
  • In 2012 Kenny King's contract was terminated after he appeared on TNA's television show while still half of the ROH tag team champions.
  • In 2013 Charlie Haas and Grizzly Redwood ended up being let go after they had a dispute which escalated into a scuffle in the locker room, though not immediately after said scuffle, leaving a lot of fans confused.
  • ROH declined to renew Kelly Klein's contract after she publicly defended Joey Matthews when detailed how mismanaged the company had become under Sinclair, while making her own private conversations and phone calls with staff public.
  • In 2020, Marty Scurll was intended to become one of the top bookers for the company once the shows returned into production after the hiatus in the middle of the pandemic, however, after sexual misconduct allegations came to light, ROH suspended him for an undetermined time, and then decided to let him go through a mutual agreement.
• Romance on the Set:
  • CM Punk has dated Lucy and Tracy Brooks.
  • Tracy Brooks has dated CM Punk and is now married to Frankie Kazarian.
  • Simply Luscious has dated Steve Corino.
  • The first woman of honor Allison Danger is married to Ares, who challenged for the the World Title in Germany, though in the U.S. he's more known for his work in CHIKARA.
  • Allison and Ares's tag team partners, Sara Del Rey and Claudio Castagnoli, also dated.
  • Davey Richards has dated Angel Williams (aka Angelina Love).
  • Michael Elgin eventually became MsChif's husband.
  • Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis dated, then got married. It practically become the basis of their gimmick.
  • Silas Young dated and married Valerie Malone.
  • Eddie Kingston and Mia Yim dated.
  • BJ Whitmer dated, then married Kelly Klein. Unfortunately, they divorced after sources revealed that Klein had an extramarital affair with Joey Matthews (aka WWE's Joey Mercury).
• Screwed by the Network: ROH was one of the companies least affected by YouTube's blanket censoring of pro wrestling, what with existing before it and consistent insistence from creative that they have their own online video service even with Sinclair's infamous lack of dedication to it. Still, it was an immediately noticeable setback for Women Of Honor, which was by far their most notable YT project and had only just begun to expand beyond the site.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot
  • While FIP running as a sister to ROH was done on the whim of their mutual booker, SHIMMER's case was more obviously a product of circumstance. Products of other promotions were already being sold by ROH at that point and while it had some women in the company, it didn't have a whole lot for them to do. But many were a part of SHIMMER so there was dual benefit of making their own shows more interesting while getting a cut of any sales cross promotion brought to the newer company. This also explains why ROH and FIP's angles stayed inline longer, being driven more by a single creative direction rather than convenience.
  • Cody and The Elite breaking away to form their own All Elite Wrestling promotion stems from investor Tony Khan deciding the Sinclair Broadcast Group didn't have the vision to be worth investing in but that the wrestlers who basically went ahead with the show on their own did. This was good for ROH, as though they probably could have squeezed more out of Cody, the Bucks were on schedule for another hiatus anyway, and the success of the All In show was enough to convince SBG that bigger arena shows were worth the effort, allowing ROH to sell out Madison Square Garden.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: An odd case of doing this for one specific market. Edison, New Jersey had been marked by crowds who were erratic at best, and downright disrespectful at worst. Adam Pearce decided to do this on Injustice II in January 2009, which saw the combination of Austin Aries outright calling Edison a "B-market," and the infamous 48-minute "time limit" draw between Nigel McGuinness and Tyler Black. They would run two more nondescript Edison shows later in 2009 before dropping it permanently in the spring of 2010.
• Troubled Production
  • Multiple DVD teams lost, two ring crews ran off in as many years, multiple failed attempts to create more controlling contracts, an airplane on fire, a ring frozen to the ground, they're in it for the long hall because even with SBG progress comes slowly in ROH.
  • Fandom discontent over delayed DVD releases and pay per view feed freezes aside, the RF incident, TNA pullout and various scheduling conflicts may have overall been for the promotion's benefit. Gabe Sapolsky didn't win all those "best booker" awards necessarily because his angles were the greatest but because, similar to Jim Cornette in OVW, people were watching to see how he'd book his way out of this setback and he became great at getting interesting matches together on the fly.
• What Could Have Been
  • Ring of Honor could not have been. RF Video initially went to CZW with offers to be their distributor and use them as their replacement for ECW. ROH was started after CZW either refused or John Zandig dragged his feet for too long.
  • That best of three series between Punk and Joe that produced the five star was originally going to be a one off match but Sapolsky ended up giving them two more due to a scheduling conflict with Pro Wrestling ZERO1 leaving Steve Corino in Japan.
  • ROH wanted to sign the Human Tornado to a long term contract with a few angles already in mind. These deals never worked out. That sound? That's the RoHBot lament.
  • Ring of Honor was supposed to host the first title defense of newly crowned NWA Ring Warriors Grand Champion Bruce Santee at Showdown in the Sun and it did, but in a dark match, so most viewers didn't see it. Instead, Adam Pearce was on the show proper, but at least the ROHbots got to see him again.
  • ROH attempted to bring Filthy Tom Lawlor back to pro wrestling long term but failed to get him under contract.
  • A program between Kazuchika Okada and Cedric Alexander was supposed to start in May 2014. It would be an entire year before they had so much as a single match, though Alexander's anxiety and frustrations were a big part of the build up to it.
  • The same year, ROH tried to have Cedric Alexander replace Roderick Strong in a program with Paul London, but London pulled out to go wrestle in Spain's Revolution Championship Wrestling in protest to ROH changing his opponent without telling him ahead of time. London wouldn't work with the company again for an entire year, when ROH did cross promotion with Preston City Wrestling, who happened to have London in their locker room, leading to him finally getting a match with Strong.
  • In 2015 WWE attempted its first outright raid on the ROH roster and walked away with Austin Aries, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Jimmy Jacobs (albeit as a member of the Creative Team, and not an actual wrestler) and, eventually Tommaso Ciampa. According to both Joe Koff and Rolling Stone, WWE had their sights set on a lot more people but for first time in thirteen years not only did ROH have the ability to match WWE's initial offers but every wrestler willing to depart for WWE for the sake of it had already done so, forcing WWE to actually dig into its purse and choose a select few. It took all year for them to get Styles (probably on account of New Japan also investing heavily in him) who said as late as December's Road to Final Battle (where his loss to Lethal on the 18th made it clear he had finally bitten) that he wasn't going until more money was offered.^note Keep in mind that the raid continued afterwards, as by 2019, Roderick Strong, Cedric Alexander, Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O'Reilly, Nigel McGuinness, War Machine, Donovan Dijak, Lio Rush, Mike Bennett, Maria Kanellis, Punishment Martinez, Keith Lee and ACH had all signed a contract to WWE.
  • YOSHI-HASHI of CHAOS and Ride the Lightning was set to make his USA debut at Super Card of Honor XI but visa issues kept him and regular ROH guest Jushin Liger from entering the country so a six man tag match involving the Guerrillas of Destiny was thrown together.
  • Irish Airborne was returning as OI4K at Gateway To Gold to challenge The Young Bucks for the world tag team titles, but due to Dave Crist being injured, Jake Crist was instead added to the gauntlet match singles world title while Vinny Marseglia and Matt Taven of The Kingdom got OI4K's tag title shot.
  • The 2018 All In show of Chicago where the NWA World Heavyweight Title belt was on the line in the main event was originally pitched as an ROH show on a dare between Dave Meltzer and Cody. Sinclair Broadcast Group wasn't interested, so it instead became a general independent circuit wrestling show with the blessing of ROH/SBG preceding it.
  • After All Elite Wrestling became official, Joe Koff claimed he was in talks of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship between it, ROH, New Japan, CMLL et all. To say it didn't workout would be an understatement. With ROH backsliding due to WWE going after their talent more aggressively, WWE actively pushing fans and wrestlers alike to EVOLVE over ROH, the long-established pull of Impact Wrestling, wrestlers eager to follow the Elite to their new promotion (with a heavy financial backing), and New Japan looking to cut out the middle man, Marty Scurll was hired to do what Koff apparently couldn't deliver on.
  • And speaking of Scurll, when he renewed his contract with ROH in 2020 with main booking duties once the promotion returned to making shows in the middle of the pandemic, he would not only plan to recover the promotion entirely from the disastrous booking of Bully Ray in 2019, but also get a crossover program with Nick Aldis for the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship, but alas, he got accused of sexual misconduct during the #SpeakingOut movement.
• Written by Cast Member: Bully Ray assumed booking duties in the promotion in addition to being a wrestler from 2019 to 2020, when his contract expired.
• You Look Familiar
  • Todd Hanson originally showed up in dark matches as Handsome Johnny.
  • Dalton Castle is known as Ashley Remington in CHIKARA.

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