The Rise, Fall, And Rise Again Of Ring Of Honor (Part 3 FINALE) | partsFUNknown - video Dailymotion

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The Rise, Fall, And Rise Again Of Ring Of Honor Part 3 | partsFUNknown With us having successfully completed our look through Ring of Honor's history, let us know in the comments what your favourite era of Ring of Honor is!  SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/ Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/ Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/

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00:00 You know, I originally considered calling this short series the Rise, Fall, Rise, Fall

00:04 and Rise Again of Ring of Honor, because hot damn does this company have a turbulent history.

00:09 I could probably even make the argument to throw an extra rise and fall in there, but

00:13 that would just be insanity.

00:14 If you watched part 1 and 2 of our Tidy Little series, you'll have heard the story of a

00:18 company usually able to take the roster they had and produce top notch wrestling regardless

00:23 of how many of their top stars walked out the door.

00:25 As such, if you've watched these videos, you know the main theme of Ring of Honor's

00:29 history has been its identity and how strongly fans have been able to connect to that identity.

00:34 During their early years, their identity was very positive, capturing the imaginations

00:38 of their fans through great matches and storylines with a roster of insanely talented wrestlers.

00:43 But as those years went by and ownership and management changed, that strong identity began

00:47 to wane.

00:48 Coupled with excessive technical difficulties, ROH lost some of that goodwill they had with

00:52 their fans, despite still putting on some great matches.

00:55 As complicated and turbulent as the initial rise, fall, rise, fall, however many times

00:59 over was for Ring of Honor, business had never been stronger by the time ROH pushed onward

01:04 into 2018.

01:06 With the Elite drawing the largest crowds in the promotion's history, putting on fantastic

01:10 matches and selling merch at an unprecedented pace, the two sides seemed destined to shake

01:14 up the wrestling business together, but what seemed like a perfect marriage turned into

01:17 a very bitter divorce, with a new, better, hotter suitor emerging to succeed where ROH

01:22 would fail.

01:23 It's time to close the book on the Honorable Ring, and boy if the last chapter isn't

01:27 the most Shakespearean tragedy I've ever seen take place in a corporate landscape.

01:31 I'm Tempest Haling from PartsFunKnown, and this is the Rise, Fall, and Rise Again

01:35 of Ring of Honor, Part 3, Exodus, Pandemic, and Tony Khan.

01:40 While it was covered at the end of Part 2, I really want to hammer home just how awesome

01:44 Ring of Honor was with the Elite at the helm.

01:46 You were guaranteed multiple great matches on each big ROH show, with Hangman Page beginning

01:51 to show glimpses of the star he would become, Cody defending the ROH World Championship

01:55 and later leading the ROH side in the Bullet Club Civil War, and the Young Bucks continuing

01:59 to be the best tag team on the planet.

02:02 There may have been distractions from management over the years, but the bottom line of Ring

02:05 of Honor was always being able to produce great wrestling, and let me tell you, the

02:09 Elite produced more great wrestling than just about any other act in Ring of Honor at the

02:12 time.

02:13 But they weren't the only ones producing huge moments.

02:15 Broken Matt Hardy's appearance at Final Battle 2016 is one of the loudest pops I've

02:19 ever heard in any promotion.

02:21 By this time, the business was shifting, and Ring of Honor had started to outrank Impact

02:25 in a number of metrics.

02:27 Meaning when the Broken Hardys showed up to face the Young Bucks in an incredible passing

02:31 of the torch ladder match at Supercard of Honor 11, it didn't feel like they were taking

02:34 a step backwards.

02:36 Supercard of Honor 11 was the biggest non-WWE show of WrestleMania weekend in 2017, and

02:41 while that wasn't necessarily the first time that it happened, the margin of which

02:45 they were the biggest show was much larger.

02:46 Also, that ladder match really is awesome.

02:49 It's one of my favorite matches of all time.

02:51 They recreate the exact finish of the famous Hardys-Edge and Christian ladder match from

02:55 No Mercy as a great false finish, and I love this match so much I might go watch it again

03:00 right now.

03:01 In fact, hold on.

03:03 Yep, still f***ing great.

03:06 There was always something to look forward to during this era.

03:08 If it wasn't the Hardys, it was Minoru Suzuki challenging Cody for the ROH World Title,

03:13 or any of the redonkulous ladder wars that could stack up against any of the best ladder

03:17 matches in WWE history and do more than okay.

03:20 Ring of Honor was just such a solid promotion, and more and more people had taken notice.

03:24 A lot of this was discussed in Part 2, but I really need y'all to know just how awesome

03:29 this stuff was, because it makes what happens next that much harder to swallow.

03:33 The story of All In has been told and told again over the last few years, but what it

03:36 came down to is pretty simple.

03:38 A lot of fans had let it play out long enough, and were very tired of the product WWE was

03:42 offering, and, for the first time in a very long while, that growing hardcore wrestling

03:47 audience was very willing to spend a lot of money if it meant not only seeing great wrestling,

03:52 but supporting it as well.

03:53 So while Supercard of Honor 12 drew 6,000 people to see Cody Rhodes pin Kenny Omega

03:57 in a fantastic match, Ring of Honor would not be the ones to fulfill this growing appetite.

04:02 Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks co-promoted All In, the biggest independent wrestling

04:06 show of all time, selling over 11,000 tickets in under a half hour.

04:10 You could not have had a bigger sign that pro wrestling fans were ready and willing

04:14 to invest their time and money in pro wrestling.

04:16 Seriously, flashing neon lights saying "Take Our Money" would have been the next step,

04:20 and even then who knows if Ring of Honor would have capitalized on the momentum the hardcore

04:24 wrestling scene was experiencing.

04:26 What's worse is they helped produce the show!

04:28 There was a very heavy ROH presence at All In.

04:32 The show was run mostly by ROH crew, the ROH World Championship was defended by Jay Lethal,

04:37 and ROH owned the distribution rights of the show.

04:40 There is no reason they shouldn't have looked at this event as the biggest turning point

04:44 in Ring of Honor history and the biggest opportunity for growth the company had ever seen.

04:49 But they didn't!

04:50 Somehow Ring of Honor chose not to push their chips to the center of the table and held,

04:54 and held, and before you knew it it was Final Battle 2018 and nearly every member of the

04:59 elite and SoCal Uncensored walked away from the promotion.

05:02 As I said last time, ROH helping run All In was about as ironic as Bret Hart walking Shawn

05:08 Michaels through how to put him in the sharpshooter, and sure enough, ROH had about as much luck

05:11 as Bret did.

05:12 ROH COO Joe Coff has shouldered the blame for Ring of Honor's cautious approach to

05:16 this emerging wrestling landscape, but their caution quite literally cost Ring of Honor

05:21 everything that had made it the second biggest promotion in the US.

05:24 In one fell swoop, The Young Bucks, Cody, Hangman Page, Christopher Daniels, Frankie

05:30 Kazarian and Scorpio Sky were all clicked, dragged and dropped right in the bin by ROH.

05:36 While WWE can seemingly get away with the mass releases doing to have so much top talent

05:41 on their roster, a promotion like ROH would not be so fortunate.

05:45 They had seen stars leave before, that was the only life ROH had known, but this was

05:49 a mass exodus that they were not prepared for.

05:52 It was clear there was a steep drop in interest in Ring of Honor following the launch of All

05:56 Elite Wrestling in 2019, with all of the stars who had been making Ring of Honor the fun

06:00 promotion to watch now repping the Jacksonville Jaguars.

06:03 Honestly, pretending to like the Jags would probably have been enough to keep me from

06:06 signing an AEW during that first year, but I digress.

06:09 However, the real impact of this mass exodus would not be felt until a few months later

06:13 when Ring of Honor co-promoted the biggest event in their company history with New Japan

06:17 Pro Wrestling, packing 16,000 people into Madison Square Garden for G1 Supercard, the

06:22 first non-WWE wrestling event held at MSG in nearly 60 years.

06:27 On paper, that sounds like a monumental accomplishment, and on paper, it is.

06:32 The problem was, all the tickets were sold mid-2018, when everyone believed they'd

06:36 be seeing the Elite at the show.

06:38 The tickets were sold, but no one could have anticipated the sheer clusterfuckery that

06:42 would go down inside the world's most famous arena.

06:45 We went over Ring of Honor's working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling in the last video,

06:49 with ROH serving as the window for North American fans to see their favorite New Japan stars

06:53 live.

06:54 For a long time, that worked great, but as the 2010s went on, New Japan Pro Wrestling

06:57 continued to get more and more popular, and soon enough, they began to run US shows of

07:01 their own, cutting out the ROH middleman.

07:04 They still worked together, but there was suddenly a new way for fans to see the New

07:07 Japan stars straight from the source as New Japan ran their first major events in the

07:11 United States in 2017.

07:13 By the time G1 Supercard arrived, it was New Japan people wanted to see while Ring of Honor

07:17 was slowly becoming just an add-on.

07:20 Worse than that, G1 Supercard was half a fantastic show and half a disaster.

07:24 Unfortunately for ROH, it was very easy to see where the issues with the show came from

07:28 as every single New Japan promoted match met or exceeded fans' lofty expectations, while

07:33 every single Ring of Honor moment, match, and decision proceeded to turn more and more

07:38 fans away from them.

07:39 You had Bully Ray taking up an ungodly amount of time with an awful street fight with Flip

07:44 Gordon and the Lifeblood, while career mid-carder and extremely not-world champion level Matt

07:48 Taven won the ROH World Championship in ROH's top match.

07:52 They attempted to bring in Enzo and Cass, former WWE stars not exactly known for having

07:56 good matches, they did bring in The Allure, former TNA stars not exactly known for having

08:01 good matches.

08:02 This night would be far more damaging for Ring of Honor than they would realize at the

08:05 time.

08:06 The piss-poor quality of their product at G1 Supercard turned a lot of fans off, with

08:10 many of the decisions being made seemingly being in direct contrast with what Ring of

08:14 Honor had been known for.

08:15 But the Enzo and Cass fiasco would prove even more costly.

08:19 Not only was it a dumb idea that soured the fans, but Ring of Honor had involved them

08:22 in an angle also involving New Japan stars Evil Sonata and the Gorillas of Destiny without

08:27 New Japan's knowledge or blessing.

08:29 That would be the unofficial wrath on the partnership between New Japan and ROH, with

08:33 the former feeling disrespected by the latter's lack of communication.

08:36 Now you have to consider that not only had ROH lost the services of the Elite and SCU,

08:41 but they had now lost their direct access to New Japan's roster, meaning those major

08:45 shows were about to become real miserable.

08:48 Follow up G1 Supercard with Best in the World 2019, considered by many to be one of the

08:53 worst pay-per-views of the year, and ROH was in the gutter.

08:56 This is a story about identity, and Ring of Honor's identity had died a painful death.

09:00 They trudged along until they and the rest of the world came to a screeching halt in

09:05 2020.

09:06 For all their flaws, Ring of Honor handled the pandemic better than any promotion, paying

09:10 all of their talent, releasing no one, and when the time came, produced shows from a

09:14 bubble surpassing the measures taken by any other company at the time.

09:18 There's nothing to be taken away from this.

09:20 During the period where the promotion had the least amount of goodwill with the fans,

09:24 Ring of Honor stepped up and protected their talent and top marks will be given for that.

09:28 However, as fans began to return to shows, it was becoming very clear that there was

09:32 very little interest in the Ring of Honor product.

09:34 Over the course of the pandemic, top ROH star and booker Marty Skrull was accused of taking

09:38 advantage of a 16-year-old girl at a bar.

09:40 Skrull would state that the encounter was consensual, but his time in Ring of Honor

09:44 was over nonetheless, leaving yet another major black eye on the promotion that they

09:48 really could not afford at the time.

09:50 Finally, fans were able to attend Best in the World 2021.

09:53 1250 fans, to be exact.

09:56 ROH certainly had a number of talented stars on their roster.

09:59 Jonathan Gresham, Bandito, Dragon Lee, Tony Deppin, The Briscos, the list goes on, but

10:04 Ring of Honor no longer had the identity of having the best wrestling in America.

10:08 In 2021, they weren't even close.

10:11 On October 27, 2021, ROH announced that they were releasing all of their talent and would

10:16 be going on hiatus to reimagine Ring of Honor.

10:18 In short, Sinclair Broadcasting pulled the plug, with Joe Koff shouldering the blame

10:22 for not being more aggressive and growing ROH in 2018.

10:26 Final Battle 2021 would be the final show under the Sinclair umbrella, but you could

10:29 already see glimpses of what was to come next.

10:32 AEW stars FTR arrived and challenged the Briscos despite having nowhere to wrestle.

10:36 A few months of radio silence later, and you had Tony Khan walking out on AEW Dynamite

10:41 to let everyone know he was the brand new owner of Ring of Honor.

10:44 The Sinclair era was over, and Ring of Honor was once again in new hands, and not that

10:48 I'm trying to earn a little extra Khan coin here, but ROH was in far more capable hands

10:52 than it was.

10:53 Say what you will about Tony Khan, but he has built a track record for himself, and

10:56 after three years of mostly great booking in AEW, Khan now had the chance to rebuild

11:01 Ring of Honor anew.

11:02 Supercard of Honor 15 was the first show under the Tony Khan banner, a stellar show mixing

11:06 ROH stars with AEW contracted talent, with some independent talent, and a smidge of New

11:12 Japan, with AEW now being New Japan's primary US partner.

11:15 That catches us up to present day, but this story very clearly is not as close to its

11:19 end as it seemed two years ago.

11:21 With the association with AEW, Ring of Honor has had access to not only many of the best

11:25 wrestlers in the world, but many of the men who helped build Ring of Honor from the ground

11:29 up.

11:30 It remains to be seen how many of these names will find their way back to the Honorable

11:33 Ring, but the prospect of Bryan Danielson, CM Punk, Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian,

11:38 and Samoa Joe being on a Ring of Honor show in 2022 is particularly magical.

11:44 It remains to be seen what Tony Khan will do with Ring of Honor in the big picture.

11:47 They don't have a TV deal, and another pay-per-view has not been announced, but already ROH titles

11:52 are being defended in AEW, and non-contracted talent like Willow and Dalton Castle have

11:56 already made appearances.

11:58 One could spend an entire video just theorizing about what Tony could do with ROH, but in

12:02 a more vague sense, I don't think the specifics matter.

12:06 Currently Ring of Honor is in limbo with a very tumultuous past not far enough down the

12:10 road to feel comfortable, but with very exciting possibilities ahead.

12:14 Ring of Honor is without an identity at the moment, as they're largely without a product

12:17 of their own.

12:18 Thus, Tony Khan can take this opportunity to re-establish Ring of Honor in any way he

12:22 sees fit, and hopefully build an identity that fans can identify with and recognize

12:27 as a symbol of excellence in wrestling once again.

12:29 It won't be easy, but Ring of Honor is a brand with so many memories and feelings associated

12:34 with it that it should be protected.

12:36 Ring of Honor has risen and fallen more than most wrestling companies of its era, and now

12:40 it's time for Ring of Honor to rise again.

12:43 [MUSIC]

12:53 [MUSIC]

13:03 [MUSIC]

The Rise, Fall, And Rise Again Of Ring Of Honor (Part 3 FINALE) | partsFUNknown

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