I thought this deserved it's own thread, Tony Khan has purchased the promotion off of Sinclair Broadcasting. Now I'm not sure if any of the talent had any remaining time left on their contracts but I presume he gets the license and video catalogue. In the press statement, it said that the catalogue extends back to 2002 so he may have the entire video library but there's always been conjecture of how much Sinclair actually owned. I'm sure we'll get clarity soon but even just to have Punk, Danielson, Page, Bucks' entire history is great. It can also open up the possibility of doing feature length documentaries and releasing content via their youtube platform. They could take a page from WWE's book and have the talent watch back certain matches and offer their criticism.

However the big question is, how will ROH operate moving forward?

Call me a cynic, but unless some significant measures are put in place, I can't see ROH as anything more than a glorified AEW Dark. TK already has his hands full with AEW, the Jaguars and Fullham so I can't possibly see how he could give ROH the attention it needs to thrive. Now I'd love to be proven wrong and for TK to bring in some management and let somebody manage the show independant of him to help develop stars and take chances they aren't willing to on Dynamite.

I have low expectations, but this is a big story, a nice boon for AEW, I just have low expectations for ROH moving forward.

I feel it’ll be AEW’s NXT circa 2014/15 with a bit of 2018. A mix of the people you want to see continue to develop and have high hopes for, and a mix of established vets and give some lost in the shuffle things to do who can’t get Tv time.

Dark/Elevation are just basically rankings boosters. I think this ROH can be much more with their own titles, big shows, etc. Bring in Regal as GM

Awesome to see you back The Dazz

I hope that's the route they take as well. Make Cesaro the ROH Champion, bring up guys like Wheeler Yuta, Daniel Garcia, Lee Moriarty etc. and repackage talent like the Varsity Blondes here. I think this would be a great spot to let Team Taz dominate and help give guys like Miro a bigger aura.

TK needs to trust somebody else and let this be different from his vision.

The question has to be asked...

Yes, let the cosplay continue.

Mar 3, 2022 5:02:50 GMT Big Pete said:

Awesome to see you back The Dazz

I hope that's the route they take as well. Make Cesaro the ROH Champion, bring up guys like Wheeler Yuta, Daniel Garcia, Lee Moriarty etc. and repackage talent like the Varsity Blondes here. I think this would be a great spot to let Team Taz dominate and help give guys like Miro a bigger aura.

TK needs to trust somebody else and let this be different from his vision.

Thanks. I was surprised I remembered my info.

That’s exactly what I’d want. Start out with a big name like Cesaro as ROH champ to carry the ship back up, cement the younger guys, have a core of mid-card acts you can use to build up and also reinvigorate themselves whenever they go back to main AEW tv. Think there’s plenty exciting options. Plus the obvious of occasional big matches from the top guys and ROH legends.

i don’t really think it should be TK. He should just be the overseer. But idk who they could get to run it. Well besides Cody lol. Imagine that. 

Big news is not that he own the fed, but he owns the library is looking to get it up somewhere for streaming.

He should make a deal with Disney to be their exclusive wrestling content provider.

IMO he should dissolve the main fed. No need to run regional shows monthly in small places when he can just run AEW shows in arenas.

And Dark and Elevation are his NXT. Before doing big high impact runs on the TV shows, these shows let people get used to working matches for their cameras. Also keeps his b-talent in the loop doing something, rather than just chilling backstage bored.

Since Tony seems set on keeping RoH alive, likely the fed will be a feeder fed to try out guys both in their ability to connect with the crowd and in the locker room.  Some of the vets may be interesting in moving down to run the fed as well to make them more of a conditioning fed to move to AEW.  Teach them there how to work for cameras, then when they come up they will be brought up to speed much, much faster.  Then do a mix of indy draws, nightmare factory guys and guys who AEW may want to use, but not right now.

So I'm fascinated by this. It's a huge outlay, if what is being reported is accurate, for a dead brand and a type library. I really want to understand what the strategy is. Is it to leverage AEW's position to attract streaming services? Would HBO Max give a flying fuck about Ring of Honor? Is he going to bring it back? At $40m, I don't get it. Cool for the fans I suppose but they don't even have any talent, do they have any staff? He's just bought the RoH name.

I'm struggling to make sense of it as an investment but I'll hold off on damning it until he does something with it. Maybe he has a grand plan to make his money back on that investment.

RoH is not entirely dead. Show next month with several matches announced already. The core executive staff is still there, for now at least. Tony should def purge everyone currently involved and replace them, but for now, he got all their production gear and shit even.

HBO may care about RoH if Tony can sex it up and sell it. RoH is 100s of hours of exclusive to streaming content that a fairly sizable potential audience would pay for. The library is def worth money. Be some time, but he can make his cash back from that alone, and use that to leverage a streaming deal with AEW tacked in.  If HBO is not interested, since Tony can commit right now, Disney may be.  Would sever their ties to Vince, but Tony could make a compelling case to Disney execs as to why they do not want the WWE catalogue associated with their brand at all.  Cannot just put WWE up unedited as so many of the old shows are too racist for TV today.

Tony was not stupid, this was not throwing cash in a fire, there were other people going for RoH around this price.  

Production gear? They already have massively superior production gear. :lol:

Fair enough the tape library is useful, but how do you sell it to a top streaming service like it has any kind of real audience? And let me get this straight, you think Tony Khan can convince Disney not to do business with WWE by dangling a Ring of Honor shaped carrot in front of them? Is this an acid trip?

Did the guilt from gutting it 3 years ago finally get to him?

All mean spirited snipes aside, I'm glad it has lived on with AEW. And considering there is so much former ROH talent in AEW, it makes for an extraordinary addition to AEW's origin story.

Mar 3, 2022 10:19:51 GMT Todd said:

Production gear? They already have massively superior production gear.

Fair enough the tape library is useful, but how do you sell it to a top streaming service like it has any kind of real audience? And let me get this straight, you think Tony Khan can convince Disney not to do business with WWE by dangling a Ring of Honor shaped carrot in front of them? Is this an acid trip?

Disney clearly wants wrestling so he can make a case his library is far less problematic that the current WWE library is.  None of his shows would need to have racist segments removed, extremely sexist segments removed, or remove matches that involved people who murdered their girlfriends and families.  This would be on top of removing all WWF branding from the past product.  Peacock is laying a heavy hand as it is to the old library of WWE stuff to avoid negative press which is causing massive delays getting even what was on the network up as most of the old content has to be reviewed and approved to be added.

Case Tony can make is product is good to go as is without the additional costs for review of content, is pretty future proof from major controversies due to the tamer nature and currently under stable uniform management.  Not having your champion pretend to fuck a corpse is just a bonus.

And well, Tony will give him access to the American market, something WWE will not commit to now or in the future.  

I genuinely don't know how to respond

I'm not really buying it. The WWE have a tremendous home video division that can put together acclaimed featurettes on any wrestling related subject. AEW has done some decent packages but will need to invest more to compete with the WWE in that area.

'Disney wants wrestling' :lol: What does this even mean? What other wrestling companies have they ever shown interest in?

Mar 3, 2022 11:06:56 GMT c said:

Mar 3, 2022 10:19:51 GMT Todd said:

Production gear? They already have massively superior production gear.

Fair enough the tape library is useful, but how do you sell it to a top streaming service like it has any kind of real audience? And let me get this straight, you think Tony Khan can convince Disney not to do business with WWE by dangling a Ring of Honor shaped carrot in front of them? Is this an acid trip?

Disney clearly wants wrestling so he can make a case his library is far less problematic that the current WWE library is.  None of his shows would need to have racist segments removed, extremely sexist segments removed, or remove matches that involved people who murdered their girlfriends and families.  This would be on top of removing all WWF branding from the past product.  Peacock is laying a heavy hand as it is to the old library of WWE stuff to avoid negative press which is causing massive delays getting even what was on the network up as most of the old content has to be reviewed and approved to be added.

Case Tony can make is product is good to go as is without the additional costs for review of content, is pretty future proof from major controversies due to the tamer nature and currently under stable uniform management.  Not having your champion pretend to fuck a corpse is just a bonus.

And well, Tony will give him access to the American market, something WWE will not commit to now or in the future.  

Disney wants wrestling like network television wants Football - they want the NFL, not the Pennsylvania Amateur Football League. WWE IS wrestling to mainstream audiences, and no level of " WWF was problematic " is going to help AEW sell ROH to Disney. ROH at best looks like it was shot in a basement garage in 2008... despite the actual year being 2022. And most of the wrestling is just, shit. 

Have fun explaining the Age of the Fall's debut. 

I don't think it's impossible that AEW ends up on a streaming service like that. Young audience, big company, a lot of brand loyalty. Price would be key but I could see it, HBO Max in particular fits like a glove and has live streaming capabilities for events too. I just take issue that they could warn Disney off WWE because Piper put paint on his face and HHH shagged a doll. Generally, the idea that AEW could fill a WWE-sized hole of anything is delusional. If anything was to happen to WWE, those hours would likely be transferred to COD, Fortnite, Netflix, etc. AEW couldn't replace it, just like WWE couldn't replace WCW. It doesn't work like that with entertainment.

I hope not to come across like I'm attacking them. I love their success and their TV ratings and live event attendance continue to blow me away.

Mar 3, 2022 11:13:58 GMT Todd said:

'Disney wants wrestling' What does this even mean? What other wrestling companies have they ever shown interest in?

They made offers to WWE which WWE turned down for the US distribution.  Disney handles only select international markets for WWE, but WWE will not give them the US market, or several other major markets.  If WWE is not interested why should Tony not make a play?  

And it is a matter of costs.  WWE library goes to Disney they cannot just add the shit to be streamed.  Everything will have to be combed over or you get the racist stuff on your network and there was a whole lot of it.  You have to remove Benoit, Snuka and other people.  You need to remove the Nazi gimmicks.  Estimated the WWE library they gave Peacock was 17000 that had to be reviewed and approved.  This costs cash.  Even paying a low wage for someone to review it you are looking at nearly $200000 just to review the footage for things that could cause a media backlash.  

And again, Vince will not give Disney the library to license as he wants to sell the company to him, so while he is fucking around, if you were AEW why not pitch them something they can have now and put up without worries about having to review every piece of content for past behaviors that are not acceptable now?

I'm no expert on ROH but I'm pretty sure it's likely to have just as much offensive content, if not more, than WWE. After all, ROH didn't have to answer to board of directors or provide content for a TV show for much of its existence.

Imagine there's a lot of gritty, unsuitable content in ROH's early years. Not as squeaky clean as you're making it out to be.

It's a good acquisition in terms of the video library. That said,if it's going to keep operating, hopefully they have Delirious keep booking it, and if not him, someone other than Khan. With running AEW, doing analytics for the Jags, and Director of Football Operations for Fulham, he's really stretching himself too thin with what he does now. Either way, at least ROH can survive, to some extent.

Listening to Meltzer, Dave is adamant that they shouldn't bother running anymore shows after Supercard and should be known as AEW. He cited a couple of examples like the WWF trying to run WCW & ECW shows as well as Crockett buying Mid-South. He also made the point that live event business isn't cost effective, and the WWE won't run anything without their brand, not even NXT.

He theorised that Khan paid a good price for it because ROH had been in discussions with the WWE as far back as 2018 so he wouldn't have got it cheap. He thinks long term they could make money with it but it's a big investment at this stage.

One benefit he did bring up was the existing HonorClub platform service and how they could use that install base.

Otherwise, his main point was why run an ROH show that draws 800 fans when you can call it AEW and attract 1,500? Take the tape library and run.

I had a look at the HonorClub service because I had heard conflicting reports. They have every show from the time Sinclair bought the company, but they have uploaded hundreds of matches from 2002-10. The thing was they had to segment them into their own matches and cut the audio from the opening due to licensing. A lot of ROH talent used licensed music as entrance themes and they couldn't broadcast it on their platform without paying a fee.

If there’s an issue of unfavorable looking past content, well even better for my hopes of a streaming deal on HBOMax. They already got things like GoT, Sopranos, Wire, Euphoria, etc. I’m sure HBO will be ok with dumb edgy content from 20 years ago. If anything, just pop a disclaimer before a show if need be.

As far as who runs the shows, I think that needs some new faces to create a new, fresh feel and maintain the buzz. Not sure it should be whoever was running ROH the last couple years.

one cool thing I’ve barely seen mentioned that’s a cool little bonus is the ability to do a special ROH toy line and alt characters in the AEW video game. 

Mar 3, 2022 13:23:27 GMT Emperor said:

I'm no expert on ROH but I'm pretty sure it's likely to have just as much offensive content, if not more, than WWE. After all, ROH didn't have to answer to board of directors or provide content for a TV show for much of its existence.

Imagine there's a lot of gritty, unsuitable content in ROH's early years. Not as squeaky clean as you're making it out to be.

Nope.  Early RoH was really devoid of storylines.  Their badass heels would refuse to shake hands.  Like that was all it took really to be a super over heel in RoH, just not respecting the Code of Honor.  The RF scandal was a big thing, but that was a very weird legal situation where the police investigated and cleared RF fast because he was in an 18+ erotic roleplay chat focused on ageplay.  Hansen basically prey on people into ageplay and not actual pedophiles which is why almost nothing he did ended up with a person being put in jail.  And well, there was the massive lawsuit after one of the people killed themselves and NBC fired him after being forced to settle out of court.

Post RF era, only gimmick that was remotely edgy was the Embassy, but they portrayed Ghana as a rich and wonderful country.  As far as racial gimmicks go, it is really tame.  Post Gabe era, Cornette is really the most controversial person to appear.  Briscoes a bit towards the end when they went confederate and made some stupid comments publically.  

Now compare this to Chris Benoit murdering his family, likely due to head trauma he suffered in WWE, Jimmy Snuka going insane and killing his girlfriend, the super racist HHH vs Booker program, the entire divas era, particularly Trish's early career before she was known for wrestling, ect.  It is not comparable.  Simply put if RoH did shows like WWE did, Frank Talent would have barred them from the arena like he did CZW.  

Mar 3, 2022 14:38:26 GMT Big Pete said:

Listening to Meltzer, Dave is adamant that they shouldn't bother running anymore shows after Supercard and should be known as AEW. He cited a couple of examples like the WWF trying to run WCW & ECW shows as well as Crockett buying Mid-South. He also made the point that live event business isn't cost effective, and the WWE won't run anything without their brand, not even NXT.

He theorised that Khan paid a good price for it because ROH had been in discussions with the WWE as far back as 2018 so he wouldn't have got it cheap. He thinks long term they could make money with it but it's a big investment at this stage.

One benefit he did bring up was the existing HonorClub platform service and how they could use that install base.

Otherwise, his main point was why run an ROH show that draws 800 fans when you can call it AEW and attract 1,500? Take the tape library and run.

I had a look at the HonorClub service because I had heard conflicting reports. They have every show from the time Sinclair bought the company, but they have uploaded hundreds of matches from 2002-10. The thing was they had to segment them into their own matches and cut the audio from the opening due to licensing. A lot of ROH talent used licensed music as entrance themes and they couldn't broadcast it on their platform without paying a fee.

Exactly, why the hell should they consider keeping RoH alive at all?  The name has some meaning, but it is stupid to run two feds, when you can run RoH shows under the AEW presents RoH banner anyway and basically just run shows with the B talent in smaller places to let them work longer matches.

And yeah every single indy fed when their stuff gets sold needs to have all of the entrances cut.  Just the nature of the game.  

The library is fucking weird.  At one point it was split into three blocks, the RF years, the Cary years, and the Sinclair years.  I believe HonorClub worked a deal to host some of the older stuff in exchange for payment, but RoH could never until now it seems unite the full library.  RF would not part with what he owns for cheap, and not sure who exactly owned the middle years.  But after cutting him out of his own fed, believe RF retained the rights for the shows his team produced selling rights to them, but keeping ownership.  Cleaning up the audio should mostly be done already as once they went national with sales and shit got more intense when it came to licensed music in wrestling.  Most feds basically cut the entrances out these days as it is faster than cleaning the audio out entirely.  This is also easy work that can be done at super fast speed by a trained editor.  Likely can nail out a show in 30 minutes editing out the entrances.  Rerending the video will take longer though.

Mar 3, 2022 14:40:34 GMT The Dazz said:

If there’s an issue of unfavorable looking past content, well even better for my hopes of a streaming deal on HBOMax. They already got things like GoT, Sopranos, Wire, Euphoria, etc. I’m sure HBO will be ok with dumb edgy content from 20 years ago. If anything, just pop a disclaimer before a show if need be.

As far as who runs the shows, I think that needs some new faces to create a new, fresh feel and maintain the buzz. Not sure it should be whoever was running ROH the last couple years.

one cool thing I’ve barely seen mentioned that’s a cool little bonus is the ability to do a special ROH toy line and alt characters in the AEW video game. 

Marty Scrull was booker in 2020 but after he was fired, and Delirious was brought back.  Delirious was booker before Marty was brought on in 2020 to try to revive interest.

The issue with ROH is that the production values were terrible for years. It was the #1 complaint with the company and it never really improved. TK could have the gift of the gab (spoilers: he doesn't thankfully money talks) but nothing could really spice ROH up beyond it having retroactive recognition value and even then what's that worth? The WWE has obviously attracted more controversy over the years, the Owen Hart situation alone tops anything but networks turned a blind eye and they made the sale of the century when they got the Peacock deal. Whether they'll get that again remains to be seen as NBC just lost a stack of money, but it'd be easier to sell their catalogue than ROH's.

I don't think it's a case of angles, but just the odd gimmick, promo or commentary line that won't sit well. A lot of that 2000s indies stuff has aged terribly and fans have tried to cancel Sami Zayn and Excalibur because of it. Obviously not for stuff they did in ROH, but it would not be shocking at all to see that seep through the show. I don't think he said anything that would get him cancelled, but Steen was really trying hard to be an edgelord during the Cornette years. I revisited a show not that long ago and if Steen continued down that tangent, I could see it creating issues.

Mar 3, 2022 14:22:38 GMT Leper Messiah said:

It's a good acquisition in terms of the video library. That said,if it's going to keep operating, hopefully they have Delirious keep booking it, and if not him, someone other than Khan. With running AEW, doing analytics for the Jags, and Director of Football Operations for Fulham, he's really stretching himself too thin with what he does now. Either way, at least ROH can survive, to some extent.

What is kind of funny, is the perfect person to book RoH may be have been Cody.  Tony could have given Cody complete creative freedom to do what he wanted with a set budget and make the wrestling fed he wanted AEW to be. 

If they need a new booker, should see if Punk, Daniels, Joe or Dragon wants it.  Instant hype for RoH to have an OG RoH guy running things, and all four guys are nearing retirement age, and this will give them something to really get behind.  Or if Tony is REALLY ballsy, bring in Bubba Ray.  Another guy who would fucking thrive in a booking role is Black.  He lives for creative stuff.  His streams show he has put way too much thought into his character and you can see how he influences everyone he works with.  

The analytics work is mostly automated with the bitch work done by interns or low level employees.  Once you have a system in play for sports analytics, it is basically just generating reports running the same scripts weekly.  Tony likely set up the scripts and oversees the design, but it is unlikely he is running them, or doing the reports.  So not going to take up much of his time.  That is intern work.

For AEW, he has a ton of paid agents doing a lot of the work, with most vets getting involved and doing agent work for free.  Basically he books the matches and the times and the guys do everything do else.  Everyone says he is very hands off with promos and matches.  If you want help, people will jump too.  I mean, you can literally ask Sting for advise on character work or Dragon for a cool submission.  Punk's been working with people on how to play up themselves.  Colt helps people monetize themselves.  Uno helps people set up their streams.  It is crazy the way this lockerroom works.  

Ditto for most of the corporate shit, he has a team for that and he just makes the executive decisions.  Tony def is not getting stretched too thin.  Likely spends more time with his finances than his analytics of AEW creative work.  

Mar 3, 2022 15:48:46 GMT Big Pete said:

The issue with ROH is that the production values were terrible for years. It was the #1 complaint with the company and it never really improved. TK could have the gift of the gab (spoilers: he doesn't thankfully money talks) but nothing could really spice ROH up beyond it having retroactive recognition value and even then what's that worth? The WWE has obviously attracted more controversy over the years, the Owen Hart situation alone tops anything but networks turned a blind eye and they made the sale of the century when they got the Peacock deal. Whether they'll get that again remains to be seen as NBC just lost a stack of money, but it'd be easier to sell their catalogue than ROH's.

I don't think it's a case of angles, but just the odd gimmick, promo or commentary line that won't sit well. A lot of that 2000s indies stuff has aged terribly and fans have tried to cancel Sami Zayn and Excalibur because of it. Obviously not for stuff they did in ROH, but it would not be shocking at all to see that seep through the show. I don't think he said anything that would get him cancelled, but Steen was really trying hard to be an edgelord during the Cornette years. I revisited a show not that long ago and if Steen continued down that tangent, I could see it creating issues.

Yeah, tapes just do not hold up so well in the modern era.  Also some of the early shows have shitty camera angles when RF used mostly hand cams. 

The anti-mask crap was stupid as masked wrestlers started in NYC not Mexico.  The Masked Marvel predates El Santos by 25 years and both adapted mask from carney culture, which would place mask wearing as part of carnival entertainment as Italian in origin of all places.  Edgelord Steen sure it can be problematic at times, but but something he did pushed as far as to really invite backlash.  
But I mean look at what fans wanted to cancel in RoH. 

Really it is pretty petty shit that big companies are just not worried about at all.  WWE had far more serious problems, particularly in Jesse's commentary.  I love him, but man, it did not age well at all how he would talk about minority wrestlers.  

The sole exception I can think of would be the way they wrote off Lacey.  But Jimmy cutting her with the cane knife was implied and happened off camera, and the promo was never a part of the official release anyway.  It was a fantastic angle and a great send off, but way too edgy for any official release.  Likely that promo will not see the light of day again.

Anti-mask? I'm talking about them using inappropriate language and that coming to light on social media. Point being, I doubt they're isolated incidents and the 00s scene was rife with that edgy sense of humour. ROH weren't really above it, but I doubt it'll play a huge factor as well. I'd say the quality of the footage more than anything else will turn executives off.

Both Disney and HBO work with James Gunn, who did far, far worse than anyone on the RoH did. I mean, he loved his rape jokes and wrote them into his early films regularly. Both Tromeo and Super had really fucked up shit in them that was far worse than anything that anyone in RoH did. And his edgy tweets were far worse than any tweets others made.

The general attitude of large companies is not to punish people for edgy shit said done more than a decade ago anymore anyway after we started to focus on things like sexual assault or domestic abuse in Hollywood. Even in social justice scenes, people are moving past cancelling people for just being edgelords.  

Where I see a concern is some of the bloodbaths may be too much for at least Disney to air, particularly Jay who used to be a master of the Dusty bladejob. Jay vs Joe and the Age of the Fall debut though both see Jay gushing blood leaving literal puddles, which may be too much to air. But that is maybe what .001 of the product.

Also let's face it, this is non-WWE wrestling Tony is selling. He is not going to get top dollar. Likely the whole library will be a free bonus as part of a deal to get AEW onto an international streaming service. Right now he only has 65% coverage in the US, and little international coverage, so he will want a deal badly. Likely they will get AEW and RoH for the yearly cost of a single superhero show. It is value for them.