The Rise, Fall And Rise Again Of Ring Of Honor

Ring of Honor was launched following the success of APW’s King of the Indies tournament in 2001. The two night show brought together the biggest names in independent pro wrestling and was an eye opener to many that there was enough talent on the indie circuit to sustain a bigger promotion. Names like Samoa Joe, Frankie Kazarian, Doug Williams, Adam Pearce, Christopher Daniels, Brian “Spanky” Kendrick, Bryan “The American Dragon” Danielson, Low Ki, and some guy named AJ Styles all took part in the show with Danielson knocking off Low Ki in the finals.

Already the ROH fans watching this will know that many of the names I just listed would soon become the foundation of Ring of Honor’s roster. And this is what most people would consider Ring of Honor’s greatest success. See ROH was never going to be this huge money maker, at least not at first, but what the company was able to do was give young wrestlers another place to work. In the wake of WCW and ECW both closing, suddenly there was only one major player in town if you wanted to make a full time living in pro wrestling. If you weren’t working for WWE, odds are you were struggling. The early 2000s were some of the worst years ever to be a pro wrestler simply because there were so few places to make a living. That is why many looked at the newly christened ROH with great fondness. The number one asset to the wrestling business has always been the talent and Ring of Honor quickly proved themselves able to identify, cultivate and develop talent. This would be one of ROH’s greatest contributions to the business as a whole and will certainly be a running theme throughout this story.

The new promotion had a simple business strategy, book hungry young wrestlers on shows designed to attract about 500 people, then sell merchandise and later sell DVDs of the event, thus breaking even. ROH wasn’t meant to be a huge money-maker with this model, but it allowed them to run shows and start to build the ROH brand name through word of mouth as a result of their own stellar shows. And to their credit, that is exactly what happened.

• Ring of Honor
• Bryan Danielson
• Samoa Joe
• ROH

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