LOLROH History

Ring of Honor is a company that had its share of glory with some great moments in indy wrestling history. However, they could not avoid making booking errors themselves. Their world title may as well be cursed: it's practically a tradition for ROH fans to turn against their champion for different reasons. Numerous fans point to the end of the HDNet era as a turning point for ROH in general. Jim Cornette had some connections in the TV world to get ROH a TV deal that ended up saving the company's life, but once Corny got the book, he introduced some very outdated ideas into the product. Eventually, Cornette left and buried some folks behind the scenes at ROH. Delirious got to be the main booker and he's still not very well received by numerous ROH fans. When this page says that the end of the HDNet era was a turning point, that could go beyond just the way ROH was run. For some fans, it was the point of no return, with the quality of ROH programming going downhill and then up, but never quite reaching the heights of the old days. Due to the difficuly with finding old ROH footage (fuck Honor Club, more on that later), this page will mostly focus on the post-Cornette era of ROH. Any contribution from past ROH eras will be considered, but not automatically accepted. Keep that in mind.

2016

 * In 2015, Roderick Strong had defeated Jay Lethal for the ROH television championship. This left fans expecting big things from him in the future, because beating Lethal as he was being pushed very hard by ROH was a big deal. 2016 was sadly disappointing for Roddy: he ended up dropping the ROH TV title to Tomohiro Ishii. Nothing wrong with making a talented wrestler like Ishii a champ, but this was a year where it would become clear that ROH was leaning on the relation with New Japan HARD.
 * Ultimately, Strong was stuck in a midcard shuffle despite being in ROH for many years, and WWE sniffed blood in the water...Roddy ended up leaving ROH for WWE this year.
 * After some stalling here and there, Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley reunited at the ROH 14th Anniversary show. The Motor City Machine Guns were back, baby! Any decent booker would say that the obvious decision at that point would be to make them the ROH tag team champions as soon as possible, preferably at a big event...but it didn't happen, at least not this year. At Best in the World, despite some great showings from the Machine Guns, they ended up losing to The Addiction, who retained their tag team titles.
 * The way The Addiction won the tag team titles involved the face tag team champions, War Machine, making themselves look like idiots. After successfully defending the titles against Okada and Gedo in a War of the Worlds show, War Machine wanted to take on another team in the same night. The Addiction stepped up and won the titles from the silly babyfaces.
 * In hindsight, this seemed like a rushed way to get the titles onto heels in order to build another storyline, which would lead to the titles being defended in a triple threat Ladder War match at All Star Extravaganza. The participants were The Addiction, Young Bucks and the Motor City Machine Guns. Why War Machine had to lose the titles in the way they did is kind of a mystery. Perhaps someone decided that War Machine wasn't over enough. Oddly enough, War Machine got more over after losing the titles, even earning themselves contracts at New Japan and eventually, WWE.
 * As the year rolled on, Jay Lethal's title reign kept going, and going, and going...without much of a purpose, really. It went on for so long that Lethal eventually turned face.
 * Speaking of Lethal, he was managed by Truth Martini, a talented manager who single-handedly made ROH stars with his promos in the past. However, after being attacked by Donovan Dijak, Truth eventually left the company altogether. This left Lethal with no manager, and Taeler Hendrix was no longer Lethal's valet. She became a bland, egotistical wrestler who fancied herself to be some kind of queen ("Hail Hendrix").
 * ROH got to work closer with Bullet Club this year, pushing the group harder as the year went on. Adam Cole's induction was controversial, not necessarily because of Cole himself, but rather because of the timing and the fact that ROH pushed the stable as heels. At Global Wars, the Young Bucks interfered in the main event of Colt Cabana vs Jay Lethal for the ROH World title. They launched the "biggest superkick party in the world" by literally super kicking almost every worker in their sights, and this is where Adam Cole was introduced as the new member of Bullet Club. The show ended with a no-contest result for a world title match - something which didn't sit well with older ROH fans. As over as the act ended up being, interrupting a world title match, and ending it with no winner was something one would expect from WWE, not ROH. Also, if this was supposed to be a heel act, the silly graphic with the superkick counter probably shouldn't have been there.
 * On top of that, let's look at the actual world title match: Jay Lethal vs Colt Cabana. This was very, very abruptly thrown together. Colt Cabana had only recently returned to ROH and got a very quick win over Jay Lethal at Supercard of Honor X (day two). Granted, this was after Lethal had a brief match with Cheeseburger, but this was still a very ridiculous way to set up the match.
 * Despite Bullet Club mania running wild, ROH kept pushing them as heels as they were building up Death Before Dishonor, most likely because the group were the main heel faction in New Japan and NJPW would not have been happy with ROH making them faces outside of Japan. The storyline was that Kyle O'Reilly was finally getting another chance at Jay Lethal's World title on a TV episode of ROH. Matchmaker Nigel McGuinness even set up the match as the opener, to give it all the time in the episode, expecting it to be a long match. However, O'Reilly got attacked by Adam Cole and the Young Bucks who injured his shoulder. O'Reilly got his shoulder taped and refused to forfeit the match. He would get his title match, and lost due to the injured shoulder. Lethal would turn face as he told McGuinness that this wasn't right. Bullet Club would attack O'Reilly again. As a result, Nigel McGuinness had banned Cole from ever getting a World title match again as long as he was the matchmaker. The crowd was actually not cool with this, because, surprise! The Bullet Club were very over, and Lethal's title reign was getting stale.
 * ROH still didn't give up and had the Young Bucks and Adam Cole attack Jay Lethal, shaving his head after knocking him out. This got Lethal more sympathy, but the crowd wasn't going to boo the Bullet Club at Death Before Dishonor. After DBD, they at least tried to keep Adam Cole heel, but this didn't quite work, either. Adam Cole's opponent at All Star Extravaganza was...Michael Elgin. The crowd went mild for Elgin, even though they tried pushing him as a babyface powerhouse during TV tapings.
 * ACH's abrupt exit from ROH is worth mentioning here as well. For whatever reason, ROH refused to give him the Television title, tag team title or even the new Six Man tag team title. They knew damn well that he was over, too, he had a damn DVD set. Frustrated with this, he suddenly left ROH as he was working through the tournament for the Six Man tag team title. It was clear that The Kingdom were going to be the champs, winning over the thrown-together trio of ACH, Jay White and Kushida. With ACH's exit from the company, his spot was filled by Lio Rush in the final.
 * For whatever reason, ROH brought in Bull James for a few appearances, including a proving ground match against the world champion, Adam Cole.
 * BJ Whitmer either had bad luck or was a shitter in his own right because every major feud involving him was not well handled this year. He had a feud with Adam Page, who was very vanilla prior to joining the Bullet Club. For whatever reason, ROH booked the feud in a way that had Whitmer beat Page at the 14th Anniversary show. Page would get his win back in a San Antonio Street Fight at ROH Conquest Tour - which had way less viewership than the PPV match.
 * Later, he got into a personal feud with Steve Corino, which led to an Unsanctioned Fight Without Honor. BJ Whitmer won with help from Kevin Sullivan, who hit Corino with a golden spike. This finish deflated what was an otherwise good match. The feud didn't end there, things got spooky and rather silly. Apparently, Corino was part of a cult way back in the day, and Sullivan wanted him to come back to it. Whitmer then wrestled with white pants and an X on his forehead. There was a TV promo where the crowd chanted "BORING" at Whitmer. Then, Sullivan got on the mic and the boring chants stopped. We can only assume this is why Sullivan was signed.
 * Punishment Martinez joined this weird cult, and since Steve Corino was leaving for WWE, his portion of the storyline ended with Corino joining them as well. Corino and Sullivan were both gone by 2017, making Corino's part of the story pointless.
 * After the All-Night Express failed to win the tag team titles, they eventually added Caprice Coleman into the mix, and this 3 man team became known as "The Cabinet" - because the US election was going on at the time. This took a surprisingly dumb turn when Kenny King and the others expressed frustration with management on camera, and changed their team name to "The Rebellion" - kayfabe was broken by King asking if this ("The Cabinet") is the best management has to offer.
 * Kyle O'Reilly beat Adam Cole for the World title at Final Battle. On paper, this was a good way to cap off the storyline between the two...sadly, this was, in reality, an attempted hail mary from ROH. See, O'Reilly was thinking of leaving them for WWE. ROH tried to convince him to stay by giving him the world title and a new contract. This was, sadly, not enough. O'Reilly would have to drop the title back to Adam Cole at Wrestle Kingdom 11. The match was so thrown together that the crowd was mild for the match, and O'Reilly would later say on Jericho's podcast that the line to the bathroom probably got longer during his match with Cole. This left O'Reilly with the worst ROH World title reign, with 0 successful defenses in 33 days.

2017

 * The team of BJ Whitmer and Punishment Martinez didn't last long. After going over War Machine, Martinez hit the South of Heaven on Whitmer, completely killing off the cult. Why put the team over if you were going to break them up anyways? After one match with Jay Briscoe, Whitmer would later return on camera as a commentator, barely acknowledging this whole goofy storyline.
 * Little by little, things got moving on the Women of Honor division. Taeler Hendrix and Mandy Leon had what was arguably the first notable feud of the division, with their No-DQ match getting over a million views on YouTube. However, for unknown reasons, Taeler Hendrix abruptly left ROH before the feud could be finished. In later segments, it became clear that Mandy was supposed to win the feud. For one match, she came out with red claw-like marks painted on her body, and commentary talked about how she did the "dishonorable" to Hendrix. This means that in kayfabe, Leon seriously hurt or even killed Hendrix. Later, this was completely dropped, with Leon coming out with no red marks on her, working like a babyface again. For what it's worth, Hendrix thanked ROH for the opportunities and at least for now, there seemed to be nothing strange going on.
 * Another feud was Kelly Klein vs Deonna Purrazzo. Klein was on an undefeated streak and it was nearly broken by Deonna. However, through dirty tactics, Klein was able to defeat Deonna. This set up a simple premise for later - Klein would have her streak broken by a newbie, Karen Q, due to interference by Deonna. Simple shit, right? Wrong. For one thing, ROH underestimated the two reasons why Klein got somewhat over with fans (her gimmick, and her in-ring dominance, obviously). The other part was that Karen Q was ok in the ring, but that wasn't enough for the crowd to get behind her. On top of that, Klein got into the ring a bit too soon, so the ref counted her out even though it looked like she got in on time. All of this led to the crowd booing the streak being broken, even though this was supposed to be a babyface moment.
 * Brandi Rhodes started getting booked into Women of Honor matches. Her first match was a botchfest, and the only reason that it's not on Botchamania was because Maffew has an agreement with ROH to keep their botches off videos. It's so bad that some wonder why the match was even uploaded. (As of January 2022, Brandi has not improved as a wrestler.)
 * At the 15th Anniversary Show, the Six Man tag team title match became infamous for a graphic botch. For whatever reason, O'Ryan was allowed to do an Asai Moonsault from the apron to the outside, near the guard rail. These aren't like the security walls in WWE that are padded, so when he overshot the moonsault, his leg broke upon hitting the metal. The Kingdom then quickly went to the finish, rolling up Dalton Castle for the win, and O'Ryan was carried to the back immediately.
 * The production still wasn't that great on PPVs. Supercard of Honor had audio issues at the beginning. For a couple of minutes, only the sound of the graphics could be heard, and not the commentators or the crowd.
 * The Rebellion continued to be a pointless stable until they were forced to disband after losing a match against Search and Destroy. Yes, one pointless stable ended the other's existence at Best in the World. Search and Destroy was made up of the Motor City Machine Guns, Jonathan Gresham and Jay White. Initially, Lio Rush and Donovan Dijak were supposed to be in this group as well, but they both ended up leaving ROH. Dijak was a notable example of someone being wasted because he was quite agile for his size and yet they had done almost nothing with the guy, beyond making him lose matches that could have put him over with fans.
 * Colt Cabana had turned heel last year after briefly teaming up with Dalton Castle. The feud seemed to be finished after Castle beat Cabana at Final Battle, but it kinda kept going for months. Colt attacked the Boys, he would get mad on commentary when they used twin magic, and finally, the feud was ended on July. Dalton Castle and the Boys beat Cabana and the Tempura Boyz (later known as Roppongi 3K), and like that, Cabana's heel run was done with because it simply wasn't getting heat.
 * By Best in the World 2017, the Bullet Club train was running at full steam. The Young Bucks were the tag team champions, and had beaten the Broken Hardys at Supercard of Honor earler in the year. Marty Scurll had won (and lost) the TV title, Hangman Page was...there, putting on good performances, Adam Cole got kicked out, and more importantly, Cody, the biggest recent signing for ROH, had become the World champion. Cody's World title reign was not without its faults, however. Some matches of his were notorious Cody specials where he stalled, and stalled so damn much by working the crowd. An infamous black mark on his title reign was the match he had with, of all people, Minoru Suzuki. They were doing a good job getting the crowd into it with their gimmicky antics, but then the match abruptly ended with 1 (one) Cross Rhodes at 13 minutes.
 * Kushida had won the TV title from Marty Scurll at a TV taping, with Adam Cole distracting Scurll for the finish. Soon enough, it was time to decide on who would get the rub from beating Kushida for the TV title. It had to be someone with potential, a hungry midcarder who just needed that big win to break past the ceiling of the midcard. ROH ended up choosing...Kenny King. He's not a bad wrestler by any means, but the idea that being on The Bachelorette would translate to him getting over big with ROH fans was silly, to say the least. King was over, but not that over. This would be proven at Final Battle, where King defended the TV title in an elimination four way match, and almost none of the wrestlers involved were over. The crowd was very quiet and only mildly woke up after King was eliminated, which meant that there would be a new champion. Ultimately, that champion ended up being Silas Young.
 * The Motor City Machine Guns scored a big upset win over The Young Bucks for the World Tag Team titles at Death Before Dishonor. As Colt put it, this was a title reign that was long overdue...too long, in fact. ROH management knew that The Young Bucks were a hotter act by far at this point, and so despite beating them, the Machine Guns got almost none of the rub from beating The Young Bucks. It didn't help that the rest of the tag team division was mostly made up of teams that weren't very over, so the Machine Guns had an underwhelming title reign.
 * The Top Prospect Tournament of this year had some very underwhelming matches. Notably, the barely mobile Brian Milonas reached the semifinals and got himself an ROH contract, and Josh Woods won the tournament. Woods would struggle to get over as a face as time went on, mostly losing matches.
 * At Final Battle 2017, the trio of SoCal Uncensored was formed (Scorpio Sky, Daniels and Kazarian). Scorpio's jumping cutter on Flip Gordon wasn't caught on camera because the wrong angle was chosen by the production team.
 * Beyond all of these, business-wise, it was a historic year for ROH. The Bullet Club was red hot, Bully Ray ended up being a hell of a signing, as was Cody, many good shows were enjoyed by fans, and the rising star, Dalton Castle, won the ROH World title at Final Battle. It was time to see how Castle's reign would go...

2018

 * Late 2017 saw ROH revealing the Women of Honor title belt. Early 2018 brought a few surprises to this rather dull division. First, a tournament would be held to determine the first WOH champion. Second, talents from Stardom would be involved, including HZK, Kagetsu, Hana Kimura, and Mayu Iwatani. Third, ROH managed to sign Tenille Dashwood, formerly known as Emma in WWE. This was a pretty big signing and it seemed like an obvious decision to make her the first champion...but it didn't happen. Instead, Sumie Sakai (46 years old at the time of the final) ended up being the first champion, and her reign lasted for 8 months. She never really got over.
 * As if the choice wasn't already weak enough, the final of the tournament was Kelly Klein (who beat Mayu Iwatani on the same night) vs Sumie Sakai (who beat Dashwood on the same night), and the finish of this historic match was botched. It seemed like Sumie Sakai was supposed to end this with a simple moonsault to Kelly Klein, who was laying on the ground. Sakai went up...and missed the moonsault. From the looks of it they had to improvise immediately, with Kelly not selling the clearly missed moonsault. They awkwardly grappled for a bit and then Sakai hit a DDT for the awkward finish. The poor commentators were noticeably baffled by this shit finish, but managed to stay on track and tried to sell this as a good historic moment.
 * A year later, it was noted by the former Joey Mercury (aka, Adam Birch, Joey Matthews) that Klein got concussed during the match with Sakai. It was near the end, after the missed moonsault, Sakai kicked Kelly Klein in the head, knocking her silly. During the DDT, Klein landed nastily on her head. Todd Sinclair (the ref) never checked on Klein.
 * February saw the launch of Honor Club. With ROH's shaky history with iPPVs, issues were expected and found. The search option is useless, some live shows had issues with the stream because too many people were trying to watch at once, only the current era of ROH episodes is on VOD, etc. - as of 2019, the service is still in its dark ages.
 * Manhattan Mayhem had some issues regarding the CMLL talents that were going to work the show. Apparently, they got caught up in customs for a bit, and arrived late to the building. This left Soberano Jr. to work with Punishment Martinez, with the condition being that their match had to be called in the ring, without any kind of prior practice. The result was a disaster. At one point, 4 spots in a row were botched, and the crowd lost their patience with the wrestlers. Mercifully, the match ended at around 6 minutes. Most of the botches could be blamed on Soberano, so when Punishment teased leaving and then went back to beat him up, the crowd popped.
 * The World tag team title reign of the Motor City Machine Guns ended on a whimper against The Briscoes, at the 16th Anniversary show. The bad news didn't end there for the guns. Shelley suffered a serious injury months later and the team had to be disbanded.
 * Supercard of Honor XII was a considerably inferior show compared to last year's. It was a hard act to follow considering that the Young Bucks and the Broken Hardys main evented last year, but this had some ridiculous booking errors. Beyond the semifinals and finals of the Women of Honor tournament, for whatever reason, Cody vs Kenny Omega was not the main event. Instead, Dalton Castle vs Marty Scurll main evented because it was a World title match. On paper, this isn't so bad, but then some fans actually left the arena after Cody vs Omega. On top of that, Castle vs Scurll disappointed due to being a slow match that was an unsuccessful attempt at being an epic 30 minute match.
 * Despite starting strong with the match against Jay Lethal, Dalton Castle's title reign took a disappointing turn with that match against Marty Scurll. It only got worse from there: his body broke down as the year went on, and a few World title matches had to be cancelled (one against Matt Taven and the other against Ultimo Guerrero). There was a triple threat for the World title at Best in the World: Castle vs Cody vs Scurll. This seemed like the perfect time to make Castle drop the title, but since Delirious tends to like "expect the unexpected" kind of booking, he retained. That decision was completely ridiculous given that Castle could hardly bump or do moves involving lifting. On the next night's TV tapings, Castle mercifully dropped the title in a fatal four way, and was finally able to take some time off.
 * Who was the new champion? Jay Lethal. This nicely wrapped up a redemption storyline that he had going. He went around, beating people that had pinned him in the past, and then won the World title. However, lady luck didn't seem to be on ROH's side. Taeler Hendrix suddenly accused Jay Lethal of having sabotaged her career in ROH. Supposedly, Lethal did this because she refused to sleep with him. ROH went on an investigation and it seems like nothing was found. Hendrix's twitter rant about how she should have been the biggest star out of House of Truth made it seem like she was merely accusing Lethal out of spite. She even claimed that Lethal should have been carrying her bags back then, and her "proof" of being sabotaged was a text where Lethal said he really wanted to talk with her. Apparently, we're supposed to believe he's the zodiac killer because of harmless texts like that. This isn't anything compared to, say, the damning Michael Elgin texts that were leaked this year. Anyways, with no real proof to her claims, ROH let Lethal keep working in peace.
 * Death Before Dishonor showed that ROH had problems with its roster. With the Bullet Club being stuffed into one match against CHAOS on the show, the rest of the card (barring the main event, Lethal vs Ospreay) barely got over with the crowd. This wouldn't be a big problem if it wasn't for the fact that most of Bullet Club was on its way out towards the end of the year. ROH had the fun job of trying to find replacements for the Young Bucks, Adam Page, and Cody. SoCal Uncensored were also leaving by the end of the year.
 * Sumie Sakai's reign of terror was finished at Final Battle in an elimination fatal four way match. Kelly Klein was the new WOH champion, a step sideways for the division.

2019

 * Women of Honor finally got its first proper champion this year: Mayu Iwatani. She defeated Kelly Klein at Bound By Honor, but since she was mainly a Stardom wrestler, her title reign wasn't going to be long. This gave ROH a chance to put a woman over big time, but of all people, they chose to give the title back to Kelly Klein. It didn't help that their two rematches were worse than the Bound By Honor match due to the story of the feud: it was about Kelly Klein overcoming Mayu on her own, making her a face in the process. The rivalry ended at the G1 Supercard show where Klein won the Women of Honor title back from Iwatani.
 * At the 17th Anniversary Show, a tag team match had to be taken off the card. Why? Because Jay Lethal and Matt Taven had to go to a 1-hour draw during their World title match. Yes, 1 hour. Miraculously, this worked the crowd instead of making them turn on the match, but the reception from viewers at home was much, much more mixed, leaning towards negative.
 * After a lot of hype, the G1 Supercard show finally arrived. This could end up having its own section depending on who you ask, so here's what went down:
 * Kenny King won the gigantic Honor Rumble, which went on for over 40 minutes in the pre-show. It wasn't good for such a long match, and the finish involved Jushin Thunder Liger and the Great Muta being the "final two". The swerve was that Kenny King hadn't actually been eliminated, and he tossed both legends out of the ring, pissing the crowd off. Another result for the "Kenny King is overrated" pile, which includes moments like pinning Marty Scurll and feuding with Jay Lethal for the World title.
 * The IWGP Tag Team and the ROH World Tag Team titles were on the line in a big fatal 4-way match. As a match, it was fine, but unfortunately, some shenanigans took place after the finish, which led to no one talking about the match. Enzo Amore and Big Cass brawled with the Briscoes, and Bully Ray came out to join the brawl. The cameras only briefly showed Amore brawling with Mark Briscoe before cutting away. This segment was set up to look like a shoot, but soon enough, fans found out that this was a work. There are some problems with this idea.
 * First of all, Enzo and Cass aren't exactly workhorses. That's not a problem in WWE necessarily (unless you split them up), but on ROH, this DOES matter. Not only that, they'd have to work as heels in ROH! As faces, they could get by in NXT with Amore getting beat up, and Cass getting the hot tag, but as heels, it's a struggle. They could cut promos, but ROH television doesn't have much time for that, the episodes are only 1 hour long, and generally, ROH shows don't have nearly as much promo time as WWE shows.
 * Second, people on the NJPW side were not told about this being a work, which ticked off some workers on the show.
 * Following the disappointing Women of Honor title match, Angelina Love and Velvet Sky came out. Mandy Leon went to the ring, and it looked like she would be on Kelly Klein's side to brawl with Love and Sky. However, this was a swerve™ that saw Leon and the former Beautiful People attack Klein and a few other geeks that ran into the ring. This heel stable was given the name of The Allure. No-one cared.
 * The triple threat ladder match for the ROH World title saw Matt Taven beating Jay Lethal and Marty Scurll clean. Yes, this big time event was used to put over Matt Taven as ROH's next big star.
 * Due to these moments, G1 Supercard was seen as a great NJPW show saddled with a bunch of crappy ROH stuff.
 * Time went on since G1 Supercard... and strangely, Enzo and Cass were nowhere to be seen on any ROH shows. Not even on segments taped on TV. It's as if the negative reaction to this worked shoot segment scared off ROH management.
 * The new babyface stable known as Lifeblood started losing members quickly. Tenille Dashwood left ROH, and was written out in a segment where it's implied that Bully Ray put her through a table. Juice Robinson was reportedly unhappy with ROH and asked to not be booked anymore. David Finlay got injured. They needed a new member, and for a while, Flip Gordon was teased to be that new member. This led to something of an infamous segment.
 * At Best in the World, Lifeblood (Mark Haskins and Tracy Williams) with PJ Black took on Villain Enterprises for the 6-man tag team titles and lost. After the match, Bully Ray and the Soldiers of Savagery (who hadn't been properly introduced on ROH yet) came out to attack the faces. Bandido had come out to try to save his allies, but Bully took him down. Flip Gordon came out and successfully made the save. Afterwards, Mark Haskins and the other Lifeblood members offered their shirt to Flip, and Flip accepted. It seemed like they got a new member. However, a swerve would hit them - Marty Scurll appeared on the entrance video screen and revealed that Villain Enterprises had got a new member too: Flip Gordon. Villain Enterprises attacked Lifeblood, and laid Williams onto a table. Flip Gordon hit a 450 splash... and blew out his fucking elbow.
 * Miraculously, this injury wasn't as bad as expected. Per Bryan Alvarez, the injury was said to look gruesome because Flip dislocated his elbow, but they managed to put it back in place. Still, the problem with this was that there was no need for such a risky spot. The crowd didn't react much to it anyways since the segment was a face stable attacking another face stable. As a result, Flip Gordon lost momentum because he had to work matches very carefully for a while due to the pain in his elbow.
 * Timing issues hurt the main event of Best in the World. Due to some segments running long, Jeff Cobb vs. Matt Taven only got close to 10 minutes of action. Given that this isn't the first time this happened, it shows that there are some visible issues with ROH management.
 * On top of that, the build up for the main event was poor. Jeff Cobb was hyped up as being undefeated... but he had just lost both the TV and NEVER Openweight championships. Neither of these facts were mentioned in the few promos that built up the match. Matt Taven did one where he was strangely sitting away from a beach. It's supposed to make him look like a successful douche, but the fact that the promo was taped in such a rinky dink manner made him look silly.
 * Honor Club still had production hiccups with streams every now and then. A match between PJ Black and Jeff Cobb suffered from the stream speeding up or slowing down.
 * The Briscoes feuded with the Guerrillas of Destiny, and Tama Tonga took numerous shots at ROH and its World Tag Team title. This wouldn't be bad, except for the fact that numerous fans were in agreement with what he said. Among other things, Tonga said "I love the fact that Enzo and Cass came and jumped the losers of our match. @ringofhonor booking at its finest."
 * At Death Before Dishonor, Rush finally ended Matt Taven's ROH World title reign. Taven held the title for almost 6 months, and was widely perceived as a very unpopular world champion. ROH used to brag about record-breaking ticket sales when Bullet Club was running wild, but went quiet this year when it came to attendance. That's because numerous shows had weak ticket sales, with some getting around 600-700 people in attendance.
 * Of all teams, The Bouncers were getting pushed this year. They didn't win the tag team titles, but they were definitely getting some spotlight, even feuding with The Kingdom at one point.
 * At State of the Art (Day 2), an infamous event took place. After a Women of Honor match, The Allure (Velvet Sky, Angelina Love and Mandy Leon) attacked the women that just wrestled. The segment was designed to be a usual segment where heels attack tired wrestlers, but as the commentators were trying to keep things moving in the show, Velvet Sky stayed in the ring after her partners left. A fan had gotten under her skin, and she was visibly arguing with him from the ring before finally leaving. That was the end of that on camera, but the fan actually took the time to complain about more than just that on Twitter. It turns out that he got taken to the back by a "security" guy (who turned out to be Hunter Johnson, aka Delirious) after the match. See, after Velvet Sky called him a virgin, he clapped back by pointing out that she fucks Bully Ray. Sure enough, after being taken to the back, Bully Ray himself talked to the fan, in full wrestling gear. The fan claimed that Bully intimidated him, told him he was done talking to the women, and needed to treat them with respect.
 * Bully Ray's version is that he simply told the fan to enjoy the show and "be a fan" - a phrase that would be mocked for months, as fans believed that this was him trying to cover his own ass. Bully also went into a spiel about behavior towards women that came off as laughable coming from a guy who said some very non-politically correct shit in ECW, and made a career out of it. He even famously came close to causing a riot, and worked a fan to the point where he got off his cheap high seat and, with help from other fans, tried to fight Bully Ray (then known as Bubba Ray Dudley).
 * tl;dr version of the previous two points - fan clapped back at Velvet Sky, Sky got her feelings hurt and got Bully to bully the fan. Bully then came off like a hypocrite and a pretentious clown when preaching about fan behavior and the treatment of women.
 * ROH seemingly did nothing about this... but then some things changed. The Soldiers of Savagery were quietly not booked anymore for a while, their feud with Lifeblood was dropped and Velvet Sky wasn't booked anymore, either. With no explanation, The Allure came out without her on shows after State of the Art. Bully Ray was also removed from shows until Death Before Dishonor.
 * In the latter half of the year, ROH television episodes became even less watchable because they would show matches from events that already aired on Honor Club and recaps of other matches from said events. The only "new" content on ROH TV would be short segments to build up matches.
 * On November 1, Joey Mercury was removed from his position at ROH's creative team. He got a new Twitter account (JOEYnRetrograde) and unloaded some dirt on the promotion. Kelly Klein (the Women of Honor champion at the time) and BJ Whitmer confirmed that the Twitter account was run by him.
 * ROH tried to make Kelly Klein work shows in South Africa while concussed.
 * They didn't have a quick response to Lethal breaking his arm, nor did they take care of him.
 * They didn't have transportation for Marty Scurll.
 * They didn't take care of Jeff Cobb after he got hurt.
 * They fired Alex Shelley. He went and got medical training and was taking care of people backstage for free, to the point where he reset Flip Gordon's elbow with the help of one of the lucha guys and Brody King.
 * They were also planning to not resign Shane Taylor on January 1st...which would have been a very bad decision, in hindsight, considering that he would step up his game during ROH's shows in the pandemic. Bandido was also planned to be let go by then because Greg Gilleland (the same "office boy" from a Jim Cornette rant) didn't see the obvious value in the talented luchador.
 * And between Greg, some chick called Lauren and Greg's various hires he doesn't consult anyone on, the backstage of the company is all fucked up. They're also not spending much on security at many shows (which explains why Bully Ray had to talk to the fan months prior), don't have a concussion protocol and not much in the way of medical staff.
 * It was also revealed that Greg shit talked New Japan, and called Hikuleo a "waste of money" - insulting one of NJPW's talents is not a good way to keep the relationship between both companies stable. Tama Tonga, Hikuleo himself and others had no problem shitting on ROH for this.
 * By November, attendances of ROH events were pitiful. Per Wrestling Observer, The Experience drew 250 and Unauthorized drew 300. The UK tour also drew very poorly. A quote from Wrestling Observer: "We didn’t get official numbers from the tour but 10/25 in London did about 400 at York Hall which is terrible, 10/26 in Newport, Wales, did about 150 and 10/27 in Bolton, UK looked to have done a little over 300."
 * This article summarizes the downward trend in ROH attendances. Archive of the article.
 * On November 21, Kelly Klein, the reigning Women of Honor champion, was told via email that her Ring of Honor contract won't be renewed. She was told this while suffering from post-concussion syndrome.
 * ROH ended 2019 by putting their world title on the 51-year-old PCO at Final Battle. On paper, nothing wrong with that, the man was undeniably over, but the style of match he had with Rush was pure, unfiltered sports entertainment. The type of match older ROH fans would despise.

2020

 * Possibly due to Greg's idiocy in the Joey Matthews leaks, New Japan did not have the annual Honor Rising events.
 * January had 0 updates on the state of the Women of Honor title and Kelly Klein. In February, ROH finally announced that there'd be another tournament to determine the new Women of Honor champion.
 * In a desperate bid to stay relevant, ROH offered Marty Scurll a major contract. He accepted, and got more than just money for it. Scurll became part of the booking team at ROH. All well and good, except for the part where they still wasted 2019 by pushing Matt Taven to the top, with the assumption being that Marty was going to leave.
 * On top of that, Marty Scurll had a dark cloud hanging over him due to one of those vintage "open secrets" - there was an allegation regarding him and a 16 year old girl, going way back prior to him being in ROH. This story was dragged into the spotlight during the month of June, as part of the #SpeakingOut movement. Supposedly, Sinclair has opened an investigation on Scurll, but they have said nothing for months. The only update on Scurll prior to the Pure Tournament TV tapings was that he's "on hiatus" - that's all. As far as shows are concerned, ROH carried on as if Scurll wasn't in the promotion anymore. Brody King even split from Villain Enterprises.
 * With the Women of Honor tournament cancelled, and The Allure being suspended in kayfabe for attacking Quinn McKay on ROH Week by Week, the WOH division was practically dead by November.
 * As of November 2020, there's still no update on Scurll's status with the promotion. It appears as if he's being quietly Benoit-ed from the promotion.

2021

 * After many, many months, ROH finally had an update on the Marty Scurll question. In a brief announcement posted on twitter: Marty Scurll and Ring Of Honor have mutually decided to part ways.
 * By March of this year, another tournament for the Women's division was announced by Maria Kanellis - the name "Women of Honor" was ditched in April.
 * PCO, who was still being pushed big time prior to the pandemic, has been reduced to a lower card geek status, teaming with Danhausen and an ROH trainee named Sledge. The former world champion revealed by September that he would not be renewing his deal with ROH. The low point of his low card status was when he eliminated himself from the Honor Rumble due to "short circuiting" - almost no one in the crowd cared except for one fan who could be heard explaining what just happened.
 * At Best in the World, ROH's timing for PPV matches reared its ugly head again. The main event between Rush and Bandido had to be rushed (no pun intended). Strangely, the end of the show had Rush and his stable posing over a fallen Bandido, even though the latter won the match and the ROH World title. In fact, the story of the match was essentially "Rush could have totally won this, but Bandido did just enough to get the 3 count, and Rush kicked out at 3.1" - the match itself wasn't bad, but the ending of the show was puzzling, to say the least. It was so puzzling that ROH would straight up ignore the beatdown in later video packages that involve the match.
 * At Glory By Honor night 1, Flip Gordon finally got the World title match he had earned just before the pandemic - and lost to Bandido. At least that got wrapped up. On night 2, Gordon lost again, taking a Jay Driller from Mark Briscoe. This led to a gimmick change where Flip got "concussed" and suffered retrograde amnesia, making him think he's back in 2018. Not exactly the most appropriate character for a promotion with ROH's track record. Later, at Death Before Dishonor, ROH went all in on this gimmick, having Flip Gordon come out to his old theme song, with the old Flip Forever entrance video. He even shaved and went back to his outfit from 2018.
 * Speaking of Death Before Dishonor, this was the first time where a crowd turned against a Pure Rules match. It happened during Jonathan Gresham vs Josh Woods. The crowd was not into the style they worked, where they did almost nothing for the first 5 minutes. The crowd got so quiet that a fan could be heard saying "are you guys gonna fight already?" - the rules with the double rope break were just getting the fans to heckle the wrestlers and the ref. Though the last minutes of the match and the title change got over with the crowd, this match was a breaking point for numerous viewers, with regards to the Pure Rules.
 * As of August 2021, wrestlers like Session Moth Martina, Joe Hendry, and Mark Haskins have worked 0 matches at ROH events despite being under contract to the promotion, largely due to travel issues caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn't until September 21 that ROH finally showed Joe Hendry and Session Moth Martina wrestling at another promotion, via ROH Week by Week.
 * ROH kept running crowdless TV tapings, and by October, this was getting awkward due to other promotions being able to have fans in attendance.
 * On October 27, ROH released an ominous statement on twitter: "We now find ourselves at a time where we need to make changes to our business operations and are planning a pivot for Ring of Honor, with a new mission and strategy. The year will culminate with a Final Battle in December, and we will be taking the first quarter of 2022 to work internally to reimagine ROH...We anticipate returning to live events in April for the Super Card of Honor with a new fan-focused product and provide a unique experience for wrestling fans."
 * Soon, it was revealed via Meltzer, Sean Ross Sapp, and Bryan Alvarez that basically: none of the wrestlers' contracts will be renewed. If they go past December 31, 2021, they will be honored until March 31, 2022. One more take from SRS: "We're told that Joe Koff told talent he had multiple meetings trying to fight for ROH, but ultimately Sinclair made the call. Talent was told there was some type of TV show that will be in place after Final Battle but weren't told what that would be."

Related pages

 * LOLTNA History
 * LOLWWE History