Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
Hi everybody, and welcome back to another edition of the pROHfile. ROH has a really, really major big time weekend coming up with their debut TV tapings, but I’ll talk about those shows later in the week. For right now, there are some other things going on in the ROH universe that I wanted to give my two cents on.
One of the things that’s gotten a lot of people talking over the last couple of weeks is the prospect that several recently released WWE and TNA talents might find their way into Ring Of Honor, and chief among these talents is, of course, Colt Cabana. Let me start by saying that I think WWE was insane for letting him go. The guy is amazingly talented and entertaining and would have been perfect for the new, PG direction WWE is planning on taking its product as he could have really gotten over well with the kids. One of the main knocks people had against WCW back in the 90s is they would let huge talents like Steve Austin, the Undertaker, Mick Foley, and Triple H literally just walk right out of the promotion and go to the WWF where they became huge stars. Now, I’m not saying that Colt Cabana or any of the other guys I’m going to talk about are going to be the next Steve Austin or Mankind, but WWE is showing the same short-sighted dismissal of great talents for similarly poorly thought out reasons as WCW did in the mid 90s, and I think that when WWE gets to a point where Shawn, Hunter and the Undertaker are retired, Batista is finally injured enough that he can’t get back in the ring, and John Cena becomes such a big star that he goes and finds something else to do for a living, they’re going to be kicking themselves for letting these guys slip through their fingers once somebody (maybe TNA or ROH, maybe not) grabs these guys and uses them to start kicking WWE’s ass the way WWE did to WCW back in the day.
But that’s something we’ll have to wait years to find out, and as for right now, we’re talking about Colt Cabana coming back to ROH. The first thing anybody reading that headline last week thought was “when is Colt Cabana going to be back in ROH?†While Cabana returning to ROH would absolutely help in some respects, ROH has to be careful about bringing him back, because in the absence of not just Cabana but also Samoa Joe, Homicide, Christopher Daniels, and others, they’ve had to work very hard to get a new crop of main event talent over. If Cabana (or Paul London, for that matter) came back, the fans would expect them to get slotted right back into a top spot and that wouldn’t be fair to Nigel McGuinness, Claudio Castagnoli, Roderick Strong, Brent Albright, Steen & Generico, Jimmy Jacobs, Tyler Black, and all the other guys who have busted their butts to gain acceptance as ROH’s main event crew.
But whether that’s a consideration or not, I would bet good money that both Colt Cabana and Paul London will be back in ROH by June. So how would I suggest they be used? Well, since people are going to expect them to come in on top, I would do the obligatory runs with Nigel McGuinness, have each of them put Nigel over, and then move them out of the title picture for a while since that’s Tyler Black and Jerry Lynn’s show right now. I wouldn’t be against either of them winding up back in contention at some point down the line, but they should spend some time building back to that point instead of walking right back into the main event scene and bumping somebody else out of the spot. Paul London in particular is a guy that I think a lot of ROH fans felt like he should have been the ROH Champion but never got the chance, and I wouldn’t be against him getting a run with the title down the line if they do a good job of building to it.
Though it’s been officially denied, there has been talk that Val Venis, or Sean Morley as I guess he’ll be going by now, would be making his way into ROH sometime soon. If you want to talk about a guy who can wrestle, promo, and pretty much do anything you would need him to do, that pretty much sums up Sean Morley. For some reason he hit a wall after joining the Right To Censor in 2000 and spent the next eight years being criminally neglected. He’s not quite as old as Jerry Lynn, but he’s in a similar situation where he could come to ROH to prove to himself that he still has what it takes to be a star. He’s also a guy who’s got a ton of experience working different styles all over the world before he came to work for WWE, so not only would he be able to adapt to wrestling pretty much anyone in ROH, but he’d be a valuable veteran presence who could help this generation of ROH’s roster develop.
From the TNA side, two recent releases who are getting some talk about coming to ROH are Jimmy Rave and former TNA X-Division Champion Petey Williams. I like the idea of bringing Williams in because he’s a great wrestler, but I don’t know where exactly he would fit right now. I think he’d be all right coming in to do a few shots against Nigel or someone and then come back more regularly in six to nine months, but I don’t know where there’s a spot for him right now. As for Rave, if anyone could be said to be crammed down the ROH fanbase’s throats in a Randy Orton-esque manner, it would be Jimmy Rave. Gabe Sapolsky tried so many times in so many different situations to get Rave over as a top star in ROH, but he just never clicked, and I don’t see the value in bringing him back. He’s an average wrestler and has no charisma whatsoever, and really wouldn’t bring much, especially since he left under somewhat strained circumstances the first time.
I think the first instinct any ROH fans have when they see someone has been released from WWE or TNA is to think about how well they’ll fit into ROH, and if it’s a good wrestler or a former ROH star, they’re probably expecting them to be brought right back into the fold. That’s all well and good that the fans get so enthusiastic, but you also have to consider timing, and if somebody coming in would disrupt an ongoing storyline or if there’s just no spot for them to do anything productive, the fans have to be understanding that ROH wouldn’t waste money bringing in names just for the sake of bringing in names. There was a company once that did that, it was called WCW and it went out of business some time ago, in large part due to excessive spending on talent. I think all these guys will find their way into (or back to) ROH at some point, but let’s give them a chance to get through their current storylines first.
* * *
Speaking of people coming to Ring Of Honor, another major bit of news has Ric Flair scheduled to make several appearances in ROH, beginning with ROH’s return to St Louis. As Mike mentioned, the simple fact is that Ric Flair will draw a lot more fans than the ROH roster would be able to do on their own. I also think that with ROH being in a position where they have establish some credibility for themselves as a national wrestling company, part of the bargain is that you have to have some nationally recognizeable names, and there aren’t many names that would jump out at a casual viewer more than Flair’s.
But again, what do you do with him? I can guarantee you that there is no chance whatsoever that Ric Flair will ever wrestle in an ROH ring. If he wasn’t going to take the money for that rumored trip to work in Japan last year, he’s not going to give up his retirement to wrestle in ROH. So if he’s not going to wrestle, what is ROH going to get out of his appearance? Well, for starters, it will draw more of a crowd to the live show than an ROH show without Flair would. He’ll also sell some DVDs, and I think even just having Flair on the shows gives ROH a mainstream legitimacy that it really needs at this point. ROH has already had older legends like Harley Race and Bruno Sammartino appear in the past, but while those names would probably only mean something to hardcore fans of today, Flair is a lot more well known to today’s fans and even his past would be more accessible to younger fans simply due to the number of Ric Flair-related DVD sets WWE has put out in recent years.
In terms of what he’ll actually be doing at these shows, other than signing autographs of course, I would expect with Flair’s history in St Louis that this first appearance would have him put over ROH as a true extension of the old school style of wrestling that you won’t find anywhere else. Beyond that, I would expect that since Flair will probably be in Houston for Wrestlemania, they could have him make a second appearance there, and with the last of the travelling NWA World Champions in the same building as current NWA Champ Blue Demon Jr, it would be a natural fit to have them do something together.
Beyond that, maybe part of the deal is that they’ll eventually bring in Ric’s son Reid. I may be getting a little bit ahead of myself here since Reid has only wrestled one match that I know of so far (unless you count his classic against Eric Bischoff in 1999), but I get the feeling that Ric Flair is very serious about making sure his son has a proper upbringing in the business, and if you’re looking for a place to allow him to grow as a wrestler as he prepares for the inevitable WWE deal, I can think of worse places to do that than ROH. In fact, if Reid does come in to wrestle in ROH, we may be looking at Ric seconding his own son instead of some current member of the ROH roster.
So basically what I’m saying is that I have no idea what Flair’s going to be doing in ROH, or what they have in mind that will help ROH beyond live gates and DVD sales. I have faith in Cary Silkin because he’s shown in the past that he knows how to get his money’s worth out of appearances like this, but even though I’m just taking shots in the dark, Ric Flair is easily going to be the biggest star to ever set foot in ROH (and that includes Misawa and Kobashi), and it’s going to be interesting to see how they try to capitalize on it. As long as he doesn’t wrestle and neither does his son David, I’m a happy man.
* * *
Just real quick before I go, I want to touch on some production notes about the HDNet series, with two things that I think are worth mentioning. The first is that longtime ROH announcer Lenny Leonard will not be working on the TV series, though he is expected to continue doing commentary for the DVD series. I have to be honest, I really couldn’t care less. To me, the real highlight of the commentary team is Dave Prazak, because even though Lenny gets in some clever quips from time to time, he’s generally pretty bland and Prazak is the more valuable of the two, and I’m glad he will be working on the show. Replacing Leonard will be Mike Hogewood, an HDNet appointee who has sports broadcasting experience but no background in professional wrestling. I’m always very, very iffy about non-wrestling people coming in to do commentary on a wrestling show because, as the Mike Adamle Experiment showed, the results can get really ugly. Fortunately, Prazak will be in the announce booth and hopefully Prazak can do a good enough job prepping this guy that he’ll come off better than Adamle did, and with any luck he can grow into a decent wrestling announcer who is at least able to get the angles over, even if he doesn’t know the names of all the moves.
The other major production note is that going forward, the ROH wrestlers will no longer be using the theme music they have been all along, and will instead be using all new original music. There has naturally been a pretty vocal group of people who are up in arms over this, but the reality is that there’s nothing they could do about this because the cost of continuing to use the music on TV would be way more than they could justify paying, even The Final Countdown. I have to admit, one of the fun things about ROH has always been the “real†music as opposed to the original music composed specifically for the wrestlers like in WWE and TNA, and I won’t deny that I’m a little doubtful as to whether what they come up with will measure up. I have no doubt whatsoever that Bryan Danielson’s new music will go over about as well as Sandman’s new music did in WWE, but the difference is that Danielson brings something to the table other than cool entrance music, so I’m sure he’ll be fine.
I know that a lot of ROH fans are looking at changes like this, and the new talent coming in, and are probably screaming, to themselves if not to anybody else, over the fact that their little secret promotion that nobody knew about but them is undergoing all these changes, to the point where it may be hardly recognizeable, but the fact is that when you get into bed with a partner, they’re going to have some say and that’s something we’re all going to have to live with. And not all these changes are necessarily going to be bad, some of them might be alright if we’re not sitting there sulking about stuff being different.
In any event, this weekend’s shows are going to be interesting shows to watch unfold, that’s for sure, and I will be previewing those shows in the very next edition of the pROHfile, to be up on the site later this week. For now though, I’m done. Thanks for reading, and as always all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com. See you soon!
