ALL PURPOSE NEW TALENT/SPECIAL ATTRACTION THREAD

[Wilson]

It wasn’t even that Joey did something so crude and so publicly as to elicit sexual harassment, he also did in front of the completely wrong audience. I haven’t really enjoyed his role in EVOLVE so far, and this instance is about as clear as an example of someone being out of touch.

If ROH hires him for web design, then so be it. It’s just for the wiser that he’s not put in a public sphere.

[Big Red Machine]

I would certainly be hesitant about hiring Joey as an announcer after his clear lack of judgement, but it's impossible to deny that he would be a VAST improvement over Kevin Kelly.

[The Dragon Saga]

As noted over the weekend, Joey Styles was fired by EVOLVE. PWInsider.com reached out to Styles on Friday evening and this morning, received the following "open letter", which we are printing in its entirety:

AN OPEN LETTER FROM JOEY STYLES
Friday night, I panicked on camera during the live broadcast of Evolve 72 on FloSlam when I realized that heel manager, Stokely Hathaway and I would be doing our promo at ringside and not in the ring with ring announcer, Joanna Rose as I had anticipated.

I told Joanna before the show that during my promo with her and Stokely in the ring, I was going to ask her about English tailoring so we could compare my suit with Stokely Hathaway's suit.

I had no idea what to say when Stokely Hathaway and I were at ringside about to trade promos and I didn't have Joanna with us to ask about English tailoring.

I panicked and I did exactly what Gabe Sapolsky told me not to do earlier in the week and made a political joke. The joke included a partial quote from the President-Elect that was meant to mock him and then, in-turn, my scripted nemesis, Stokely Hathaway.

I started the joke and stopped quoting the President-Elect without using the offensive word.

Again, I did not utter the offensive word.

I then turned to Stokely Hathaway and said "the word that I will not use, brings me to you."
As the veteran, I should have walked through the promo segment with Stokely Hathaway and Joanna Rose before the event so that there was no possibility of me putting myself in that position.

Gabe was justifiably furious at me and thought that I had endangered his relationship with FloSports.
After the event, I looked Gabe in the eye, apologized to him, and as not as to put him in the awkward position of having to fire someone he has known for 20 years, told him to fire me publicly and then shook his hand.

I apologized to Joanna who said she said she wasn't upset because she knew it was a joke about the President-Elect. It didn't matter if she was upset or not, therefore I apologized to her again, repeatedly.

I apologized to Jeremy Botter, the representative from FloSlam who was at the event, and he wasn't upset. It didn't matter if he was upset or not, therefore I apologized to him again, repeatedly. I also told him that Gabe and EVOLVE had no knowledge of what I was going to say and my actions should not be held against Evolve.

I apologized to the locker room and the wrestlers weren't upset. It didn't matter if they were upset, therefore I apologized to the wrestlers again, repeatedly.

While apologizing to the wrestlers, I saw that Timothy Thatcher obviously had a very serious concussion.
Timothy Thatcher's main event opponent, Drew Gulak also recognized that it was a very serious concussion and said that Timothy needed to go to the hospital.

I went to the hospital with Timothy and Larry Dallas. Gabe arrived at the hospital shorty after we did. We were cordial to each other, because I had already apologized to him and he had already fired me publicly. All that we were rightly concerned about by that point was Timothy Thatcher's condition.

Larry and I stayed at the hospital with Timothy until he was released at 1:30 AM into Larry's care to recover at Larry's home in NY until he is well enough to fly home to California.

While at the hospital watching Timothy struggle to regain his memory of what happened and even remember my name, I made the decision to stay quiet about EVOLVE 72 until today so as not to take attention away from EVOLVE on FloSlam on Sunday night.

In summary, I panicked on a live broadcast, ad-libbed by telling bad joke, apologized to Gabe, told him to publicly fire me to protect himself and then apologized sincerely and repeatedly to everybody involved including Joanna Rose, Jeremy Botter from FloSlam and the wrestlers in the EVOLVE locker room.

In conclusion, I'd like to thank FloSlam for editing out the segment from the EVOLVE 72 replay on FloSlam so fans can enjoy the historic event forever without it being marred.
Joey Styles

Courtesy of PWPopUps, click the below link at your own discretion.

http://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.php?id=105971

---

That's one of the classier apology letters I can remember from anyone in the pro-wrestling business. If you read in between the lines I can't see Joey being gone from EVOLVE for too long. Whether Quack uses him still in CHIKARA is up in the air, but if ROH will use him is doubtful. Kevin Kelly has a lot of hats and even if Corino were to get a coaching gig in WWE, ROH would then need a color commentator and not another play-by-play, unless they went to a three man booth with Kevin, Joey and Nigel, but I don't think Nigel's matchmaker role suits him being a full-time color commentator. Not to mention whenever ROH wants to do a blade job they'll need Nigel to leave because he becomes audibly disgruntled when watching when blood, especially when done with a blade happens.

[supersonic]

https://twitter.com/sodutw/status/798255542519074816

https://twitter.com/mikequackenbush/sta ... 5264337923

https://twitter.com/beyondwrestling/sta ... 6169961473

[Memphis Mark]

Joey makes one mistake and is blackballed by these self righteous creeps. It must be nice to be able to glide thur life without making any mistakes. Well , I am ending my relationship with Evolve , Chikara and Beyond. These jerks will never get another nickel from me .

[leenie426]

Joey makes one mistake and is blackballed by these self righteous creeps. It must be nice to be able to glide thur life without making any mistakes. Well , I am ending my relationship with Evolve , Chikara and Beyond. These jerks will never get another nickel from me .

Joey messed up. For everyone to treat him like this is a bit much.

Yes he should have been let gone from Evolve because he said something he was told not to. The other two groups though, not so much.

[supersonic]

Gotta keep Flo happy. He's also seemingly not being honest about how he handled the situation.

[Wilson]

Gotta keep Flo happy. He's also seemingly not being honest about how he handled the situation.

But he at least did take all the blame, which is probably most important.

Gabe Sapolsky has definitely done things that demeaned femininity (both in the far and recent past), but it would've been been difficult for EVOLVE to come out and not completely resist Styles's comments, which were definitionally harassing. There certainly should've been a public response to Styles's actions, though to what degree is up to contention. With his letter, I think he'll end up getting work again eventually. I sincerely hope it was a one-time mistake.

Beyond and Chikara have all the right to resist any association to gendered misconduct.

[Big Red Machine]

Joey makes one mistake and is blackballed by these self righteous creeps. It must be nice to be able to glide thur life without making any mistakes. Well , I am ending my relationship with Evolve , Chikara and Beyond. These jerks will never get another nickel from me .

Joey messed up. For everyone to treat him like this is a bit much.

Yes he should have been let gone from Evolve because he said something he was told not to. The other two groups though, not so much.

This. Quack went as far as to call what Joey said "hate speech." That's ridiculous.

[McXal]

Time to put Kevin Kelly backstage (or better yet, send him back to the early 90's where his commentary would still be considered even remotely relevant) and get Joey in.

Don't get me wrong, Joey is hardly 'cutting edge', but to imply he wouldn't do a better job than Kelly is madness. He did a decent job when he was allowed to run with Raw/Smackdown during his WWE tenure - but tanked because Vince couldn't harness his wrestling-centric style. I am not begging for endless 'Oh My God's on ROH shows - but when he stops being a caricature of himself he is a solid wrestling commentator - and far more relevant to a 21st century wrestling product than Kelly

He might not be amazing - but to say that Joey and Corino or Nigel wouldn't be a drastic improvement on the complete sham that is ROH's current announce team is laughable.

[FanSinceHDNet]

Time to put Kevin Kelly backstage (or better yet, send him back to the early 90's where his commentary would still be considered even remotely relevant) and get Joey in.

Don't get me wrong, Joey is hardly 'cutting edge', but to imply he wouldn't do a better job than Kelly is madness. He did a decent job when he was allowed to run with Raw/Smackdown during his WWE tenure - but tanked because Vince couldn't harness his wrestling-centric style. I am not begging for endless 'Oh My God's on ROH shows - but when he stops being a caricature of himself he is a solid wrestling commentator - and far more relevant to a 21st century wrestling product than Kelly

He might not be amazing - but to say that Joey and Corino or Nigel wouldn't be a drastic improvement on the complete sham that is ROH's current announce team is laughable.

I don't know that we've been watching the same 2016 Joey Styles. Ian Riccaboni, Lenny Leonard, Chikarason, Rich Brennan, and others would be fine if they really wanted to replace Kevin Kelly. But, really, he's pretty ingrained into the product and is pretty good on PPVs and NJPW events. There's no need to get rid of him, especially not for Joey Styles.

[McXal]

Time to put Kevin Kelly backstage (or better yet, send him back to the early 90's where his commentary would still be considered even remotely relevant) and get Joey in.

Don't get me wrong, Joey is hardly 'cutting edge', but to imply he wouldn't do a better job than Kelly is madness. He did a decent job when he was allowed to run with Raw/Smackdown during his WWE tenure - but tanked because Vince couldn't harness his wrestling-centric style. I am not begging for endless 'Oh My God's on ROH shows - but when he stops being a caricature of himself he is a solid wrestling commentator - and far more relevant to a 21st century wrestling product than Kelly

He might not be amazing - but to say that Joey and Corino or Nigel wouldn't be a drastic improvement on the complete sham that is ROH's current announce team is laughable.

I don't know that we've been watching the same 2016 Joey Styles. Ian Riccaboni, Lenny Leonard, Chikarason, Rich Brennan, and others would be fine if they really wanted to replace Kevin Kelly. But, really, he's pretty ingrained into the product and is pretty good on PPVs and NJPW events. There's no need to get rid of him, especially not for Joey Styles.

I agree - and I did point out that in 2016 Joey could hardly be considered 'cutting edge'. And I totally concur that Joey wouldn't be my top choice if I could pick anyone to replace Kelly.

But at this point, my mentality is that Kevin Kelly actively and persistently detracts from the product - and makes the entire presentation feel brutally outdated. I'm at the stage where 'anyone will do' so to speak. And with Joey's combination of name value, credibility and experience working televised events within a large corporate environment (like Sinclair) he'd be a tolerable replacement that wouldn't be wildly out of sync with SBG's approach to the product.

[supersonic]

Observer:

ROH announced the contract signings of Marty Scurll and Will Ospreay. We’d reported both a long time back, but the delay was likely due to them having to get the visas taken care of. They were described as exclusive deals, but that was just for the U.S. market. Ospreay will continue to work New Japan as his main outlet and work here when he isn’t booked on tours. New Japan wanted Ospreay to work for ROH in the U.S. since the two sides work together well on dates, once it became clear Ospreay was in demand by Evolve and other groups as well. Scurll signed what I believe was a one-year deal, but both sides were said to have an escape clause at the six month mark. The deals will allow both to work in the U.K., although both will probably be working a lot less there, and they can still work PWG.

[Big Red Machine]

Time to put Kevin Kelly backstage (or better yet, send him back to the early 90's where his commentary would still be considered even remotely relevant) and get Joey in.

Don't get me wrong, Joey is hardly 'cutting edge', but to imply he wouldn't do a better job than Kelly is madness. He did a decent job when he was allowed to run with Raw/Smackdown during his WWE tenure - but tanked because Vince couldn't harness his wrestling-centric style. I am not begging for endless 'Oh My God's on ROH shows - but when he stops being a caricature of himself he is a solid wrestling commentator - and far more relevant to a 21st century wrestling product than Kelly

He might not be amazing - but to say that Joey and Corino or Nigel wouldn't be a drastic improvement on the complete sham that is ROH's current announce team is laughable.

I don't know that we've been watching the same 2016 Joey Styles. Ian Riccaboni, Lenny Leonard, Chikarason, Rich Brennan, and others would be fine if they really wanted to replace Kevin Kelly. But, really, he's pretty ingrained into the product and is pretty good on PPVs and NJPW events. There's no need to get rid of him, especially not for Joey Styles.

I wouldn't mind any of those others aside from Riccaboni (who is very hit and miss), but Kevin Kelly is terrible. He might be tuned into the product, but the way in which he presents it does not engage me at all and often leaves me feeling confused, feeling like Kevin is a hypocrite, or like or feeling extremely annoyed.

[187_Joeism]

I don´t mind Kevin Kelly, he is average nothing great but nothing terrible either to me, i don´t think Joey Styles would be an improvement over him in 2016, if they want to change it bring someone new and fresh.

[supersonic]

Observer:

Billy Corgan and Dave Lagana had a recent meeting with ROH in Baltimore. It was about three weeks ago

Drew Galloway’s [TNA] contract expires in mid-February. He got a pretty strong offer to stay several months back ($200,000 per year) which he turned down because it was the exclusivity deal where they would be in charge of his outside bookings, and he’s all over the indies in the U.K. in particular and the U.K. scene is pretty interesting. But he’d be available at that time for companies like WWE or New Japan, where the TNA contract obviously was a tough one since New Japan doesn’t use any of the TNA guys. Plus one would think he’d be tailor-made to be a top guy with the ITV group, but there’s no guarantee that one gets off the ground. It is interesting because theoretically he’s a guy people should want, and he’s got the size, the look, the ability, and the talking ability to be a top guy

[AlexROH]

Kevin Kelly spent 5 minutes of his interview putting over Juice Robinson. He also said that 2017 will be his year and confirmed that Juice will face Marty Scurll at Atalanta's TV Tapings.

I think Juice will say goodbye to NJPW in his WK match against Cody and then, he'll come to ROH for excursion, just like Kamaitachi and White did last year.

I think he'll be a great addition for the low-midcard.

[supersonic]

Observer:

Rossy Ogawa, who runs the Stardom women’s group in Japan, which is the top women’s company in that country, said that they are working on business dealings with ROH. ROH booker Hunter Johnston was at the Stardom show in Tokyo on 1/3. Stardom is the company with Io Shirai, Mayu Iwatani, Kairi Hojo and Yoko Bito. Shirai and Hojo are probably two of the three best women wrestlers in the world right now.

As of right now, Drew Galloway isn’t scheduled until 1/7 which means he’ll miss both the TV and the PPV. He had bookings scheduled with What Culture Pro Wrestling in the U.K. and he’s their heavyweight champion and he’s changed dates on them in the past several times and didn’t want to do that again because of how well that company has treated him. His contract is up in February. He’d make sense for New Japan but New Japan hasn’t been aggressive when it comes to signing new talent, because they have so many guys and Suzuki-gun in said to be returning. TNA wants him to sign an exclusive deal. ROH has interest and all the top U.K. groups don’t want him to sign an exclusive with TNA, since that would mean they’d have to go through TNA instead of him to get dates, and if TNA does start running house shows, that would make it difficult to get him. He and the Hardys are the key contracts coming up in the first quarter. Not sure Jeff’s expiration date but it is sometime in February. Matt’s contract expires on 2/27.

[monster mafia]

lets go drew!

[monster mafia]

Keiji Muto mentioned that he will wrestle outside of W-1 and in oversea this year.

lets go roh,make the deal.