ALL PURPOSE CONTRACT STATUS/POTENTIAL DEPARTURES THREAD

[187_Joeism]

Aries handles social media in an awful way, i agree with the other you mention. Moose handles social media terrible too.

[supersonic]

Aries never asked anyone to drink bleach or attempted to vaguely hype up his free agency. He simply waited until Rumblr week and accurately statedhis status was under the radar.

[187_Joeism]

Also posted a lot of stuff that lead to unnecesary backlash of his twitter without being provoked to do so.

[supersonic]

That was a faux outrage situation.

[Big Red Machine]

One question no member of the wrestling media has been willing to address when I've brought this up:

What happened to the 3-year deals from the initial PPV era? They would give the bookers and company plenty of comfort, yet I keep seeing just 1 and 2-year deals. I wonder if those 3-year deals contributed to Silkin having to sell the company.

If I had to guess:
Gabe has always said he was happy to let someone out of a contract to go to WWE or TNA. Pearce seems to have had the same attitude, as, if Gabe was going to sign anyone at the beginning of the PPV era, the first two surely would have been Dragon and Nigel and they left in 2009 when their contracts would have been up in 2010 (then again, I remember talk of them only being two-year deals, and people specifically sighting his lack of contract as the reason that not much was done with Danielson during the summer of 2009).
Delirious doesn't seem to be willing to do that and that's completely fair of him. However, a result of this is probably that talents who want to reevaluate their options more often would want a shorter contract (especially with the exclusivity of current ROH contracts), so they're making one and two year deals instead of three.

All speculation on my part, but it is based on some evidence and seems plausible.

[supersonic]

Observer:

Truth Martini is no longer with the promotion. He was written out of storylines months ago to have neck surgery and was supposed to return originally at the PPV in Las Vegas. But with Jay Lethal having been turned babyface, there was no role for him. Evidently he was told when inquiring about his return

[Big Red Machine]

Observer:

Truth Martini is no longer with the promotion. He was written out of storylines months ago to have neck surgery and was supposed to return originally at the PPV in Las Vegas. But with Jay Lethal having been turned babyface, there was no role for him. Evidently he was told when inquiring about his return

Wait... Lethal turning babyface after Truth's injury wasn't the plan the whole time? I thought that there was an awkward component to the Dijak vs. Lethal TV match with Lethal feeling like the babyface despite us knowing that the man he was trying to avenge was a total sleazebag, but in hindsight I figured that this was all set up on purpose as part of a turn for Lethal to set up Cole replacing him as the top heel, and to set up heel Truth coming after both babyface Lethal and babyface Dijak, but apparently it was just dumb luck. Is everything Delirious does that winds up working a total accident?

[Thelone]

Well they stumbled on the Jay vs. Jay thing by complete accident when ACH missed his flight for ASE two years ago. The plans were clearly ACH beating Lethal for the TV title as ASE and a showdown between Briscoe and heel Ciampa at some point in the future, but then Lethal kept his belt and Ciampa got stuck in this zero tolerance crap and whatever momentum he had at the time quickly died because of that.

[Big Red Machine]

Well they stumbled on the Jay vs. Jay thing by complete accident when ACH missed his flight for ASE two years ago. The plans were clearly ACH beating Lethal for the TV title as ASE and a showdown between Briscoe and heel Ciampa at some point in the future, but then Lethal kept his belt and Ciampa got stuck in this zero tolerance crap and whatever momentum he had at the time quickly died because of that.

I wouldn't say that was an "accident" so much as it was the new plan. They did spend MONTHS building that up. This was something that I had thought was done on purpose but it turns out really wasn't. It would be like if it turns out that Kyle tapping Lethal because of Briscoe at Conquest Tour: Milwaukee in the Champions' Challenge match wasn't done from the very beginning for the purpose of setting Kyle up as a challenger for Lethal at All-Star Extravaganza.

[Thelone]

Sure, it became the plan going further, but that wasn't what they were going for initially. Hell, I'm sure the original plan was Elgin vs. Ciampa for the belt at FB (which is why we got that match anyway), then Jay vs. Ciampa up until November (they did an angle with Ciampa having a visual pin on Jay at one of those PCW shows), then only Briscoe vs. Lethal almost by default.

[Wilson]

Sure, it became the plan going further, but that wasn't what they were going for initially. Hell, I'm sure the original plan was Elgin vs. Ciampa for the belt at FB (which is why we got that match anyway), then Jay vs. Ciampa up until November (they did an angle with Ciampa having a visual pin on Jay at one of those PCW shows), then only Briscoe vs. Lethal almost by default.

I think it’s a bit more dignified than you make it out to be. Yes, Lethal/Briscoe was at most a 5-6 month feud between two protected wrestlers and was perhaps planned a month or two in advance. What worked in the feud were the beats, Lethal and Briscoe drawing in their promos, the timing of the match, the payoff, and setting up future challengers. It was a pretty digestible story and, when reduced, it seems easy to pull off, but ROH has since made it appear an unattainable feat. ROH hasn’t timed anything right since then.

If your argument is “Lethal is a midcard TNA hack and remember ‘Killer Instinct’ and to heck with that guy,” then sure, I would understand that you wouldn’t cotton to this program.

[Thelone]

During his overly long reign as both TV and world champion, he made absolutely nobody (ACH is the closest and to be fair to Lethal, it's not his fault ACH got cold feet or whatever happened that day), produced nothing resembling a MOTYC and very few great matches, which is pretty bad considering he had almost 70 title defenses and worked with guys like O'Reilly, Strong and Styles.

There's a reason why I took some distance from the product when I realised they were going to put the world title on him, and this had nothing to do with him being a Macho Man ripoff or cutting goofy promos with Flair or being a former member of Special K years ago.

[Big Red Machine]

During his overly long reign as both TV and world champion, he made absolutely nobody (ACH is the closest and to be fair to Lethal, it's not his fault ACH got cold feet or whatever happened that day), produced nothing resembling a MOTYC and very few great matches, which is pretty bad considering he had almost 70 title defenses and worked with guys like O'Reilly, Strong and Styles.

There's a reason why I took some distance from the product when I realised they were going to put the world title on him, and this had nothing to do with him being a Macho Man ripoff or cutting goofy promos with Flair or being a former member of Special K years ago.

I'll agree with you that his reigns were too long and and that he didn't really make anyone, but that's more a fault of the booking than of Lethal himself, as he was never placed in a situation to make anyone aside from ACH (and his matches with ACH were pretty awesome). He was never given a program with an up-and-comer the way Dragon was with Roddy and Nigel or Nigel was with Claudio and Tyler. All of Lethal's defenses of both titles were against guys who were either already established or who were clearly scrubs (Cheeseburger, Marseglia), with the exception of the aforementioned ACH program, the Taven program (which failed because Taven is a terrible babyface), and his one-off matches with Hanson (a tag team guy) and Rush (which was a pretty great match). It's Delirious' booking style that is the problem, not Lethal's wrestling.

[Wilson]

During his overly long reign as both TV and world champion, he made absolutely nobody (ACH is the closest and to be fair to Lethal, it's not his fault ACH got cold feet or whatever happened that day), produced nothing resembling a MOTYC and very few great matches, which is pretty bad considering he had almost 70 title defenses and worked with guys like O'Reilly, Strong and Styles.

There's a reason why I took some distance from the product when I realised they were going to put the world title on him, and this had nothing to do with him being a Macho Man ripoff or cutting goofy promos with Flair or being a former member of Special K years ago.

I was defending the program for Jay Briscoe and Jay Lethal. I won’t go into Jay Lethal’s World Title reign. It was bad for a lot of reasons (most of which you did summarize and to which Big Red Machine well responded). In 2015, I thought Jay Lethal was absolutely the right guy to be champion: tons of momentum, good worker, good promo, and was not a previous ROH champion. He’s not perfect, and I don’t think anyone would argue that he is one of ROH’s all-time greats.

My only thoughts were that if you just couldn’t care less about Lethal, then of course you wouldn’t be interested in him challenging the makeshift champion or the ensuing year of squalid main event programs. I defend that time for ROH’s main event picture for developing a few pieces and adumbrating new scenarios, but there was very little follow-through.

I take breaks from wrestling all the time. Really, unless I am being very generous, being invested into any given promotion is often boring or disappointing. Independent promotions often delve into tacky, indy commonalities and bigger promotions move along with a continental grind.

[christopherclinton55]

During his overly long reign as both TV and world champion, he made absolutely nobody (ACH is the closest and to be fair to Lethal, it's not his fault ACH got cold feet or whatever happened that day), produced nothing resembling a MOTYC and very few great matches, which is pretty bad considering he had almost 70 title defenses and worked with guys like O'Reilly, Strong and Styles.

There's a reason why I took some distance from the product when I realised they were going to put the world title on him, and this had nothing to do with him being a Macho Man ripoff or cutting goofy promos with Flair or being a former member of Special K years ago.

This right here is the exact reason Lethal should leave ROH and go elsewhere why work for people who constantly complain about you they purposely look over his matches against dijak, rush, mark Andrews, noam dar, Colt Cabana and blame him instead of booking because idiots like Roderick Strong refuse to lose to Lethal clean people are expecting him to work like Bryan Danielson and because he doesn't they consider the match not great. However it's your choice

[Big Red Machine]

During his overly long reign as both TV and world champion, he made absolutely nobody (ACH is the closest and to be fair to Lethal, it's not his fault ACH got cold feet or whatever happened that day), produced nothing resembling a MOTYC and very few great matches, which is pretty bad considering he had almost 70 title defenses and worked with guys like O'Reilly, Strong and Styles.

There's a reason why I took some distance from the product when I realised they were going to put the world title on him, and this had nothing to do with him being a Macho Man ripoff or cutting goofy promos with Flair or being a former member of Special K years ago.

This right here is the exact reason Lethal should leave ROH and go elsewhere why work for people who constantly complain about you they purposely look over his matches against dijak, rush, mark Andrews, noam dar, Colt Cabana and blame him instead of booking because idiots like Roderick Strong refuse to lose to Lethal clean people are expecting him to work like Bryan Danielson and because he doesn't they consider the match not great. However it's your choice

Do you have any evidence that Roddy refused to put Lethal over clean?
Also, asking us to judge an ROH world title reign based on matches that didn't happen in ROH and weren't even publicized by ROH is a little crazy to me. As for the matches you've listed, of those that I have seen, I didn't think either Cabana match or the Rush match were anything close to special, and while the Dijak match was pretty great, it was on the lower end of what I expect from a big match featuring the ROH World Champion.

[christopherclinton55]

This right here is the exact reason Lethal should leave ROH and go elsewhere why work for people who constantly complain about you they purposely look over his matches against dijak, rush, mark Andrews, noam dar, Colt Cabana and blame him instead of booking because idiots like Roderick Strong refuse to lose to Lethal clean people are expecting him to work like Bryan Danielson and because he doesn't they consider the match not great. However it's your choice[/quote]

Do you have any evidence that Roddy refused to put Lethal over clean?
Also, asking us to judge an ROH world title reign based on matches that didn't happen in ROH and weren't even publicized by ROH is a little crazy to me. As for the matches you've listed, of those that I have seen, I didn't think either Cabana match or the Rush match were anything close to special, and while the Dijak match was pretty great, it was on the lower end of what I expect from a big match featuring the ROH World Champion.[/quote]

Other than Twitter nope but I believe it because Roderick strong is that type of person. ROH was talking about his matches outside of ROH if haven't seen any ROH title matches outside of ROH than you may need to watch the vod and television show. The Lethal Rush match got a lot of praise from the wrestling community people from the observer and mlw podcast so you and a few other might be the only people who thought that wasn't great. I edited my comment because I skim through it at first. I totally understand your point though

[Big Red Machine]

This right here is the exact reason Lethal should leave ROH and go elsewhere why work for people who constantly complain about you they purposely look over his matches against dijak, rush, mark Andrews, noam dar, Colt Cabana and blame him instead of booking because idiots like Roderick Strong refuse to lose to Lethal clean people are expecting him to work like Bryan Danielson and because he doesn't they consider the match not great. However it's your choice

Do you have any evidence that Roddy refused to put Lethal over clean?
Also, asking us to judge an ROH world title reign based on matches that didn't happen in ROH and weren't even publicized by ROH is a little crazy to me. As for the matches you've listed, of those that I have seen, I didn't think either Cabana match or the Rush match were anything close to special, and while the Dijak match was pretty great, it was on the lower end of what I expect from a big match featuring the ROH World Champion.[/quote]

Other than Twitter nope but I believe it because Roderick strong is that type of person. ROH was talking about his matches outside of ROH if haven't seen any ROH title matches outside of ROH than you may need to watch the vod and television show. The Lethal Rush match got a lot of praise from the wrestling community people from the observer and mlw podcast so you and a few other might be the only people who thought that wasn't great. I edited my comment because I skim through it at first. I totally understand your point though[/quote]
I've seen basically every episode of TV and every VOD during Lethal's title reign aside from the Road to BITW shows for Indy, Hopkins, and Milwaukee. I don't every recall any of Lethal's defenses outside of ROH in any company other than New Japan being mentioned.

[SeanWrestling]

You guys complain about everyone's World title reigns past like McGuinness's. It's annoying.

[christopherclinton55]

You guys complain about everyone's World title reigns past like McGuinness's. It's annoying.

Thank you people should stop comparing everyone reign to Danielson's