What's unique and standout about ROH in 2017?

[supersonic]

This is a pressing question I've had in mind for awhile.

There hasn't be a hot storyline in years. This is a problem that honestly plagues most of the industry; that ROH has failed to step up in this category is a disappointment.

In the past few years, no more than 5 matches have received widespread critical acclaim among the most well-versed purists. While workrate isn't the be-all, end-all, the lack of hot stories should mean this category would compensate for it. In this time, the acclaimed matches galore have been in WWE, NJPW, Evolve, and the U.K. indies.

The roster itself lacks the unique depth to be truly remarkable from the rest of the pack. This particular issue has been tackled substantially; while there are certainly some gems, a good chunk of the roster would be slumming up dark matches and post-intermissions with the likes of Shane Hagadorn, the Outcast Killaz, etc. during the 2000s. The dependence on special attractions have also been well-documented, and ROH failed to truly filled the void that Kenny Omega had planned to fill for AJ Styles last year when his visa issues popped up. Sorry, Adam Cole has never grabbed the level of attention that Omega has.

ROH no doubt is financially healthier than in the past; there's another perspective to that statement though. The production has obviously improved as well.

ROH has become a poor man's WWE and glorified feeder system to NJPW. There's nothing that differentiates the product anymore to make it must-see.

ROH is a solid, sometimes really good product. In 2017, the rest of the business has improved too much for "solid, sometimes really good" to be considered good enough and labeled as anything special.

What can ROH do in 2017 to become truly outstanding once again? What can it do to stand out from the rest of the industry like it once did with its arcs, roster, and title belt treatment?

[The Dragon Saga]

There hasn't be a hot storyline in years. This is a problem that honestly plagues most of the industry; that ROH has failed to step up in this category is a disappointment.

The last angle I was truly invested in was Adam Cole/Jay Briscoe. That ended over two years ago now - which is mindblowing to me by the way, considering how long it went on - but I will say that the way ROH built that story over a year and a half was remarkable storytelling that I am yet to see other promotions do. They obviously tried to do the same with Whitmer/Corino and Cole/O'Reilly. While Corino/Whitmer produced some good promos, got BJ major heat and had that good old school brawl at BITW, they participants in the feud is what never allowed it to boil over for the audience and gain traction or buzz. And of course from BITW onward the story got messy and turned into some weird, "who is Kevin Sullivan's favorite son?" angle which I don't think anyone wanted to see, as cool as KS was in his day.

This is definitely something ROH needs to improve on this year. Better told stories over long or even short periods of time.

In the past few years, no more than 5 matches have received widespread critical acclaim among the most well-versed purists. While workrate isn't the be-all, end-all, the lack of hot stories should mean this category would compensate for it. In this time, the acclaimed matches galore have been in WWE, NJPW, Evolve, and the U.K. indies.

I think that while ROH haven't had as many "classics" as they used to, from beginning to end of show standpoint, they still put on the best overall wrestling shows. Especially the weekly show. Take WWE for example, RAW has a good match maybe every week, and that's them filling up three hours - one good match in a three hour show is not substantial enough. New Japan is a full on wrestling promotion and their audience is different because they interact differently with the show, take Wrestle Kingdom for example, it was a 6 hour show - people who attend ROH TV tapings that take 4 hours complain about length, American audiences don't have the attention span. UK audiences probably do because of their antics and enthusiasm which US audiences lack. I don't follow EVOLVE much but asides from one or two, I haven't heard of any classic matches coming out of EVOLVE in the last 2 years, in fact I've heard of more flops than classics, so I wouldn't rate them higher. U.K. indies have a lot of good matches - my local promotion is OTT, who put on barn burners - but the difference is ROH's overall audience is much larger than any U.K. promotions and their doing much bigger business, ROH had to transition from what U.K. promotions are now in-order to grow their business, which inevitably every U.K. promotion will have to do if they want to step up. Unlike the US, pro-wrestling is a hot market in the U.K. and Ireland right now.

The roster itself lacks the unique depth to be truly remarkable from the rest of the pack. This particular issue has been tackled substantially; while there are certainly some gems, a good chunk of the roster would be slumming up dark matches and post-intermissions with the likes of Shane Hagadorn, the Outcast Killaz, etc. during the 2000s. The dependence on special attractions have also been well-documented, and ROH failed to truly filled the void that Kenny Omega had planned to fill for AJ Styles last year when his visa issues popped up. Sorry, Adam Cole has never grabbed the level of attention that Omega has.

Replacing AJ Styles is impossible. Even if Omega's VISA issues had been cleared up, he wasn't a substantial replacement for AJ. If he came in now, after the year hes just had and especially the WK11 performance, he would definitely be of much bigger value, but of the same that AJ Styles had? I don't think so. The roster is very strong, lots of names people recognize who can put on solid to great matches if given the time - Jay Lethal, MCMG, Young Bucks, The Addiction, Colt Cabana, etc, it has a good number of "ROH made" guys too, like Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, The Briscoes, with some up and comers like Adam Page, Donovan Dijak, Lio Rush, Jay White, etc, and of course international flair with Scurll and Ospreay. What ROH also has which benefits them is their partnerships so they can always diversify.

The roster could be stronger, but to say it lacks depth to me is an exaggeration. It has plenty of depth and the guys who are of similar molds to Hagadorn, Special K, Bobby Dempsey, etc, aren't getting any serious time on screens anyways, especially not in recent months. I think Cheeseburger has had his day.

ROH no doubt is financially healthier than in the past; there's another perspective to that statement though. The production has obviously improved as well.

I don't think this can be viewed in any way as a negative. Production is up ten fold, still needs some polishing but overall, its still unique but is obviously a lot more professional. The company's stature is also much larger than it has ever been and Meltzer noting that Final Battle received buys above what was expected is an example of this. I think there are a lot of ROH fans who are solely ROH fans and not just wrestling fans.

ROH has become a poor man's WWE and glorified feeder system to NJPW. There's nothing that differentiates the product anymore to make it must-see.

I disagree. I think that the look and feel of the product is much different to say WWE or even NXT. The format is obviously different due to how ROH utiliizes house shows in canon, which has its pros and cons. As aforementioned, I feel that the weekly show, while it could definitely be better, is from beginning to end more often than not a better wrestling show than say NXT is, which has dropped off completely, with many remarking you don't even need to watch NXT weekly anymore and instead can just watch the Takeovers. I think this could be said about ROH TV too, however because of the gap between PPV's you will definitely miss something which is a plus.

The pros and cons of the New Japan relationship have been noted a thousand times over on this forum, but again I will say, Ring of Honor with New Japan is better off than Ring of Honor without New Japan.

ROH is a solid, sometimes really good product. In 2017, the rest of the business has improved too much for "solid, sometimes really good" to be considered good enough and labeled as anything special.

But most of said products have little visibility while ROH is very easily accessible. I still think ROH has more importance in the world of wrestling than any other promotions other than WWE and New Japan. It has surpassed TNA due to their turmoils and ROH's growth in 2015. Is ROH "anything special"? I wouldn't say it is anymore, no, but to some degree it had to leave behind a lot of what made it special when it decided it was time to get serious and grow larger than the "little indie that could". I think it could be a lot better and should be making much more noise than it is, the reasons it isn't come down to the managament and booking, which has been noted.

Really though, what is "special" though, right now in wrestling? Is New Japan special? I would of thought it was much more special a couple of years ago, personally. Is NXT special? Takeover's are great, sadly the loss of Ryan Ward to main roster creative is noticeable as many weeks of NXT TV is filler content with appearances by the top guys and the odd solid match. Is PWG special? I feel that their stock dropped a lot in 2016. It's not as cool being a PWG fan as it was in 2015 and the whole "balls to the wall, do all your movez and sell for nothing" style PWG became cool for is wearing thin.

The UK scene is cool and feels special, but as aforementioned, sometimes what is special might not be easy to access. I was aware of every competitor asides from HD Dyer and the guy Pete Dunne destroyed in the UKCT, but I saw so many question who even guys like Pete Dunne are, because people aren't accustomed to seeing British wrestling because it has little visibility. ROH has much larger visibility and while not considered an indie anymore and not being an indie, is still viewed by some as the top place outside of WWE in the US.

What can ROH do in 2017 to become truly outstanding once again? What can it do to stand out from the rest of the industry like it once did with its arcs, roster, and title belt treatment?

Simple, sign hotter talent, use hotter talent to do better storylines with more detail and attention, produce hotter weekly TV, focus more on TV and PPV's and use house shows or "VOD's" for your filler content like your Cheeseburger's and Will Ferrara's etc.

[Memphis Mark]

ROH needs to become more selective on who they added to the roster . If guys just want to use ROH for exposure to so they can get notice by the WWE , they do not need to be signed. They can work for Gabe if their goal is to get an entry level NXT deal . Also any new talent that appears on TV and/or PPV needs to be under some type of binding contract where ROH has first option on their services . . ROH does not need to waste valuable TV on talent that is just using them for exposure . No more Keith Lee's.

Talent needs to be under multi- year deals . ROH has had guys under 1 years deals or no deals at all. Of course this has led to the thin and unstable talent roster that ROH has in the beginning of 2017.

At time I believe that only the Young Bucks and Jay lethal are under 2 year deals. ROH needs to have 10 to 12 more talents under 2 years deals to stabilize the company. If guys are not willing to commit long term , release and find people that will commit 2 or 3 years to ROH . After a couple of years the talent can then move on to another promotion . That would allow ROH to slowly blend in new talent.

Not everyone can sign with the WWE and make big money . The successful existence of ROH , NJPW , LU and now TNA provide a stronger overall business climate for the wrestlers. The Jackson Brothers get that , I think ROH can find a few good hands to commit if they make the effort.

Also who really handles talent relations for ROH ? I am under the assumption that Delirious and Greg the Office Boy have been in charge the past few years. Now , ROH has had to hire Kevin Kelly on a full time basis in an attempt to properly manage the talent. Correct ?

[Wilson]

Pretty great OP and responses so far.

Unfortunately, what I think separates ROH from its close competition is its TV availability. Long-running, episodic television is prepared for casual viewing, under-stimulated narrative development, and to be be generally self-sustaining, if not just outright coveting its status quo operations. Despite their shortcomings, maybe some of the product's negative trends show no effect on its success, which is probably most consumed by older, more indiscriminate viewers. There have been great steps made in the past few years to fortify the company, but at most times it still seems that Sinclair believes ROH to just be some Mom-and-Pop, ephemeral wrasslin'. Even though it's a major company that is partnering with the second largest wrestling promotion in the world, I'm sure there are still others within that wish they could run Baltimore every month for family outings in which the stars just have to be wrestlers to get over. Wrestling for the sake of wrestling.

There are a lot of similarities of ROH to pre-90s wrestling. It's intentional throwbacking can be endearing at times, but its barreling toward US isolationism would make even the territories shudder.

[Big Red Machine]

I think that most of ROH’s problems stem from two main issues, one of which is creative and the other is more corporate-philosophical.

The major creative issue, I think, is an inability to tell anything other than the absolutely most simplistic and basic of stories. How many of ROH’s feuds over the past few years has it required more than two sentences to summarize? Almost everything has been “I don’t like you so we fight” or “I want your title so we fight.” The only ones that have even needed two sentences to summarize are Cole vs. O’Reilly O’Reilly (“Adam is jealous of Kyle so he betrays him and vows that he will never win the title. Then Adam wins the title to try to keep it away from Kyle”) and Silas vs. Castle (“Silas doesn’t like the way Dalton and the Boys live. He wins the Boys in a match to try to make them live his way but they choose Dalton in the end”). Maybe the only feud with any more depth than that was Cole vs. Lethal, and even there I think it wasn’t ROH so much as the wrestlers themselves that did most of the work in getting the nuance of that feud (i.e. the role of anger) across.
(Yes, there is also the Corino/Whitmer/Sullivan/Martinez/Cody bullsh*t, but that doesn’t count because no one could possibly explain that if they were given a trillion sentences to do it in).
Don’t get me wrong: this sort of thing isn’t bad all of the time. It’s okay to occasionally have a feud like this. Lethal vs. Briscoe and Lethal vs. Roddy are excellent examples. But having feuds that are this simple all of the time makes the product feel like it lacks any sort of depth… and I do mean any. The promotion feels like it is being booked at a first-grade level. There stories are just the same thing over and over again, and not just in terms of the same angles up and down the card, time after time, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred they show an inability to understand how to make the events of the story matter. This, itself, causes several major problems:
1. The stories don’t feel like they ever move forward. The idea with the Addiction seems to be to turn them babyface by having them be humbled by Ladder War. That’s a great idea. They started out by having them show others respect verbally. Then they went on a losing streak, and after each loss they would reluctantly shake hands with their opponent. The problem is that it’s been four months now (thirteen shows, counting each taping as one show) and it really doesn’t feel like they’re progressed at all since day one. Compare this to Jimmy Loves Lacey, where it took them eight shows (two months) to get from “Colt is f*cking Lacey, making Jimmy both sad and jealous” to “Colt is now being an ass to the already depressed Jimmy” to “Colt feels bad about the way he and Lacey are treating Jimmy” to “Colt treats Jimmy more nicely and tries to get Lacey to do the same” to “Colt dumps Lacey because of the way she treats Jimmy and tries to get Jimmy to see that she is a bad person and not worth his love” to “Jimmy attacks Colt for insulting Lacey.” See the difference?
How many times did anything The Cabinet said or did ever matter? And yet they kept having pointless match and cutting pointless promos on every show, doing the same thing. How long did it take for Daniels to run around claiming that there was a “conspiracy” against him and Kaz before Nigel actually did anything to shut him up? Or the whole Cedric Alexander “unsafe working environment” angle? How long were ACH and Sydal teaming together doing absolutely nothing? How many times did The Addiction jump MCMG after a match and hit Sabin with Celebrity Rehab? How long was Prince Nana giving out envelopes for before anything ever came of it? How many times did Corino almost stab a jobber with the golden spike? It felt like it happened on every show for months. Even War Machine vs. Lee & Taylor was just them fighting over and over and over again.
The result of this is inevitably that people stop caring because they lose faith that anything will ever happen, and that’s a major problem because that’s when people tune out.

2. Related to the above point but separate from it is the fact that ROH creative doesn’t seem to know how to make the events in a story matter. Silas won the Boys from Dalton, but we never saw it affect Dalton at all and then they just went back with Dalton and the fighting continued until the feud was booked to end. Cabana turned on Dalton so they had a match which Dalton won, and yet they continue to feud, with Dalton costing Cabana matches. This is bad enough on its own, but the real problem comes when you let it trickle down to the most basic building blocks of a story: the matches and their results.
Take Jay White, for example. His “story” seems to be that he is a great prospect who keeps getting big wins and hasn’t been pinned, made to submit, knocked out, or even counted out or disqualified yet. Well it’s been seven months of this. How has this kid not yet earned a singles title shot? Or Dalton and Cabana breaking up because Cabana doesn’t think that he can have success with Dalton as his partner… and yet they have won two of their last three matches when Colt decides this… which he does immediately after a match in which Dalton pinned a guy in less than a minute.
Or how many times have guys been given title shots or been put in #1 contendership matches even though they’ve been losing recently? How many dirty finishes have we seen that are not followed up on in any way? When the results stop mattering, then there is no reason to care about them. Most ROH cards nowadays just feel like they are matches randomly thrown together with finishes that won’t matter. Even if you book random stipulations it doesn’t make the show feel important enough to go run out and buy. You can partially overcome this with an extremely high workrate, but ROH doesn’t do that anymore, and even if they did, that will only help you so much when you’re putting out almost forty live-event DVDs a year (and that assumes you are mixing up your talent pool well to create interesting match-ups, which ROH isn’t).

3. When all you are booking is “I don’t like you, therefore we shall fight” you really have no way to integrate new talent into the product. There’s only so many times someone can just show up to fight with someone else, and even if this is the case, it often makes it hard to care about the new guy. Lee and Taylor got away with it because they’re physically impressive, and White and Kamaitachi because they had buzz from Japan (and ROH did something on the website to make a big deal about White). New talent nowadays almost exclusively enters ROH via getting booked in the Top Prospect Tournament, at which point the winner and maybe one other guy are ever seen again. Maybe a few of the others are randomly brought back, but no effort is ever made to do anything with any of them. Even the TPT winner never does anything after the tournament. Lio Rush is just a guy. After two years Donovan Dijak is still just a guy. Will Ferrara feels like has been around forever and is still just a guy. The only other guys I can think of aside from the aforementioned Lee, Taylor, White, and Kamaitachi to come into the promotion without going through the PTP and then disappearing are the New Kingdom, and they just come across as Taven clones. This makes it basically impossible for fans to get behind new talent. Compare this to the rise of a guy like Darby Allin Evolve- or even Chris Dickinson and Jaka. Fans got to watch these guys on a quest to try to earn a WWN contract, so when they finally did so, the people cared.

4. Similarly, when you have a bunch of undercard guys not really doing anything because you don’t want the whole card to be “I don’t like you, therefore we are fighting” angles, it makes it very difficult for fans to care about those guys, and the more someone languishes in the mid-card without doing anything of note, the worse that becomes. ACH, Sydal, Cedric, Dijak, Rush, and Ferrara have all spent the large majority of their time in ROH not really doing much of anything. If you don’t do anything with them the people won’t get behind them and as a result you never have any real buzz about the “next guy” in the company. Back in 2012 the feeling was that if/when a guy like Davey, Roddy, or Steen left, you could push an Adam Cole or Kyle O’Reilly into their place and things would be fine. Nowadays that feeling isn’t there. We know that guys like Rush and Page and Dijak and Dalton or Kenny King have the ability to step up and fill one of those slots, but when you’re watching the product it doesn’t feel like they’re ready to take that next step (Jay White might be the one exception here).
Not only does this leave ROH without an underlying buzz of its own, but when one of the wrestlers have had enough and have decided that they want to try their fortunes somewhere else like ACH and Cedric have done and like the rumors are that Dijak will do, that creates the overall feel that ROH isn’t the place guys go to get “made” anymore.

5. When all you’re focused on is guys fighting, you never get any of the little detail segments that push the angle home from a different direction. For example, a few weeks before the big Lethal vs. Briscoe match, they booked show where the gimmick was that there would be two three-ways on the undercard, with the winner of one getting a TV Title shot and the winner of the other getting a world title shot. They just kind of… announced the matches and they happened and that was that. But what if they announced the one for the world title first (they had been doing similar things to set world title shots recently) but then had TV Champion Jay Lethal insist that he was the top champion in the company and thus he could do anything Jay Briscoe could do, so he demands that they also book a similar three-way to set up a challenger for him on that show. Then, on the show, when it is time for the TV Title match to go on in the semi-main event, have Lethal come out and demand that he be given the main event spot instead because he is the top champion. Jay Briscoe would then come out and be a good fighting babyface champion and say he doesn’t care if he is the main event or not; he only cares that he gets to defend his title, and have Briscoe agree to be the semi-main and let Lethal be the main event. Segments like that are little things, but those are the type of segments that make people stand up and take notice of how crisp the booking is.

6. When all you’re doing is “we don’t like each other, therefore we are fighting” it is tough to have someone doing two things at once because, ultimately, both things are going to be the same. This makes for shows that feel either repetitive (because it’s the same guys fighting each other all the time (how many times did we see Sabin, Shelley, and/or Jay White in the same match with Daniels, Kaz, or Kamaitachi between February and October?), or unimportant (because you’ve made the results of the matches not matter). It also makes the title picture much less interesting if you’ve only got one or two viable challengers at a time. With the exception of the last three months of this year, when was the last time that it felt like ROH was building to more than one world title match at the same time? Early 2014? This makes the product a lot less exciting.

All of these things, in their own ways, contribute to the product not having any buzz, and it’s buzz that draws eyes. In terms of consistently good wrestling, ROH is usually right up there with the best, but promotions like Evolve, LU, and occasionally even New Japan and (less frequently) WWE manage to make their matches feel more important- to make their shows feel more must-see. In terms of in-ring quality I’d put ROH’s 2015 up against any year any promotion has ever had, but no one was paying attention if it didn’t involve New Japan or it wasn’t a PPV because ROH failed at making the matches feel important.

The other big problem that I think ROH has is the corporate-philosophical one, and that problem is that ROH doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be. The way they hype themselves up is like they’re a televised version of the must-see, awesome work-rate super-indy of old; the “real” wrestling fan’s alternative to yucky WWE sports entertainment and TNA’s Russo-mania,” but they don’t book themselves that way at all. Instead they book the TV as an odd hybrid of an old territorial show where it’s all about “hey, wrestling fans! Come see ROH live when it’s in your town!” except that the matches they put on their TV are building to the PPV instead of the local shows like you would in a modern televised promotion… except that the presentation is still stuck in that 1970’s friendly “come see us live in your town” atmosphere, so a lot of things feel kind of out of place.
Then there are those live shows which, with the exception of a few major shows, instead of booking them to be relevant like an indy promotion or a territory would, they book them to be most irrelevant like WWE would. Meanwhile, they try to promote tem like they’re New Japan “road to” shows with usually mix-and-match undercards and one big main event tag match PWG spot-fest that they’re counting on to both draw the house and send the people home happy after an almost forcibly bland night random twelve-minute matches, and giving them the “tour” names. But then, instead of having them either only for the live crowd or using that as the TV show to build up the PPV like New Japan does, ROH instead tapes them for DVD/VOD release and tries to sell them to you as these exciting nights of must-see action like the ROH of old would, except they do a pathetically half-hearted job of pushing them in a way that convinces you that they are worth seeing (instead they’re efforts all go into coloring books, backpacks, and Cheeseburger/Women of Honor shirts).

Then they’ve got these contracts that they want everyone to sign that seem fairly exclusive, except that- as the PWG situation has shown, ROH has fairly little leverage as far as making people feel like they should be picking ROH over everywhere else. They pretend that they can be WWE but they have TNA’s leverage, and a chunk of their sales pitch revolves around them being a feeder system for New Japan… but one with limited opportunity due to the limited number of spots New Japan has for gaijin. Then the booking comes into again and they book people to progress so slowly that it feels like these guys haven’t done anything for years when they could have been spending time being used well in Evolve or making a name for themselves and trying to get noticed on the mid-sized indies that are getting buzz now like AAW and Beyond so people become hesitant to sign the contracts, which results in them being booked into a further purgatory because ROH doesn’t seem to feel comfortable with using someone regularly on a per-appearance deal. This results in them limiting their talent pool. Then they try to be WWE about it with these “tryout camps” but 90% of the guys getting picked up seem to be guys who have some connection to the New England area- i.e. they’re often getting signed because they know someone rather than because they’re a talent that ROH should be aggressively trying to sign.
Quite frankly, ROH needs a change in leadership because the current leadership, both corporate and wrestling-wise, seems to have no vision.

[Big Red Machine]

There hasn't be a hot storyline in years. This is a problem that honestly plagues most of the industry; that ROH has failed to step up in this category is a disappointment.

The last angle I was truly invested in was Adam Cole/Jay Briscoe. That ended over two years ago now - which is mindblowing to me by the way, considering how long it went on - but I will say that the way ROH built that story over a year and a half was remarkable storytelling that I am yet to see other promotions do. They obviously tried to do the same with Whitmer/Corino and Cole/O'Reilly. While Corino/Whitmer produced some good promos, got BJ major heat and had that good old school brawl at BITW, they participants in the feud is what never allowed it to boil over for the audience and gain traction or buzz. And of course from BITW onward the story got messy and turned into some weird, "who is Kevin Sullivan's favorite son?" angle which I don't think anyone wanted to see, as cool as KS was in his day.

This is definitely something ROH needs to improve on this year. Better told stories over long or even short periods of time.

If I remember correctly, wasn't this feud actually supposed to end well before it actually did, and the only reason they went back to it for Final Battle was the Elgin thing? And that Cole was actually supposed to go over but then he needed to get surgery so Briscoe had to win?
As for Cole/O'Reilly and long-term storytelling, I think part of the problem there was that some of the stuff was too long-term. There was so much stuff they felt they needed to squeeze into Lethal's title reign before putting it out of its misery that even before Cole won the belt everyone already knew exactly what would happen in the feud and when. They should have gotten the Briscoe rematch out of the way MUCH earlier than they did (like the Anniversary Show at the latest, or maybe you could have done it on the first night of SCOH, then did the Rush match on night 2 and had the Cabana return after the Rush match instead of going through that Cheeseburger match), done Cole and Lethal at Global Wars, then gotten the belt to Cole at BITW. That way you've got not only Kyle but also Cabana and Lethal as viable challengers to Cole who might actually create some doubt that Kyle will be the guy to take the belt from Cole, which should help make Cole's reign seem like something more than just waiting a few months until Kyle takes the belt from him.
(So, in hindsight, after writing all of that, I guess it was really the Lethal-Briscoe rematch one year later that was where the majority of the "thinking too long-term" was).
It's really the short-term storytelling where I think ROH needs to improve because other than a few tournaments, there really aren't any short-term stories at all. No quick "here is one match that leads to an angle that leads to one more match and then we're done" or no "a guy gets a few wins in a row then gets to challenge for the world title and loses" or anything like that.

In the past few years, no more than 5 matches have received widespread critical acclaim among the most well-versed purists. While workrate isn't the be-all, end-all, the lack of hot stories should mean this category would compensate for it. In this time, the acclaimed matches galore have been in WWE, NJPW, Evolve, and the U.K. indies.

I think that while ROH haven't had as many "classics" as they used to, from beginning to end of show standpoint, they still put on the best overall wrestling shows. Especially the weekly show. Take WWE for example, RAW has a good match maybe every week, and that's them filling up three hours - one good match in a three hour show is not substantial enough. New Japan is a full on wrestling promotion and their audience is different because they interact differently with the show, take Wrestle Kingdom for example, it was a 6 hour show - people who attend ROH TV tapings that take 4 hours complain about length, American audiences don't have the attention span. UK audiences probably do because of their antics and enthusiasm which US audiences lack. I don't follow EVOLVE much but asides from one or two, I haven't heard of any classic matches coming out of EVOLVE in the last 2 years, in fact I've heard of more flops than classics, so I wouldn't rate them higher. U.K. indies have a lot of good matches - my local promotion is OTT, who put on barn burners - but the difference is ROH's overall audience is much larger than any U.K. promotions and their doing much bigger business, ROH had to transition from what U.K. promotions are now in-order to grow their business, which inevitably every U.K. promotion will have to do if they want to step up. Unlike the US, pro-wrestling is a hot market in the U.K. and Ireland right now.

Evolve has had several classics (check out Roddy vs. Sabre Jr. and Thatcher vs. Gargano from 2015, last year's Squared Circle Survival, Sabre Jr. vs. Gargano from Evolve 68, and Sabre Jr. vs. Ospreay from WrestleMania weekend). Between the great wrestling and great booking, it baffles me why no one is talking about them.
Evolve is the promotion that I think gives you the best wrestling all up and down the card. It's a more grapplef*cky (but not all grapplef*ck) version of PWG, but where the results of the matches actually matter. The thing that Evolve (and PWG) do is that ROH isn't doing anymore is giving the matches time to deliver. I think ROH would be a much better product if the cut out a lot of the pointless crap on each card (and on TV) like Evolve has. Especially if you are trying to get all of your shows in the 2:30-2:45 range like ROH seems to be doing, it's better to have seven matches than nine, and the amount of time ROH wastes with overbooking or bait-and-switches and with promos that have no purpose other than to set up said overbooking and bait-and-switches is staggering.
I actually think the TV would benefit greatly from more backstage segments. If you can tape 3-3.5 hours of longer matches and simply have guys cut backstage promos to hype the up, you could probably get 5 or maybe even six episodes of TV out of one taping than the four mediocre ones we currently get. Also, having things occur backstage and the ring almost always being used for wrestling (and post-match promos/segments) would differentiate ROH from WWE and TNA where it seems like the kayfabe promotion sets aside at least half of their weekly Tv time for wrestlers to come out to the ring and talk.

The roster itself lacks the unique depth to be truly remarkable from the rest of the pack. This particular issue has been tackled substantially; while there are certainly some gems, a good chunk of the roster would be slumming up dark matches and post-intermissions with the likes of Shane Hagadorn, the Outcast Killaz, etc. during the 2000s. The dependence on special attractions have also been well-documented, and ROH failed to truly filled the void that Kenny Omega had planned to fill for AJ Styles last year when his visa issues popped up. Sorry, Adam Cole has never grabbed the level of attention that Omega has.

Replacing AJ Styles is impossible. Even if Omega's VISA issues had been cleared up, he wasn't a substantial replacement for AJ. If he came in now, after the year hes just had and especially the WK11 performance, he would definitely be of much bigger value, but of the same that AJ Styles had? I don't think so. The roster is very strong, lots of names people recognize who can put on solid to great matches if given the time - Jay Lethal, MCMG, Young Bucks, The Addiction, Colt Cabana, etc, it has a good number of "ROH made" guys too, like Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, The Briscoes, with some up and comers like Adam Page, Donovan Dijak, Lio Rush, Jay White, etc, and of course international flair with Scurll and Ospreay. What ROH also has which benefits them is their partnerships so they can always diversify.

The roster could be stronger, but to say it lacks depth to me is an exaggeration. It has plenty of depth and the guys who are of similar molds to Hagadorn, Special K, Bobby Dempsey, etc, aren't getting any serious time on screens anyways, especially not in recent months. I think Cheeseburger has had his day.

I mostly agree with you here as far as TV goes (although this past week was different), but they are taking up time at house shows. On both TV and house shows, the Cabinet are the biggest offenders here. I like Rhett but I don't think he's really worth more than an undercard heel unless he's Kenny's tag partner, but Caprice- the guy who wastes by far the mot time with his talking- has outlived his usefulness. Cutting out Caprice and just letting Rhett and Kenny be themselves, as well as getting rid of Ferrara and reserving Burger purely as a jobber would make the house shows much more enjoyable. Not because these guys are terrible wrestlers or anything, but because their matches drag down the card by being irrelevant because it feels like they have no mobility and we know they'll never amount to anything, and yet for some reason they keep getting booked. Daddiego fits in here, too, but he isn't on the shows as much.
I actually feel that the New Kingdom fits into the "so mediocre they're not worth it" category. They don't in any way come across like guys who ever would have been brought in if ROH hadn't decided to waste time with these six-man titles. Even Taven I wouldn't mind not seeing again. Not because he isn't good, but he's not that great either, and it doesn't feel like there is anything left for him to do.

ROH no doubt is financially healthier than in the past; there's another perspective to that statement though. The production has obviously improved as well.

I don't think this can be viewed in any way as a negative. Production is up ten fold, still needs some polishing but overall, its still unique but is obviously a lot more professional. The company's stature is also much larger than it has ever been and Meltzer noting that Final Battle received buys above what was expected is an example of this. I think there are a lot of ROH fans who are solely ROH fans and not just wrestling fans.

I disagree that ROH is unique anymore. It feels like TNA in that it's just another wrestling show on TV. Yes, there are good matches sometimes, but the thing that really helped set ROH apart was the old booking philosophy which focused on minimizing the amount of non-clean finishes as much as possible- is clearly gone. We get dirty finishes on every show now, even if they never lead to anything. Hell, Lethal couldn't get a clean win over Watanabe when Lethal was a double champion and Watanabe was wrestling his last match before going back to Japan. ROH used to come with a quality guarantee that you would get a great match with a satisfying finish. That's not true anymore. There is no "Honor" in Ring of Honor.

ROH has become a poor man's WWE and glorified feeder system to NJPW. There's nothing that differentiates the product anymore to make it must-see.

I disagree. I think that the look and feel of the product is much different to say WWE or even NXT. The format is obviously different due to how ROH utiliizes house shows in canon, which has its pros and cons. As aforementioned, I feel that the weekly show, while it could definitely be better, is from beginning to end more often than not a better wrestling show than say NXT is, which has dropped off completely, with many remarking you don't even need to watch NXT weekly anymore and instead can just watch the Takeovers. I think this could be said about ROH TV too, however because of the gap between PPV's you will definitely miss something which is a plus.

The pros and cons of the New Japan relationship have been noted a thousand times over on this forum, but again I will say, Ring of Honor with New Japan is better off than Ring of Honor without New Japan.

I'd actually disagree that you will miss something if you only watch the PPVs. I really haven't felt like ROH has done a good job of building most matches up recently, and aside from the Decade of Excellence tournament, it feels like absolutely nothing is going on in this company right now. They've got the Hardys match all set, but they're not taking any steps to build up any challengers for the Bucks, either before that match or after it (don't even get me started on this match with the Briscoes), all of the talk about Dalton and Fish's title shots feels like it's coming from Cole, the New Kingdom are just defending the belt against a bevy of randos who have done absolutely nothing to earn a title shot, and the same can be said for Scurll... meanwhile there is no talk of Fish getting his rematch or of Ospreay getting his (unless he got pinned at FB, but I don't remember that being the case), or of Mark Briscoe getting a title shot despite having pinned Fish in Champions vs. All-Stars. Nothing is happening.

]ROH is a solid, sometimes really good product. In 2017, the rest of the business has improved too much for "solid, sometimes really good" to be considered good enough and labeled as anything special.

But most of said products have little visibility while ROH is very easily accessible. I still think ROH has more importance in the world of wrestling than any other promotions other than WWE and New Japan. It has surpassed TNA due to their turmoils and ROH's growth in 2015. Is ROH "anything special"? I wouldn't say it is anymore, no, but to some degree it had to leave behind a lot of what made it special when it decided it was time to get serious and grow larger than the "little indie that could". I think it could be a lot better and should be making much more noise than it is, the reasons it isn't come down to the managament and booking, which has been noted.

This is where we're going to disagree heavily. I don't think ROH needed to give up that up at all. After all, the were growing prior to... whenever we're dating this change in mentality to (2014? 2015?). They might have even grown faster had Gabe not been so conservative. The strategies for expanding the product were no different in 2013 than they are now (get TV in an area, give it some time to get attention, then run there). The only thing that has changed is the product itself, and that change has been for the worse.
Also, while ROH is the most visible of said "better" products, I don't think they're any more accessible to someone who is looking for them. It's no more difficult to sign up for RevPro's service or buy an Evolve iPPV than it is to buy an ROH DVD or VOD.

Really though, what is "special" though, right now in wrestling? Is New Japan special? I would of thought it was much more special a couple of years ago, personally. Is NXT special? Takeover's are great, sadly the loss of Ryan Ward to main roster creative is noticeable as many weeks of NXT TV is filler content with appearances by the top guys and the odd solid match. Is PWG special? I feel that their stock dropped a lot in 2016. It's not as cool being a PWG fan as it was in 2015 and the whole "balls to the wall, do all your movez and sell for nothing" style PWG became cool for is wearing thin.

The UK scene is cool and feels special, but as aforementioned, sometimes what is special might not be easy to access. I was aware of every competitor asides from HD Dyer and the guy Pete Dunne destroyed in the UKCT, but I saw so many question who even guys like Pete Dunne are, because people aren't accustomed to seeing British wrestling because it has little visibility. ROH has much larger visibility and while not considered an indie anymore and not being an indie, is still viewed by some as the top place outside of WWE in the US.

That question of "what is special" is the really interesting one, and probably the hardest to answer. In some ways it almost seems that special winds up meaning the same as "new and good." A thing gets attention and becomes cool/special for a while. I see the UK scene now where New Japan was a few years ago. Now we've all seen a bunch of stuff from New Japan, and while the matches are still great, it doesn't feel as impressive. There was short women's wrestling boom a few years ago, too. Stardom is starting to catch on now. CHIKARA did it with the BDK and was pretty hot until the shutdown.
It's seems like it's more of a question of finding something that catches on and then keeping it fresh. Personally, I think Evolve has been the best at that because Gabe's booking and eye for talent has been able to make the most out of a lot of different guys. PWG was doing it by basically staying ahead of the curve in terms of who was on the rise and who wasn't, then using their consequences-free set-up to just let everyone go ball-out in every match and beating promotions like ROH to matches because ROH would try to build to a match to sell as many DVDs/PPVs/VODs/whatever as they could, whereas PWG is happy just covering their losses by filling the same small building every time.
I think that ROH will have a very hard time finding that next special thing because they've shown themselves to be very late in terms of moving on talent, both to sign hot names (Kincaid being a recent example) or to do anything with said talent to put them in a situation where they can be that special thing (ACH, Dijak, Cedric, etc. etc.), and if they do find it, I don't think they're going to be able to keep things special for long due to their inability to move things along at a satisfying pace (especially with the amount of shows they are running).

What can ROH do in 2017 to become truly outstanding once again? What can it do to stand out from the rest of the industry like it once did with its arcs, roster, and title belt treatment?

Simple, sign hotter talent, use hotter talent to do better storylines with more detail and attention, produce hotter weekly TV, focus more on TV and PPV's and use house shows or "VOD's" for your filler content like your Cheeseburger's and Will Ferrara's etc.

I think that treating anything as "filler" is a mistake. There are ways to make the house shows relevant without requiring that someone watch all of them.

[Big Red Machine]

Pretty great OP and responses so far.

Unfortunately, what I think separates ROH from its close competition is its TV availability. Long-running, episodic television is prepared for casual viewing, under-stimulated narrative development, and to be be generally self-sustaining, if not just outright coveting its status quo operations. Despite their shortcomings, maybe some of the product's negative trends show no effect on its success, which is probably most consumed by older, more indiscriminate viewers. There have been great steps made in the past few years to fortify the company, but at most times it still seems that Sinclair believes ROH to just be some Mom-and-Pop, ephemeral wrasslin'. Even though it's a major company that is partnering with the second largest wrestling promotion in the world, I'm sure there are still others within that wish they could run Baltimore every month for family outings in which the stars just have to be wrestlers to get over. Wrestling for the sake of wrestling.

There are a lot of similarities of ROH to pre-90s wrestling. It's intentional throwbacking can be endearing at times, but its barreling toward US isolationism would make even the territories shudder.

Right. It's not that ROH is "losing money" by not being good and making people turn away from it. It's that there are many people they could be attracting but aren't because they (meaning management) aren't putting the proper effort in to do so.

[rovert]

Lack of an announce team

[DXvsNWO1994]

Sorry to disappoint with a short post, but as far as hot storylines go (or at least, the buildup to a big match), I would say the last one was the Jay Briscoe/Jay Lethal title vs. title match in 2015. That's the last match ROH put on that truly was important, and felt like a big deal.

Lack of an announce team

Dominos continuing to fall....

[Big Red Machine]

Lack of an announce team

I think that's a vast improvement at this point.

[Thelone]

ROH's history reminds me more and more of ECW's in reverse.

[Big Red Machine]

ROH's history reminds me more and more of ECW's in reverse.

Why in reverse?

[Thelone]

Late era ECW = Early ROH (some good stuff, but loads of shit)
Golden era ECW = Golden era ROH (do I really have to explain that one ?)
E(astern)CW = Current day ROH (seems to be perfectly fine being everyone's bitch and a big fish in a small pond, veterans past their prime with complete nobodies, being this bland/uncool promotion in general really)

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

Late era ECW = Early ROH (some good stuff, but loads of shit)
Golden era ECW = Golden era ROH (do I really have to explain that one ?)
E(astern)CW = Current day ROH (seems to be perfectly fine being everyone's bitch and a big fish in a small pond, veterans past their prime with complete nobodies, being this bland/uncool promotion in general really)

He makes a good point.

[Brada]

Excellent analogy. Completely agree here.

I would also add that it seems part of the hostility towards the current product could be that the product was SO good over the past number of years that there is that expectation to continue to live up too.

I think that should always be the standard, its just much easier said than done.

[monster mafia]

im agree...roh put the standar very high years ago

and this time of roh in terms of wrestling is good but not great like years ago.