Agree w/ all this and would add that it's hard to remember how truly different, important, and revolutionary ROH felt in the wrestling landscape of 2002-2006. Yes, we had TNA, but their booking has always been spotty and they always had a hard-on for washed up ex-WWE guys - both factors made TNA seem low-rate and, for lack of a better word, impure compared to ROH.supersonic wrote: ↑Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:03 pm Those crowds moved on to any combination of AEW, NJPW, PWG, and WWE (NXT and depending on who is pushed and how, the main roster as well) in the past decade or so.
I may dig into this to a significantly greater degree one day. WrestleMania XXX weekend in NOLA confirmed to me that the ROH of the 2000s no longer lived on in ROH, but at the time in WWE. Even TNA (until the gravy-train ran out in late 2013 starting with Styles) for a brief time, had to some degree what ROH once had.
Those crowds were also the evolution of the ECW crowds. Those same fans who were well-versed on the business, who weren't interested in what WWE wanted to feed them, and with very high expectations.
There will NEVER be an ROH audience again that screams "DON'T COME BACK!" at someone who comes in and stinks up the joint, as happened at Best of American Super Juniors Tournament. My evidence for that is the amount of talents ROH has brought in over recent years and not gotten the slightest bit of controversial pushback, other than the exception of Cass & Enzo. In the 2000s, no way would a lazy sack of shit like Bull Dempsey had survived; he'd have been eaten alive similar to Jeff Hardy 2003. No way would a washed-up, completely irrelevant Mr. Kennedy had been welcomed to any degree, other than to be absolutely humiliated by an ROH favorite.
I'd never anything remotely close to matches like Danielson/Joe, Danielson/Nigel, and Joe/Ki because there simply wasn't anywhere you could unless you were a tape trader. I distinctly remember being blown away by just the chain wrestling in Danielson/Nigel from Unified. It also helped that everyone involved in ROH put everything they had into the company. Of course, there was the wrestling, but Gabe used to write pages just to get people hyped for a B-show. That level of effort was needed because the company was always on the verge of collapse in a way it hasn't been since Sinclair bought ROH.
Plus, ROH looked after the fans. I remember driving hours to a show in Dayton and got lost on the way because I was a dumb kid. I got there about 2 matches in and raced over to pick up my 4th row will-call ticket. The people staffing the table couldn't find it and could tell I was stressed and anxious to get into the show and they picked up a chair and put me in the front row.
BRM from the wrestling revolution captures what ROH was in that time in a fine column:
http://www.thewrestlingrevolution.com/u ... e.php?id=9
"In my humble opinion, Ring of Honor has been greatest wrestling promotion that has ever existed. Who else has given fans such a wonderful combination of in-ring action, characters, promos, storytelling, and booking with real, satisfying finishes and a reputation for innovation and excellence on such a consistent basis for so long? The over eight-year body of work from October 2003 through November 2011 put together by the wrestlers and bookers of Ring of Honor was a period of excellence in just about every aspect of the art form of professional wrestling unparalleled in history up to that point and likely never to be outdone or even equaled in the future. During this time ROH was the strong in-ring undercard of PWG, the creativity and optimal utilization of each individual talent of ECW, the willingness to expose audiences to foreign talent of WCW, the fealty to logic of your favorite territory, the roster depth of modern New Japan, the drive to prove that "we are the promotion you should be paying attention to" of the late 2004-2006 Dusty and D'Amore Era glory days of TNA, the "I can't wait to see what happens at the next show" atmosphere of Attitude Era WWF, and the devotion to superb action with clean satisfying finishes and no bullsh*t of 90's All-Japan, all rolled into one. "