ROH Thread

so i guess i'm buying this ppv on sunday because skiff told me to. So chat party for the anniversary ppv sunday, be there.

I'm pretty pumped for the Joe announcement, I'm hoping I can make it out to the Chicago show

Yeah I didn't think I was excited for Joe to get released, but that video package made me excited, especially when I saw that Baltimore was his return date.

bought my ticket for Chicago

War of the Worlds was announced for Wednesday May 13th in Philly, is anyone planning on going? I kind of feel like driving out for this one

WEDNESDAY?!?!? Ugh, its a 2 hour drive....thinking about it.

They're doing shows with NJPW that weekend in Toronto, if that's an easier trip.

Any reason why at least one of those shows couldn't be made available as a traditional live PPV?

Do they make more money on these events by doing them as a DVD/online exclusive?

I know there are some logistics involved as to how ROH and NJPW would split revenue by doing that, but it just seems like a missed opportunity.

I think the idea with Traditional PPV is to do the same Sunday night time slot, at the same time of year and be able to use the TV show to build up the PPVs and since the NJPW guys won't be on the TV to build the PPV it might be hard to sell it in their minds, and that might be a valid point, I don't know

According to meltzer the June PPV and Final Battle both did way better than WOTW with worse cards which might suggest that there is a different audience for traditional versus iPPV, so just having a PPV(which does come with more expense, not sure how much is break even with a normal budget) with an increased budget due to the NJPW guys without being sure if these guys are draws to the casual ROH fan might not be the best idea

Of course the NJPW guys will then be on the TV's leading up to the June PPV in theory which would be weird since they will likely be protected against the guys you are using to try and sell the PPV unless because June is BOTSJ you might be able to get one of the big names back to do the PPV, but I doubt that

Overall this is kind of a strange relationship, I think it's probably worth the risk to try the NJPW on a traditional PPV, but I don't know how tight ROH's budget is and if they have room for a failure or not

Joe Koff on the show with Meltzer and Alvarez said that one of the NJPW shows in Toronto is going to be a TV taping.

The thing is that NJPW's wrestlers are big names and draws to the ROH audience. The majority of the ROH audience is very educated on the entire wrestling scene, in comparison to say WCW or TNA when they would bring in NJPW and AAA talent for PPVs in the past.

Scheduling one of these shows for a Sunday, instead of all three being on weeknights, would have allowed for not only a PPV opportunity, but also a bigger live gate, theoretically.

I just think that if you're going to spend a lot of money to bring these guys in, you might as well make the most of them by using them as special attractions on PPV.

I think you're possibly making an incorrect assumption thinking that the majority of ROH fans know the NJPW guys are stars. I do believe some fans know and care about the NJPW guys, but the majority of ROH TV markets are second and third markets as opposed to major metropolitan cities, so while yeah the wrestling hotbed cities like New York, Chicago, Toronto, Philly, etc might be familiar with the NJPW guys the TV markets where they are growing the brand, might not.

There is an added cost of doing live traditional PPV, I'm not sure how much, but I'd bet it's significant, so when you factor in spending money on the talent and then doubling down by adding more cost to make it a PPV you're possibly setting yourself up for an expensive failure, and to be honest the upside of proving the NJPW guys are stars who can draw on PPV probably isn't super helpful anyway since you can only get them once a year.

And also they aren't running three weeknights, they're running one, they're running Wednesday in Philly which I expect will sell out, and tickets are moving well for that already, and Friday and Saturday in Toronto which I'm guessing will both draw better than a Sunday night show.


In the end I really don't know if the NJPW guys on PPV would be a success or not. By all accounts the January 4th show did a good number, but it didn't blow people away at the box office, and I would guess it ends up doing better than the ROH PPVs but also had a very mainstream American star in Jim Ross attached to it so I don't know how much was people just being into the NJPW guys or giving something different a chance and believed JR to be a credible salesman.


Also just found out that the Sunday PPV is 44.95 on Dish, weren't the last 2 34.95? I will likely still get it, but it's tough to justify spending almost $50 on that show

They might not even be allowed to put the njpw guys on ppv #gfw

GFW seems like more of a middle-man than an actual promoter. Considering that they had ROH's reDRagon appeared on the Wrestle Kingdom 9 PPV broadcast, I take it that they are open to working together any potential issues that might exist over talent being on each others broadcasts. Isn't that why Jeff Jarrett was at an ROH event last year?

As for NJPW talent potentially only being available once a year, isn't that the reason why they should use them on PPVs? PPV is a struggling market in today's climate, so promotions have to use special attractions in order to actually sell them. That's why the WWE started utilizing part-time stars, and the UFC signed CM Punk and are bringing back older, big name fighters in marquee fights.

Plus, the manner in which ROH is utilizing the Bullet Club on this show (especially Gallows & Anderson who don't have deals with ROH and are strictly NJPW talent) is exactly the strategy in which I'm suggesting that it would be beneficial for ROH to maximize their drawing power.

As for the cost, I believe that the $45 price is likely because that's the HD price. I don't recall if the other two PPVs were offered in HD, but that would be the rationale. Then again, maybe they did just raise the price because of the amount of bigger names on the show.

$44.95 in HD on DirecTV. Really hard to justify that price.

Same price I paid for NJPW PPV. I think the 10 buck increase from the other two PPVs might be due to the talent booked on the show. Styles, El Patron, Joe.

I ended up ordering it, at the end of the day it looks like its a fun show and I want to support the company so the price is a little high, but I guess not high enough to stop me from ordering

No Gallows tonight, stuck in an airport

GO PICK HIM UP AND GET HIM TO VEGAS DAMNIT!

Machine Gun needs a partner....hmmmm.

This show had some very good in-ring action. However, I just feel like it was lacking that big time feel that their anniversary show should have had. I think the issue aside from the production values, many of the matches lacked any significant backstory going into them.

The main event was pretty fun. I haven't been digging the guys in the red masks because of how cheap that story has come across on TV. However, it seems to be going somewhere that makes sense. The finish seemed to set up two major matches for Samoa Joe going forward.

Lethal vs. Alberto was fairly good, but it could have been much better without so much of the interference. Of course, that was the story for this match, it just ended up hurting the action in the manner it was done.

reDRagon vs. The Bucks was a lot of fun. I wasn't a fan of Shayna Baszler being involved, mainly because she's lame. She's not very well known as an individual (instead she's best known as one of Ronda Rousey's hanger-ons), so this didn't come off as well Tom Lawlor's appearance did. I look forward to seeing how Rocky Romero & Trent Barreta fare as a tag team (Sleepy Hoot announced this on commentary) in the near future.

The rest of the card was quite good. AJ vs. ACH was the probably the best match on the card. Sydal vs. Alexander was nice as well, but lacked a bit from being a filler match.

I was disappointed that they couldn't find a partner for Machine Gun (Romero would have been perfect since they do the Talk 'n Shop podcast together), but I understand the circumstances.

The main event made me consider giving up on the company.

I thought the guys in the Red Masks were going to be a good way to bring in a new tag team. Instead it was a cheap way to use "Matt Hardy" & "Adam Cole". Rowe's return was cool, but not needed in this main event.

Then they pushed the Tomasso/Nigel storyline into this as well, and it was a cool thing, but WAY unneeded in this.

The finish had to have been one of the most bullshit finishes to a ROH main event (including the 58 min draw).

I'm still planning on going to the Baltimore show on saturday, especially once they announced Joe/O'Reilly, but boy was I more excited about this show last saturday.

Man that main event really got Skiff down.

Joe/Kyle in Balt, Joe/ACH in Milwaukee... which likely means Joe/Elgin in Chicago, which will be fine, but still