Report: What WWE Planned To Do With ROH In 2018 Revealed
Many top ROH stars became household names in WWE
In the wake of Tony Khan buying Ring of Honor, reports have emerged that WWE wanted to buy the promotion in 2018, with Triple H (Paul Levesque) spearheading a potential deal.
The idea makes sense due to NXT at the time having utilised a number of top former ROH stars, and in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer has reported on what WWE may have planned to do with the ROH IP:
“WWE did have talks with ROH management when ROH was at its peak of popularity with the Young Bucks about purchasing the company, but the idea was to shut down the company and really just purchase the tape library which had early matches of many of WWE’s top stars like Kevin Owens (as Kevin Steen), Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins (as Tyler Black), Daniel Bryan (under his real name), Cesaro (under his real name) and many others.
“The idea at the time was to get the valuable library and use it on the WWE Network and for documentaries, and shut the company down because at the time ROH and NXT were battling over the hardcore fans and even going head-to-head in markets and in places ROH was beating NXT even with NXT’s advantages of being part of WWE and more advertising, but ROH did have an edge of better talent and the New Japan affiliation which in 2018 meant a lot. The idea would have been to eliminate NXT’s biggest competition for the hardcore fan base while picking up a valuable library. But the deal was never completed past ROH making a deal to allow WWE some usage of their footage for WWE projects.”
There isn’t much clarity of what the future of ROH looks like. Whilst Supercard of Honor XV is still scheduled for April 1, there is no indication on if Tony Khan will still run ROH as a true standalone promotion.
