Tony Khan is thrilled about where Ring of Honor currently stands in the grand scheme of professional wrestling.
Ring of Honor owner Tony Khan took part in the Death Before Dishonor Media Scrum to answer a wide variety of questions. When asked what the point of ROH is in the grand scheme of things right now, Khan said he has a different mission for it than All Elite Wrestling.
“Ring of Honor is a great wrestling promotion. It’s got a different mission. It’s got a different audience than AEW,” Tony Khan said. “It’s maybe more focused to a hardcore audience, and I can do things programmed to the hardcores and deliver the kind of wrestling that I know a hardcore fan is gonna want to see.
“I think AEW speaks to maybe a broader definitely a bigger and broader worldwide audience. Ring of Honor has a great 21-year history and was, at one point, in my opinion, the number two wrestling company in North America, if not the world, and when AEW launched, that changed things. AEW is a bigger challenger brand than there’s been in pro wrestling since the 90s. And it’s been a long time since there was a company like AEW that changed where Ring of Honor stood.
“But now Ring of Honor is back, and I think Ring of Honor is still a major company. It’s not the number two company in the world. But I think there’s clearly two biggest companies, certainly in North America and I think worldwide, but really, I don’t think Ring of Honor has ever been more influential or powerful or well backed. I think these have been some of the best pay-per-view shows in the history of Ring of Honor over 21 years. And now, looking back, we’ve done five pay-per-views since I took over, and I really think they’ve been five of the best shows Ring of Honor’s ever done on pay-per-view, and I stand by that.
“They’ve also been five of the biggest live attendance. I haven’t got the final numbers for tonight, but I think they’ll be five of the biggest pay-per-view numbers, probably five of the ten biggest live attendance, and five of the ten biggest pay-per-views of all time. So in 21-year history, I think to do that just what we’ve done in a little over a year has been amazing.
“It’s also given young wrestlers a place to work, veteran wrestlers; it’s given more opportunities. It helps build stories across wrestling for AEW but also for our partners in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and we can bring in great Lucha stars. And it’s definitely had an impact on our AEW shows. And I think it’s really great that Ring of Honor is back, and that was what I wanted to do.
“I didn’t want the promotion to just disappear because there’s a lot of Ring of Honor fans, and the success of AEW probably changed the course of where Ring of Honor was going to go as a pro wrestling company But I’m very glad to be the owner of Ring of Honor, and I enjoy booking Ring of Honor I enjoy booking AEW. They’re different things to a different audience in some ways, and I have different expectations.
“There’s different business expectations, but they’re both great, and I think they exist very well, and I think they’re very complementary. I also think the relationships we have in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and Lucha Libre, and other international and domestic wrestling promotions can also be very complimentary. But certainly, AEW and ROH work really well together. ROH has a great history with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and now AEW and New Japan Pro-Wrestling, I think, is the most important and successful wrestling partnership in the world.”
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What do you make of Tony Khan’s comments? What do you think Ring of Honor’s place is in the grand scheme of pro wrestling right now? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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