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Today is the anniversary of the date Ring of Honor first ran a live event. It was held in a small, small sweatbox known as the Murphy Recreation Center, a gym that was (and is) operated by the city of Philadelphia.
The show drew in the 400 range (56 of whom came on a bus trip from New York City and another 20 who came from a Boston trip) , featuring a bevy of stars who would go on to headline in a major way nationally and influence the next generation of stars –talents like Bryan Danielson, Low Ki, Christopher Daniels, The Briscoes, The Amazing Red and Brian Kendrick and the lone female performer on the card, Allison Danger, who would become an instrumental force behind the scenes in women’s pro wrestling.
It was a throwback show at the time, as much as it tried to push pro wrestling forward. The referees were instructed to treat their officiating as a shoot. The tag team rope, a far-gone relic long forgotten, was brought back. ROH started on time, had a short intermission and then before the main event, announced the top matches for the next event. The premise was to present things like an old WWF house show but with modern day pro wrestling, to be different during a time period where everyone was trying to chase the ghost of ECW and try and fill it’s shoes.
Instead, Ring of Honor forged their own fire.
Sometimes, I wonder what path pro wrestling would have taken if there wasn’t a Ring of Honor? There were promotions, like CZW, ICW in New York and Jersey All Pro Wrestling, that existed and were doing solid crowds for the venues they were running, but Ring of Honor brought all of those talents and even many of those promotions’ elements to one place, creating what could be described as the first super independent promotion. It's easy to forget in 2020 how desolate pro wrestling was in the wake of WWE absorbing ECW and WCW, leaving lots of wrestlers scrambling for ever-decreasing paydays as their careers came to an end and an entire generation of wrestlers who wanted to try and get to those promotions now having no endgame in sight.
Then came Ring of Honor, and everything was changed forever.
Like all promotions, Ring of Honor has seen the highs and lows and the audience that was there that night has lived through all of it. Ownership changes. Stars being born before their eyes. Scandals. Talents departing. Angles going awry. Championship glory. It went from a promotion owned to create videotapes to a promotion financially enabled by whatever hot Broadway ticket was being sold by the ticket broker who kept it going out of love to being owned by a massive TV entity. It went from fighting to fill 400 to filling Madison Square Garden to fighting to fill houses again.
From Abdullah the Butcher to the Young Bucks, fans have seen it all, and today is a day where fans have been looking back. There are a lot of people recounting favorite Ring of Honor matches (Paul London vs. Bryan Danielson at Epic Encounter for yours truly), favorite stars, favorite venues and even looking back at the What Ifs that could have happened if talents like CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Kevin Steen, Cesaro, Adam Cole and others had remained with the company instead of moving on to other places.
Indeed, Ring of Honor, in its 18 years (and counting) of existence has become a place where wrestlers go to become stars before landing elsewhere to become globally known stars. That is Ring of Honor’s blessing and its curse, if we are going to be honest. For every Nigel McGuinness vs. Austin Aries or Bryan Danielson vs. Tyler Black classic that is celebrated, there’s always going to be a knowledge that many of these great memories were forged because those talents were looking for the next great payday elsewhere.
However, I think the unspoken legacy of Ring of Honor is that it was the first root of that giant oak that professional wrestling has become over the last 18 years. Think about this:
*Had Gabe Sapolsky not been dragged kicking and screaming into booking Ring of Honor, how many talents working Wrestlemania this year would have found the same path to WWE?
*Had Sapolsky not been fired from ROH, would EVOLVE and WWN’s family of promotions have been founded? Would Dragon Gate USA have been a thing? Would Sapolsky found himself working for WWE?
*Would SHIMMER have been formed by Dave Prazak and would Allison Danger have been so intimately involved if it hadn’t been for the early buzz and success of ROH, and if not, what would the state of the women’s professional industry look like today without that stage for everyone from Becky Lynch to Paige and beyond to have helped find themselves?
*Does Wrestlemania weekend become the Woodstock of pro wrestling if ROH doesn’t decide to start running the night before Mania itself? Certainly there would have been shows, but the entire Mania experience exploding into the madness that it is today…there’s no way it would have happened in the same manner.
*While they undoubtedly would have had their AXS TV series, would New Japan Pro Wrestling have had the evidence their talents would draw and would become stars in the United States had it not been for their talent agreement with Ring of Honor? It wasn’t all that long ago that a tour with Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kenny Omega, Prince Devitt, Jushin Liger, etc. didn’t do all that well financially when co-run by Jersey All Pro – ROH provided a platform and a foundation for the current NJPW expansion, so does it happen without Ring of Honor existing? Not in the same manner, I am sure.
*Without ROH signing Cody and working with NJPW, does Bullet Club morph into the Elite? Does Tony Khan see the level of performers that are out there and move forward with building All Elite Wrestling? Does pro wrestling return to TNT if Ring of Honor isn’t there to help pro wrestling forge itself forward?
*Does WWE NXT, stacked with a bevy of former Ring of Honor talent over the course of its existence find those same talents and use them to stockpile the Performance Center? Does the in-ring style of NXT even exist without all those years of ROH tapes and DVDs making their way around the pro wrestling universe? What would have been the next style for professional wrestling if it had not been for ROH pushing the athletic, sports of pro wrestling, which gave way to highspots galore and near falls aplenty? What would Tommaso Ciampa vs. Adam Cole on Takeover: Portland had looked like had professional wrestling's trajectory not been nudged in that direction, slowly, but surely, gaining momentum over time, with the formation of Ring of Honor?
Where would pro wrestling be today had ROH never booked the Murphy Rec Center? I don't know.
Perhaps everything would have happened as it did with CZW (which has its own legacy of spots and style that has been taken by others) or another promotion, but what if Ring of Honor isn’t formed as a way to replace the old ECW video tape market? What if they don’t given talents from Florida, Chicago, Philly, New York and New Jersey a place to intersect all at once? What if Ring of Honor doesn’t change the trajectory?
I don’t know what the answers would be – but I know this, there are a hell of a lot of professional wrestling fans getting to enjoy alternative professional wrestling today – on live cable, on Internet PPV, from Japan, even on WWE’s dime, and it wouldn’t exist, as it does today, for better or worse, had Ring of Honor not run their first show on February 23, 2002.
Happy birthday ROH and sincerely, thanks for all the gifts you have given pro wrestling in your wake.
That is the true legacy of honor.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
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