I admittedly havent watched RoH consistently in about a year or so, so I just assumed it was chugging along fine as that number 2 promotion in America with indie darlings and still having solid matches and even when the Elite left I figured there was still enough good talent there it was doing fine plus they had the NJPW deal and helped with All In etc
So to come to find out people hate and say its worst than TNA when it was coming apart and all this other stuff has me
ROH is stale guy. ROH aren't #2 because of the product they put out. People are frustrated by the fact that Delirious is not creative he's a status quo maintaining wave rider who Joe Koff loves for whatever reason. He's the luckiest man in wrestling. If you sit and really break down the reasons for ROH's ascent and the wave they've been on the last few years it has very little to do with Delirious. It all boils down to:
- Sinclair buying ROH thanks to Jim Cornette.
- New Japan and subsequently the Bullet Club catching fire.
- TNA imploding.
ROH isn't really the place for indie darlings anymore, except for the AEW guys, guys with indie buzz get fast tracked to WWE via NXT and their satellite promotions. You'd be better off catching a PWG show or watching Impact. Delirious' roster construction strategy for the last few years seems to be a combination of:
- Signing guys who pay to go through their tryouts.
- Signing the white guys signed to New Japan.
So the roster is stale. A noticeable chunk is dead weight. He's done an awful job of replacing the guys who've left. ReDRagon pretty much filled the American Wolves' void before they left but beyond that the guys who've been brought in to ROH have been vastly inferior to the guys who've left throughout the last 6 years Delirious has had the reins. There's no upward mobility for guys. Characters aren't developed, their motivations aren't articulated. Guys are just wrestling putting on 5-8/10 matches for the sake of it in front of lukewarm audiences. You have guys on the roster for years who haven't gotten anywhere. He has absolutely no idea what to do with the women either. His booking strategy essentially consists of:
- Booking New Japan guys for all of their big shows and promoting NJPW.
- Using NJPW guys as transitional champions.
- Recycling pushes for the same guys.
- Having guys wrestle in essentially meaningless exhibitions hoping that NJPW take a liking to them, book them and get them over with the internet marks.
- Letting The Elite/Bullet Club create storylines via Being the Elite (and he can't do that anymore)
ROH TV under Sinclair has always hovered between mediocre (boring) and decent. ROH has partnerships with New Japan and CMLL and the idea he takes from that is a 6 man tag team championship. Jonathan Gresham should be the gatekeeper for a Jr Heavyweight/Cruiserweight division. They're probably the only company of the big 3 whose core audience would really buy into that sort of division instead he's wrestling just to wrestle in matches that seemingly don't have any bearing on the trajectory of his career. It's not just Gresham too he's just an example. Current ROH is a product where the characters aren't strong enough for people to care about and the matches aren't at a consistently excellent level in order for them to be the hook. It's just there riding Sinclair and New Japan hoping neither one of them drops it.
the Tama Tonga TSC heel turn has arrived
Seriously, people shyt on Impact but holy hell ROH just does shyt to piss people off on purpose and not by accident.
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