On Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 8:58 PM EST
Around the Town #11: Honor Unraveled: Is ROH on its Last Legs?
October 29, 2008
By: Hunter Golden of WrestleView.com
For those of you who have been sleeping under a rock the past few days, Ring of Honor booker Gabe Sapolsky has been dismissed from the company and replaced with Adam Pearce. In a promotion founded on and even mired in continuous change, it was inevitable that the axe would fall on Sapolsky's neck sooner or later. Even the most ardent ROH optimist would probably admit that.
But the cold, harsh reality of it all is that it might have come too late. For both Gabe Sapolsky and for Ring of Honor, which has seemingly and suddenly self-destructed in the most spectacular of fashions.
Of all places to quote one of the greatest spiritual icons of modern mankind, maybe a wrestling column of all places would be the last place you'd expect it, but low and behold, Gandhi's intellectual muscle knows no bounds.
“Everyone is capable of becoming what they hate”
Without a doubt, the very concept of Ring of Honor is entirely Gabe Sapolskly's. Born out of a reaction to the McMahon monopoly on the wrestling world, Ring of Honor sought to take wrestling away from fads, trashy imagery and pop culture, and instead restore it to it's purest form. In the process, it may have become it's own wrestling sub culture that was every bit as pop-culture-ish and trendy as anything on television. Maybe even a little trashy, too.
Thanks to Rob Feinstein being friends with Dave Meltzer, the promotion was able to promote itself right off the bat. Feinstein was a part time share holder in the company while Meltzer is the owner of the largest wrestling newsletter in the world. With a strong place to produce tapes and a widely read dirt sheet to promote it, getting the word out was easy.
But delivering a strong product was a task in and of itself. Sapolsky should be given credit for that much at least. Sapolsky booked a hybrid, if not down right bastardized version of 1990s All Japan mixed in with a whole Lotta Crockett circa 1986. Some said it was New Japan Juniors bred with ECW. Champions held onto their belts. Heck, they even toured. There was a strong pecking order. There was even a ranking system. Tournaments were held. ROH had Crockett-like colorful, but not over the top characters who wrestled a hard nosed, stiff sporty-driven All Japan style.
Compared to Billy N Chuck's civil union, Triple H humping a corpse and a past his prime Scott Steiner falling off a ring apron in the WWE, ROH seemed like a pretty awesome alternative. And for a few years, it was just that.
Super talented young wrestlers like Samoa Joe, Bryan Danielson, CM Punk and Homicide arrived, feuded and worked their tails off. People took notice. Some even consider the Joe-Punk series some of the best wrestling they've ever seen. Generation Next formed, swarmed and stormed the mid card. Up and comers like Jimmy Jacobs, Jimmy Rave, Nigel McGuiness and Colt Cabana were all making headway. All the while, it was being balanced by unspectacular, but solid veteran talents like Steve Corino, Raven, James Gibson and Christopher Daniels.
Whenever a storm appeared, ROH seemed to be able to not only weather it, but come out the better for having gone through it. Pedophile-gate threated to totally tank the company amidst allegations that Rob Feinstein was shopping child pornography. With the promotion on the brink, Sapolsky was able to keep the ship sailing steadily forward, confident in his creation's resilience.
Top stars like Paul London, AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels all went to TNA or WWE, but the promotion was able to not only replace them, but find guys to surpass them. Even the story lines were great. CM Punk-Raven, Joe v. The Rotweillers, Colt Cabana v. Homicide, Punk-Rave, The whole Summer of Punk in 2005... all of them were fun, traditional yet edgy programs.
Through it's high quality and grass roots resilience, ROH became the talk of the town for a little while. They managed to turn enough heads that Kenta Kobashi, as Austin or Hogan-ish as a Japanese guy could be, decided it'd be worth it to fly across the Pacific and an entire continent to wrestle Samoa Joe in the ballroom of a run down hotel a few blocks from (not in) Madison Square Garden. It was something else.
And Gabe Sapolsky had a ton to do with it all. Sapolsky's stock as a talent began to rise rapidly. Dave Meltzer even named him 'booker of the year' not once, twice, or even three times. He did it a whopping four times in a row. Fans heaped praise on him. He was invited to do 'guest booker' segments. He became an act unto himself.
Others though, were skeptical of the talents of a man who himself had never really done anything other than shill programs at ECW events. After all, Paul Heyman claimed that he didn't really know him all that well. Many wondered whether he really knew how to properly run the business end of things. They even wondered if he had any idea as to what he was even booking.
After all, The best stuff like CZW vs ROH was booked by the wrestlers (Hero & Danielson). His love for worked shoot angles paralleled even that of Vince Russo's (Who could forget the basis of the angle between Bryan Danielson and Roderick Strong over their trying to hurt each other in a fake pro wrestling match). He showed up on a Wrestling Radio show in kayfabe during the CZW v. ROH feud trying more worked shoot madness.. One message board member even said “ The excuse that blood rivals Samoa Joe and Low Ki are teaming up to 'honor Kenta Kobashi' might be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of in my entire life.”
To those on the fence, he was a guy who was a decent creative facilitator who b-s ed enough people into thinking he was taught by Heyman (whose style was wildly popular at the time), and merely injected continuity back into wrestling story lines. Thanks largely to the total lack of such continuity in other companies' stories, Sapolsky got over as a talented booker, but in reality was just feeding people one thing that they really wanted, and that was for us to act like the world and each other existed. To these people, he probably received more credit than he deserved, but certainly was a good thing in the wrestling world.
Regardless of the general opinion of Sapolsky, at the close of 2005, it was hard for anyone to consider ROH even a remote failure. 2006 however, brought with it much change not just for the company, but perhaps in Gabe Sapolsky himself.
On the company level, the turn over on the roster was massive. Samoa Joe wasn't full time and was quickly on his way to 'no time'. CM Punk signed with the WWE in late 2005 and he was gone. James Gibson re-signed with the big company, too, and also left. Christopher Daniels left. The landscape was becoming increasingly more erratic.
The style went from being strongly competitive to mildly disturbing. Matches were being promoted on the basis of lost teeth and broken bones. In one of the events, BJ Whitmer was even shot with a staple gun. Worked shoots became more common place, and were frequently employed throughout the CZW-ROH feud. Things seemed more on the fly and despite the new pretty light fixtures and cooler looking entrance ramp, it seemed more unprofessional as well.
Perhaps that's because the Captain of the Ship was becoming more of a Drunken Sailor. On His own ale no less.
In one of his less professional moments, he went off on New Jersey Pro Wrestling on his company's own message board, of all places, in absolute rage that the smaller fed would ask his ROH Champion to job to theirs."
Other unprofessional incidents including comments likening WWE wrestlers to being drug users were also well documented in NY Newsday in the wake of the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide. “WWE does not represent the entire industry, just because someone is a professional wrestler doesn't automatically put them in this category that they're going to be a drug user." Sapolsky said.
Not only were these cracks showing in Gabe's overall 'public' demeanor, but in his work as well. In all reality, playing the 'super Indy' balancing act was proving to be a daunting task.
In newer markets, he was constantly switching venues. In Connecticut alone, he ran five venues in the span of three years. After a post event scuffle where CM Punk chased a fan out of the arena for throwing a bottle of root beer at him, it appeared they had enough of Ring of Honor. Then in East Windsor, there was the issue with the local fire department over there not being enough exists from the small all-purpose dome ROH was working, pushing the show outside under a tent where it rained so hard, that the roof sagged to the point where top rope moves were hard to pull off. Also, it was NOAH's first big night in the company. The Connecticut Expo Center and National Guard Armory would come and go as ROH venues before the show finally landed in Danbury, CT.
In Indy wrestling, there is, after all, a shelf life. Very few promotions are able to sustain the level of prominence achieved by ROH. ECW may be the greatest example.
What Killed Heyman's company was a perfect storm of not knowing their limitations as a promotion, an inability to change once a style or genre of story lines had run it's course; Knowing how to rebound once the big boom had subsided and lastly, Developing new acts that would keep fans tuned into the product.
Heading into 2007, three of ROH's 'four corners of heaven' (Joe, Punk, and Homicide) were gone and the in ring hopes of the promotion rested solely on the shoulders of one Bryan Danielson. Nigel McGuiness was lined up and summarily injected into one of those four big spots and has done an admirable job. But still, he hasn't been able to create the buzz that guys like Joe, Punk and Homicide were able to create. Truth be told, it's been an uphill battle for Nigel. His quest for the title and the reign of the champion before him, Takeshi Morishima, were poorly done to the extent that it amplified the issues that the Gabe Sapolsky/ROH style and the company's roster.
To be sure, Sapolsky has had standards for the World Title scenes, but perhaps standards that weren't all that great. His method did work for a few years, largely because he had some sensational talents to work with. Truth be told, they STILL have a lot of talented guys, but the only ones who're really capable of working the ROH main event style are Dragon and Nigel. Maybe Morishima, but it may be stretching it. It ran Mori's run rather thin to the point where he basically kept on facing them over and over again because there just weren't any other viable options. In the end, Nigel ended up with the strap.
One observation many readers of this site regularly make that WWE has been doing this weird thing of where a guy becomes #1 contender to a title, loses to the champ, but then keeps the contendership for some reason and keeps challenging for months on end before they finally win the belt. Think M Matt Hardy vs. MVP, Batista v. Edge, Edge v. Undertaker, Mysterio v. Edge, etc. In all reality, ROH has been doing the exact same thing, with Nigel vs. Morishima being perhaps the biggest offender
In many ways, it felt like an unspectacular Batista reign the WWE. Nigel was just the guy who got the belt because they kept putting him in that spot. Without Danielson, there are practically zero options for 'real' challengers. It exposed the roster not only as being sub par, but when Danielson and Nigel both fell to Morishima, yet still kept on getting title shots anyways, it re-enforced it. Now Nigel is champion and Dragon's the only real challenger.
Unless Ring of Honor can develop someone else as a legitimate challenger they're going to be in trouble. The problem is that ROH is trying to get people to fill in a certain mold and or style of what their perception of a main event wrestler should be rather than allowing for and creating something new and different.
To say the least, Gabe Sapolsky's creative genius, if it ever existed, seems to be completely and utterly tapped. Look in the ROH bank account however, and that's what's really beginning to run on empty and could potentially be the second foot in the proverbial grave.
For supposedly being a pupil of Paul Heyman, Sapolsky seemed to fall into exactly the same trap as his mentor. Not only was he horrible with money, he clearly had no idea as to how to control the growth of the company.
Ring of Honor is financed by Cary Silken, whose the majority owner in the company. About two years ago, the Ring of Honor brass decided to run pay per views. The hope of course, was that it would widen the fan base and expose the product to many more fans.
It was a great idea except for the fact that it seemed to all operate backwards. Instead of using house shows and television to build up to a pay per view, the ROH model operated in reverse. ROH hoped to sell itself as a live experience rather than just a wrestling product. The pay per views would be used for revenue, but more importantly, a catalyst to draw fans to their live events.
For a while, there were rumbles of ROH needing to run TV as well. However, against that advice, they decided that it wasn't needed. They briefly had a deal with WGTW out of Philadelphia, but paying for the time slot and producing it for Television wasn't worth it. With ROH being so dependent on DVD sales, it would have been counterproductive and thus to ROH, it was just another expense.
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However, TV, Pay Per View, both or neither, unless the action is there in the ring, attendance is going to fail. And it's begun to decrease and not just because of a down economy. Things got bad enough that several shows in Florida were canned altogether and moved to sometime next year, if they're even going to happen.
New York City and Chicago have drawn well, but other markets haven't. This weekend's show in Connecticut was another show where attendance failed to break 700. Several other markets have experienced otherwise stagnant attendance.
Sapolsky has tried bringing in new talent, but it hasn't stuck. Because of the lack of names on the card, ticket sales have dropped and worse yet, so have DVD sales. The growth had been capped.
Coupled with the enormous expense of bringing in big name Japanese wrestling stars with little name recognition in the states and overseas tours in larger venues, the cost of doing business under Sapolsky was becoming enormous. And to cap it all off, with costs sky rocketing, Sapolsky was beginning to cater his product to too specific a subset of wrestling fan. Costs were going up and growth potential was shrinking. Too much money was being spent, and too little was coming in.
In spite of it all, Tough times were nothing new to ROH. They'd been through them before. A great deal of the resilience of the company was due large in part to it's locker room, which had always believed in the product. That, too however, was beginning to change.
The relationship between Gabe Sapolsky and Cary Silkin was becoming more tenuous to the point where Silken was becoming more and more critical of Sapolsky's performance. Full blown confrontations were becoming more and more regular behind the scenes.
One ROH wrestler who requested anonymity described the scene backstage:
“Two months ago I told Gabe that he is going to be cut in due time. The writing was all over the wall. I was hearing all types of negative comments from Syd and Ross and there were many secret meetings in towns with Adam.” Said the wrestler.
“I also knew that Cary was getting more involved and really breaking Gabe's balls by always questioning him. Just last week there was a major blow up which at this time does not matter.”
With the company bleeding money and spinning it's wheels creatively, Owner Cary Silken knew it was time for a change. This past Saturday, he finally dropped the hammer.
Sapolsky was fired at Saturday night's show and promptly replaced with Adam Pearce. The move came as a shock to both the ROH fan base as well as wrestlers in the back. Word was that other ROH Management convinced Silkin to keep the company running, and to let Gabe Sapolsky go, and in the process make changes beyond the booking alone.
“What matters is Gabe was fired with no warning what so ever. I was backstage and I knew it was coming on Saturday when I saw Cary storm off into Syd's work area. Then the time bomb went off just hours later. Gabe was so in shock that when he was leaving I was scared to even go up to him.” said the ROH worker.
With that, the Gabe Sapolsky era in Ring of Honor was over. Whether that came as a shock to Sapolsky or not, might be up for debate. Fights between management and Sapolsky seemed to be common place.
“There has been so many behind the scenes problems in the last 6 months that its own booker went looking to work for the WWE and that was not by choice. I know Gabe very well and he has always been outspoken on his problems with the office staff who just did not understand the wrestling business” Explain the ROH wrestler. “Gabe was not a easy person to get along with. He was a very paranoid person from day one in the company. In Illinois there were many fights in hotels between the office staff that if any of the other boys would have heard we would have all been looking for work else where”
Reactions to the decision to hire Pearce were immediately challenged by much of the talent in the back, particularly after an email from Pearce on Monday which outlined many of the booking and style changes that would be coming with him.
“Now this is not 1986 and Adam is not Dusty Rhodes but this is never going to work. ROH is a Indy company and nobody in that locker room is going to take orders from another wrestler that has no track record. “ said the wrestler. “Adam sent a email out to the entire staff yesterday and asked us to Kayfabe he was the booker. I almost spit my water out of my mouth. This thing is doomed to fail. You can't be a booker and than book yourself into the top heel spot. Like I said if this was a Terry Funk or a Dusty Rhodes things would be smooth sailing but Adam can't just come into our locker room and take over the ship. He is just a Indy worker, who is a great old time heel. But that heat will never work in ROH.”
Card budgets need to be cut. Towns need to be booked to run at a profit regardless of draw even if it means reducing pay to some talent or reducing the number of wrestlers booked per show, particularly fly-ins.
However, the most daunting task may be on the part of management to keep a combative and angry locker room from flying off the reservation all together.
“As a wrestler, how can you trust ROH? I mentioned Sapolsky. This is the man that built Ring of Honor. These are three men who put their livelihoods on the line for ROH. And now? All have been stabbed in the back & fired from Ring of Honor. The wrestling business will eat you up.” expressed the wrestler.
Ring of Honor now faces it's strongest challenge yet. It's almost as if it's starting from scratch all over again. They have a fan base to win over, a locker room to restore trust with and a check book that's in dire need of balance.
Changes at Ring of Honor are definitely needed, but is it realistic to expect that they CAN change?All the good in ROH, IS Gabe Sapolsky but unfortunately, so is all the bad. It appears that what Gabe worked so tirelessly to avoid, he became.
He ran angles that catered to too specific of a fan demographic that hurt the growth potential of the company as a whole. He failed to learn the lessons of his supposed tutor Paul Heyman in his inability to control his own monster. He failed to manage finances just as Heyman did. He failed, as most all Indy promoters do, to prepare for the inevitable down turn. He became caught up in trashy angles like women being stabbed with knitting needles. This past weekend Chris Hero was greeted with a loud 'You F--- Pigs' chant. Only of course, to be topped by 'You still F--- Pigs'. Sapolsky set a double standard for himself, the fan base and his promotion that might not be able to be reset.
Fundamentally, the reaction that triggered a group like Ring of Honor's rise to prominence was the belief that Vince McMahon took pro wrestling, something that was not 'his' and attempted to make it so. The very force that brought ROH and Gabe Sapolsky into the spotlight, is threatening to destroy it.
There will be no quick fix, but if the bleeding can be stopped, Cary Silkin & ROH can survive. In the next few months, we'll find out. What has been discovered however, is that Gabe Sapolsky never quite understood what made ROH great .