Year in Review 2013: ROH

[Big Red Machine]

The year 2013 was a decent year for Ring of Honor. They’ve certainly had better, but they’ve had worse, too. Depending on how lenient you are towards the early days of the promotion, this might have actually been towards the bottom of ROH’s ROH’s now twelve years of existence. It is certainly in the bottom three or four since the promotion really hit its stride in 2004, but it really wasn’t a bad year, and that fact will make it one of the most important years in ROH’s history.

To understand the year 2013 in ROH, we first need to understand the year 2012 in ROH. 2012 was ROH’s worst year ever. Jim Cornette had tried to turn the clock back twenty-five years and turn a 2000’s northeast and Midwest indy into a 1980’s southern-style promotion, bringing in mediocre-at-best talent like Mike Mondo, Q.T. Marshall, and Totally Awesome. He also brought in the Headbangers. Yes, those Headbangers. In 2012. Matches that were not the main event were rarely allowed to deliver, and as a result, the shows felt like they weren’t as good as they could have been… that they weren’t as good as they would have been under Gabe or Pearce or Delirious. It had become, as Austin Aries sardonically called it in an interview, “Smokey Mountain of Honor.” And it was failing miserably.

The stretch of shows from mid-May's The Battle of Richmond to Killer Instinct in early October was, with the exception of The Best in the World 2012, probably the worst string of shows in ROH history. It was like Gabe's infamous "slump" between Glory By Honor V: Night 2 and Final Battle 2006, except without awesome main events turning terrible shows into okay ones and without anything interesting going on. Their cross-promotional angle with CHIKARA led to almost nothing, the promotion's iPPVs were plagued by problems, and popular stars El Generico and the Young Bucks had left the company.

When Jim Cornette was replaced as booker by Delirious in October, things immediately started to look up. Delirious' first show, Glory By Honor XI, was awesome (though most of the card was already in place by the time he officially took over), and went off without a hitch. The TV tapings the next month were full of great matches, but were apparently a miserable experience for the fans and the wrestlers at the arena, due to the freezing temperatures; The last show of the year, Final Battle 2012, was another great show which also had no iPPV problems at all. Heading into 2013, most fans had an attitude of cautious optimism.

The first two shows of 2013, The Hunt For Gold and Defy or Deny II were big hits. In addition to awesome main events, both shows also had an awesome match on the undercard. The last time an undercard match had really been allowed to deliver on a non-iPPV show was back at No Escape in 2011, the last show before Cornette really took over the reigns of power. The next show, Honor vs. Evil was mediocre, with a main event that most fans thought was disappointing, considering the talent involved. Under Cornette's reign, it would have been one of the best non-iPPV shows.

The excitement really ramped up for ROH's next show, the 11th Anniversary Show. The show was great, and had a bunch of major surprises on it. Charlie Haas and BJ Whitmer, who had been having a mediocre singles feud which had spun off of a mediocre tag team feud from the Cornette Era, had a No Disqualifications match that far exceeded everyone's expectations. Matt Taven's career was launched with a major upset victory over Adam Cole to win the ROH TV Title, and reDRagon, whose comedic douche-baggery would make them ROH's best act of 2013, captured the tag title from the Briscoes in a mild upset. But none of these surprises created anywhere near as much excitement as the show-closing angle.

After Kevin Steen defended his ROH World Title against Jay Lethal, Steen's SCUM stablemates, Jimmy Jacobs, Steve Corino, and Rhino hit the ring for a beatdown. As various babyfaces came out to make the save, SCUM's membership doubled when the returning Jimmy Rave and the debuting Cliff Compton both jumped the barricade to help them. Rhett Titus joined the stable by turning on his tag team partner BJ Whitmer, and Matt Hardy revealed himself to be a member of the stable as well. The show closed with the heels standing tall while Jimmy Jacobs repeatedly stabbed an ROH banner with his trademark railroad spike and Steve Corino announced the group's intention to destroy ROH. Everyone was buzzing about the angle, and ROH had managed to put on three straight iPPVs with no issues at all! Unfortunately, things started to go downhill from there.

The next day's TV tapings, which, like the 11th Anniversary Show, were held in Chicago, did not draw well. This would be a first in a series of four TV tapings held the day after an iPPV in the same venue as the iPPV that did not draw as well as expected. To make matters worse, these were in ROH's four biggest markets: New York, Chicago, Toronto, and Baltimore. The next show, War, in Asheville, NC, was a bad show that also saw Charlie Haas go nuts on the mic (including making fun of on-screen matchmaker and ROH legend Nigel McGuinness' retirement due to Hepatitis B), had a competitive match with a jobber whom he was supposed to squash, and announcing his own retirement, leaving ROH high and dry just one week before his scheduled grudge match with former longtime tag team partner Shelton Benjamin.

The next show was one of ROH's biggest of the year: Supercard of Honor VII, in their biggest market, during Wrestlemania weekend. The show was fantastic, with awesome matches between reDRagon and the American Wolves, Jay Lethal and Michael Elgin, and longtime ROH star Jay Briscoe ending Steen's reign as ROH World Champion, which was a big moment for the fans in attendance. Unfortunately, though, when that show goes down in the annals of wrestling history, only about seven minutes of it will really be remembered. The seven minutes we didn't get to see.

The iPPV stream had been working perfectly all night, and ROH seemed on their way to an unprecedented fourth straight iPPV with no problems, when, during the main event, just as Kevin Steen was about to turn babyface against SCUM, the stream went down. It came back, about seven minutes later, in time to show Jay Briscoe holding up the title, celebrating with his family, and being announced as the new ROH World Champion. We missed the turn, we missed the finish, but we got back just in time to have it all spoiled for us. Fans were furious, and matters were not helped by ROH claiming that a fixed version of the replay was available the next day when, in fact, the missing seven minutes during the replay were almost unwatchable because they were so choppy. By the time ROH got an acceptable replay up, they had not only undid all of the confidence the last three iPPVs had built up, but they had also hurt the fans faith that the corporate side of the company actually cared about them.

Already off to a poor start, the spring of 2013 would prove to be a very disappointing time for ROH. Japanese star Naomichi Marufuji was supposed to return to ROH for the first time since 2008 for big matches against Davey Richards and Michael Elgin: He got hurt. ROH booked Paul London as a replacement: London got hurt during the match with Richards, forcing the Elgin match to be cancelled. Jay Briscoe, the new champ, brought some negative mainstream attention on ROH when he expressed his unhappiness with a new law in his home state of Delaware by Tweeting that he would "f*cking shoot" anyone who tried to "teach [his] kids that there's nothing wrong with [same sex marriage]."

Unfortunately for Jay, his Twitter was not the only source of the fans' dissatisfaction. It is well known in wrestling that if your top angles are hot, fans will generally feel good about the product, even if the undercard is very weak. Conversely, no matter how strong your undercard is, if fans are not happy with your top angles, they will generally have a negative feeling about the product as a whole. The two top angles in ROH during the spring of 2013 were Jay defending his ROH World Title and the ROH vs. SCUM feud, and the fans were not happy with either of them.

With Jay, his title defenses simply weren't at the level that fans expected from the ROH World Champion. His two best defenses were also his two least-hyped title defenses, random defenses against Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards which were clearly intended to make the title reign look more impressive numerically. His iPPV match with emerging star Adam Cole at Border Wars 2013 was seen as a big disappointment, and his defense against BJ Whitmer was just not ROH World Title quality.

Despite the initial buzz about it at the 11th Anniversary Show, the new additions to SCUM really hurt the feud. Rave, the best of them in the ring, was quickly and quietly removed from the group after being hospitalized with seizures. Compton was dreadful in the ring, and Titus' match quality actually seemed to decline after he joined the group. Matt Hardy was also underachieving in the ring, but at least he was getting heat. Most of it, of course, was more for the crime of being Matt Hardy than from the angle, but you take what you can get. Rhino wasn't wowing anyone in the ring, either, and with only the Hardy vs. Steen part of the feud really working and Jacobs being the only guy in SCUM who was putting on good matches, ROH decided to pull the plug on the angle... but first, they wanted to milk it for what they could.

The Best in the World 2013 iPPV was built around two angles. The first was the SCUM vs. ROH feud. In addition to a Steen vs. hardy No Disqualifications match, SCUM members received shots at the two ROH undercard titles. Because the champions of both titles were heels, there were also ROH random babyfaces thrown into the matches so that the fans would have someone to cheer for. The matches were almost universally crapped on by fans, confirming that pulling the plug on the angle was a wise decision. The second angle was a Jay defending the ROH World Title against his brother and tag team partner Mark. Once again, and match was certainly great, but it wasn't the up to the standards that fans expected from an ROH World Title match or an ROH PPV main event. Exacerbating these two problems was the fact that the iPPV stream was so bad it was unwatchable, and despite an amazing match between Michael Elgin and Tommaso Ciampa, fans were once again very unhappy with an ROH iPPV.

Both Jay's title reign and the SCUM angle were ended at the next day's TV tapings. In the case of the SCUM angle, they ended it in a Steel Cage Warfare match was so good it almost seemed to justify the rest of the feud. Jay's title reign, on the other hand, was ended with yet another disappointing title defense, this one against Matt Hardy. Jay actually won the match, but SCUM badly injured his arm, forcing him to miss time.

Coming out of the tapings, we learned two major pieces of news. The first was that ROH would no longer be running iPPVs, and would instead focus on getting the on-demand stream (a well received venture they had started in January) of each show up as soon as possible. The second was that, for the first time in ROH history, the title would be vacated. While this was certainly big news, it was made even bigger by later reports that this had been the plan from the very beginning of Jay's title reign, and that it was possible that both Jay and Mark Briscoe would be taking some time off from ROH, and possibly never returning.

Fans were outraged at this. The unbroken lineage of the title was sacred, and the idea of throwing it away for no reason, especially when it would have been possible to have Jay come in for one more sow and lose the belt, couple with the SCUM feud debacle, caused some fans to wonder whether Delirious had lost touch with the fans or not. The spring of 2013 had had some bright spots (mostly Michael Elgin's singles matches, the return of Ciampa), but for the most part, it had been a major disappointment, and going into the summer, things seemed bleak.

The first ROH show of the summer was by far the strangest ROH show of all time: A Night of Hoopla. Hosted by Truth Martini, a cult leader/sex fiend and manager of ROH TV Champion Matt Taven, the show seemed to be trying to answer the question of "what would it be like if someone used professional wrestling as a medium to do a very rated R sex and comedy show?" The show featured, among other things, Michael Elgin doing the worm, Jay Lethal and Delirious reenacting Randy Savage vs. the Ultimate Warrior from Wresltemania VII, Silas Young getting felt up by a transvestite, and Davey Richards getting overly competitive in a "pants-off dance-off." The show was well-received by most fans, though, and the Hoopla Hotties took their pants off, so it can probably be categorized as a win.

Despite the positive reaction to A Night of Hoopla, it was clear that ROH really needed to step up its game if it was to restore the fan's faith, and during the summer of 2013 they did just that, putting on great show after great show, including strong debuts in two new markets, some great shows with Reclamation weekend and All-Star Extravaganza V, and a Show of the Year candidate in Manhattan Mayhem V. The two big angles were a hot-potatoing of the tag titles (which made for some great matches, but most fans did not like) and a sixteen person tournament to crown a new ROH World Champion, which was filled with great matches and culminated with an awesome final match at the equally awesome Death Before Dishonor XI. Adam Cole emerged as the World Champion and turned heel, with the show being booked in a way that perfectly set up both Michael Elgin, who had actually lost the tournament finals, and Jay Briscoe, who returned to the company to award the belt to the new champion, as challengers.

After a skippable show in Hopkins, MN to start off the fall, ROH resumed its course from the summer, putting on shows ranging from good to great, all leading up to Final Battle. If ROH had one weakness during this time, it was undercard angles. While angles such as Kevin Steen and Mike Bennett's feud over who had the best piledriver and Silas Young's feud with Mark Briscoe were entertaining, they very much felt like standard undercard fare that you could see in any company, rather than the great undercard angles ROH had been known for in the past. The promotion was being booked well and the shows were strong, but people just weren't excited about the product.

In fact, despite the strong shows the promotion was putting on, it seemed like most of the buzz surrounding ROH towards the end of 2013 was about who might be leaving the company. The American Wolves had a tryout in WWE that reportedly went very well. Roderick Strong had signed to make his debut for the rival Evolve promotion. ROH tried to create some positive buzz about who might be coming in to the promotion by bringing back Paul London, teasing that Adam Cole had an adviser who would show up at Final Battle, and announcing the 2014 Top Prospect Tournament, but all everyone seemed to be talking about was who was leaving the company. This was not helped by Davey Richards pretty much getting himself fired in an interview. ROH tried to capitalize off of this by teasing a mystery partner for Edwards to take Richards' place in their match at Final Battle, and this (combined with WWE's release of Chris Hero and the breakdown in negotiations between AJ Styles and TNA) finally managed to create some buzz for Final Battle.

Final Battle 2013 was a fantastic show. It was the best show of ROH's year, and its main event was the best match of ROH's year. Every match on the card delivered aside from the tag team title match (which would mark the end of Eddie Kingston and Homicide's disappointing return to the company). We saw a new heel stable formed and new TV Champion crowned, and while the return of the thought-to-be-retired-due-to-injury BJ Whitmer did disappoint fans who were hoping for Chris Hero or AJ Styles, and fans were not disappointed by the reveal that Cole's mentor was Matt Hardy, or by Hero's return at the end of the show, laying out both Cole and Hardy.

Coming off of an awesome Final Battle, ROH ended 2013 with possibly the biggest new of the year: AJ Styles would be returning to Ring of Honor. Between the return's of AJ, Hero, and London, Cole's heel turn, Jacobs, Whitmer, and Strong's fresh direction, C&C Wrestle Factory's amicable split, and the unfortunate departure of the American Wolves, ROH's roster feels fresher going into 2014 than it has in years, and that can only be a good thing.

2013 was a pretty good year for ROH business-wise, as well. Sinclair acquired many new TV stations to show ROH programming on, and ROH man more live events this year than they have in any year since 2009. They seem to have established some hot new markets in Columbus and Cincinnati, and firmly established their old market in Detroit. The loss of iPPV was a big blow to the company, but the video on demand service that they created has done a decent-enough job of replacing it. Even when they had the iPPV, the VOD service was great because it let fans see all of the live events to build up to the big shows before seeing the shows themselves. It makes keeping up with the product while staying relatively spoiler-free very easy, which is a big plus to many fans.

Overall, the quality of the in-ring product, the thing ROH is most famous for, was good this year., but there is a lot of room for improvement. I only gave on match from ROH a 9/10 or higher during the course of the entire year: the main event of Final Battle, to which I gave a 9. Every other year in ROH's history, even the early years and the very disappointing 2012, I have given at least two matches 9.25/10 or higher. They are not quite the ROH of 2005- early 2011 yet, but they are getting there, and that is what is important.

2013 was a year of recovery for ROH. They had to show us that 2012 was an anomaly. That ROH is back to being the place where every match gets a chance to shine. The place where every show has a match worth going out of your way to see. The place that does whatever it can to go out and get best up and coming independent talent and gives them opportunities to do big things. And they are definitely heading in that direction. 2013 wasn't even close to being one of ROH's best years, but in the long term, it will be seen as the year that got ROH back on track to being what it once was, and what it will become again: the best wrestling in the world.