Adam Cole Should Never Have Lost The ROH Title

[cero2k]

Source: http://savagescondoonthemoon.blogspot.c ... t-roh.html

When it happened I questioned if it was the right move and looking back on it 3 months of so later it seems even clearer. Adam Cole should still be the Ring of Honor Champion. Ring of Honor wanted that feel good moment at the end of their first live pay-per-view. It makes sense with hopefully some new people watching the product. In theory, Michael Elgin was the right choice to be that guy as well.

In reality Adam Cole outside of his ‘heel character” he is an engaging and great guy to put out there to promote your product. Far more so than Michael Elgin or Jay Briscoe could be in that regard. Adam Cole is a guy that clearly has some gifts that make you see him as a next level guy with the WWE someday. If you’re a company like ROH, why not take advantage of every single day you have this guy under contract.

The company also was aware their overall top draw Kevin Steen was leaving for WWE developmental as well. So if you can’t draw people with your biggest babyface than why not go with the top heel that fans want to see get his butt kicked?

No one could have seen the issues Elgin would have with working in the United States. There seems to be some debate on if ROH knew this fact before they decided to change the title. ROH after having a successful 6 months to start 2014 things seemed to lose momentum after Elgin winning the title on pay-per-view. The follow-up overall by the company after the debut on pay-per-view was disappointing. Elgin himself did not gain any momentum even with having a number of title defences in short succession. Sometimes in wrestling, fans are more invested in the chase to get a championship and this seems to be one of those cases.

After setting some attendance highs in various markets, it seems like attendance dropped since Elgin became Champion and after Kevin Steen’s tour leaving the company. It’s not all doom and gloom as Sinclair the owner of the company has stuck a syndication to get ROH television in 2.4 million homes in Atlanta. A sign that we could see Ring of Honor make moves to get into several major markets they are not.

Given everything why not have Adam Cole hold the title until December and have him drop it at Final Battle as his contract with the company will be coming due. Adam Cole is still putting on great matches as he showed with his recent contest with A.J Styles in Toronto. It was a better match than the stunning title match in which Jay Briscoe won the title from Michael Elgin.

Adam Cole has also been working with Michael Bennett, Maria Kanellis and occasionally Matt Hardy in the “Kingdom” which has given him a new dynamic to use. Only a few people that book ROH know the answer but I feel if they had it to do all over again, Adam Cole would still be ROH Champion I believe. That ship has sailed though and Cole is likely going to be out of the title picture for the remainder of his contract in ROH. This is a shame as he was really coming into his own as the heel Champion of Ring of Honor.It was never going to be forever as Cole's heel character was suggesting near the end of his reign but it should have been longer.

What's done is done and ROH has to make the best of the situation with Jay Briscoe as champion.

[Big Red Machine]

Given everything why not have Adam Cole hold the title until December and have him drop it at Final Battle as his contract with the company will be coming due. Adam Cole is still putting on great matches as he showed with his recent contest with A.J Styles in Toronto. It was a better match than the stunning title match in which Jay Briscoe won the title from Michael Elgin.

I'll respond more to this in the morning when I'm more awake, but on EVERY OTHER SHOW since the title change, Elgin put on better matches.

[cero2k]

Given everything why not have Adam Cole hold the title until December and have him drop it at Final Battle as his contract with the company will be coming due. Adam Cole is still putting on great matches as he showed with his recent contest with A.J Styles in Toronto. It was a better match than the stunning title match in which Jay Briscoe won the title from Michael Elgin.

I'll respond more to this in the morning when I'm more awake, but on EVERY OTHER SHOW since the title change, Elgin put on better matches.

i don't think he's saying Elgin's were bad or worse than Cole, but that having Cole keep the title wouldn't have hurt the quality of matches. The only one he mentions wasn't as good was Briscoe/Elgin

[Big Red Machine]

I'll respond more to this in the morning when I'm more awake, but on EVERY OTHER SHOW since the title change, Elgin put on better matches.

i don't think he's saying Elgin's were bad or worse than Cole, but that having Cole keep the title wouldn't have hurt the quality of matches. The only one he mentions wasn't as good was Briscoe/Elgin

And Briscoe vs. Elgin was still awesome, IMO.

[Big Red Machine]

Source: http://savagescondoonthemoon.blogspot.c ... t-roh.html

When it happened I questioned if it was the right move and looking back on it 3 months of so later it seems even clearer. Adam Cole should still be the Ring of Honor Champion. Ring of Honor wanted that feel good moment at the end of their first live pay-per-view. It makes sense with hopefully some new people watching the product. In theory, Michael Elgin was the right choice to be that guy as well.

In reality Adam Cole outside of his ‘heel character” he is an engaging and great guy to put out there to promote your product. Far more so than Michael Elgin or Jay Briscoe could be in that regard. Adam Cole is a guy that clearly has some gifts that make you see him as a next level guy with the WWE someday. If you’re a company like ROH, why not take advantage of every single day you have this guy under contract.

The company also was aware their overall top draw Kevin Steen was leaving for WWE developmental as well. So if you can’t draw people with your biggest babyface than why not go with the top heel that fans want to see get his butt kicked?

No one could have seen the issues Elgin would have with working in the United States. There seems to be some debate on if ROH knew this fact before they decided to change the title. ROH after having a successful 6 months to start 2014 things seemed to lose momentum after Elgin winning the title on pay-per-view. The follow-up overall by the company after the debut on pay-per-view was disappointing. Elgin himself did not gain any momentum even with having a number of title defences in short succession. Sometimes in wrestling, fans are more invested in the chase to get a championship and this seems to be one of those cases.

After setting some attendance highs in various markets, it seems like attendance dropped since Elgin became Champion and after Kevin Steen’s tour leaving the company. It’s not all doom and gloom as Sinclair the owner of the company has stuck a syndication to get ROH television in 2.4 million homes in Atlanta. A sign that we could see Ring of Honor make moves to get into several major markets they are not.

Given everything why not have Adam Cole hold the title until December and have him drop it at Final Battle as his contract with the company will be coming due. Adam Cole is still putting on great matches as he showed with his recent contest with A.J Styles in Toronto. It was a better match than the stunning title match in which Jay Briscoe won the title from Michael Elgin.

Adam Cole has also been working with Michael Bennett, Maria Kanellis and occasionally Matt Hardy in the “Kingdom” which has given him a new dynamic to use. Only a few people that book ROH know the answer but I feel if they had it to do all over again, Adam Cole would still be ROH Champion I believe. That ship has sailed though and Cole is likely going to be out of the title picture for the remainder of his contract in ROH. This is a shame as he was really coming into his own as the heel Champion of Ring of Honor.It was never going to be forever as Cole's heel character was suggesting near the end of his reign but it should have been longer.

What's done is done and ROH has to make the best of the situation with Jay Briscoe as champion.

A few things:
(1) Adam Cole had NO fresh opponents who were at world title level. If they werne't intent on putting the belt on Elgin at BITW, they probably could have saved his defense against Ciampa for Death Before Dishonor and did the same angle they did with Ciampa vs. Elgin, but that would still leave Cole no fresh opponent for FIVE MONTHS. Okay. Maybe Daniels (I don't think people really buy Kaz as a singles star- at least not without build, so at best, that's two). Any AJ match you do would have to be a draw because New Japan won't let him lose, and if you do a draw and then don't deliver a rematch, that's not good either. It's pretty clear that New Japan hasn't been sharing their booking plans with ROH, or else ROH wouldn't have done AJ vs. Elgin twice to build Elgin up, then gotten stuck giving it to us AGAIN a few weeks later in NYC instead of the big Elgin vs. Okada singles match that everyone wanted to see.

Elgin presented a bunch of fresh match-ups, and (2) was often having the best match on the card- especially during Cole's big streak of not delivering in main events (although, in hind-sight, that can be blamed on Hero and Taven... but then again, it's the champ's responsibility to pull the best out of someone- especially a guy like Taven who is/was on his way up the card).

(3) Over the past few years (since Gabe left, really), ROH has earned a bit of a reputation for not striking while the iron was still hot. They had guys keep losing title shots for too long before finally winning, and the fans stopped caring as much. They did it with Tyler Black, many fans thought they had done it with Adam Cole, and now Michael Elgin was quickly nearing that point. This was a time when ROH NEEDED to pull the trigger, and they did.

(4) The Kingdom stuff was annoying, and not in a good way. The religious iconography bothered some people, and made most others just roll their eyes. Bennett is a good talker, but people just don't want to see him. The big knock on him when they brought him in was he was a competent wrestler and a pretty good talker, but merely being a "competent" wrestler doesn't fly in ROH. He wasn't having ROH-quality matches, and in the past four years, that criticism has proven accurate. In four years, the ONLY Michael Bennett match I have given an 8/10 or higher to was his match with Steen at Final Battle, which was a gimmick match. Hardy, too, has been very disappointing in the ring. He, too, has only had ONE 8/10 or higher, and that was in a match that also featured Elgin, Cole, Hero, and the Briscoes. Putting Cole in a stable of guys that fans clearly don't want to see would only make them tire of him quicker.

(5) I would also dispute his claims about Cole's success. ROH did not have a successful first three months. The first three months were not very successful at all (at least in the ring. I don't know about financials, but I think that attendance at the Chicago show was a lot less than Chicago attendances of the past, and despite giving them a very stacked and very good show back in January, no return date has yet been announced for Pittsburgh, which is a stark contrast to a lot of the other markets that ROH has started running since the Sinclair deal like Columbus, Cincinnati, San Antonio, Milwaukee, Nashville, and Baltimore). A lot of the blame for the lack of ring-success falls squarely on the shoulders of Adam Cole, who delivered disappointing matches during all of his title defenses. Cole isn't solely to blame, as AJ Styles under-delivered in big matches with Jay Lethal and Chris Hero, and everyone hated the Outlaws Inc. vs. Steen & Compton feud, but for the most part, during those first few months of the year, Adam Cole was not having the matches people expected of him. Cole (and Jay Briscoe, while we're at it) often put on very disappointing performances, whether in singles matches or even in matches where the Briscoes teamed to face Cole and Bennett. Instead, the guys having the best matches were Michael Elgin, Cedric Alexander, ACH, reDRagon and Kevin Steen.
In the second quarter of the year, Cole definitely picked up his game (as did AJ), but a lot of the momentum can be attributed to the New Japan guys coming in. In Elgin's reign, all of the shows have been great, and despite the loss of Steen, the company definitely feels like it is gaining steam as it heads into Final Battle. To be fair, you could credit some of that momentum to Kaz and Daniels, but the fact remains that Elgin's title defenses (I haven't seen Field of Honor yet, but that's about it) have been of a fantastic quality.
I'm not sure where he is getting these figures that attendance has dropped during Elgin's reign, as both the Milwaukee and Hopkins shows had the best attendance ROH has ever had in those towns, whereas I believe that the attendance drop in Chicago (one of ROH's three biggest markets for years) started with Cole's reign.