My 2010 ROH Experience
By Kevin Kelly
I did something this year that I never thought I would do. I became an announcer for Ring of Honor and I will never be the same. My love for wrestling was reduced to YouTube memories of times when wrestling was good but now I can “live in the now”, proud of the wrestling product and completely jazzed about the future.
Here on Wrestlezone, I love to share my thoughts and opinions on the wrestling industry but I need to speak to the masses. Love it or hate it, the majority of wrestling fans only know WWE and former WWE names in TNA. Casual fans only know WWE. It’s like sports talk radio… if you do a national show, you have to talk Notre Dame, the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees. Kobe, LeBron and Brett Favre.
What moves the needle at WZ? Locker room dirt, Russo, the Hardy’s, Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon, etc… But it’s the Holiday week and I am taking one column for me.
On Wrestlezone, it’s tough to talk a lot of ROH because they are a little fish in a big pond. But the big pond for ROH is allowing for slow growth with a revised business model. Following the downturn in the DVD market, ROH couldn’t stack cards with the best Indy names available… wasn’t cost effective, travel budget was a nightmare. In 2009, the television partnership with HDNet and the return on Jim Cornette helped begin to facilitate changes the company needed to make to survive.
