What’s the story?
Pro Wrestling Sheet dropped a bomb earlier in the week by reporting that WWE has been in talks to buy Ring of Honor. The report said that talks have been going on since early in the year. CBSSports.com reported on March 24th that two people with direct knowledge of the situation said there would not be a sale.
There have been reports of WWE reaching out to ROH being more about buying their tape library. Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter said the following about the situation:
There is no telling if a deal will be made, but what they are negotiating is to get tapes and get rid of competition.
In case you didn’t know...
The WWE did a large-scale buyout of rival WCW in 2001. This was announced on Monday Night Raw by Vince McMahon, but it was revealed at the end of the show that his son Shane swooped in and finalised the transaction before Vince could. This would be the beginning of the Invasion story angle.
The heart of the matter
Unlike the buyout of WCW, the Pro Wrestling Sheet report stated that the WWE would allow ROH to continue to function and their weekly television show would appear on the WWE Network. Quite similar to when WWE had two developmental territories in Ohio Valley Wrestling and Deep South Wrestling.
Also read: WWE buying Ring of Honor would kill off the promotion
According to the CBSSports.com report, a high-ranking source has stated that “there is no story here.” The COO of ROH, Joe Koff, made the same denial by saying
“No. No, no, no. It’s very flattering and humbling to us. It validates what we’ve done. But let’s face it, a lot of their current competitors are ROH guys, and we have their history. So maybe the content of the backstories of Kevin Steen before he became Kevin Owens or AJ Styles’ run in Ring of Honor. Tyler Black, Claudio (Castagnoli aka Cesaro), Tyler Black (aka Seth Rollins). We have their backstory and where it began
He seems to indicate that a licensing deal; however, could be in the works.
What’s next?
Big weekends are in store for both WWE and ROH next week. Ring Of Honor will hold their annual Supercard of Honor show, and air it on pay per view for the first time on April 1st. The WWE has their big WrestleMania weekend featuring the Hall Of Fame, NXT: Takeover Orlando, and WrestleMania.
Sportskeeda’s Take
Of course, the ROH officials have to deny the statements as any discussion of it publicly could have negative consequences. This is going to be very interesting to follow in the coming weeks.
The addition of ROH to WWE would be tremendous as long as they don’t try to re-brand it like they did with ECW. The odds of keeping the integrity of ROH would be pretty high with Triple H in control as one can assume that Vince wouldn’t be as hands on, just like with NXT.
So many of ROH’s past stars are in the current main event scene like Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, and AJ Styles. There are also past WWE stars that had a significant role in ROH such as CM Punk and Daniel Bryan. This buyout would open up a world of possibilities.
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