By Dr. Wrestling on Saturday, March 22 2008

This week for That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It I'll be telling you what I think of the evolution of Ring Of Honor.

The past year has seen the evolution of Ring Of Honor and to their credit they have managed to survive despite almost all their original stars being signed to either WWE or TNA contracts, which resulted in many of those stars leaving the company. You could start to see the change of direction when Homicide, who was pushed for six months to eventually win the title was defeated in February 2007 by NOAH wrestler, Morashima. After the major push Homicide was ROH world champion less then two months and few people knew anything about Morashima. I said it during Morashima's title reign and I will say it now, Morashima was not on the same level in terms of in ring ability as past ROH champions. It seems like ROH booker, Gabe Sapolsiky or ROH management had the smart mark theory that "if he's a wrestler from Japan he must be a good wrestler" but that's not always the case and Morashima is an example that just being from Japan doesn't make a wrestler a legitimate champion. I've seen a decent amount of Morashima's matches during his time in ROH and I have to say, I only consider one of those matches to be a great match, which was against Byran Danieslson at the "Man Up" PPV. The other Morashima matches and his title reign overall very average at best. The reason I say this is because his matches had an unsteady pace and his style was somewhat sloppy in the ring. I also don't think it was a wise decision for ROH to showcase Morashima as the world champion for the majority of the PPVS because it doesn't really do anything to help ROH in the future. I say this because ROH built Morashima up on PPV but after he lost the title to Nigel McGuinness he only wrestled a few matches and at this point is back wrestling in NOAH in Japan. The bottom line being Morashima's title run has to be seen as one of the less successful title runs in ROH history and he didn't do much to help ROH.

If this column is hard to follow I apologize but I'd like to go back to March 2007 to ROH's next step of evolution. Many wrestling fans were shocked when Samoa Joe announced that he would be leaving the company and made his final appearances in ROH. It's obvious that it was a major shot to the company because without Samoa Joe having the epic title run that he did, Ring Of Honor might not be the top independent company that it is today. Joe had what was probably the most important title reign in the last decade and he brought credibility to the ROH championship when he held the title for almost two years. Joe's series of matches with CM Punk have been compared to the Flair/Steamboat series in the NWA, which is a credit to how good both wrestlers are in the ring. The list of Joe's accomplishments and contributions to ROH is something that helped bring the company notoriety but ROH also helped Joe advance his career because his accomplishments in ROH is what gave him a chance to sign with TNA. Joe wasn't the only one to leave in March 2007 though as Christopher Daniels and Homicide also left the company because of being signed to a TNA contract. Daniels and Homicide had both been wrestling in ROH since the beginning of the company and even though they didn't have farewell matches they still had a major impact on the history of the company. Colt Cabana and Matt Sydal also left the company because they were both signed to WWE developmental contracts so there were many other stars that left the company during the middle of last year.

Following many of the original stars leaving the company, ROH announced they signed a PPV deal and over the next few months they tried to established new stars. Nigel McGuniess defeated Morashima in to win the Ring Of Honor World championship but injuries, including a partially torn bicep kept Nigel from defending the title at some of ROH's major shows, which lead to some resentment from the fans. Recently, Nigel has turned heel, which is a wise move considering that some fans were booing him anyway and I think it could help his title reign. As far as the future of ROH I think they need to use their stars better and it will improve the shows.

Until next week
That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It
Dr. Wrestling

If you have comments or questions e mail me drwrestlingallpro@yahoo.com