Eric Bischoff has dismissed Ring of Honor as a “insignificant, off-the-radar, unknown brand.”
Back in May, Tony Khan purchased Ring of Honor and the promotion’s extensive video library. With the acquisition the wrestling world was buzzing at the prospect of the brand being reborn with significant backing, paving the way for a number of dream matches in the process.
However, the reality has fallen some way short of those expectations. The promotion is yet to secure a television/streaming deal, and it’s titles and some of it’s stars have been integrated into AEW programming.
Speaking on an episode of his Strictly Business podcast, Eric Bischoff has questioned the logic of the purchase by the AEW President. Bischoff stated that Ring of Honor was essentially “insignificant,” drawing only a very small die-hard audience before it was bought by Khan.
“How many YouTube viewers did Ring of Honor get before they were purchased? You’re talking about tens of thousands, maybe? It was an insignificant, off-the-radar, unknown brand, with the exception of the most active of the internet wrestling community who sought it out,”
Continuing on, Bischoff also questioned Khan’s desire to own ROH’s video library given that so much of it is “poorly produced” and was worth “almost nothing.”
“The library was worth almost nothing. A lot of that library is so poorly produced it doesn’t lend itself to a premium streaming platform.”
Ring of Honor was created back in 2002 and quickly earned a cult following among fans in search of something different to WWE, which was dominating the wrestling landscape. Over the years the promotion has been home to some of the best wrestlers in the world such as CM Punk, AJ Styles, Bryan Danielson while the likes of Cody Rhodes, the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega all appeared under the ROH banner.
In late 2021 it was announced that Ring of Honor would be going on an extended hiatus with the aim of relaunching again in 2022. The first event following the break took place on April 1st, before Khan purchased the brand a month later.
H/t to SEScoops for the transcription.