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Missy's Manor: Thoughts On The ROH Business/Booking Model

Posted: Jul 10th 2013 By: CMBurnham

The ROH television show is available in my market on Saturday night at 11PM. It haves no appeal in my opinion outside of the internet bubble and only appeals to the most hardcore fan that will watch anything. The booking is generally solid, but the biggest problem is no personalities. I understand for budgetary reasons that they have to make chicken salad out of chicken shit with their roster and whatever talent is left on the indy market. The problem is few of their wrestlers have genuine personalities and they come across as bland. There is a difference when you have a dynamic personality that can click [ex. Jay Briscoe] to anybody that is open minded in trying the promotion out. At the same time, the majority of their managers are campy at best, especially when you compare them to the hey day of managers. It?s even worst that the campy manager is a better promo then the wrestler. The evil heel faction is a tiresome angle, which makes the promotion resemble a copy cat promotion.

When you have few wrestlers with genuine personalities, it?s so much harder for any booker to create story lines. Even Jim Cornette hit the wall and he did wonders in OVW. Unfortunately people gloss over Corny?s track record when they are bashing him to the point that they are making him in to this generation of Ole Anderson. Don?t get me wrong, Corny is not perfect.

No wrestling show in the U.S. will appeal to the masses with nothing to offer but wrestling matches. Some of their wrestlers can only hit moves, pop up, and just keep hitting spots with no selling. It looks visually entertaining, but does it draw people to be emotionally invested in to the product? I?m going to say no, since their attendance never increased in their core cities. Spot fest wrestling haves never worked in the long run. Especially when the ROH audience haves been educated to the style that they expect to be presented to them.

The people from my generation usually dismiss the ROH style, since some of them have lengthy walk thrus in their matches. They are more interested in running thru a million spots rather then interact with the crowd, tell emotion with body language and facials.

It seems like the ROH audience wants to be in their own little bubble and they will openly shit on somebody if they are perceived as too mainstream [ex. Matt Hardy].
Familiar wrestlers with television exposure are necessary if you want the casual person to sample a new product.

If you ever talked with Payl Heyman on what he wanted ECW to later be in 2001, he wanted it to be a little bit closer to UFC. ROH tried that approach. Here?s the problem with that approach. If you don?t have wrestlers without personalities, personal issues, and a compelling chase for the title, the product comes across as low rent MMA [generic guys fighting on a show with crappy production values, which is available on the lower tier sports channels].
I?m not being bitter in anyway. I see countless plugs for ROH & DGUSA. DGUSA ran in Florida and they barely drew 150 fans each night for a three day swing. You can throw in DVD sales, IPPV streams, etc. Everybody fails to understand that there are not enough internet hard cores to make these business models profitable. When I worked on indy shows, a few recognizable names on the advertising was necessary. There is no reason in which a ROH show with Matt Hardy if properly advertised could not do decent indy business. At the same time, there is not enough fans to justify the expenses of ROH that have fallen in to the original ECW crux of ?being too big to small & too small to be big?. Shows in Texas required plane tickets, hotel rooms, & higher costs by running outside their home base can not be money makers.

The point to my ramblings is that some of these internet darling promotions have to broaden their appeal to the casual fan. Instead they are stuck in the mindset that they are happy to continue to cater to the same fans that are finicky at best and not supporting every revenue stream to make these promotions work.

My opinion is ROH will be around if Sinclair thinks producing the television show in a viable option in order to have original television content. I can?t see why Sinclair is burning money with money losing house shows. The whole DGUSA business model to me is a vanity money mark promotion.