Hold on to your steel chairs, wrestling fans, because the rumor mill is grinding harder than a wrestler on leg day! Last week, during a media call to hype up ROH Death Before Dishonor, AEW head honcho Tony Khan dropped a tantalizing teaser about potentially rebranding Ring of Honor (ROH) under the AEW banner. It’s like a wrestling crossover episode nobody saw coming! Naturally, the ever-vigilant Dave Meltzer dissected this bombshell on “Wrestling Observer Radio,” zeroing in on the million-dollar question.
“The key to all this is: can you sell it?” Meltzer mused, his words sharper than a Ric Flair chop. “[Khan] was definitely pushing the idea of rebranding this as ‘AEW Ring of Honor’ like WWE does with ‘WWE NXT.'”
Picture it: AEW and ROH, merging like a superhero team-up, fighting for ratings and wrestling glory. Meltzer reckons that if Khan wants to keep ROH alive and kicking, leveraging AEW’s name could be the secret sauce. But there’s a twist! Meltzer also thinks that Khan might be better off folding the tent on ROH, given AEW’s already packed TV schedule—five hours a week of high-flying, body-slamming action without ROH’s addition.
For now, it seems Tony Khan isn’t ready to send ROH off to the wrestling retirement home. The future of ROH could hinge on ongoing media rights negotiations between AEW and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Rumor has it that AEW and WBD are cozying up like tag team partners, but no contract has been signed yet. It’s all about the Benjamins, folks!
“When the deal is done we’ll know, but he definitely brought up that idea [of ROH airing on TV],” Meltzer continued. “Maybe even not on TBS or TNT, which — WBD has a lot of stations. If [AEW] can get some money and it’s financially worthwhile, then it’s a success. Again, Ring of Honor’s cool to have as a library [but] I don’t think they need it as a second promotion. It’s too much product anyway, but if you can make money on it, then that’s the name of the game.”