Tony Khan Buys Ring of Honor
Musing over what this may mean for Tony Khan’s growing content library.
Tony Khan (courtesy of allelitewrestling.com)
Oh, good lord, this feels like wrestling promo. I’m seeing the white’s of his eyes far too much. He’s making some Seth Freaking Rollins faces. Tony Khan just bought Ring of Honor! Is it an angle? No, there’s no angle. Cody isn’t interrupting. Phew.
You’ll have to excuse my fear-based reticence. From my various stints as a desk-jockey in corporate America, I guess I’m conditioned to hearing soulless men drone-on in company-wide, “Events,” “Fireside Chats,” and “All-In Keynotes,” where their feverish hunger for life-altering acquisitions can’t even keep them satiated. Tony Khan is, if nothing else, excited about his product. And he really really really likes surprises. The tribalistic will make jokes that he’s merely completing the best tape trading collection. But shouldn’t we want someone who actually watches what he purchases? Isn’t it a good thing that Tony Khan will be a faithful steward to ROH?
Shane McMahon was jokingly referenced to tell us to not take this as some sort of Invasion storyline. The Shane OMac association made me think of when WWE purchased WCW, before wrestling Twitter flooded my feed with memes. Back then, WCW was a depreciated asset, like ROH is now—just sayin’—but it has a rich history that wrestling fans worldwide appreciate and do not want to see disrespected.
So what’s the value of ROH now?
We don’t know how much Khan spent to purchase ROH. Dirt sheet rumblings say a cool $30 to 40 million. When WWE bought WCW in 2001, its value to wrestling fans was jack shit, but dirt sheets had you believe WCW was going to be sold to another backer for near $100 million, but once Vince pocketed it, it went for a paltry $4 million. Wrestling fans rejoiced because you theoretically could stage an in-ring WWE vs. WCW wrestling event. The Mr. McMahon character planted those seeds during the infamous simulcast on TNN and TNT in the spring of ‘01. To get heel heat, Mr. McMahon said it was going on the shelf and he’d do nothing with it. In real-life, Vince as a businessman is as heelish as his worked persona is, and that’s more or less what he ended up doing once he wasn’t tickled by his new toy any longer. The cold hard truth was that Vince let WCW die as a brand because the war was already over—fans chose WWE over WCW. As fans chose the NWA over the UWF in 1987. And in 2019 the fans chose AEW over ROH. AEW had a better brand and value on the marketplace over ROH since its inception, and that’s why we’re in this position today.
Details are sparse and more will be revealed, but from what we know so far, I think this deal is smart if it’s to bolster their video library for a streaming service. But if this deal was done on the backs in hopes of making ROH a viable touring entity, I think it’s a terrible idea.
As referenced already, the box office spoke and said it prefers WWE and AEW over ROH. Would ROH be better managed for house shows and marketing and profitability under Tony Khan than Sinclair? Sure. But what would draw more people to a building, Bryan Danielson under the ROH banner or Bryan Danielson under the AEW banner? Ask yourself the same question with what would get higher ratings with a prime time slot on TNT. Same question again on what moves more needles on social media. Maybe they reimagine Dark or Dark Elevation to be AEW Ring of Honor, but history has told us, nostalgic ECW fans will stop watching ECW when they realize its WWECW; it’s simply not the same and it’s over.
There has been plenty of scuttlebutt whenever Tony Khan does press about a streaming deal, and with AEW on Turner, HBO Max is the only logical landing place (I have HBO Max, so naturally I’m big into this idea). I was never keen on WWE buying ROH for its library whenever it had the chance, as at this point in the game, what incentive does WWE have in putting old content on Peacock? That deal is done. They can’t even be bothered to upload old episodes of Superstars, Wrestling Challenge or Prime Time. At least you can go ahead and assume Tony Khan has a watched a few thousand hours of ROH television throughout its 20 year history, and he’ll be a fine curator.
As someone who has no access to anyone within the television industry, it’s laughable for me to armchair quarterback and guess what the value of ROH will add to the inevitable streaming bundle of AEW’s library. There’s a war in accumulating content, and you see someone like Trey Parker and Matt Stone collecting damn near a billion for South Park on Paramount+, but I have no fucking clue what would be a good or bad deal for Tony Khan for the rights to his shit. After reading James Andrew Miller’s exhaustive oral history of HBO, Tinderbox, you find out that HBO didn’t see the value of sports on their network anymore and severed their ties to broadcasting boxing and tennis in recent years. Maybe that’s why AEW’s content isn’t up there already in some form or fashion?
And god help Tony if he wanted to launch an AEW version of WWE Network. Hate on WWE and their business ethics, but that was one of the smartest deals they’ve ever made. Their executive board realized they were not a technology company or a touring entity, they were a television studio that can provide a catalogue.
Wherever this footage of ROH steams, I’m curious and excited to watch it. Enjoying the ease of streaming, like most people, I stopped buying DVDs and Blu-Rays, so a vast majority of ROH I’ve not seen. The first time Alex, Sean, and myself as a group saw ROH live, we were subjected to one of the most obnoxious idiot fans in an audience I’ve ever had to deal with: whenever anyone ran the ropes—and it’s wrestling, it happens multiple times in multiple matches—this shrill, nails-on-the-chalkboard-voice of some lady yelled, “Weeeeeee!” Unfairly, that was my introduction to ROH so I always blamed them for not inadvertently hitting her with a chair.
I look forward to discovering Ring of Honor, however we’ll get it, in whichever form. As long as it’s not developmental run by a certain patriarch of a certain royal family of wrestling.
