YMMV / Ring of Honor

• Accidental Innuendo: During the Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Dalton Castle match at ROH Reloaded Tour 2016, September 24, 2016, Liger had commandeered Castle's entourage The Boys and they were fanning him in the ring, leading to...
  Kevin Kelly: You don't mess with a man's boys!
  Alex Shelley: Uh, yeah.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Many long-term fans were already skeptical enough about a large corporation buying Ring of Honor, but the Sinclair Broadcast Group being the one to do so was a turn-off for other reasons, given their reputation and their actions (see the linked entry from The Other Wiki). There's a reason they're called "The Heathens of Hunt Valley".
• Badass Decay:
  • Davey Richards when he was in the No Remorse Corps. (See Butt-Monkey on the main page.)
  • As soon as he became the new Crown Jewel of the Embassy, you could feel the badass being sucked out of the Necro Butcher.
  • For those that did not immediately hate The Age of the Fall, the sight of Jimmy Jacobs in his nice white suit covered in blood was both awesome and surreal. Unfortunately, ROH didn't do much to capitalize on all the hype put into The Age of the Fall afterward, and it became like an emo version of the nWo before dwindling down to three official members — Jacobs, MsChif, and Brodie Lee.
  • B.J. Whitmer, especially after losing in his feud to Jimmy Jacobs, while Jacobs was still Lacey's mistreated lackey.
  • In the exact opposite of The Age of the Fall case, S.C.U.M. was believed to become less badass when it significantly increased its membership.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sapolsky is a debated on whether he grew into a great booker during ROH's most troubling years and kept the company going or if his booking really wasn't that good and the credit should go to the talent who believed in ROH enough to continue stepping up their game for it. Since neither party in particular is really asking for the credit it really goes back to Sapolsky's departure and whether he should have been kept or not.
  • Teddy Hart is either celebrated for his athleticism and ability or torn down for being a Spot Monkey Attention Whore. Running H2Wrestling shows directly against ROH after being fired didn't garner him too much sympathy but fans softened towards him after he attended ROH shows and behaved himself.
  • Michael Elgin, ironically, became more of one the better he got. Mainly because 'better' doesn't necessarily mean 'best' and some people wouldn't care for his style even if done to perfection.
  • The Young Bucks are either a great tag team who should be champions forever or the most annoying pair ever who should only get beat by other tag teams. Riding the Bullet Club's popularity skewed the base heavily in favor of the Bucks, though.
  • Everyone agrees Bobby Fish is a good wrestler and he has credentials no one can deny, but some people just find his work in the ring to be bland. On the microphone his hipster like trolling is amusing to some, just plain annoying to others.
  • Ring of Honor fans, as expected, were livid about Kevin Sullivan's involvement at the 2016 Best In The World. Where they break is whether his appearance is thematically appropriate or if the promotion would have been better off using a younger person in his place.
  • The discussion of Mike Bennett and whether or not he was a "star". Despite all the abuse he got during his runs from the fan base, people arguing he was mistreated by the company started derailing various topics after he left for TNA (where he was better received, to be fair).
  • Cody's debut didn't leave much impression on fans, and the purists remained largely apathetic as he was pushed ahead of up-and-comers (eg. Lio Rush, Keith Lee), stronger technicians (eg. Silas Young, Dalton Castle) and several foreign wrestlers interested in the World Title (no less than Hiroshi Tanahashi!) but Bullet Club fans came to adore him after he joined the group, to the point they drowned out cheers for Christopher Daniels with their Cody support.
  • When Bryan Danielson mentioned Alex Shelley's past in CZW, before he could get to his point he was drowned out by a mix of cheers and boos, which lead to a dueling chant of "C-Z-Dub!"-"Sucks!"
  • Dave Prazak or Kevin Kelly, who is the better commentator?
  • As said, the Sinclair purchase was met with skepticism and has since lead to some changes people are not too thrilled with. Internet pay per view took the biggest hits once the Sinclair was in power due to their missteps, with attendance being a mixed bag. On the other hand, ROH had been in an unfavorable position since 2004 and the HDNet deal wasn't cutting it. Someone had to bite to prevent a significant downsizing or worse and thus some are thankful to Sinclair.
  • There are convincing arguments that both ROH and SHIMMER are in better financial positions since their relationship wound down. However, there was much backlash when ROH's female roster was reduced to one. ROH would take actions to address the resulting complaints, but those efforts are themselves subject of debate.
• Bizarro Episode: A Night of Hoopla, hosted in a bar by Truth Martini. Two nights of reclamation were needed to get things back in line.
• Broken Base:
  • The Top Prospect Tournament. Its purpose is obviously to showcase whom ROH thinks has the most future potential at the moment and some fans accept that, except that being presented as a wrestling tournament, other fans ignore this premise and just want to see who they consider the best wrestlers right now win, as seen in Matt Taven over TaDarius Thomas, Donovan Dijak over Will Ferrara and Lio Rush over Brian Fury.
  • The introduction of the Six Man belts. There have been faint cries for them since 2004 but they came in 2016, after a year of much louder cries for a WOH belt. Speculation around six man belts leaned toward them being tools to further shill Elite!Bullet Club, The Cabinet and or more CMLL guests, giving the broken bases of those topics something else to argue about, as well as drawing comparisons to New Japan's NEVER experiment. This all quieted down a bit, as it went to The Kingdom rather than the Club, The Cabinet became Darker and Edgier, the matches of CMLL's luchadors were received fairly well and none were the following champions, who turned out to be an unexpected contender in Bully Ray, with the Briscoes, and unlikely underdogs in The Boys, with Dalton Castle.
  • The promotion itself as the Spiritual Successor of ECW is subject of debate. Most of the Pro Wrestling Community like the technical pro-wrestling approach, while others derided ROH because they felt that CZW was a more suitable choice as the defunct promotion's successor. Ironically, CZW often partnered with ROH to the point of exchanging talents.
• Creator's Pet:
  • The Carnage Crew. Nearly everyone flipped their shit when they beat Whitmer and Jacobs for the Tag Team Titles.
  • Better people were available but Mike Hogewood did commentary on 100 HD Net shows because he was friends with people who worked for HD Net and ROH didn't want to offend them by dropping him.
  • "The Prodigy" Mike Bennett goes here in most eyes, especially when he is feuding with Christopher Daniels and Eddie Edwards for the Television Championship. He even received a "YOU CAN'T WRESTLE" chant at Tag Title Classic II. However, with his gimmick, it works for him.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Even when Homicide attempted to murder Colt Cabana, he was still treated as a hero in NYC.
  • While Project 161 was greatly hyped and sold in a way that blurred kayfabe before the big reveal, The Age of the Fall seemed to devolve into just another "gothic" group that happened to wrestle while talking big about their agenda, decrying the health care situation in America. Part of the problem with that was that ROHbots seem more likely to be liberal (in the American political sense) so the crowd could agree with them. Necro Butcher seemed to be more left-wing (seriously), and as fans chatted before and after the show with his charming wife...
  • The Bullet Club were basically baby faces after the first Global Wars and War Of The Worlds events but headed into this territory after the 2016 Global Wars, as pro ROH Styles and sympathetic Anderson were gone, with the rest of the group dedicated to making Adam Cole champion by any means necessary. But being Adam Cole and Bullet Club, they have to work extra hard to get booed. And even when the rest of Bullet Club started to remember why Cole had been their perennial enemy when Styles was around they didn't exactly scale back their shenanigans.
• Ending Fatigue: Ring of Honor main events have a tendency to go on A LOT longer than they really need to, even if by all means and accounts the participants should have basically beaten each other into a coma. They really milk that 60 minute time limit for all its worth.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Ebessan/Kikutaro. We're still not quite sure what he was, but the crowds loved him.
  • After handling an unruly fan who tried to take a swing at Austin Aries, referee Paul Turner has been cheered mightily, especially in New York.
  • Delirious, a jobber who was kept around by fan demand due to a well worked gimmick, eventually becoming world title contender before settling into the mid card.
  • Necro Butcher got an unexpected amount of cheers for being in The Age of the Fall and generally not being of the mold ROHbots usually prefer their wrestlers to be in, since he was better known as an ultraviolent deathmatch wrestler as opposed to the scientific wrestlers and high-flyers.
  • Kevin Steen as well. Packaged Piledrived Steve Corino, Jimmy Jacobs, and El Generico onto the injured reserve list, has been on a one-man crusade against Jim Cornette (and ROH in general as long as he was running it), convinced Corino and Jacobs to forgo their redemption quests and join him in forming a self-professed army of evil, shown absolutely no remorse for his actions even as they threatened the company...and the ROH fans cheer him like crazy.
  • QT Marshall had the size and promo style ROH bookers tend to gravitate towards but fan reactions to his ring work were tepid, so he was teamed up with RD Evans to help him overcome that hurdle. Fans instead focused on Evans and ignored Marshall.
  • Kenny King and Rhett Titus became this as the All Night Express, a tag team mostly put together to keep tag team matches from becoming monotonous. That was until they won the belts only for King to leave and try his hand in TNA's X-Division...
  • Michael Elgin: Went from simply being a guy with a few impressive power moves to having a huge following after having a match of the year candidate with Davey Richards.
  • Solo Darling was presented as another meal for Kelly Klein but was kept around when their match rapidly became the most viewed video on ROH's YouTube channel, prior to the blanket pro wrestling restriction anyway, and the most popular WOH video by far.
  • On the website, the acceptance of rookie Lio Rush by the notorious crowds of Philadelphia was stated to be a relieving surprise. There were some grumblings when he got a world title shot at Jay Lethal but none in Dallas Texas, where the match took place... besides those from the CZW show.
• Fan Myopia: There has been a strong case for dispute against Ring of Honor's status as United States's "third major promotion" for most of its existence. While there are no other major landmarks in the immediate 50 states, territorial companies such as WWC in Puerto Rico have demonstrated the ability to draw larger crowds and when WWC was in its downward spirals, it was largely due to those audiences moving over to the International Wrestling Association (the World Wrestling League, IWA's figurative successor, has also drawn impressively). ROH does have a claim all the same (their championship belts have been defended in front comparable crowds in joint ventures, single ventures once AEW convinced ROH to step its game up, and they have at times surpassed them in television distribution), just not an undisputed one.
• Fandom Rivalry: Used to be Friendly Fandoms with Impact Wrestling (then known as TNA) till the first pullout and got more hostile which each subsequent pullout, as management of the two companies continued to try to work something out for six years, failing every single time. Somewhat contentious with the WWN due to Gabe Sapolsky and who took over after ROH left but not too much due to the unsurprisingly similar styles, even taking the Dragon Gate influences into account. This is now averted once ROH entered in hiatus in 2022 and select former members of the roster are now in Impact Wrestling.
• Fan Nickname
  • "The Flying Squirrels" for Special K.
  • "Smoky Mountain of Honor"... uh, a detractor nickname for those who weren't fans of Cornette's run as an authority figure and/or his influence on the booking. Coined by one Austin Aries, although after Cornette's departure some fans began using it a bit more positively as they realized buyrates and attendance were going up while he was a consultant and the felt the company had become...
  • "New Japan's Bitch", due to complaints that ROH was relying too much on the foreign company to remain relevant and that New Japan's wrestlers were beating ROH's too much on pay per views. This died down when Kyle O'Reilly and Bobby Fish gained high profile wins over Tomohiro Ishii and Katsuyori Shibata, and New Japan eventually helped ROH break its all-time attendance record.
  • "WWE's actual developmental territory", after it was noted that most of WWE's signings, especially through late 2000s and pretty much the entirety of the 2010s, consisted of ROH wrestlers.^note Ironically, WWE's actual developmental territory, NXT, would later be nicknamed "AEW's developmental territory" after several call-ups from NXT to WWE's main roster became flops, which was credited to WWE's poor booking decisions, and upon being released signed up with said company.
  • "The Heathens of Hunt Valley" is a nickname for Sinclair Broadcast Group, referring to their headquarters in Hunt Valley, MD, and their infamous business practices in the TV industry.
  • Punishment Martinez was called "Barrio Corbin" by non-ROH fans after he first "trended worldwide" on Twitter (never mind Martinez had been in pro wrestling a lot longer than the man he was being compared to). Became Hilarious in Hindsight since as of 2019, Martinez has signed with WWE as Damien Priest, so maybe people will finally see if he could beat Corbin.
• Fashion-Victim Villain:
  • Truth Martini. He got slightly better with the House of Truth's second ROH incarnation.
  • Far more terrifying than Adam Page's noose is Adam Page's man bun. And Adam Cole apparently thought it was a good idea because he got one too on Road To Final Battle.
  • Unlike the previous Kingdom members, Vinny Maseglia and TK O'Ryan tend to emulate The Hardy Boys more in their ring gear than their choices in wrestling moves, but this just makes them a different kind of eyesore.
• Fridge Brilliance: The invading heel Knights of the Rising Dawn had a mission stance of being opposed to the idea that tenure longevity and company politics should override talent when it comes to who's the best for the job in ROH. Come the reveal of KRD's membership—The Addiction and Chris Sabin—it all starts to make sense. Christopher Daniels is a guy who's routinely traveled off and on between ROH and TNA, while Kazarian and Chris Sabin both sporadically appeared in ROH in the past but never as full-time members. Of course they don't want the company prioritizing tenure, that works against them. Furthermore, KRD's stance was the exact opposite from the Decade, another heel group. So why were they acting as heels instead of attacking the Decade? Well, this is where we remember that Daniels and Kazarian came back as faces before launching the KRD plot, and their first ROH feud as a tag team was against…the Decade.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Somewhat friendly with CZW, although there are a lot of fans of both promotions that can't stand the other. Friendlier with Chikara, while getting ROH crowds to rag on CZW isn't hard and Chikara fans do like to make jokes about ROH, pretty much no one was happy to hear Kevin Steen put down Chikara on the mic and even Jim Cornette, who is very vocal about his hatred of cartoon wrestling, respects the Chikara regulars as wrestlers and professionals.
  • Friendly with AJPW, NJPW, NOAH. CMLL fans were generally positive when talent bounced between it and ROH, though they didn't pay it as much attention and some had mixed feelings about wrestlers associated with ROH also popping up in CMLL's main rival, AAA. This changed for the better with Matt Taven, of all people, who made ROH much beloved letters among CMLL fandom. As for the opposite, "Honor Nation" got on board with CMLL a little earlier thanks to the efforts of Dragon Lee and Kamaitachi.
  • Very friendly with SHIMMER besides a fringe that has no interest in women's wrestling. All American Wrestling encourages its fans to be friendly towards ROH, as did Ring Warriors. ROH promoted this towards Pro Wrestling Guerrilla as well during its efforts to get wrestlers to accept more exclusive contracts, letting them keep PWG dates and telling fans it was a great company.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: When CM Punk and Samoa Joe took their World Title series to the UK it set records for the highest attendance ratings of any independent show in the country and the highest ringside gross of any pro wrestling show in Europe.
  • ROH's most profitable venue is Ontario, not Canada as a whole, as they didn't do to well in Quebec despite getting The Super Smash Brothers on the under card and sticking their two prominent French Canadian wrestlers in two back to back main events, but Ontario specifically, particularly Toronto.
  • Cheeseburger T-Shirts weren't just hits with RoHbots, they were also one of New Japan's best sellers.
  • Despite stateside apathy towards him, Matt Taven got over enough in Mexico on his CMLL tours to be in the main event of their 85th Anniversary show, the biggest supercard of the CMLL calendar year.
• Growing the Beard: The one-hour draw between CM Punk and Samoa Joe is cited as the turning point for the promotion; the original owner had been ousted shortly before that due to a pedophilia scandal, and the promotion was in danger of going out of business. The Joe vs. Punk series and the breakout of the Generation Next stable created heightened interest for the promotion as well as heralding a more sophisticated booking style augmented by a roster of young wrestlers who were constantly improving.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • After a year long feud in which Homicide's constant abuse seemed to be breaking down Colt Cabana, he decisively defeated his tormentor at Better Than Our Best. Homicide himself stopped fellow Rottweilers Ricky Reyes and Julius Smokes from enacting retribution on Cabana following, and apologized. It was the first time Colt Cabana seemed happy in months.
  • Jesse Sorensen didn't have the best match at Glory By Honor XII, nor the best showing considering he lost, but he got a standing ovation nonetheless, because all the crowd cared about was the fact he had returned to wrestling.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When she first debuted, the commentators immediately identified CM Punk's girlfriend as Daffney from WCW and had to correct themselves when Punk introduced her as Lucy. TNA would later reveal Daffney's different gimmicks were the result of multiple personality disorder.
  • During the Colt Cabana/Homicide feud, Cabana referred to Homicide as "Konnan's bitch." When he said this, it was based on such an unpublicized real-life connection that it had a Viewers Are Geniuses vibe. A few months later, Homicide began wrestling for TNA with Konnan as his manager, making the burn much funnier in retrospect.
• Hype Backlash: Ring of Honor itself, with a good bit of Hype Aversion. While certainly a good promotion, and arguably better than both WWE and TNA/Impact, its fans never stop singing its praises while endlessly bashing either WWE or TNA, sometimes without real reason.
• Iron Woobie:
  • El Generico has been one since his debut, but his feud with Kevin Steen and Steve Corino has intensified that status.
  • Daizee Haze is very prone to taking levels in badass when the time arises.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: You can find people who are not fans of Ring of Honor bending over backwards to find faults with any successful guy who built up a reputation here, meaning the RoHbots stay loyal but the effect of making it big outside of ROH is pretty much the same.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Field of Honor 2014 was graced by a particularly drunken, disrespectful and mostly uninterested crowd...who shaped right up when AJ Styles came out. The first Champions vs All Stars was a hit but the second one got a lukewarm reception when Styles couldn't make it.
• Love to Hate:
  • RohBots quickly took a special disliking to Jimmy Rave. If it was possible to be a cult unfavorite, it was him, and they delighted at his set backs and humiliations.
  • Adam Cole's usually cheered whenever makes an appearance, no matter how overweight, underweight or unkempt he happens to be. But ever since the formation of The Kingdom the longer a match goes the more likely Cole is to get booed, but unlike the other three men who were associated with the group during his time in it a certain affection remains. Cole's loyalty and work are appreciated but at the same he does wrestle like an asshole to the point he becomes harder to root for the longer he does.
  • Hangman Page is the most unpopular member of Bullet Club, which is to say he's the only one who consistently gets the right kind of heat. Most of them are "badass", "cool" or "fun", but Page is simply a dickhead through and through.
  • Brian Johnson, because he's a complete jerk and arrogant to boot, but these aspects make him a Heel who's cool to get hate.
• Memetic Badass:
  • The little girl who flipped off Bryan Danielson.
  • Did someone mention >Matt Taven?
• Memetic Molester: Given the circumstances of Feinstein's unceremonious departure, it became a meme to mock him. "Lol I'll pretend you said 18."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Final Countdown, lampshaded by ROH themselves with "The Final Countdown Tour."
  • Prince Nana lives on in Memetic Mutation to this day. "WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT SHRIMP COCKTAIL, HANH?" Matt Striker even got into this on SmackDown.
  • "There is no God, and the cage wasn't 30 feet." (a reference to Teddy Hart's antics at ROH Main Event Spectacles, the quote in specific was CM Punk's response to Hart's comments on it)
  • "Woman At ROH Event!" This was eventually discredited, as the number of female fans did increase over the years, eventually to the point they could make the fact they didn't find this very funny heard, but the company did once have a "boys club" reputation...it still had a boys club reputation among fans of women's wrestling, particularly after divorcing with SHIMMER, but that's another story.
  • "Wait you implying the Romantic Touch is...no couldn't be!"
  • "Steve Corino is not Mr. Wrestling III, although they are very good friends."
  • "Hania didn't see the 2012 Homecoming attack on the Briscoes, though Jay deserved it for grabbing Saturyne."^note Tamara McNeill dropped the Saturyne gimmick after she left CHIKARA following Aniversario: Never Compromise on June 2, 2013, which was the night of the shutdown, and never looked back, using the Hania the Howling Huntress gimmick until she retired in 2018.
  • Teddy Hart's cats (he tends to travel with them, once leading him to be charged by the Dallas police when a friend let a cat out of a hotel room).
• Moral Event Horizon: Jimmy Jacobs pulling the spike out on the normally despised Lacey.
• My Real Daddy: Every booker to come after Gabe Sapolsky is going to be met with this sentiment.
• Narm: The whole Homicide/Colt Cabana Drano thing. First off, a guy trying to kill someone with Drain Cleaner in the ring and it not killing the guy pushes the boundaries of Willing Suspension of Disbelief pretty far, but when the drain cleaner in question looked like chunky Lime Jell-O, then it's just silly and dumb.
• Narm Charm: All of Jimmy Jacobs' songs. They're incredibly cheesy for a promotion that usually tries to be serious in an angle that was supposed to be about him becoming more mature, but Jacobs is a legitimately talented singer.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Few RoHbots can tell you much about Mike Mondo's role in, say, Bolin Services. A larger-than-you-may-expect amount have not even committed to memory most of his time in this company. The main thing everyone knows is that he was Mikey from The Spirit Squad.
  • While The Briscoe Brothers as a team are remembered as ROH's most decorated tag team, Jay Briscoe on his own will forever be known as the person who once tweeted that he'd shoot anyone who told his kids gay marriage is OK. Both ROH and New Japan will similarly get scolded by LGBT fans and allies every time Jay gets a solo push. Unfortunately for them, the 2017 fan votes for Tournament of Honor suggested Jay Briscoe was the single most popular wrestler employed by the company at the time, ahead of even Cole, Castle, Daniels and Lethal, or at least the one fans wanted to see pushed the most since the voting was on who they would have as their world champion (though ROH did end up pushing Daniels in that instance, to rave reviews). It's also the most likely reason why they are one of the very few ROH champions that never appeared on AEW television, due to Warner-Discovery not wanting to risk the backlash. This would sadly only be finally subverted with his tragic death in 2023, with fans belligerently citing his sincere efforts to atone for the comment in his defence, and Tony Khan going to bat hard to let Warner-Discovery produce a tribute episode for him on AEW Dynamite, as well as signing his brother Mark to the AEW roster.
  • ROH is going to have to do a lot of work to come back from their absolutely abysmal performance at the 2019 G1 Supercard, where nearly every ROH match was plodding, uninteresting, and often had outside interference...including an appearance by Enzo Amore and Big Cass, two WWE rejects known for their terrible backstage behavior.
  • Flip Gordon is a talented wrestler on his own, and even garnered a lot of fans outside ROH thanks to his comedic My Friends... and Zoidberg role in the web series Being the Elite, but when his anti-vax and anti-mask views were made public in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic, this caused him to be remembered as a "conspiranoic alt-righter" instead, not helped by the fact that ROH had a serious COVID-19 protocol from 2020 to 2021. As a consequence of this, he closed his Twitter account, and was also not picked up when ROH was rolled into AEW, despite his previous friendship with the aforementioned The Elite. David Finlay Jr. pretty much eulogised his career by calling him "the dumbest person I know, and I know [Will] Ospreay."
• Older Than They Think: The Road To Final Battle Story Time With Adam Cole drew comparisons to Broken Matt's Bound For Glory promo, even though Cole had been doing his longer, plus the fact Adam and Matt were part of the same stable before their current affiliations, so it made sense there would be some similarities in their villainous breakdowns when both also happened to be reflecting on their history. And wouldn't you know Matt announced he was returning to "render" two of Cole's stablemates "obsolete".
• Padding: At the time of its inception, Ring of Honor was praised for trimming parts of the promos, brawls, entrances and such on their videos, shortening everything but the matches. When it started doing Internet Pay Per View, Ring of Honor was criticized for going too long with intermissions.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • The first three goals of Ring of Honor upon its creation: replace ECW since it has no new videos to sell, find the best wrestlers in the world, pander to the hardcore wrestling fan. Not hardcore in the Garbage Wrestling sense but hardcore in that they miss the hour long bouts such as Pedro Morales vs Bruno Sammartino or Jerry Lawler vs Harley Race, when ref bumps were still rare, when there was strict punishment of disqualifications, active enforcement of clean finishes, ability of wrestlers to see each other's recorded locker room misadventures, male managers and of course a pure wrestling championship belt. The only thing ROH lacked was a two out of three falls enforcement, it pandered to "purist" fans who wanted to see wrestling presented the way a plausible sport would. There is some deviation from this path though, thanks to crossover with the comedy oriented Chikara and the proud garbage wrestling CZW. It's never completely gotten back on track since Generation Next's chaotic formation, really.
  • In response to complaints surrounding its new choice in venues, from New York fans in particular regarding Terminal 5, ROH announced that it not only would be returning to the Hammerstein Ballroom but would be running a double shot for 2016 Final Battle with the 2300 Arena, aka the ECW Arena.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • It used to be a meme to take a picture of a crowd watching an ROH event and then try to find the lone woman in it, ala Where's Wally?. The female minority did notice, however, and strove to make themselves seen and heard until it was discredited.
  • The ROH fan base had a reputation for open misogyny towards female wrestlers, the list of those actually received well by ROH crowds being a short one. SHIMMER didn't improve said reputation immediately, but did end up leaving ROH with an audience who not only appreciate but demand women's matches. With a vocal fistful of fans who complain when a women's match is free for anyone with internet access rather than on pay per view!^note Since anywhere from 1/10 to 1/2 of an ROH crowd is at a merchandise table during dark matches, especially those they know can be seen later. A subset of fans is willing to pay money to make other fans watch a certain way!
• Replacement Scrappy: Shane Hagadorn taking the place of Larry Sweeney due to Sweeney's personal problems. A big blow to ROH, considering how consistently over Sweeney remained throughout his tenure.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The promotion has been fairly well-known for giving successful makeovers to struggling wrestlers.
  • While Mike Mondo couldn't shed the stigma of being "Mikey" of the Spirit Squad, ROH has successfully convinced most of his detractors that he can actually wrestle.
  • Matt Taven, prior to the 2020 relaunch, was not an interesting wrestler and his ROH World Championship run was met with a lukewarm reception, but his "Follow the Trend" gimmick allowed him to be a fully-fleshed character on his own and won the respect of the Honor Nation. Similarly, Mike Bennett (Taven's tag team partner and best friend) got also rescued in his return to ROH after being fired from WWE in 2020. Taven and Bennett reuniting The Kingdom, now known as The OGK, was met with a better reception.
• The Scrappy:
  • Fifteen years after his run, Xavier was still the most maligned ROH World Champion. Part of it was by design. He was part of The Prophecy against the company and a dirty coward to boot. The other part was some fans finding his time in the promotion forgettable and wondering why he was given a title shot in the first place, much less cutting the ever-popular Low Ki's reign so short. The fans not frustrated with the amount of time that went by without his face being beat up just found him boring. However, this is no longer the case once Xavier passed away.
  • Nigel McGuinness, after a year as the company's top babyface, quickly hit Scrappydom upon winning the ROH World Championship belt. However, ROH and Nigel turned it around with a Face–Heel Turn that saw him Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Jim Cornette's first stint as ROH Commissioner was chock-full of Scrappyness, especially after he turned heel against Homicide by refusing to reinstate Low Ki.
  • As soon as Jerry Lynn won the ROH World Championship belt, he got placed here. Keep in mind that he won the belt from the aforementioned McGuinness after his Face–Heel Turn made him popular as champion, that at the time of McGuinness losing the title he was the second-longest reigning title holder, and that the title win took place around the time of the release of The Wrestler,^note which incidentally shot its wrestling scenes at ROH shows, leading to claims that ROH was trying to emulate the film's plot by having Lynn, a veteran of the industry (and ECW Original) win a world title, and one could see why it was hated at the time.
  • Matt Cross. ROH fans are known for their loyalty to alumni, but Cross got pretty much none of it. Even in venues were he was kind of liked, such as Dayton Ohio, fans were largely ignoring him in favor of rookies like Pelle Primeau. Though he would partially redeem himself to some with his "Son of Havoc" gimmick he used as part of a trio elsewhere.
  • "The Prodigy" Mike Bennett, simply thought to not be "good enough" for the promotion. Then he won the first "Top Prospect" Tournament. Add Matt Taven, the second "Top Prospect" Tournament winner to the equation and you get the Kingdom, one of the most hated stables in recent memory. Not even the awesomeness of Ensemble Dark Horse Adam Cole could save them from the vitriol of the RoHbots. Instead of downplaying the team, they started becoming more prominent, ripping off the Hardy Boyz moves and even going to New Japan Pro-Wrestling and winning the IWGP Tag Team Championships. Guess what the fan reaction was.
  • Mike Mondo. He even surpasses Mike Bennett in this regard. The guy who was Mikey in the infamous Spirit Squad stable in WWE selling himself as a tough guy went as well as one would expect.
  • BJ Whitmer didn't start off as this, but after the departures of Roderick Strong and Jimmy Jacobs from the Decade, quickly became this in record time. Part of it is due to the fact that the fans believe that he's just too old and broken-down to wrestle well anymore, and part of it is his feud with Steve Corino, which became personal to the point that most fans found it uncomfortable.
  • Bully Ray. He gets signed, does some shows for them either as an authority figure or a wrestler, he often refuses to job or really put anyone over... Then ROH is looking for writers and suddenly Bully Ray is the head booker along with Delirious. He pulled Hulk Hogan-level thunder-stealing with the Briscoes, had feuds with Cheeseburger and Flip Gordon that were little more than repetitive squash matches (and Gordon is more popular the further his "feud" with Bully Ray falls into the dustbin of history), he accomplished nothing with Silas Young. It took two people to gang up on him during the Mark Haskins match. Then he went through a table. Then he ate a top rope double foot stomp, a move which always looks like attempted murder. And he still kicked out at 3. (Just got thrown through a table, time to adjust my clothes.)
• Seasonal Rot: ROH has been plagued by a host of problems:
  • Sinclair investing zero money, thus making everything in ROH (right down to the crooked ring ropes) look cheap. They've had a reputation for trying to cut corners at their innumerable TV stations (such as the disastrous 2003 "News Central" experiment, which attempted to mix locally-produced news with national segments; in many cases, this meant cuts and layoffs for stations that were already producing all-local newscasts)
  • Weak writing by pretty much everyone since since Gabe left in 2008: former ROH in-ring wrestler Adam Pearce, veteran writer Jim Cornette, and wrestlers Delirious and Bully Ray. (It had been almost 20 years since ECW folded, so people tended to forget how bad their booking was when Bully was working behind-the-scenes.) It's generally-agreed that Delirious is stuck in his ways: he was still booking it as if it were the DVD-sales indie of yesteryear, and he has difficulty recycling guys in a way which keeps them interesting. Jay Lethal and the Briscoes were the only thing they had going, but both were doing the same stuff since 2012.
  • 2019 is not a good year for the company, which includes factors such as:
    • The massive exodus of wrestlers, combined with the fact that their most valuable talents Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks leave to form All Elite Wrestling with the backing of Tony Khan.
    • Bully Ray working as a main booker and refusing to put over the young talent.
    • The hiring of both Enzo and Cass, infamous for their atrocious backstage behaviour during their time in WWE. Fortunately, it didn't last long.
    • Matt Taven not being over with the Honor Nation when he won the ROH World Championship in the G1 Supercard event, leading to a lukewarm title run at the time, as they wanted the then-fan favorite Marty Scurll to win. In hindsight, ROH technically dodged a bullet because one year later, Scurll got accused of sexual misconduct when #SpeakingOut hits in.
    • The lack of a concussion protocol, which led to then-Women of Honor Champion Kelly Klein to compete after suffering a concussion in October 26, 2019. As a result, she sought medical help to treat with the symptoms and stopped booking her until her contract is expired in December.
• Tear Jerker: The first departure of CM Punk, as well as the sendoffs to Bryan Danielson and Steve Corino.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Very often, most notably after Gabe Sapolsky was fired.
  • The television show got this in 2016, due to a stronger emphasis on "Best Of Clip Shows" showing matches that often did very little in helping anyone understand what was going on in ROH right now and the fact there was as much as a three week delay between a pay per view and the following television program, meaning those who wanted to see a follow up often saw something completely unrelated.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: People who remembered were not amused to see Prince Nana's offer to Caprice Coleman never being followed up on in favor of Coleman becoming the manager of Kenny King and Rhett Titus.
• Win Back the Crowd: Ring of Honor returned to produce new episodes, starting with the Pure Championship Tournament in September 12, 2020, after suspending all the programming of ROH TV due to the COVID-19 pandemic that led up to air the ROH wrestlers' best matches (including a tribute to the late Japanese wrestler Hana Kimura) at the time. As a result, wrestling fans saw improvement to the product by showcasing pure wrestling matches like no other during the tournament, followed by fresh new rivalries and the rescuing of Matt Taven from impopularity with his new "Follow the Trend" gimmick. However, it was too good to last, as ROH was put up for sale at the end of 2021, with the company eventually being relaunched in April 2022 under Tony Khan's management from now on.
• The Woobie:
  • Most ROH School graduates fall under this, especially Pelle Primeau, Bobby Dempsey, Alex Payne and Cheeseburger. However, Jade Chung is the ultimate woobie.
  • Grizzly Redwood never can catch a break.
• X-Pac Heat:
  • They are somewhat fondly remembered now, but Age of the Fall got it during their debut. Yes, they got a Draco in Leather Pants entry too. Fans can be weird sometimes.
  • Konnan and Jeff Hardy got it when they showed up. Matt Hardy has to work off a renewed round of it every time he shows up, though he usually ends up working it off. That was until Matt showed up "broken" and got the biggest pop of the night right off the bat.
  • The Kingdom get loads of it, especially among the Smart Mark crowd. Matt Taven escaped this after an injury caused fans to feel sorry for him.
  • Rhett Titus got some during the 2016 Road To Best In The World and Kenny King had been getting some prior simply for coming back after the TNA incident, culminating at The Cabinet's introduction promo going on so long it ate into the main event of the pay per view itself.
  • Enzo and Cass got so much of it for their worked shoot brawl that it was never mentioned again.

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