This has been a hell of a weekend for America’s Number Three wrestling promotion, Ring of Honor.

They’ve just announced the line-up for their next PPV and it looks set to be a cracker. They promoted shows at the weekend that from all reports, seem to have gone down very well indeed.

ROH World Champion Nigel McGuiness is also set to defend his title against Necro Butcher in a match, that announced a week earlier, would have ensured a large percentage of their fans would have soiled themselves.

Oh yeah, and they also revealed that one of their biggest stars of all time, Samoa Joe, the former TNA World Champion, is returning for a one-night only appearance.

But no-one gives a toss about any of this.

Because as of Sunday morning, we learned that Gabe Sapolsky, the ROH booker who has been with them since the start, was fired by owner Cary Silkin. As has earlier been revealed here at iFight365.com, Sapolsky didn’t walk. There wasn’t a single incident that provoked this and there was no blow-up. He was simply “shown the door” following Saturday night’s card.

Obviously, this has been a big, big shock, to us. And it appears, to Gabe himself. No-one within the industry pre-empted this move and it certainly seems as if few, if anyone knew it was coming, outside of Silkin and the new booker, Adam Pearce.

There is currently much speculation around the reasons why. It seems though that it’s a business decision Silkin has made, because he cannot, in the long term, envision the company surviving (without a TV deal) under it’s current guise. Clearly he feels major changes were in order.

At the Observer, Dave Meltzer has been reporting that their shifting gears towards a more old-fashioned 1970’s style promotion - one that will place the emphasis firmly on simplistic good-guy versus bad-guy storylines. Highspots will be toned down and cuts made (most likely surrounding the use of imports, especially Japanese performers), with more local talent being accommodated, and exaggerated characters, in the WWE mould a definite possibility.

I think, these are the wrong changes to be making.

Now, don’t get over-excited and commence with the hate-mail. I’m not about to immediately condemn the switch in creative and in particular, the owner of a financially insecure wrestling company making changes that he feels are necessary in order to maintain his organisation. Until we actually witness said “New Direction”, it’s ridiculous to slate the guy.

However, even with a rational head screwed on, it’s still a baffling move surely? Because ROH, for me, was always the company that brought together old-school sensibilities (importance of the World title etc, the emphasis on honour - remember the Code of honor? The lack of cartoonish gimmicks, feuds developing over time in a logical manner) with cutting edge grappling.

They have been head and shoulders above all other promotions in treating their tag team division as an equal to the singles ranks. This combination is what made it stand out from the glut of companies that since the death of ECW and WCW have sprouted up across American territory.

ROH has never been a mere imposter, or even comparable to the majority of other Independent promotions that fill the calendar.

In the past few years, they provided a platform for innovative talent to move to bigger things - AJ Styles, CM Punk, Homicide, Samoa Joe, etc - and they still retain that aura of exciting, edgy athleticism in The Briscoes, Age of the Fall, Bryan Danielson and Austin Aries.

Much of what Sapolsky had provided over the past few years was utterly astonishing. At times, he was truly innovative. This is the guy that for the past four years has won the Wrestling Observer Booker of the Year title. Some may say that’s unimportant - but that’s ridiculous - because the Observer voters are smart fans, net fans and ROH’s fan-base is almost unanimously comprised of Internet fans.

Remember, when on the very first show, he had the balls to book Low Ki, Bryan Danielson, and Christopher Daniels in the main event, over Eddy Guerrero, who went on underneath?

How about the astonishing title reign of CM Punk, that completely swerved, but fascinated and thrilled it’s fan base. Yes, promoting a wrestling show isn’t necessarily all about swerves and twists and confounding the internet. However, when that’s almost your entire viewing audience, and you pull it off, it’s truly masterful.

If that was too modern though, what about the CZW/ROH war that was just a good old-fashioned territorial war, that tore the house down?

More recently, we were captivated by the great feud between American Dragon and Takeshi Morishima, then the really cool change of pace, that has seen Jimmy Jacobs and Austin Aries lock, err, horns.

Even the simple stuff that Gabe put together could be magnificent. I refuse to believe that Bryan Danielson is solely responsible for the entire content of his enormous catalogue of World title defences in 2006 (and the majority were indeed, wonderful). Sapolsky’s fingerprints were all over the best of this material.

When Danielson fought Colt Cabana at “Gut Check” in August 2006, they had a really clever, different, sixty minute match 2/3 falls match. Brilliantly, Cabana, the outmatched Babyface, but with hometown support, scored an early pinfall. Then in the final moments, knowing the clock was running down and he would win the belt, without doing anything else, tried to stay out of the ring and away from the Champion. Sounds simple, but it’s not. That sort of logic is not normally applied, but here it was great.

Later in the year, at Final Battle, Dragon tussled with Homicide in an outstanding finale to Danielson’s reign on top. In this one, the two wrestlers incorporated nods to months worth of build up, their previous matches, as well as bouts from YEARS prior. However, they did so in the context of a match that did not alienate those who were unaware of such intricacies. It was a fine marriage of “sports entertainment” and of solid, workrate-based grappling.

Over the past twelve months, a few things have grated on me as I’ve watched their shows and at times I’ve voiced my criticisms. There’s been far, far too many hardcore brawls, that for the most part, have been completely interchangeable. This has hindered the feud between the Age Of the Fall and The Briscoes, as well as taking the value of The Necro Butcher down a notch, when so many others are involved in his wild brand of encounter.

Parity booking has been an issue the odd time and made it difficult at times for wrestlers to gain momentum. And there probably have been too many repeat appearances by Japanese wrestlers in inconsequential matches. The worst thing I’ve seen from the company is having undercard matches that run too long, are too heated and too stuffed to the gills, treading on the toes of the bigger matches, sometimes diluting their impact.

However, more often than not, the top matches have been great regardless.

But they’ve also given us a bunch of PPVs that have provided some of the finest shows in recent years - top-to-bottom entertainment. They’ve brought in the wrestlers that people have clamoured for from Japan and even more locally (Necro Butcher’s been a big star, they’ve tried to work Mike Quackenbush in, barring injury, and even Eddie Kingston has been appearing).

They’ve built up a credible World Champion and placed him in some tremendous, heated matches. And they’ve continually offered some dandy tag-team action.

Basically, they’ve listened to the fans.

What has always been a constant in Ring of Honor, however, is that watching a show guarantees some top-notch wrestling.

A popular point it’s critics have always cited, is that the wrestlers are “all the same”, which If you followed the show for more than fifteen minutes would become obvious nonsense. Just because the characters featured are not cartonnish and two-dimensional in a Hulkamania sense, does not mean they are non-existent. Is Delirious not an individual? Claudio Castagnoli? Bryan Danielson? El Generico? Kevin Steen may not stand out from a crowd, but surely that’s why he has opportunities to cut promos, and show that he is individual? How about Larry Sweeny, and his entire Sweet N Sour Inc faction? Are they all cookie-cutter copies of each other? I don’t think so.

I don’t think characters, or personalities, or entertainment are the issue in ROH. The promotion and the presentation of their product, at times, has hindered their development. Anyone outside of their existing fan-base thinks they look bush-league and admittedly, their advancements have been slow. And they just aren’t out there in the public eye as much as they need to be. But then again, wrestling is not especially in the public eye - and it still has a horrible image, one that is not at an all-time high with the masses.

Is Gabe Sapolsky to blame for this? Is Sapolsky to blame for the PPV’s not doing especially well? I don’t think so. They’ve been GREAT shows and that’s the almost unanimous consensus.

However, a scan through supposed “smart” fan message boards indicates that while some of their “fans” have bought the PPVs, many others are happy to download them instead. It would be a different scenario if your average cable viewer was buying the shows, but the reality is, the exposure isn’t there and people aren’t going to pay for wrestling right now, without sampling it on free TV first.

Can ROH get that far though?

ROH definitely run the risk of alienating their audience. And who will be left? Will they be able to build a big enough fan base to sustain themselves if they do alienate their current supporters? If the Internet fans go away now, will the company survive long enough to draw in new viewers?

This is a company based almost ENTIRELY on it’s DVD sales. One of the key aspects of their success is that they appeal to people who are shopping for the best quality of matches. Bouts so good, they’ll watch them time and time again. Are these fans going to get their fix from a ROH that de-emphasises these qualities? They can already get the other stuff elsewhere, in bigger, glitzier fashion.

Are they shooting themselves in the foot, by aiming for a product that people would maybe be happy to watch on television every week, but would NOT see as worth shelling out for the DVDs?

I actually really admire the idea of going back to basics, in a storyline/character sense. However, ROH has always provided a mixture of cutting-edge work, that has evolved from a deep, intense love for traditional aspects of the business and I feel that Gabe would surely have been able to balance his approach, with a new company directive, rather than removing him from the equation altogether.

I found this quote from a user on the ROH discussion board, which I found to be a sensible way of addressing the situation: “It’s much easier to build on top of your current fan base than to piss them off and have to replace them and hope to increase the numbers as well. I honestly think better marketing would increase their attendance acceptably.”

I didn’t get his name before the site was closed (temporarily, supposedly because the increased traffic was slowly down ROH’s entire website - since yesterday the traffic has been dramatic), however, it’s a stark contrast to the absolutes and black and whites that many of the “ROHbots”, as non-ROH following smarks like to call them have spouting.

Most fans right now seem to fall into two categories - either being ready to abandon the company they “love”, or blindly defending it. But this guy has hit the nail on the head: Why risk driving away your supportive fans?

I think there’s more to this story, and it’s up to the ROH crew to address all these concerns, or simply move on.

It’s obvious to me though, that the company, Cary Silkin, Adam Pearce and all else involved are in for a rough ride. Why? Well because the very fact that ROH’s (almost) entire fan-base are vehement, but even more to the point, even DISCUSSING the loss of a BOOKER, suggests to me that these are the fans that they need the most.

ROH never has appealed to WWE fans - to casual supporters of the spectacle, the glitz and the apparent glamour that the big-money show has to offer. Will that really change?

Right now, It APPEARS - and this is, at this point, only speculation - but they’re doing the one thing that they usually never do: they aren’t listening to their own fans.

I applaud the decision to cut back on spending, to drop some foreign imports and go back to basics. But I find it difficult to equate the desire for a storyline-based product when you remove the man responsible for some of the bets stories in recent times in wrestling.

Puzzling stuff. Hopefully, they really do know what they’re doing.

Thanks for taking the time to check this out. I welcome any and all feedback and I can be contacted at www.myspace.com/michaelwrestlingetc or simply by emailing me at Michael@ifight365.com. I look forward to hearing from you, and will be back soon!