Hello, everyone. The past few days have made this quite a week when it comes to pro wrestling news. TNA Wrestling has, in effect, severed all ties with Ring Of Honor, by pulling all of it's contracted talent from their current and future shows. Ring Of Honor has finalized a deal to finally appear on Pay Per View in the very near future. Pro Wrestling Guerilla has decided to sever ties with TNA, due to a disagreement over TNA talent being featured on their DVD's. Let's try to sort all of this out if we can, shall we?
Yesterday, it was reported by Ring Of Honor that it had secured a PPV deal with a few companies, including iN Demand, TVN and Echostar Entertainment (who owns Dish Network). This will, in effect, bring an entire new dynamic to their company, including the ability to be seen in up to 50 million homes in the United States and generating more revenue for the company. Ring Of Honor is already seen on Japanese, British and Canadian Television. PPV in the United States, however, is a much bigger deal than it is in Japan, and while I am not familiar with the other markets, I do think the same rule may apply, although I would have to look into actual numbers ordering PPV's in each respective market and do a comparison analysis, which - as it stands right now - I do not really have time for. The easy answer is that this is a step in the right direction for Ring Of Honor, and they will present 6 cards as it stands right now between 2007 and 2008. This announcement is a positive for the company, but it did have an immediate negative effect.
TNA Entertainment, due to the fact that it also run's PPV events, pulled all of their contracted talent from Ring of Honor, effective immediately. It's something that has to be done, because now ROH isn't a promotion that just uses TNA contracted talent, they are now competition for the all important PPV dollars. The third news event that may be more indirectly related to all of this is more surprising.
Pro Wrestling Guerrila decided to sever all ties with TNA and it's contracted talent due to issues with DVD sales. Apparently, TNA does not want contracted talent being used on DVD's that are sold through third party retailers. PWG has just decided to stop working with the company altogether. While this seems odd because PWG isn't anyone special compared to TNA and it's talent which is on television every week, it could actually have a negative impact on TNA and future contracts with talent. Let me explain that part quickly if I can.
TNA talent are booked through TNA for unaffiliated independent shows, except of course for WWE (and now ROH). This situation has allowed many of the wrestlers working for TNA to make quite a nice secondary income for themselves by working indy dates, and the promotions they work for are obviously happy because it is always better to have recognized talent appear on their show for ticket sales and such. (I was recently at a show where Kurt Angle was doing a meet and greet. Could you imagine Vince doing that?) The winners are the fans when it comes to this special working agreement between TNA and its contracted talent. Because TNA, as of yet, runs so few house shows, it gives many people an opportinity to see TNA stars at a local event. It's actually a win-win situation for everyone involved, and I do hope it continues into the future, but this PWG situation may be just the tip of the iceberg.
Short term, ROH wins and loses, TNA loses (as do a lot of their contracted talent who are losing bookings by these decisions), and PWG basically loses because of the lack of name talent. But, I think the fans are going to see a new boom period in the next few years, and - for us - that is never a bad thing!