The ROH Supercard of Honor media call took place this afternoon, Tony Khan shared his excitement for the first pay-per-view since ROH’s return to TV. The show is being headlined by Claudio Castagnoli defending the ROH World Championship against Eddie Kingston.
Despite this being an ROH media call, Khan led the call off by letting us know about something coming to AEW Dynamite this week. “I have some very exciting news coming on AEW Dynamite on Wednesday. I’m very excited about that. And hopefully, we can all reconvene and talk about it,” said Khan.
Khan then made the very bold statement, “I believe we have the chance to do the single best event in wrestling this week with Ring of Honor Super Card of Honor, and that ROH has grown to new business heights and we have the most streaming subscribers in the history of Ring of Honor, while still maintaining the best pay-per-view numbers in the history of Ring of Honor and live attendance marks.”
Buying ROH led to Khan developing some of the best relationships of his life, specifically a relationship with Mark and the late Jay Briscoe. Khan is very grateful that he got the chance to get to know Jay, saying he was a good friend and he hopes to continue to honor his legacy. “I’ve never seen such an outpouring of love and support as I did around his passing, and I think it would make him very proud.”
On the Supercard of Honor card Mark Briscoe will be facing will be challenging Samoa Joe for the ROH Television Championship and there will be a Reach for the Sky Ladder Match for the vacant ROH Tag Team titles.
As we know the main event is the bout between Castagnoli and Kingston, there was a preview video released to hype up this championship bout made by Joseph Weirdness. Khan wants to respect the history of wrestling and he acknowledges the long history between Castagnoli and Kingston.
“That video package really captured a lot of history that was told before AEW and even outside of ROH. But then, they both have a history in ROH before they came to AEW and then in AEW their paths really crossed.”
The women’s match on Supercard is Athena defending the ROH Women’s Championship against Yuka Sakazaki.
“I think we’ve had some amazing matches and some of the best matches on the show have been involving the women’s roster in particular, I thought the main event of our second episode of ROH weekly tv, Athena versus Willow Nightingale is one of the best matches we’ve had, period. In Ring of Honor TV or pay-per-view. And it was a great main event and it got a lot of people talking and a lot of positive buzz on the product, on the company, on the Champion and the Challenger. Everybody really won that match. And of course, Athena did come out with a victory, retained the championship.”
With ROH not having the same constraints as AEW, since they are on a streaming service, Khan hopes to cater to more hardcore fans. “Circumvent some aspects of traditional wrestling television, which puts less pressure on all of us in some ways and makes it even easier to focus on and deliver great wrestling shows like we’ve been doing at ROH.”
With AEW going on a Canadian tour this summer, Khan said he hopes to expand ROH to Canada in the near future. “Canada has so much of a rich history in the wrestling business and historical figures from Canada and great matches that have taken place there. And it’s certainly one of the top markets for us, in terms of live events and television. And we’ll continue to expand and do more big events there. And this summer is a great taste of how strongly we feel about the Canadian market.”
ROH Super Card of Honor is being held in Los Angeles as a part of WrestleMania weekend, and Khan said he will be scouting all the independent shows going on in L.A. for new talent. As for his own show, he then touched on the ROH Pure Championship match with Wheeler Yuta defending against Katsuyoriu Shibata. Yuta getting the chance to face a legend, like Shibata, at such a young age is quite a big deal. Khan believes Yuta’s match with Jon Moxley early in his AEW career pushed him into the position he is now.
“He’s [Yuta] a future top star in this business. I really believe he has so much potential and he already is a major star that has accomplished a lot. He’s been a two-time Ring of Honor, Pure Champion. He had some success in ROH before he came to AEW.”
The current issues revolving around CM Punk were brought up, but Khan simply just said running two companies in the social media era is difficult and it’s just about trying to be better each day.
ROH’s streaming service, Honor Club, has now reached 15,000 subscribers as of today and the PPV buys are apart from that. “Last year in three shows we did close to a hundred thousand buys across three shows and pretty amazing and all three delivered great numbers. And now to come back with Super Card and be able to do a pay-per-view business and the streaming service too is like having your cake and eating it too.”
With the Reach for the Sky ladder match, there will also be brand new ROH tag titles debuted, and the entire match was the idea of QT Marshall. He was close friends with Jay and Mark was on board with the idea, Mark also informed Khan that he will no longer be competing in tag matches without his brother.
The launch of ROH’s TV show has also changed the way Khan books AEW, and he said he just touched on this with Kenny Omega.
“He is one of the very articulate and intelligent students of wrestling. And he asked me about it and I told him that I feel more invigorated doing Ring of Honor than I ever have before. I feel like, people thought it was going to be a drain because I already have several jobs and do several things and work all the time already. But I really enjoy doing it and I feel like it’s been additive to both companies and there’s great synergies and I get more ideas and I feel like the show, it’s helped everything and I feel like the dynamite shows have been stronger than ever.”
Khan finally said that Supercard of Honor will be a record gate in the history of ROH. “I think they’re distinct and both shows have been maybe at their all-time, some of the strongest quality stuff. And I believe by doing great wrestling, we have a chance to only grow and build and do better and better.”
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