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With what may be the final Ring of Honor PPV, Final Battle 2021 set for this Saturday 12/11 in Baltimore, PWInsider.com has reached out to current and former Ring of Honor perfomers, personalities and fans for their thoughts and memories of the promotion. Every day this week, we will be running memories and comments. Enjoy part four of a very special look back at Ring of Honor.
Tony Devito:
"Ring of Honor was a very special time in my career. ECW was out of business and I had to go back and work a shoot job to support my family, but then came along ROH. I was ablet to do some really cool things in ROH, working with Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Mick Foley, The American Dream Dusty Rhodes and others, but the greatest thing of all was teaming with my brother LOC and becoming ROH World Tag Team Champions.
As one of the veterans in the locker room, it was our job to work with all the new guys like Special K, the Texas Wrestling Academy, The Christopher Street Connection, The Outcast Killers and The Ring Crew Express. It was awesome working with these kids and teaching them the old school way while infusing the new school of professional wrestling.
Hopefully, this is not the end and just a new beginning for Ring of Honor."
One half of the Carnage Crew in ROH, Tony Devito is retired from in-ring competition beyond special appearances and is now living in Florida.
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Josh Neimand:
"I am not a wrestler. I have never set foot in the ring. But the role ROH played in my life cannot be understated.
Growing up in Texas, The Von Erichs, The Freebirds, Bruiser Brody, Chris Adams and Gino Hernandez, Ric Flair, Iceman King Parsons and nearly everyone who came through the Sportatorium were the guys who made me a wrestling fan. I grew up with the Southern style of wrestling – that cartoon stuff out of Connecticut was rarely for me, and I’ve always sought out wrestling that was reminiscent of that tough, rough and tumble, explosive style of wrestling the Southern style was known for.
In college, I stopped watching wrestling. It had lost its luster for me.
ECW brought me back in, but just as quickly, it was gone. And then, a couple years after ECW ended, my buddy Mike Johnson (yes, THAT Mike Johnson) called me and said I had to go to the Elk’s Lodge in Queens (a short bus ride from my Queens apartment) because some company I’d never heard of was having something called a Scramble Match that I just had to see.
So I dragged my buddy Harlan (he grew up watching the AWA in the 1960s) and my then wife Angie to the show to watch a few wrestlers I’d seen locally, as well as several I’d never heard of. And while the scramble match did not live up to the hype, the now well-known riot that took place after the Homicide-Steve Corino match hooked me. It was so real and so on fire that Angie thought it was only a matter of time before someone pulled out a gun and began firing, and Harlan and I – who at the time had a combined 60+ years of watching wrestling – were completely sold that this was not as planned, and when some beach blonde haired Samoan guy took down a man that looked twice his size, it felt like the roof was going to get blown off the place.
That blonde haired Samoan guy is of course, Samoa Joe and it feels almost silly now that on a card that featured Colt Cabana, Loc and DeVito, Jay and Mark Briscoe, Corino, Homicide, CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Paul London, Low Ki, and AJ Styles (all on the undercard!), I went in not knowing what to expect.
Flash forward a couple of years, and I’m traveling all across the country, going to ROH shows like I’m following the Grateful Dead.
I’m making friends both inside and outside the locker room, and living what I felt was a wrestling fan’s dream. I’m going into shows early just because I could, and then I’m helping set things up because I’m there, bullshitting with guys like Roderick Strong and Jack Evans, and the next thing you know, after fixing a major problem moments before a show in the Boston area began, Cary Silkin shakes my hand, thanks me, and offers me a job.
Suddenly, I’m actually working for Ring of Honor, getting paid to travel, getting paid to do everything from set up to camera work to merch to security (Imagine my surprise when Necro Butcher decides to throw me about 15 feet into the air onto a bunch of chairs) to whatever I’m asked, and now I truly am living the wrestling fan’s dream.
But, eventually, as all good things do, that dream came to an end. But the friendships and memories have remained. Some of my closest friends to this day are people I met while traveling to show, guys like Matty and Tom and Scott and Jeff and Adam and Jay and Cameron and countless others. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention guys like Gabe and Ross and Syd and Sugar Shawn and Zack and all the then students and men and women in the locker room who welcomed this relative outsider in.
Recently, I was asked to be on Jeff Schwartz and Shane Hagadorn’s An Honorable Mention podcast because of my time in the company. My experience in ROH opened doors in Texas after I moved down here, among them a project I was involved with (Victory Crown Championship Wrestling), which was a brief, but highly respected venture.
This past weekend, here in Texas, Game Changer Wrestling had a show. And I’d be lying if I said the biggest draw wasn’t seeing old friends – my pal Cameron who had moved from Boston to Austin a few years back, drove a few hundred miles to see the show, and of course, Mark and Jay Briscoe, who were on the card.
Cameron and I watched much of the show together, and when I went to shake Jay and Mark’s hands, they pulled me in for a hug and we laughed and caught up on old times, and the dozen years it had been just melted away."
Josh “Tree” Neimand is as passionate about music and beer as he is wrestling, and feels fortunate to have worked in all three industries. He was intricately involved in Koch Vision's series of Ring of Honor DVD releases. Neiman is now the chain account manager for Martin House Brewing Company in Fort Worth, TX, one of the fastest growing craft breweries in the country and famous for brewing beers with Hot Cheetos, Pickles, and the recently released Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins, an Elf tribute stout brewed with Spaghetti, Maple Syrup, Lactose, Chocolate, Marshmallows, and M&M’s. He can be found on Twitter at @BlameTheBeard.
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Mickie James:
"I'm sad about it. I'll be honest. I'm sad that Ring of Honor is going away. I think because when I first transitioned. I went from the school that it started at to a school in Maryland, Bone Breakers at the time, which was a really well-established school at the time, but it started to open a lot more doors and Ring of Honor was one of those doors and Impact Wrestling was one of those doors. I was holding like the first and second pay-per-view thing in that twenty-five girl battle Royal to win a contract, I believe.
Ring of Honor was so hot because it was fresh and new and if you don't remember, as ECW was kind of diminishing, there was ROH. So it was hot and it was fresh and it was that new style that we see so much more of today now. Honestly, it was really cool because there was people like AJ Styles and Chris Daniels and Amazing Red and myself. I got to wrestle and at that time, it was probably the only girls matches on the card because girls didn't really have as many matches as we do now. I'm so, so grateful because out of that was honestly where I had a serious run and I got to come do a serious run in TNA at the time out of there when Raven came and worked with CM Punk there and he saw me. [ROH] was just so much different and out of that he added me and I became pat of The Gathering with him and out of that impact, you know, TNA at the [Nashville] Fairgrounds at the time and doing that and working beside him and my friend Julio [Sanchez], and even with Punk within that whole thing.
A lot of us, a lot of people really got their start over there at Ring of Honor. It was really the place to be. I guess we all thought it would eventually grow and it did what it did, but it never kind of left that place and I just don't know why. It's sad to see that it's going away, but nothing's ever forever, right? There could be something that happens and then there's a whole Ring of Honor of Resurgence."
Mickie James, under the ring name Alexis Laree, wrestled regularly for ROH during its infancy until being signed to her first WWE deal. James is the reigning Impact Wrestling Knockouts Champion and recently produced the NWA Empowerrr PPV.
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Adam Pearce:
"Without Ring of Honor, I don’t know what I’m doing with my professional life.
I’ve said it a million times and it’s true: Without Cary Silkin and his Ring of Honor, I’m probably out of wrestling and certainly not doing what I do today.
Ring of Honor was always an incredible platform for so many of our industry’s top performers and minds; a collection of the best, a proving ground for the elite. And we all had such a pride for those three letters. All of us. In the locker room, in the “office”, in the stands.
Ring of Honor’s legacy to me will be that of a foundation, where individual legacies began their journey toward construction. Where the uncontrolled hungry found their appetite renewed and where we all found a place that gave us the chance us to try, fail, learn, and do it all over again with a smile on our faces and (hopefully) an ass every 18 inches.
Ring of Honor will live forever in each and every one of us fortunate enough to feel that energy as we stepped through their doors, down their aisle, into their ring. Just as ROH found its way into our work ethic, style, attitude, and into our hearts.
Whether the company continues in literal form or not, Ring of Honor will always continue so long as it’s children do.
And we do.
With honor.
-AP"
Adam Pearce, the second-ever booker for Ring of Honor published the above comments on his Facebook page. He is now a top official on camera and behind the scenes for World Wrestling Entertainment. Pearce also released the following on YouTube:
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