This week, Pulse Wrestling’s ROH Coverage, already the best on the ‘net, really stepped its game up. Vinny Truncellito discussed ROH’s bargain priced DVDs, Andy Mac reviewed both Take No Prisoners and Dragon Gate Challenge 2. Andy also had a great New Horizons PPV Report, and Norine Stice had an alternate perspective on New Horizons, as well. Mark Allen in Historically Speaking discusses the Stars of Honor Retail DVD, and John Wiswell has thoughts on Pearce leaving ROH, along with a list of Adam’s best matches. All of this leads me to believe I can be brief about ROH’s two major stories this week and then go on to discuss Puro. With all that content detailed above… wait… Wheeler wrote WHAT!? Go give those other columns and reviews a look. They open in separate windows. I’ll be right back when I calm down.
Okay, I’m back. I’m better. How did you enjoy those columns? Great, right? Well, time to tackle the esteemed (ahem) Mr. Wheeler’s comments. Here they are in nice hyperlink form back to his own column, For Your Consideration.
You know what… I started off pretty pissed about this, but tone aside (and you wonder why I sent you a virus!), Andy is pretty much exactly right. Ring of Honor’s attempts at advertising have been pathetic.
Ring of Honor runs occasional television spots during Raw the week before a show is coming to town. With no build and no lead time, this may entice a few to give a new promotion a try, but, generally, many people will have some kind of plans when the first they hear of a show is four days prior. I realize it’s expensive, but without greater coverage of these advertisements for a greater time frame, poor ticket sales in any new area without a huge internet presence are going to bomb.
Furthermore, these commercials look like someone’s freshman AV project. With ECW, the extreme company, this was intentional and part of the charm. With the honorable, classy ROH, it just looks cheap. In fact, visual presentation is severely lacking in many different aspects of ROH’s product. PWG, another independent wrestling company, has far more dynamic match intros and menu interfaces. Chikara has visually unique, drawn covers to their DVDs, while ROH DVD covers often look like something thrown together on Photoshop. The Ring of Honor retail DVDs in particular are lacking in any visual flair to help them stand out from the pack of DVDs from lesser known federations at the back of the store. How will new fans, particularly those who’ve never heard of the company, take it seriously when they are greeted with lackadaisical presentation? Without a professional presentation to prop it up, the negative stigma of wrestling in gyms becomes prevalent in even the most open minded of fans before they even get to the first match, whether live or on DVD.
Once that first match starts, however, the business really picks up! The actual product is great and the storylines are mostly logical and easy to follow… if you follow everything. As an unmarried teacher and accepted ROHbot, even I can barely afford to keep up with ROH’s DVD products, despite their many sales. Then, when I do, I find that very little plot progression takes place on most DVDs. The reason I focus so much on so many Best-Of lists and Story Progression type guides is that it’s nearly impossible for a new fan to figure out what to buy to get a complete story. Ring of Honor on their own offers next to no help in which DVDs are relevant for certain wrestlers and storylines.
Forget figuring out which DVDs to get through Ring of Honor, how about just introducing new fans to the wrestlers via online, official profiles? Well, those don’t exist. It isn’t like El Generico, Delirious, and Jimmy Jacobs, or even Nigel McGuinness and Bryan Danielson, are household names. Fans need to be introduced to these wrestlers. Online profiles are a free and easy way to do this. Hell, I’d write them for free and keep them updated and I don’t even work for ROH. Many other fans would be willing, as well. Once these are accomplished, complimentary highlight videos, including, hopefully, a full match or two, would go a long way to getting people interested in ROH.
When you do figure out who you like and how to follow the company, there’s yet another roadblock. Great shows often get great buzz, after all, so just picking up the shows with the best buzz makes sense. There’s another problem here though, besides price (which sales will keep down. Ring of Honor doesn’t do live commentary, so their DVDs take forever to come out. By the time they do come out, the buzz of the live show has often subsided and great shows that had great word-of-mouth are left to flounder, notably (recently) Vendetta II. This is unnecessary. Flying Prazak and Leonard in for every show might not be financially viable, but flying just one in should be done. Since both are capable at Play-by-Play, simply having a wrestler do color would go a long way towards improving DVD production speed.
All of these issues crop up for the emerging Ring of Honor fan, but the big one is simply hearing of the product. Commercials are merely one form of advertisement. Fliers, particularly at other local wrestling shows and around the venue weeks prior to the show would help business immensely. ROH might not have anyone local to spread these, but dedicated fans in the area would likely be willing if ROH would ship them the fliers. At the very least, this is worth a shot to drive up website traffic and increase awareness that the company exists.
Other measures can be taken to ensure ROH gets their product, which really is great, out to the public. The ones above are merely some of the simplest, cost effective ways of improving ROH. Other ideas include a show in syndication and sampler DVDs at WWE and TNA events, both of which would do a lot for those that are not yet willing to spend for the product, but want to sample it. Ring of Honor has a great product with a lot going for it. But, as Wheeler alluded to, they have a long way going to spreading that product out to the masses and no one to blame for that but themselves.
But hey, if all else fails, just advertise some names that have cache on television from WWE and TNA and hope that does the job. By the way, LAX are returning to ROH!
