Who needs Mickey Rourke when you've got a real-life legend in Ric Flair?
Ring of Honor -- the Philadelphia-based independent promotion featured in Rourke's critically acclaimed film "The Wrestler" -- has established a working relationship with Flair. The "Nature Boy" will be doing his trademark styling and profiling in a non-wrestling role at an ROH television taping scheduled to take place Thursday night in Philadelphia.
Flair's involvement is a coup for company owner Cary Silkin, who is seeking to expand ROH's mainstream fan base now that the promotion is airing weekly Saturday-night shows on Mark Cuban's HD-NET channel. The 60-year-old Flair remains retired from working matches, but has returned to the independent circuit for autograph shows and managerial appearances with son Reid (an aspiring grappler). Flair's televised ROH debut is set to air May 2.
"Ric Flair is one of the Babe Ruths of pro wrestling," Silkin said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "He has a lot of relevance. I love (1960s and 1970s star) Bruno Sammartino and we were very successful when he came to visit the company once in New York. But a 19-year-old wouldn't know who he was unless he was a wrestling historian. A 19-year-old or 69-year-old would know Ric Flair.
"Bringing him in not only gives us a tremendous amount of credibility but also a much-needed recognizable face. As great as our guys are, I'm a realist. Unless you're an Internet wrestling fan, you're not going to know who Bryan Danielson, Nigel McGuinness or the Briscoes are. We need to attract the rest of the world. I think Ric is the perfect person to put into that spot."
Silkin, 52, has a track record for smart business decisions. Since he purchased the company in 2004, ROH has enjoyed gradual growth as a promotion that places a heavy emphasis on in-ring action and innovative young talent (CM Punk and Samoa Joe are ROH alumni). ROH has expanded its touring base from the U.S. Northeast to other spots in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom. Strong DVD sales led to national pay-per-view clearance for taped shows in July 2007, which then helped pave the way for an HD-NET television contract.
"We present more action in 30 minutes than a complete (two-hour) show from one of the other big companies," said Silkin, referring to World Wrestling Entertainment and TNA Wrestling. "That's what we've always thrived on -- giving people their money's worth and treating fans with some respect by having things make sense. We've also been really lucky because we've had guys who are so talented and really work hard."
ROH was impressive enough to catch the eye of Darren Aronofsky, director of "The Wrestler." Aronofsky used ROH as the backdrop for matches worked by Rourke's Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a down-and-out former headliner still chasing stardom on shows in New Jersey high-school gyms.
Silkin said he "begged and begged" Rourke's management to arrange an ROH appearance after "The Wrestler's" release, but "they were scared of him being involved in too much wrestling after the fact." Rourke also declined a match at WWE's "Wrestlemania 25," but did agree to "knock out" Chris Jericho with a punch on last Sunday's pay-per-view show.
"It's funny -- a lot of people who saw ('The Wrestler') probably think Ring of Honor was done on a movie set and is this made-up entity," Silkin said. "When (Aronofsky) approached us about doing the movie, I wasn't sure they wanted to use our name, but they did. It's been great. I don't know that it's helped us at the box office, but it got us a lot of good publicity and will continue to when it gets released on DVD in a few weeks."
A longtime ticket broker and owner of ravetix.com, Silkin said his next long-term goal for ROH is running a live pay-per-view show. Silkin, though, knows the promotion needs to draw more casual fans beyond a hardcore base that rose from the ashes of Paul Heyman's Extreme Championship Wrestling. That's one of the reasons ROH has added Flair and fellow veterans Jerry Lynn (the new ROH champion) and D'Lo Brown to its talent mix.
"Our company was definitely brought up as an Internet-based company," Silkin said. "These fans are very loyal and very good to us, but you hit a wall. It's no different than with a band that's popular on the Internet. Only a finite number of people have seen it.
"We need to expand. We can't just cater to the Internet fan. We think we're doing a good job balancing that. We just want to keep Ring of Honor where it's not insulting, where there are compelling wrestlers and action that people are not going to see most of the time with the other companies."
For more information, visit www.rohwrestling.com.
(Alex Marvez writes a syndicated pro-wrestling column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at alex1marv(at)aol.com.)
ROH...
This company will be dead in two years. Larry Sweeney will be laughing...
Any reasoning behind you
Any reasoning behind you rediculous comment of ROH being dead in two years? It's been going since 2002 and started with nothing, and built it's way up to having PPV's and no a weekly show simply by putting on the best wrestling matches in America today.
Personally i don't think it will ever get bigger than WWE or TNA, because it won't attract the child fans, or the just plain moronic, who like to tune into a wrestling show that lasts 2 hours and they see 20mins of wrestling, but i think it could easily grow to ECW's level, where as ECW used violence as it's catalyst, ROH uses good wrestling talent, which of course does (and should!) include some bloody brawls, the likes of which you won't see on PG WWE now-a-days.
Older WWE fans will grew sick of the watered-down wrestling product they are producing, without the edge of the late-90's, sure they will cash-in off the kids, but it's not a long-term product that people will stick with (unless your impressed by them wasting $20k's worth of pyro everytime a wrestler hits the ring *yawn*), i think this is proven by the growth of TNA, and if it wasn't for some piss-poor booking, i think TNA could be biting into WWE's cake even more so.
ROH may run into some troubles like ECW as it continues to grow, but to predict it's death within two years is just plain idiotic.
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The first comment
Besides what the other guy just said, why would Sweeney be laughing if a company he was working for died? Pretty stupid comment.
Suspended without pay
Sweeney was recently suspended from ROH by Silkin. Sweeney (real name: Alex Whybrow) suffers from bipolar disorder and this, by Alex' account, is the reason for his suspension.
Sweeney's account can be read here
http://www.myspace.com/larrysweeney
Silkin has not made any comment to as the issue; I imagine there is a large gap of information and I wouldn't treat Sweeney's account as a legitimate source of information in regard to the incident. Particularly since his myspace entry contains ranting, irrelevant asides (i.e. "f--k the world!" and at times borders on lunacy.
This company will not be 'dead in two years,' this is well organized wrestling company that manages to both put off excellent shows appreciated by us smarks as well as operate in the black. Such is a feat accomplished by few other indy feds.
The Nature Boy,
The Nature Boy, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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