Ring of Honor CEO Joe Koff spoke with Vaughn Johnson of Philly.com recently to promote ROH’s 13th anniversary show. Here are the highlights:
On ROH running WrestleMania weekend in 2016 down in Dallas: “We’ll be fine. We’ll be in Fort Worth or Dallas [in 2016]. That’s not going to become a problem, and if it becomes a problem then we’ll deal with it. Everything they do I respect. They’re in business just like I’m in business and they’re there to protect their franchise like I’m there to protect my franchise. I have no fault with that. They can’t put everything out of business. They made it a little less convenient for the fans that are going into WrestleMania weekend, but like I said, it hasn’t stopped us from selling out that show. Look, I’m purposely there when they are there because they bring in a ton of fans and they bring in a lot of international fans. “WrestleMania is our Super Bowl and if I can be near it, I’m going to be near it.”
On promoters being afraid of Vince McMahon back in the 1980s: “One of the things I learned when I was working with the promotions is that they were very fearful of Vince McMahon and what he was doing and I think it took their eye of the ball and I think they didn’t know how to compete. The economics scared the local promoters. They just got scared of it and they didn’t know how to fight it because they didn’t have some kind of national distribution to deal with. The one thing about professional wrestling and the one thing we have is we’ve got distribution. We’re in 40 percent of the country. We’re in 40 million homes. We have the capability to be reached 40 million homes through TV. That’s something that most other promotions don’t have. Because we have that, I’m not that concerned about what everyone else is doing. I’m only concerned in bettering my product, keeping my eye on my ball and not worrying about the rest of the business.”
