WWE and AEW were given the opportunity to purchase Ring of Honor ahead of Tony Khan’s announcement on this week’s Dynamite.
Opening the show, Khan announced that he has purchased ROH, which will reportedly serve as a ‘developmental territory’ for AEW.
On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said that both WWE and AEW were contacted about a potential sale:
“Both WWE and AEW were contacted when the idea was to sell the company and AEW was the one that, obviously, made the better offer of the two and got the company. As far as what this means going forward, I don’t know.
The tape library is very valuable to AEW because they want to do some sort of a streaming service. Whether they sell something to HBO Max or they do their own streaming service in some form. That amount of library with a lot of wrestlers, including, one of the keys to that library is Ring of Honor owned the All In show which is an important part of the history of AEW… Also, it had all kinds of tapes of Bryan Danielson and a lot of other wrestlers. The Young Bucks, some of Kenny Omega, Jay Lethal.”
Khan now has 20 years of content to use, including footage featuring some of his top stars such as Bryan Danielson, CM Punk and AEW World Champion Hangman Adam Page.
Danielson and Punk will be inducted into the ROH Hall of Fame later this week on March 5, alongside the Briscoes and Samoa Joe.
AEW also now owns the footage from ALL IN, the 2018 event produced by Ring of Honor which would prove an alternative to WWE is viable.
