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GUEST EDITORIAL
By Brian Leahy of Cork, Ireland
PWTorch.com VIP Member

One would be forgiven for thinking that the sky was falling if the only wrestling news source available to you was the ROH message board this past weekend.

The sudden and surprising removal of Gabe Sapolsky from his position within the company has shaken fans of the biggest-little wrestling promotion to its core, with many followers already announcing this change in creative structure as the forerunner to the death knell of ROH.

A friend of mine, on hearing this announced "ROH died on October 26th 2008." This, to me as a fan of ROH since the release of their first DVD, was a baffling statement from a long time fan completely writing off the future of the company based on a single change in personnel.

Personally, I started watching ROH because of wrestling. Not vignettes, not skits, not storylines, just plain ol' wrestling. The subtle storylines and clear heel/face division in ROH's formative years did indeed help in a time of booking ambiguity, but it was wrestling, plain and simple, which "brought me to the dance" in the first place.

The strongest characters like Christopher Daniels, Steve Corino, and Low Ki were almost organically left to do their thing and everything and everyone else just fell into place around it. Almost anything that you did see backstage served a purpose.

There were no promos for the sake of promos; wrestlers lived and died by their in-ring performances, and it was always interesting to see local talent "Do or Die" on the newest release. The simplicity of ROH's early selling point meant that there was little need for daring or fantastic storylines.

ROH presenting wrestling as a sport allowed Gabe to do his job without doing much actual work. As a match-maker Gabe could do no wrong, having an eye for talent long before talent became apparent to the greater wrestling community, building his own stars and rarely using talent that had matured fully in any other of the "big" independents. For the first twelve months, the company could afford to stand on its in-ring action alone, with just the main Prophecy vs. "ROH headliner face" feud doing enough work to keep things interesting.

Relative to what had gone before, ROH's storylines then exploded: Corino vs. Homicide and Punk vs. Raven took centre stage. At this stage Gabe must have had buckets of ideas to use, having sat on his creative-hands for an entire year, and it showed. The three aforementioned feuds kept the company exciting and dynamic until the Rob Feinstein scandal hit. Perhaps a creative blessing in disguise, Gabe had to throw a lot at the wall and hope that at least some of it would stick.

Although the period was undeniably nerve-wracking and exciting in equal measure, the "Generation Next" faction could be considered the only success story to come directly out of it. It's often glossed over that the successful storylines from this period were, for the most part, those involving established talents, while pushes for Chad Collyer, John Walters, Matt Stryker, and Trent Acid failed miserably and made even the most devout ROH fans fast-forward through the technically sound but ultimately boring undercard.

In late 2004, ROH presented the Samoa Joe vs. C.M. Punk feud, which was darling of the wrestling newsletter community. Churning out three separate four and five-star matches, the two mainstays presented what some fans at the time alluded to as the modern day answer to the Rick Steamboat vs. Ric Flair matches of the 1980s.

The human games of chess that were their two hour-long draws gave ROH a lot of coverage in the wrestling media, but it was Punk and Joe themselves who had come forward with the idea, and was used by Gabe, more out of necessity than choice, to fill a void left by a cancelled Steve Corino vs. Joe world title match.

In so much as that credit can be taken from Gabe for this successful run of matches, credit must be given to the way the ROH World Title was handled from this period onwards. The title changes from Joe to Austin Aries to Punk to James Gibson were handled superbly, and the span affectionately known as "The Summer of Punk" still stands out as a great run of shows in the summer of 2005, though the undercard still left an awful lot to be desired.

The 12 months following Bryan Danielson's World Title win probably stand as the creative pinnacle of Gabe's booking tenure and, in retrospect, may have been too good for him to ever surpass. From start to finish and from top to bottom, ROH began to provide superb wrestling cards filled with sterling booking.

The World and Pure Title reigns of The American Dragon and Nigel McGuinness respectively formed a consistent quality baseline for the time period, while the Embassy vs. Generation Next feud, smart use of NOAH and Dragons Gate talent, and the rise of the tag team division rounded out every card, while cleverly avoiding over saturating the product with the same faces or match-ups.

Then, showing how an invasion storyline could and should be written, the ROH vs. CZW storyline unfolded. Intricately booked by Gabe and making stars, albeit temporarily, of career mid-carders like B.J. Whitmer, Adam Pearce, and Ace Steel, the feud also succeeded in gently including existing feuds between team members and opponents alike, crossing many creative threads and then unravelling them perfectly. It also succeeded in making everyone look strong at the finale and giving the losing CZW team and supporters a legitimate excuse for coming up short.

If one thing would ever be highlighted as the zenith of Sapolsky's booking tenure in ROH, his perfect booking of the invasion would win hands down. Coming out of such a hot period, Gabe should have hit the ground at running full tilt, but the Homicide title chase, although white hot in its final execution, was overbooked, drawn out, and relied far too much on the old "heel commissioner" crutch.

What followed next in ROH securing a pay-per-view deal, seemed to slam down the breaks on what was already a creatively-slowing vehicle. Although every ROH PPV since Respect is Earned has been stellar, the cards held between PPV tapings seemed and seem to feature the same matches and combinations. Again, the top of the card acts of Morishima, Dragon, McGuinness, and Aries provided exciting match ups, and The Briscoes vs. Steen & Generico feud miraculously managed to stay fresh and exciting despite near over-exposure.

On the other hand ventures such as (the Dragon Gate "inspired") "Faction Warfare" never really got started with Gabe afraid to pull the plug on something that could never have succeeded with so much talent frequently taking bookings in Japan. Even big creative ventures like Project 161 (the formation of The Age of the Fall) took time to gain momentum (although it has gained considerable steam by now) and there were few fresh, new storylines introduced since the start of 2008.

As 2008 moved along, hot-shot booking of multi-man matches with big names to draw a crowd became increasingly commonplace in Gabe's booking style. The booking of four-ways to earn a title shot early on a card became a cop-out where solid reasoning and booking would have been used in the ROH of old. Such a match would have been used to put new talent in the window, not be the drawing point of the card.

Just this last week before his dismissal, Gabe announced a "Steel Cage Warfare" a mere month after ROH had held the second ever match using such a gimmick. The last time "Steel Cage Warfare" was used before that? Almost three years ago.

Maybe Gabe had booked himself into a corner. Maybe he had no more ideas for the talent he had. Maybe Gabe was on the verge of turning ROH into TNA-LITE... Well, to his credit, his booking retained its logic, but it was becoming increasingly stale and desperate. There's only so many twenty minute, three-star matches you can present before total fan burn-out, whereas people don't watch ROH for meaningless and needless gimmick matches either.

Taking off my fanboy hat and looking at the situation objectively for a minute, ROH needed a change. There was a point where the newest ROH DVD went straight from my mailbox to the DVD player and stayed there for three hours. Not any more.

Half of me is fearful that I'll get burned out on the product that has kept me a wrestling fan at times when mainstream wrestling just doesn't cut it at all. The other half of me wants to jump headlong into the half dozen DVDs I've fallen behind on. Every ROH fan is a fan for a reason, some part of this "little company that could" has captured their imagination in one way or another, but it just couldn't go on with Gabe at the helm.

Merchants of doom and gloom point to Adam Pearce's wrestling style as what ROH fans are in for, and the reports of a new "1970s style" of booking being introduced seems to throw some followers into hysterics, but all it means is a change.

Combined with new cost cutting measures it means less being more, it means clear cut lines drawn between faces and heels, it means cutting out the dead wood, it means giving young, hungry, local talent a chance to "Do or Die." It's a return to roots in ways; it's a new direction in others. Regardless, it's a shot in the arm for ROH. Whether that shot will give it a new life, or its just delaying the company's inevitable demise remains to be seen.

If attempting to bring ROH to the mainstream is the purpose of the booking switch, that's not going to happen with a simple change in the person wielding the pen. Judging by what's drawing ratings on TV these days, glitz and glamour is favoured over substance, and if Carey Silkin is serious in taking a run at the big boys he needs to up production qualities considerably to attract the mainstream fan, which could take the edge off of what made ROH special to begin with.

Maybe Gabe got out at the right time. Whatever happens next with ROH, and whether the company fails or succeeds in its new direction, the majority of fans will remember the past six years with great fondness and Sapolsky's legacy as the creative father of ROH can never be erased.

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RELATED STORY from PWTorch.com: HOT NEWS: Exclusive - Interoffice ROH memo obtained exclusively by PWTorch - Gabe Sapolsky story cracked open.

RELATED STORY from prowrestling.net: Gabe Sapolsky comments on his dismissal from Ring of Honor.

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