By James Caldwell, PWTorch.com assistant editor

Ring of Honor president Cary Silkin says ROH signed Ric Flair to a multiple-date deal to bring a "face" to the ROH promotion that all wrestling fans can identify with the ROH product.

Silkin says ROH has "hit a wall" with trying to draw money from Internet-based fans and they want to appeal to more wrestling fans that aren't aware of the product.

"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," Silkin told Alex Marvez for his weekly syndicated column." We need to attract the rest of the world. I think Ric is the perfect person to put into that spot."

Silkin says Internet-based ROH fans have been good to the company, but they can't cater to just that audience.

"It's no different than with a band that's popular on the Internet. Only a finite number of people have seen it," Silkin said. "We need to expand. We can't just cater to the Internet fan. We think we're doing a good job balancing that."

Silkin says they will continue promoting a product featuring some of the top wrestlers in the business, especially on HDNet with 30 minutes of wrestling per show.

According to Silkin, there are plans for a live PPV in the future. He also hopes the company's exposure in "The Wrestler" will help them grow despite Mickey Rourke's publicity people not wanting him to associate with ROH.

"They were scared of him being involved in too much wrestling after the fact," Silkin said despite ROH being an integral part of the wrestling scenes in the movie.

Caldwell's Analysis: ROH has a few hurdles to overcome to grow as a company. The first is figuring out how to build continuity between TV, PPV, live events, and DVDs. Wrestling fans are accustomed to episodic wrestling storylines that flow into each other. A new DVD comes out that is a month behind live events, but a month ahead of PPV, and a few weeks out of synch with TV.

ROH also has to figure out how to keep that Internet-based audience while expanding into the mainstream. A band blows up nationally and they have a huge audience to draw from that surpasses their initial Internet fans. Unfortunately, there isn't a huge "Joe wrestling fan" audience to draw from where ROH can afford to move away from catering to Internet fans that are the foundation of the company's business. ROH has some real challenges to address and it will be interesting to see how they handle these two significant issues.

Link: Cary Silkin interview with Alex Marvez.

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