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Ring of Honor announcer Ian Ricccaboni joined PWTorch columnist Sean Radican on Radican Worldwide for a new interview for PWTorch VIP members ahead of Final Battle 2021 on Dec. 11. The show will be ROH’s last event before they go on hiatus.
Riccaboni said going into the event, he’s feeling emotional the day before the show takes place. I’m a ball, a whirlwind of emotion right now,” said Riccaboni. “ I can’t look at a picture without getting overcome with both joy and sadness. I cried at my barber today. My barber Carmine asked me, ‘hey, you got any wrestling events coming up.’ Ive known this guy for 34 years now. I got my first haircut there. This is somebody. Not a family member, but I let him know kind of what the deal was with Ring of Honor. He was so empathetic and so sympathetic. It took a toll on him even. I was shocked. There’s a lot of emotion right now. Got some of it at the last TV taping. The very last one for the time being we had that in November, so this is the last live event and this is going to be the last time I see a lot of my friends and maybe the last time for a long time. We don’t know. We don’t know if there will be a Ring of Honor. If it will be… we’re pretty confident it will be relaunched in April. We don’t know who’s going to get an offer from another company. We don’t know quite frankly what the budget might look like and if Ring of Honor can afford to continue to have us after that. I’m just looking forward to letting all the emotion out and just trying to be kind of present in the moment.”
Riccaboni was also asked about the Tweet that he posted after the news came out that ROH was going on hiatus saying that if ROH went out of business, he would be done with wrestling. Riccaboni revealed that he has changed his mind and that he even has an offer on the table that he will reveal after Final Battle.“I was overwhelmed by the amount of people that reached out and this isn’t for employment reasons, I want to make this clear, but there were folks from every major organization that I’ve known or met throughout the years that reached out to me and just wanted to check in,” said Riccaboni. It wasn’t, ‘Hey, I have a job for you.’” It wasn’t… some were like, ‘Hey we’ll let you know we’ll work you in” or ‘hey, well let you know’ and subsequently I’ve heard back from those folks and it’s very overwhelming and flattering. When I sent that Tweet Ring of Honor has been my home. It’s the home team. It’s the only organization that I wanted to call wrestling with because of the bonds that I’ve made.
“I’ve become great friends with Delirious and again it finally feels like a team where we can tear down these walls a little bit. He was the guy in my ear at every show. He was the guy in my ear during the TV tapings and he’s just the man. He’s had a lot of adversity to work against with COVID with restructuring and scheduling and booking. He’s somebody that I have a ton of respect for and I think until you walk kind of a mile in his shoes it’s very difficult to comprehend I don’t want to say how much worse things could be, but he keeps such a cool head in the face of unexpected, unprecedented, and really some difficult changes that he has to deal with because of COVID and things like that. So, between the bond with him, with referee Todd Sinclair, with Bobby Cruise, with Caprice, I just couldn’t or didn’t see myself anywhere else at the time I wrote that.
“I’ve been given the green light though to pursue an opportunity and I’ll kind of let folks know where that is following Final Battle. This… I was shocked at what opportunity it was. I didn’t even think the opportunity was on the table or would be. That just goes to show you that folks really look out for you and if somebody that really looks out for me and thinks of me and takes care of me… I’ll make it a little bit more public once we’re through with Final Battle, so I do have at least one thing on the table and one thing I get to do and I’m excited about that. I’m going to be doing some fun stuff in January, which i’ll have more information about and in March.
Riccaboni went on to say he had ROH’s blessing to pursue the opportunity, but he told ROH his commitment is he will stay with ROH if they want him when the company comes back on April 1. Riccaboni revealed he is under ROH contract until March 31.
“My commitment… I told our General Manager Greg Gilleland this,” said Riccaboni. “My commitment is I’m Ring of Honor’s if Ring of Honor wants me. My contract runs through March 31. They’re honoring that, which is awesome and if I fit their puzzle piece or their vision for April 1, sign me up, I’m in. If I don’t that probably would break my heart, but at least I know wrestling, my time in wrestling is not up and that’s also super flattering to me.”
You can watch ROH’s Final Battle on PPV, Honor Club, and Fite.tv.
Contact Sean Radican at pwtorchsean@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @SR_Torch
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