Another Twitter war. This time it's the controversial Mark Madden vs. former cheerleader Mike Mondo over the health of ROH as a company.
Long story short (and I am filling in some massive blanks here because Madden's prose is s***), Madden wrote a column wondering how ROH can survive as a "#3" National promotion when they clearly cannot pass (or even come close to) drawing the same kind of money TNA does, with talent that constantly gets purged. He likened it to ECW getting too big for its britches and basically going national at the worst possible time, since WWE and WCW had already taken all the talent that was worth taking.
A fair point. It's one thing to be small time and accept it. Tour the northeast and midwest, sell out your core markets a few times a year, don't over-extend yourself locking down talent or trying to conquer new land. You can survive and maybe even make a living that way, as CHIKARA is currently proving.
But what ROH is doing now under Sinclair is heavily reminiscent of ECW on TNN. All the charismatic guys are gone, and they're left with "good workers" (ROH) or "Hardcore brawlers" (ECW) who can't make it in WWE or TNA because they lack presence. To ROH's credit, they've lucked out a little with Davey and Steen in that those are two guys WITH presence that can't make it in WWE or TNA for size reasons (and completely different size reasons at that. <_<). ECW in its final years had no one like those two. The rest of the rosters though? Pretty comparable. And yet they're trying to become bigger than ever in scope, when their best days as a product are long gone.
Potentially fatal mistake.
So anyway, Madden points this out and all the ROHbots and even ROH wrestlers (most notably Mondo) jump down his throat about how ROH is awesome and it's the best wrestling on the planet, yada yada lena yada, which is basically a strawman.
Madden: "ROH can't survive financially like this."
ROHbots: "F*** YOU u fat slob ROH rules!"
Madden: "If it rules so much why isn't it making money?"
ROHbots: "What do you know about making money you fat f***?"
and so on and so on.
I hate to side with Madden but I think he wins this one.
Talent beats Hard Work every time.
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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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