When asked at WrestleReunion about why he was no longer with ROH, Colt Cabana said that when Sinclair was offering contracts, they gave him an offer, he thought it was low, and he asked if they were serious. Apparently, they felt insulted he made that remark because he was never given a counter offer, nor ever talked with about being used again. He said that even though he’s friends with Punk, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be signed by WWE because HHH, Stephanie, Kevin Dunn and John Laurinaitis don’t get his character, and that they were more interested in having people like Alex Riley. He noted that when he was making $500 a week in developmental, they liked Riley and offered him the same $500 a week deal. Riley said that was too little. Then they offered him $1,000 a week to start and he wasn’t going to start for that little, so he started in developmental at $1,500 per week because they liked his look. And he was a guy who had never worked indies, simply because of his look, was starting out at triple what most of those starting out, including someone like Cabana with years of experience around the world, was getting. Then again, that’s not unusual since Brock Lesnar started at $250,000 per year, Kurt Angle started at six figures, Edge started at $210 per week guaranteed, and Daniel Rodimer (the blond guy from 2004 Tough Enough) started at a big figure because they thought he looked like Dave Draper (a 60s bodybuilding icon) and he was successful in his own business in Tampa and had a take or leave it attitude and eventually left it when he didn’t get to the main roster fast enough.


^ Wow, that explains an awful lot.

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Joe Koff, the CEO of ROH, got a lot of heat for a statement reported at Prowrestling.net in response to the iPPV fiasco last weekend, saying, “We are a customer of Go Fight Live. Fans paid Go Fight Live for the PPV. We felt it was Go Fight Live’s responsibility to address the issue with those who purchased the PPV, and they did reach out to those fans. But the situation was beyond our control, so I don’t feel like we had to address it. Had the problems occurred on our end, with something we were responsible for, I probably would have responded in a greater and quicker manner.” That was a very unfortunate statement. The problems on the first night, particularly not being fixed in three hours on a live show, were really unfortunate. They did get a replay up the next morning, which, honestly, would have been good enough under the circumstances except there was a second show that afternoon. The second day issues were out of everyone’s control. But still, the fans were buying an ROH product, not a GFL product, in their mind, advertised by ROH and I know everyone felt awful but that was a poor choice of wording. They did get the missing matches from the second night up on youtube. It looks like ROH and GFL are splitting after that problem as Kevin Kelly said the 5/12 show in Toronto would be an iPPV but not on GFL. That will probably end up being true but apparently Kelly released that info before they had a new carrier in place and they wished he hadn’t said it. Those in the company said that no matter what, the 5/12 show will be on iPPV, that Kelly spoke prematurely and out of school, and that no final decision has been made whether it will be with GFL or not.

The show will be headlined by the Davey Richards vs. Kevin Steen ROH title match that has been pushed since Steen’s return as the company’s ultimate match. The booking is most interesting, because on TV they are trying to build this around a U.S. vs. Canada feud and with the match in Canada, Steen is being booked to be the super babyface when it comes to crowd reaction for this match. They could have put this match anywhere, and chose it for Canada so the goal is to make it appear Steen is the super face, or try and create a U.S. vs. Canada dichotomy like WWF in 1997. From what we understand, the match from the start was always booked for Toronto, with the idea of having a Canadian going for the title and having been out of the market for so long being the keys to drawing a big crowd. The stips are that the piledriver is legal, as requested by Richards, and that Steen only gets this one shot and if he doesn’t win, he never gets another shot at the title.

The 1,500 number we reported on iPPV buys for both nights ended up being a number notably higher than what it turned out to be, so they were down from last year’s WrestleMania double shot iPPV weekend.

What could be a huge deal for the industry is that Youtube is now sending out feelers about getting into the iPPV business.

They’ve announced with ROH/CHIKARA combined shows on 4/28 in Chicago, that the afternoon show which is the CHIKARA show will feature Eddie Kingston vs. Kevin Steen for the CHIKARA Grand championship, while the ROH show has Mark & Jay Briscoe defending the ROH tag titles against Hallowicked & Jigsaw, plus a Lucha rules (no tagging necessary) match with Fire Ant & Soldier Ant & Green Ant vs. Jay Lethal & Adam Cole & T.J. Perkins.

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