COVID-19 ruined many plans for Ring of Honor in 2020. Ring of Honor was forced to cancel money events including its Past vs. Present event in March, its Best in the World pay-per-view, and the promotion was forced to postpone its Pure Championship tournament.
The promotion has begun safely running events in Baltimore, Maryland, with their own take on the NBA bubble. The ROH bubble was chronicled by The Baltimore Sun (subscription needed) where Ring of Honor COO, Joe Koff spoke about working with the Maryland State athletic commission to provide the guidelines for safe tapings.
“I was not comfortable until we had a set of protocols that we worked on diligently with the Maryland State Athletic Commission,” he said. “It took us months.”
Ring of Honor franchise player Jay Lethal spoke about the experience thus far being a pleasant surprise as he was not looking forward to taping without an audience.
“Wrestlers, we live in hotel rooms,” Jay Lethal told the Sun. “So I was like, ‘This isn’t going to be too bad.’ Until you’re told you can’t leave your room. … We could’ve made a whole show just sending a camera to everyone’s room to see how they were passing the time.”
“I thought it was going to be a nightmare without the people there,” Lethal said. “The flashiness that’s normally there is put on the back burner. You aren’t pandering or working for what some would call the pop. … I will admit not everybody’s going to like it, but this I feel is the perfect style of wrestling for the pandemic.”
Due to the fact that many performers worked GCW’s Collective, Ring of Honor recently made the decision to send those wrestlers home from the most recent tapings but agreed to pay them as though they worked the tapings.
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