My Take Radio

Samoa Joe, CM Punk, Jay Lethal, Desmond Wolfe (Nigel McGui­ness), Bryan Daniel­son, AJ Styles, Daniels, Low Ki, Her­nan­dez , Evan Bourne (Matt Sydal), Mickie James (Alexis Laree) and Homi­cide are all names that you have heard at least once in the last few years while watch­ing WWE Raw, Smack­down or TNA Impact. But what some of you may not know is that these guys and gals all got their start in a lit­tle pro­mo­tion called Ring Of Honor, or as the fans call it ROH.

One of the most  impor­tant aspects of ROH is the “Code Of Honor”. This code not only helps make the wrestling more real­is­tic and also helps intro­duce the audi­ence to “Heel” wrestlers or bad guys for their dis­re­gard of the code.  There have been changes to the code since the start of ROH. ROH con­sid­ered it a “moral require­ment” to fol­low these rules. They were (usu­ally in this order):

1. You must shake hands before and after every match
2. No out­side inter­fer­ence: no inter­fer­ing in oth­ers’ matches or hav­ing oth­ers inter­fere on your behalf
3. No sneak attacks
4. No harm­ing the officials
5. Any action result­ing in a dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion vio­lates the Code of Honor

In 2004 the rules were changed from 5 to 3 and were as follows:

1. Shake hands before and after the match—if you respect your opponent
2. Keep the playing-field level
3. Respect the officials

 The code of honor was one of the things that made me a fan of this orga­ni­za­tion, not to men­tion the fan­tas­tic wrestling I have wit­nessed. Matches with Samoa Joe & CM Punk were clas­sics as well as matches involv­ing Homi­cide or Christo­pher Daniels and AJ Styles. It is unfor­tu­nate that so many main­stream fans have yet to expe­ri­ence Ring of Honor and see some of the future stars of pro wrestling. Guys like Tyler Black,  Austin Aries, Colt Cabana, The Amer­i­can Wolves, The Briscoe Broth­ers and many more put on mat clas­sics on a reg­u­lar basis and many of you are miss­ing it.  Here is  glimpse of what you are miss­ing out on:

ROH, unlike other orga­ni­za­tions, did not have a weekly TV pro­gram until recently. You can now catch Ring of Honor on HDnet and of course order DVD’s and mer­chan­dise from the ROH web­site. Worst case,  good ‘ole YouTube has plenty of ROH videos.