Former WWE star Simon (Gotch) Grimm announced he would be "debuting" for Ring
of Honor at their Florida events this weekend. Grimm was at a ROH event in New
York City this past May, almost immediately after his WWE release. We are
putting "debuting" in quotes as while this will be Grimm's official debut since
becoming known internationally through his WWE exploits, he did have a tryout
match for the company in 2005 in NYC, wrestling Oliver John.
ROH's Grand Poobah Joe Koff
was
interviewed by CBS Sports' Chuck Carroll, discussing a number of topics,
including the planned launch of a Ring of Honor streaming service next year.
Koff has mentioned numerous times on PWInsiderElite.com appearances that the
project was in the works and provided some additional details to Carroll,
noting,
"Yeah, we have an app coming out in the first quarter. It really became
developmentally the right time to do it. We saw an opportunity. We had a long
discussion about it. We looked at the business model and how it impacts our
business. We just felt that this was the time to create our own Ring of Honor
stream. You’re going to see an enhanced Honor Club. We tested it during the
Global Wars Tour of streaming house shows to ringside members. You’re going to
see a lot more content available, not only to everybody, but certainly in that
Honor Club. [When we tested] streaming for two shows, our response was terrific
from a quality standpoint and from an accessibility standpoint."
One of
the ideas that has been bandied about internally within ROH is to take a page
from New Japan World and live stream as many ROH events as possible for
subscribers.
Koff noted during the interview that no decision has been
made about the future of ROH PPVs, noting that its possible they could
potentially live stream those on the App and still make them available via
traditional PPV platforms, which is what WWE does. Koff commented, "I’m not
ruling out traditional pay-per-views, but the world is going that way."
Koff was asked about his "TV debut" on ROH, in a segment that got great
reviews featuring Bully Ray and others, commenting on the fact there weren't a
lot of spoilers making the rounds about the segment, noting, "There’s nothing on
that. The only spoiler I read — and the reason why you didn’t read a lot on it —
is because it was the night that WWE had all of the infection stories going on
and how it changed whatever that pay-per-view they did that weekend. So it [WWE]
really grabbed all the headlines. But I saw a report in the
PW
Insider the next day, and they talked about that situation. And the only
thing they said was that Joe Koff put Bubba over. So I probably did what I was
supposed to do."
