Tony Khan has shaken the world of professional wrestling once again. The owner of All Elite Wrestling has formally announced his purchase of Ring of Honor (ROH), a groundbreaking, influential independent wrestling promotion in which many of AEW's current wrestlers plied their in-ring craft during their formative years and saw their careers take off to unforeseen heights in the wrestling world.The ROH promotion celebrated its 20th birthday last week, and had previously gone on hiatus in late 2021 with plans for a full-on restructuring of the brand after the pandemic caused several live event cancellations and a return date for April of this year at the Supercard of Honor PPV event. The deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group, ROH's previous owners, pertains in particular to ROH's production tech, intellectual property and perhaps most importantly, its entire programming library, which, when combined with AEW's own litany of wrestling content, could put Khan's company on the fast track to a big-time streaming deal and help to expand its industrial footprint on both a national and global scale.Khan came out at the open of the March 2 edition of AEW Dynamite, the go-home show for the upcoming AEW Revolution PPV, to excitedly make the official announcement of him being the new owner of ROH. As a longtime fan of the promotion himself, Khan promised the AEW faithful that he would make immediate plans to have ROH's vast library of wrestling and backstage content made available to the public, an opportunity for fans of AEW to see the humble beginnings of many of their favorite wrestlers. There is no shortage to that possibility, as over 40 of AEW's biggest wrestling stars have had their careers kicked off or boosted by their time in ROH, including Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, AEW World Champion "Hangman" Adam Page, Eddie Kingston, AEW Women's Champion Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D., CM Punk, and Bryan Danielson.
In fact, Punk and Danielson were recently named as two of four inductees for ROH's inaugural Hall of Fame class taking place on March 5, alongside Samoa Joe and The Briscoes tag team (Mark & Jay Briscoe), carving out their most prolific in-ring personas and techniques that would define their careers, from ROH to WWE, and even now years later in AEW. This is merely a small example of what ROH has brought to the table of professional wrestling over the last two decades, cultivating some of the best minds and in-ring talent the industry has ever seen, and Khan intends on keeping that trend rolling along as its new owner.
There are no ends to the possibilities with Khan as ROH's new figurehead. The hours upon hours of video content means that AEW's inaugural event in 2018, ALL IN, could finally find its way to the public eye. There's also the chance for underutilized AEW stars to find their niche on AEW shows like Dark and Dark: Elevation, but rebranded under the ROH name to pave the way for new TV deals. ROH may well even be used as full-on developmental territory, not unlike NXT for WWE, and create opportunities for AEW's main roster to cross over to the ROH brand and vice-versa.
While there are indeed numerous possibilites with Khan's purchase, ROH's roster of talent isn't neccessarily one of them, with all the promotion's talent either released following the company's hiatus announcement or seeing their contracts with the company expire this month. That means Khan will in fact have to sign any such erstwhile ROH stars to new contracts in order to have them performing under his banner, and with an already-packed roster on the books, we may not see some of the bigger ROH names like the Briscoes or Matt Taven and his Kingdom faction anytime soon. That said, Khan is nothing if not a man of his word when it comes to keeping promises to the fans, so there's little doubt he will find a way to deliver.
Source: Sports Illustrated, All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan