I've read enough posts critical about my part in falsely building up expectations for ROH's huge announcement that I will acknowledge my own mistake. While I don't think I was wrong to offer my speculation (clearly labeled as such) that the announcement might involve the long-awaited TV deal, I regret if my post set expectations so high. What's more, I did not mean to suggest that ROH officials were wrong for getting hopes up for such an announcement. Nobody at ROH teased anything about a TV deal, although officials have been on the record about working on one.
So, for what it's worth, I apologize.
Nevertheless, none of this gets ROH off the hook for promising a "huge announcement" in a press release sent to the media and failing to deliver. Completely independent of The Steel Cage, on ROH's fan forum Sunday some 140+ posts - far more than for any other topic - speculated about what the announcement could be. They predicted everything from a renewal of the company's PPV deal, to the signing of Rob Van Dam, to a talent exchange program with TNA. Those fans certainly did not get their hopes up from anything I wrote.
I may have set the bar high with my hopes for news of a TV deal, but just about any announcement would have been better than what they delivered - a merchandise sale. I would have been satisfied with the announcement of an epic main event for an upcoming show, or the return of a former ROH star.
It's true that ROH officials have more than earned the benefit of the doubt to allow us all to write this all off as an innocent mistake, but they should be called out on their error and not get a free pass.
Nonetheless, I agree that far too much energy has been spent debating something that really isn't a big deal. I'd much rather talk about how much I'm looking forward to seeing Bryan Danielson take on Naomichi Marufuji at the Hammerstein Ballroom on May 10. It doesn't get much more "huge" than that.
Comments (5)
I don't want to talk about right and wrong. The whole situation took a life of it's own.
Just remember that the ROH forum posters aren't the only ROH fans. I'm a member of a small forum that gets an RSS feed from this great blog of yours. Not only that, but they don't have a person updating them with ROH's newswires. The only thing they knew about this "announcement" is what they read from your RSS feed. Despite you making it clear that the TV deal was pure speculation on your part, they simply saw the words "announcement" and "TV deal" and thought that 1 + 2 = 4 and took those words as the gospel and let their imaginations run wild. Once it was reported by Mike Johnson of PWInsider.com that the 33% off sale was the "announcement", the posters were pretty disappointed.
I'm not saying that you are wrong and ROH is right or vice versa. I'm just giving everyone another side of the situation.
Either way...
Thank you for clearing this all up and putting it into perspective.
Please keep up the great work.
The next time any wrestling company pushes some big/huge/ginormous announcement, run away. Aside from the Kurt Angle signing by TNA, I've never seen the actual announcement ever meet the expectations.
I thought the announcement was them expanding to Canada?
That's cool to apologize, considering I don't think you did anything wrong enough to warrant an apology. It's your blog, and you were merely providing your opinion on the information you received, in this case a press release promising a "huge announcement."
It's a good reminder to us readers that, despite your previous involvement in WWE, you are still just a viewer of the current product (albeit, with a lot more connections and other benefits than most fans have) and when it comes to the blogs on the business today, your opinion is simply that.