As announced last week, New Japan Jushin Thunder Liger is coming in to work the August 22nd NXT Takeover: Brooklyn event. He will face Tyler Breeze on the show. The announcement caused quite the stir, due to the fact that New Japan has a working relationship with ROH. The NXT show goes head to head with ROH’s event at MCU Field that night, which features top NJPW stars Kazuchika Okada, Shinsuke Nakamura, and KUSHIDA. Alex Shelley, Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr are also scheduled to work the show.
The feeling is that this puts ROH in a very bad position. The New Japan relationship is very beneficial to ROH, it provides some talent more bookings, the joint shows in May were a big success (both financially and critically), it gives ROH a big time feel and allows for talents like A.J. Styles, The Young Bucks and Roppongi Vice to be brought in for big events. ROH may feel as if they cannot trust New Japan, but if the relationship changes or ends, it wont happen until after the August event at MCU Field.
One other aspect coming from this is that the New Japan deal is one of the things that makes ROH attractive for some talent, leading to them signing with ROH. Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly and Matt Taven & Michael Bennett have been booked well by New Japan (both teams had tag title runs, and O’Reilly was rewarded with a great BOTSJ run) while Michael Elgin is currently competing in the G1 Climax Tournament.
Liger has the ability to book himself outside of New Japan, but there are limits to what he can do. Since NJPW has a working relationship with CMLL, Liger would never appear on a AAA event running against a CMLL event. The deal looks to open the door for a working relationship, to some degree, between WWE and New Japan. The main thing here is that they are bringing Liger to specifically work for their brand that targets the hardcore fans, directly against ROH.
The newsletter continues on to say that WWE is making other moves in regards to ROH, including WWE contacting at least one ROH arena with the idea of running shows provided they no longer book ROH. A deal like this will not hurt ROH badly at first, but it would make extra work for them to find a new reliable venue in that area.
Several top ROH talents have their contract expiring in January, and WWE has changed their tone on signing them (now they are interested). The clear message in the independent scene is that talent is being steered away from signing with ROH and TNA. Once ROH signed with Destination America and it was revealed that Kevin Owens had signed an outside action figure deal, Vince McMahon stated that he wanted everyone who has real promise and is a free agent locked up in some form away from TNA and ROH
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