Speaking with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, ROH World Champion Jonathan Gresham stated that Ring of Honor talent helped to change the WWE style as the company signed several former ROH stars over the years, which also helped the growth of NXT.
“I feel like I’m not just ‘Ring of Honor’s the only way professional wrestling should be,’ but I feel like it is the standard. If you look at every top performer in every company, in the United States at least, they’ve had some kind of presence in Ring of Honor. When you talk about Samoa Joe, when you talk about the Briscoes, when you talk about Seth Rollins, the NXT brand for the longest time was top Ring of Honor guys. I believe there’s a reason for that. The essence of what Ring of Honor was, a lot of people tried to use it, and then they couldn’t.
“But the guys who somehow came to Ring of Honor, made it to Ring of Honor, made it to the top of the card, they carry on a piece of Ring of Honor and the essence of it in all of what they do and take it to other companies. They transformed the WWE style into what Ring of Honor once was. The company has just influenced the entire platform, the entire wrestling industry for the last fifteen / twenty years. I just want to be a part of something like that again. The way I view wrestling and a lot of guys coming up now, they view wrestling differently. Like Danielson did and like Joe did, and I think we can do that again, we can change the mold again with the new Ring of Honor.”
Gresham will compete at the TERMINUS Modern Age Grappling event on May 22.
Quotes via Fightful