Pro-wrestling star PCO recently appeared on Highspots Wrestling Network’s virtual signing, where the former world champion spoke about his decision to depart from ROH, and how the lack of fans during the pandemic played a part in ROH losing momentum in the competitive wrestling landscape.
Says it was really hard for him to try and perform without fans:
Well the thing is like I gave my notice a month ago. Like almost a month-and-a-half ago and just on my feeling of how everything was going around, having no crowds for most of the time during the pandemic and we went safety first, safety first but then I would see in my mind, the product was great but the fact that it was no people in attendance brought the ratings down or the popularity of the show a little bit so I think that was hard. The fact that it’s a great thing that we went health first and not economy first but a lot of other companies went economy first, health second but it cost us in the end I think and I felt like towards the year that we’re on, I felt like I knew where I was going in my mind, what I wanted to accomplish, me, separately from the company. I knew I had to give my notice because it was a little bit flat. Not that the guys didn’t work as hard as they always worked. They put on an awesome show but just the fact that the fans weren’t interacting with us, that was really, really hard.
How much the pandemic derailed ROH’s momentum:
I think a real hard blow for the company and I’ve heard, like you, that they were gonna close down for four months until April after Final Battle and that was hard to see but I could tell that they were pushing a lot of guys from the [ROH] Dojos and they weren’t signing anybody lately so you can see those things that was — that feeling of [that] aspect but the history of Ring of Honor is like 20 years-plus so it’s crazy so, I think there’s a lot of good things in that library, and I think that would interest a lot of people but also, I’m pretty sure with all the money that they had invested, you have to take into consideration that the big thing with Ring of Honor was before the pandemic, we were going to fight against AEW and everybody live too. We were supposed to go live so we had reserved buildings, we had places to go, we upgraded our production material, the borders around the ring. We spent a lot of money and we’re on a higher budget than usual and then the pandemic hits and then we got all that stuff, ready to go live on a Thursday night and we got all these venues reserved that we had to break contracts and just go back to Baltimore and just do shows without a crowd so, I think they invested a lot of money in the production and on certain talent and things like that and towards the end, you could see that we’re — they we’re going like not as crazy as we’re supposed to go.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)