Updates on EVOLVE

In responding to my note in the Ring of Honor News and Notes earlier, Gabe Sapolsky wanted it made clear that the talents pulled from EVOLVE "were told by Cary Silken" that they could work for the company when they signed ROH deals. Sapolsky is extremely angry that is no longer the case, feeling its the latest in a long line of acts against him by the company he helped found.

In conversations with Sapolsky, it's pretty clear he's pissed off about the situation and feels Silkin is being unfair to the talent, although you would expect someone in his position to feel that way.

The real issue here is Gabe Sapolsky and his partner Sal Hamaoui vs. Ring of Honor as there are issues obviously stemming all the way back toSapolsky being let go by Ring of Honor several years back. Beyond that, you have DGUSA, which was formed in the aftermath of that firing and based on public claims by DG that they were owed money by ROH after the two sides had a falling out during the final ROH tour of Japan.

Where Hamoui falls into this is that he handled the production aspects of Ring of Honor DVDs before the company opted to bring that in-house last year. Hamoui's relationship with ROH has strained considerably as his partnership in the Sapolsky projects grew, which anyone could have seen coming. I am told that there are ongoing issues between Hamoui and ROH that have yet to be settled as well stemming from their business relationship in the past, although several months back Hamoui did tell me that was all resolved.

So, what we have here are two warring factions with a few young wrestlers caught in the middle. The reality is that once the ROH talents signed with ROH, they have to adhere to whatever their contractual obligations are. Silkin commented to me that pulling the duo was a "business decision." With EVOLVE about to debut in New York City, one could see how Silkin could make an argument that he didn't want talents his company was building up to be doing jobs ten blocks away for another promotion.

Or perhaps, with all the bad blood, Silkin just decided he changed his mind. Whatever the reason, Sapolsky is upset about it, feeling ROH is trying to put the screws to him. Maybe they are, but one would think that after the Davey Richards issues last year, Sapolsky wouldn't book himself into a situation where history could repeat itself.

It's also not like the DGUSA side of things hasn't tried to undercut ROH as well in the past, including booking shows in Phoenix opposite ROH events and booking top ROH talents for them, which is how the entire Richards situation blew up to begin with. One could argue EVOLVE isn't DGUSA but it's the same braintrust when you boil it down.

Just this past weekend, PWInsider.com was sent the following by Greg Davis:

"You will find this to either be very creative in an “all’s fair in love and war” way, or very slimy. Over the course of ROH’s iPPV, they asked us to tweet live thoughts using the #ROH9th hash tag. However, when viewing the most recent results of that tag, the one tweet at the top of the page was from Dragon Gate USA. As it turns out, Gabe told his followers to retweet various tweets promoting his company, with one of those people winning a gift, a standard Twitter contest. But since these tweets had the #ROH9th hash tag (among others), one of them was always at the top of that search as a “top tweet.” So while people were looking for thoughts of the iPPV, there were being told that the most important tweet was for a rival company."

So, there are always two sides to every story. Obviously both sides would be best suited to ignore the other and just do their thing but that never happens when money and/or ego is involved. It didn't happen with WWE vs. WCW and it didn't happen with ECW vs. Dennis Coralluzo's NWA. The one underlying factor here is that at some point in these "wars", someone wins and someone loses, often because they aren't paying attention to their own house and trying to build their own company, because they are too infatuated with the other side.

While I can personally see both sides of the story here, to me, the real tragedy is you've got some young guys who probably aren't making a ton of money now losing out on some potential bookings. The other tragedy is that rather than focusing on the in-ring product, fans are now paying attention to lots of politics they really don't want to think about in the first place, none of which is going to entice them to want to buy a ticket.

PWI