ROH COO Joe Koff Doesn’t Believe There’s A War With WWE

Ring of Honor fired a shot at WWE in June when they announced their intentions to hold an event at Madison Square Garden.

WWE attempted to shut the event down — and it looked to have worked — but ROH and MSG eventually moved forward and reached an agreement. The show, which is co-promoted with NJPW, sold out once tickets went on-sale to the public.

Koff spoke to Alfred Konuwa of Forbes and discussed WWE stepping in to block ROH from running MSG.

“I think that it’s been probably blown up more than it is. There was conversation, and there was a back-and-forth and it got to a point where there was an impasse that had to be broken up. But the good news was there was continuous discussion [with MSG] throughout the process. And as long as people are in discussion and dialogue, and we can establish some kind of common ground as opposed to compromise, then things can happen. We just had to work through all those things.”

Much has been made about a war between WWE and ROH. While Koff wouldn’t go as far as calling it “a war,” he did use war analogies to describe ROH’s relationship with WWE. 

“It doesn’t. If you want me to say it does, it doesn’t,” said Koff. “I’m focused on my business, and they have a business and they’re really, really good at it and if we were to look at the two battle sides, I would feel like maybe—I was just watching Braveheart, so I’m going to just use that analogy here—maybe we’re William Wallace in that first battle for the first time. But at the end of the day, they run a business, I run a business.

“There’s plenty of room in the space for both businesses, and I don’t consider this a war at all. And it would be a silly war to get into. I think we have to stay focused on what we believe in for our companies and follow that course.”

When pressed about his Braveheart anology, Koff clarified.

“I’m not even using the analogy from a blood standpoint, I’m just pointing out that it was a battle and there was one battle and everybody stood for what they believed in and that’s how the battle was won. [The ROH-WWE-MSG legal back-and-forth] was probably more of a skirmish than a battle, but it was about the belief, and the belief that this was something we believed we should have, that we believed we should be in this building, we believed we had a right to be in that building just based on business. Not based on anything more.”

Koff went on to say that the war/battle/skirmish was more about ROH and MSG, but that both parties are happy with the end result.