Ring Of Honor COO Joe Koff Talks G1 Supercard, Getting Into MSG, What's Next For Wrestling Promotion

It’d be hard to argue against Saturday being the biggest night in Ring of Honor history. A little more than 17 years after the wrestling promotion’s first show, ROH is set to produce G1 Supercard at the historic Madison Square Garden.

With wrestlers from Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro-Wrestling set to perform on Saturday’s card, it marks the first-ever non-WWE wrestling show at MSG. G1 Supercard sold out in August less than 20 minutes after tickets were made available to the general public. It will easily be the largest crowd ever for a Ring of Honor event.

Plenty of fans that can't attend the event in New York City will be watching when it starts at 7:30 p.m. EDT Saturday night. Subscribers of HonorClub and NJPW World can watch G1 Supercard through their streaming accounts. It will be available on pay-per-view via Fite TV for $39.99. G1 Supercard will eventually be available on free television when AXS TV broadcasts a pair of two-hour shows at 8 p.m. EDT on April 12 and April 19.

International Business Times had the chance to speak with Ring of Honor Chief Operating Officer Joe Koff about getting into Madison Square Garden, losing marquee names ahead of G1 Supercard and what's next for the wrestling promotion.

IBT: How are you feeling with the show just a few days away? Is there pressure? Anxiety? Nervousness?

Koff: I actually feel all those things. And not only from a business standpoint, which is natural because it's your business, but from an emotional standpoint. I spent so much of my youth in Madison Square Garden watching such unbelievable wrestling. When you are a little boy and you are a teenager and you go, "This would be great if I could ever be a part of something like this," and in a few days, I'm going to be part of something like that. I can feel it already. I'm kind of an emotional guy to begin with, but I think it's going to be overwhelming. It's just going to be overwhelming to see all those fans, and when the lights go out and to hear the eruption, hopefully. I'm projecting positive thoughts. I think it's going to be all those things you mentioned.

IBT: When you became Ring of Honor’s COO in 2011, did you ever have a thought that one day the promotion could run MSG?

Koff: Not that I could actually remember saying that. I thought that we could be big enough to play in that arena and play in that venue. I didn't know when. The company has been very measured and disciplined and it's growth. This was really more opportunistic. We saw the opportunity and grabbed it because this was our moment.

IBT: When did you guys actually sit down and decide MSG was something you were going to pursue?

Koff: We've always had Supercard on WrestleMania weekend and always on the Saturday night prior to WrestleMania, so I think when New York was announced, everybody started (thinking). We're almost like in residency at the Hammerstein, which is a fantastic building, but our attendance growth over the last three years—if we were to trend it—has seen us do 4,500, 7,000. So we knew we could do a bigger space. The challenge in the New York area is: where are those buildings? And the WWE took a lot of the buildings out of play because of their relationships with different venues. Madison Square Garden, it kind of illuminated, and we thought, "Why, wouldn't we talk to them?" And we began our talks and we began thinking about it and how can this be done. Can we really pull this off? And it was finally agreed on by both parties to do the event there. We partnered with New Japan for the specialness of it and to bring a little more bigness to the event, and that's how it happened. So it really started when the announcement to be in New York happened, but it really got steam in the summer.

IBT: Did the All In sell-out give you confidence that you could sell out the Garden?

Koff: It didn't hurt. The speed of All In and the success of that, I think what it said to me was the timing was probably right for this event and to announce it at that time. I never had any doubts that the building would be full on April 6. I just didn't think it would be sold out to that point. I thought there would be a good majority of the seats taken, and then it would fill in as we got closer to the event and as matches were announced.

IBT: Are there higher expectations now that you’re running big shows like this one?

Koff: I do feel the pressure of it because it's such a large stage, but I've never been disappointed by the work-rate and what we put out on every show. I can't tell you a show that I've been to where I didn't think that was the best show I’ve ever been to at Ring of Honor, and I expect this to be the same. It's that work level, it's that integrity why the brand is so powerful. It's why the brand exists and succeeds in spite of talent coming and going. It's a style. It's an expectation. And we continue to meet that expectation and exceed it, which is where our success comes from.

IBT: You’ve had a lot of talent come and go since the show was announced. Even though you expected to lose wrestlers like Cody and The Young Bucks, was there an extra sense of urgency to replace them?

Koff: Wrestling is an entertaining sport, but in sports, there's always turn over at the end of the season or at the end of a contract. We just watched what happened in this past free agent season in baseball. People are moving around to do what's best for them and their families or what's best for themselves and what they feel is best for their careers. There's probably a little more opportunity now, so I think it's a very good time to be a professional wrestler, but that's always going to exist. It's going to exist in every promotion because there can only be one or two or three top people, and you've got 20, 30, 50, 100 vying to get those top spots. So there's either a level of frustration or there's just a level of no movement. I always think there's going to be an available pool of talent. I think we're lucky right now because the talent is so good.

IBT: But in sports, teams that lose big players often have to spend money in free agency to replace them. Is there really no thought of, “Man, we really wish these guys stuck around”?

Koff: They were fantastic. They were terrific. and I said that when Adam Cole left. We've had amazing people that have left. AJ Styles wrestled for us. He left. The Bucks. Cody. These are terrific, terrific performers. What organization wouldn't want them in there? But, again, everybody has to do what's best for them, not best necessarily for me. Or best necessarily for another promotion. If that's where their heart is and that's what they believe, if that's what they want to do, then, by all means, they should do it. Because I really only want people wrestling for Ring of Honor that are happy and proud to be here. And I believe that those guys were happy and proud to be here. They just had an opportunity that I think they probably couldn't pass up. And had I been possibly in their shoes, I might have looked at the same opportunity. It's happened to me in my career, so I would be the first one to say, "Yes, you should do something like that if that's what you think you can achieve."

IBT: You do have wrestlers like Jay Lethal and The Briscoes that have been with Ring of Honor for many years. Is it important to have guys like that who have been with the promotion for a long time and are kind of your guys?

Koff: I think it depends on who the guy is, but I agree with you. I think they are foundational players. They give the organization soul, and they give the organization heart. They provide wisdom in the organization as to how the organization really runs. I think Jay Lethal, The Briscoes and our long-term wrestlers who have been here from the beginning, they understand the importance of that and what that means to an organization. And I love the fact that they feel that way. I love the fact that they hang their tights in our locker room because they really help the future by understanding what the past means. Not dwelling in the past, but understanding the past.

IBT: You’ve reached a point where a lot of wrestlers have a goal to work for ROH at some point in their careers, and it really isn’t fair to call ROH an independent promotion anymore, even though a lot of people still do.

Koff: If you put in the work and the energy and you do a good job, it's proven to be a very, very good place to stay for a long time or to move to another organization. We give the guys a lot of work and we give them quality work, and I think that's what's important. There's a continuity to Ring of Honor. I used to get bugged about that independent name, too, because we're not really part of that, but I think when people say you're independent, I think they're just saying that you're not WWE. It's like you're the minor leagues and they are the major leagues, and I don’t buy into that. I don't like that. We're not Triple-A anything. We’re a professional wrestling organization that tours and has TV and has champions and has champions wrestling in other places. There's continuity. I think that's what's different between us and other promotions. We have weekly television. There's a story being weaved and told throughout the year, and throughout the entire time Ring of Honor has been in business. That is not indie. Indie is throwing together a show and going to an area. That to me is more indie, but I take nothing away from it because some of these independent promotions do an incredible job. It's satisfying the fans in those areas, and I have the utmost respect for that. It’s not easy to put 1,000 people, 2000 people or more in a show of any kind.

IBT: It was announced that AXS will broadcast the show over two weekends. I know NJPW has a relationship with AXS, but what was your role in getting that done?

Koff: That was done with us. We’re the broadcaster of this event. We're producing the event with New Japan and they have a relationship with AXS, and look, if it exposes our product to a new set of audience and it gets them to sign up for HonorClub or get more interest in Ring of Honor, I'm all for it. And I really believe, why would you want to wait two weeks? I think it'll be great that it will be there in two weeks because you can relive it, but the moment is what's going to be exciting and special. I really thank the AXS people for stepping up, because they're taking the full four hours and it is really just a compliment to us. They'll do a great job.

IBT: Supercard usually runs up against NXT on WrestleMania weekend. Are you happy that this Saturday is yours and NXT is on Friday this year?

Koff: It’s not really (ours). It's ours for the big show, but there are other events that will be going on all night all across the tri-state area. Look, competition is healthy. It forces you to be better at what you do. I love that there are choices because if there are no choices you're almost in a position where you have to watch. I like the fact that people get to choose to watch NXT, depending on their point of view or where their alliances lie. Choices make for better options for the consumer, and it's up to us to create a value to get their business, and that's what we try to do always.

IBT: This is obviously a special weekend because of WrestleMania and because you’re partnering with NJPW. Looking ahead, is there a chance ROH could do a non-WrestleMania weekend show in a bigger building than what you’re used to?

Koff: I think we've stepped up our buildings all the way through. If you look three or four years ago and the buildings we are currently running, there's an incredibly apparent and visible step up in venue. You have to have the right opportunities, and you have to have the right moments to do those big, big buildings. I think because we are so prevalent in our touring, it has to be a really special event like this one to engage the people who have seen Ring of Honor, know it, know they can watch it on HonorClub, know they can see it on TV. If those opportunities afford themselves, of course, we would do that.

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