Jonathan Gresham wants to use pure wrestling to make Ring of Honor stand out in the crowded landscape of professional wrestling.
The reigning ROH Pure Champion has become practically synonymous with the term, and he wants to extend this association to the entire company.
During an interview with Inside The Ropes’ Liam Alexander-Stewart, Gresham explained how Ring of Honor had been too similiar to some of its competitors at one point in time, and he reached a point where he wondered how the company could regain its individual identity.
“I was like, how can I differentiate myself?” said Gresham. “And often times, I have to provide it myself and not just think about myself, but think about my peers and think my company. And in my mind, at that time, with the New Japan relationship, and The Young Bucks still being there, stylistically, the company was the same as every other company. So I thought to myself, what help me get to Ring of Honor was differentiate myself, making sure it was clear that Oh, that guy is different. I don’t like it, or I do like it. But whenever you notice that it’s different.
“And so in my mind, wrestling companies should be the same way. If you want comedy, you’re going to go to Company A, if you like, whatever, you go to Company B, if you like, pure professional wrestling, or a sports base, like presentation, then you’re going to come to Ring of Honor.”
Along that same vein, Gresham focused on pure wrestling because he argued that no one else can use that term, and this emphasis on the “original” style became the heart of his on-screen character.
“So I just started to adopt the pure style, instead of saying technical, I start saying pure because it’s closely associated with Ring of Honor,” said Gresham. “Nobody else can use the word pure, really, when it comes to a division or the style because it belongs to Ring of Honor. So my goal was just to be the pure wrestler over time. I said, Well, I need a character, and my character, who I am in real life really believes in this. So why does this become my character?
“And so I started to make my character, someone that was an elitist basically. I just kept pushing professional wrestling as like, the best style of professional wrestling period, is closer to the original way of wrestling anyway. So that was pretty much how it came to be. And it just helped me kind of go into a certain direction that got me here today.”
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