Bobby Cruise is often called “The Voice of Ring of Honor“; he has worked for the company for almost two decades, and for the last several years, he has been its lead ring announcer.
But over the past year, he has quietly taken on an vital role behind the scenes. Alongside Maria Kanellis Bennett, Bobby Cruise has been at the helm of ROH’s resurgent women’s division. In 2021, the company rebuilt the division from the ground up through the acclaimed ROH Women’s World Championship Tournament, which culminated at ROH Death Before Dishonor. Additionally, ROH delivered a weekly show, Women’s Division Wednesday, on its YouTube channel and often featured the performers on its television program. Each one of these milestones was remarkable because just over one year ago, ROH barely had a women’s division whatsoever.
During a recent interview with WrestleZone, Bobby Cruise looked back on his work with the women’s division and recalled how he first reached out to ROH management three years ago. He described how he wanted to build the division up because the lack of it in ROH was becoming increasingly apparent in comparison to the prominence women’s wrestling had in WWE, IMPACT Wrestling and, eventually, AEW.
“I had talked to Ring of Honor maybe three years ago about wanting to be involved with creative with the women’s division, and they had made the decision at that point that it was going to go in kind of the overall booking committee for the company,” said Cruise. “And I kinda let it go from there. And then through the pandemic, when we came back with taping the pure tournament and the good reviews that got, the great reviews that got, really, I started to talk to the office again and said we have to get a women’s division going.
“Because every other wrestling company on television was not only featuring women and a women’s division, but they’re prominently featuring it. And we were the only ones that didn’t have one, and so I had been on them for several months. And it’s not like they told me no no no, they said, ‘We know we have to do it’, but they wanted to do it the right way.”
Cruise went on to explain that he and Kanellis Bennett had the same goal once the latter was in talks to return to ROH, so it was only natural for them to collaborate on the process of establishing ROH’s new women’s division “the right way.” He expressed his belief that the company needed to “hit a grand slam” due to the previous shortcomings of the way ROH featured women’s wrestling.
“…Lttle did I know that also, besides that, Maria and her husband Mike Bennett had been talking about returning to Ring of Honor, and Maria had specifically been talking about working on a women’s division. So it was about this time last year, December last year, we had a TV taping in Baltimore and I was talking to one of the talents, and I said ah, I wanna help and get the women’s division. And [they] said, ‘Oh I thought Maria was doing that.'”
“We both had the same goal, we both had the same idea as far as getting a women’s division going, doing it the right way, giving deserving women opportunities and so forth,” said Cruise. “And I remember being on a call with Ring of Honor management and talking about this, and I said, ‘We can’t just hit a home run with this, we need to hit a grand slam.’ Because the women’s division in Ring of Honor previously didn’t have the best reputation and wasn’t viewed as a viable option of really overall good women’s wrestling and so forth.”
The announcement of ROH’s hiatus in the first quarter of 2022 has somewhat derailed the positive momentum the division had been enjoying, but upon reflection, Cruise explained how it has “flourished” over the past year. With this success in mind, Cruise made it clear that his work with the women’s wrestlers has been one of the top highlights of his career.
“It’s been a year, basically, and the women’s division has flourished, has done very well, has gotten great reviews, good views on social media, on YouTube especially and so forth,” said Cruise. “We could talk about the women’s division for an hour, I love to talk about it. This is the most fun I’ve had in my 17 years with Ring of Honor, the most rewarding personally it’s been, has been working on the division, working with Maria, working with the talent, and it’s been a blast.”
When asked to elaborate, Bobby Cruise described working with the wrestlers, seeing their passion and watching them capitalize on their opportunities have been his favorite parts of this job.
“Working with the talent much closer than I would as a ring announcer, obviously, being involved with them,” said Cruise. “The passion that these women athletes had for wrestling. You know, they didn’t want to be women’s wrestlers or female wrestlers. They wanted to be just given the opportunity to be wrestlers and to not go out there just to be given three or four minutes for a match and so forth. So I’m really proud of the opportunities we gave them, but I’m even more proud of the talent stepping up and grasping those opportunities and running with them. And they all have. It’s been so good.”
Bobby Cruise also explained that ROH management let him and Kanellis Bennett have control of the women’s division; in doing so, the company let the duo take women’s wrestling to new heights in 2021.
“They have let us do what we have wanted to do with the team we had, and I think they saw the results of that,” said Cruise. “They’ve been hands off, and the Ring of Honor women’s division has never been like it was in 2021, not even close.”
Many fans are disappointed that, at least for now, ROH’s hiatus will disrupt the roll the company’s women’s division had been on. That being said, some of its brightest stars will continue to shine, no matter what the future holds for the “reimagined” ROH upon its planned return. ROH Women’s World Champion Rok-C will compete at MLW Blood & Thunder in January; she also participated at a recent WWE tryout, so it’s clear that she’ll have no shortage of opportunities to help the legacy of ROH’s women’s division live on.
