On if he feels ROH has surpassed ECW in influence:
CS: It’s a different footprint. ECW had quite an impact and I think as time goes on… I just hope Ring of Honor stays alive. I think it will have as much of an imprint on the business as ECW.
On what he remembers about the very first Ring of Honor show:
CS: At the very first Ring of Honor show I was just a fan. The original owners I knew from ECW. I wanted to get involved when they formed the company because I knew they had good ideas, particularly Gabe. There was a void with ECW being gone and I knew they would have a good idea of what to do. They didn’t need my help, or they thought they didn’t need my help, so I went as a fan and it was a great show. I would go to all the Murphy Rec shows and about six months into it they came for help. What did they come for? Financial help, of course. I got involved via some circumstances that we are not going to get into right now and I became the sole owner of the company.
On what it was like for him becoming the owner of Ring of Honor:
CS: I had control of decisions. I think one of my biggest decisions, that gets overlooked, was bringing in lighting and bringing in the guard rails. When you go to see a concert or movie, what happens first? The lights go out. At a concert the people pop for that. I remember Gabe saying, “We don’t need this, why waste the money?” He was a concert fan and once we did it there was no Ring of Honor shows after that where we did not have lighting. It’s an important thing that I think gets overlooked. The lighting was there, the entrances were there and the wrestling continued to stay at top quality despite the attrition rate and loss of guys like Samoa Joe, Jamie Noble, Nigel McGuinness and Bryan Danielson. They put a fork in us so many times we were like Thanksgiving turkey. Thanks to Joe Koff he came along, helped me get out and here we are.
NEXT PAGE: Cary Silkin On ROH’s History Of Running WrestleMania Weekend, The Kingdom’s Conspiracy, The Importance Of ROH Fans, More
