ROH’s General Manager Talks MSG Show, Top Guys’ Contracts Expiring

Ring of Honor Wrestling‘s General Manager Greg Gilleland talked to CBS Sports to discuss the upcoming ROH show at Madison Square Garden, Cody Rhodes‘ soon-to-be expiring contract, and more. Here are the highlights from the interview.

On when the idea to run The Garden first come about:

It’s not like it was something that we had in mind for years, but it’s definitely something that we’ve always kind of joked about. The general notion was just that we couldn’t even get in there. You know what I mean? Gary Juster, who used to promote for WCW, and I would always have these conversations. It’s funny because he would say, “I guess I’ll never run The Garden in my lifetime.” It became one of those never say never things. In February, when we were looking for venues in New York, obviously we saw the Hammerstein, with pretty much any show that we bring there. So it almost doesn’t make sense to go there for SuperCard weekend.

It was an easy decision. It’s New York, it’s The Garden. All of the history of The Garden. The fact that another wrestling promotion hasn’t been there in like 60 years. From that point forward, we reached out to New Japan and said let’s do this thing together. And we hope to sell it out.

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On if there was any exclusivity deal with MSG like the rumored WWE one:

I haven’t seen that reported, and I don’t know that they do have, or have had one. I think The Garden is one of those venues that has always stayed away from those exclusivity deals because of their prowess. But I was never aware of them having anything like that. It was just one of those things where the business relationship always kept [other] promoters out.

On concerns about Cody Rhodes, Young Bucks, Kenny Omega not being available if their contracts expire before the show:

They’re our top guys, right? Of course, we’re going to do everything that we can to keep them. And we have fair offers and fair plans to retain them. With that said, I don’t think we ever operate in fear. We always operate with solid backup plans. And we have to always think about what if this, and what if that. If they go to the WWE, and they very much deserve that opportunity, we’ll continue to offer the best wrestling that we can. There’s other talent out there. And we will continue as our brand has for the past however many years. We’ve lost top guys before.

Everything we do is geared toward the fans and toward, even these arena decisions, that experience. We pride ourselves on the ROH experience, and it goes back to the question of losing a top guys. Do I wanna lose the Young Bucks, and Cody? No. Of course not. Why would I wanna lose them?

Am I gonna make an aggressive attempt to retain them and sign longer-term agreements? Of course we are. But, at the end of the day, the ROH brand is about the ROH experience, and that’s how we continue to grow.