A recount of how the relationship between GCW and ROH kicked off.
The talent exchange between Ring of Honor and Game Changer Wrestling is in motion and coming up this Sunday at GCW’s Hammerstein Ballroom show, Jonathan Gresham is making his third ROH World Title defense under the GCW banner.
The Briscoes (Mark & Jay Briscoe), reigning ROH World Tag Team Champions are also the current GCW Tag Champions. Ahead of the Hammerstein show, GCW owner Brett Lauderdale appeared on the Pro Wrestling Illustrated podcast.
Lauderdale dove into how the talent exchange and working relationship between ROH and GCW began. He touched on the appearances from Jonathan Gresham and Ian Riccaboni and mentioned that he always wanted The Briscoes in GCW.
So as far as Ring of Honor goes, obviously in the recent months before they went on this hiatus, we saw a lot of our regular talent start to go over and work with Ring of Honor. So, you know, we had people on the inside so to speak. Aside from that, obviously we’ve had relationships with people who have been there for years as well. People like PCO or Brody King or any one of the number of people and we had talked several times over the last couple of years about the possibility of getting to work with certain people, having certain people on our shows, them getting exceptions or whatever, and you know, just for whatever reason, it had never worked out up until the last — this most recent attempt. You know, we had been trying to get — The Briscoes in particular were somebody I wanted to have in GCW for a long time so, you know, some ideas came into place and I had a meeting with some of their people at one of their TV tapings and you know, we just threw ideas back and forth and the idea of how we can have a mutually beneficial relationship with using their talent and at the same time, being able to promote Ring of Honor and you know, kind of reminding fans who don’t follow Ring of Honor as much, reminding [them] what they are, who they are. You know, reminding people who The Briscoes are and whoever else might come over and you know, spark an interest from our fans to check in on Ring of Honor and at the same time, allowing these people who haven’t been seen out of the ROH world to kind of, you know, dip back into the regular indie universe so to speak and just kind of freshen things up and make things interesting and I mean, we got as far as to discussing The Briscoes and having an arrangement in place and obviously we know what happened, happened shortly thereafter. Ring of Honor, changing some things up so we didn’t get much further than that but that’s just — that’s honestly how it happened. There was no — but I’ve heard a lot of people’s speculation on how this or that happened. I mean, there was no other crazy stuff planned. It was just, ‘Let’s just start with this and see how this goes and see where this leads us,’ and yeah, that’s what happened. I mean as far as the ROH World Title, you know, I mean [Jonathan] Gresham is the champion. He wants to defend it so when it makes sense for him to defend it when he’s at GCW, that’s a thing and Ian Riccaboni, what better person to call an ROH World Title match on such a big stage than him? So, that’s how those pieces came into place.
As of this writing, here’s the updated lineup for ‘The WRLD on GCW’:
- ROH World Championship: Jonathan Gresham (c) vs. Blake Christian
- ASF, Bandido & Laredo Kid vs. Arez, Demonic Flamita & Gringo Loco
- Ruby Soho vs. Allie Katch
- Matt Cardona (w/ Chelsea Green) vs. Joey Janela
- GCW World Championship: Jon Moxley (c) vs. Homicide
- GCW Tag Team Championships: The Briscoes (Mark & Jay Briscoe) (c) vs. TBA
- Grab The Brass Ring Ladder Match: PCO vs. Alex Colon vs. Tony Deppen vs. Lio Rush vs. Jimmy Lloyd vs. Jordan Oliver
- Jeff Jarrett vs. Effy
