Former Ring of Honor COO Joe Koff has passed away.
Koff became the top executive overseeing the ROH brand after Sinclair Broadcasting purchased the group from Cary Silkin in 2011.
Koff grew up in the Northeast as a fan of Capitol Wrestling and attended shows at Madison Square Garden and Shea Stadium. When he attended the University of Miami, he discovered Championship Wrestling from Florida which led to his first involvement with the industry.
In an early television job at WTOG in Tampa in 1985, he was assigned to produce the first Battle of the Belts special with Championship Wrestling from Florida. The first special in Tampa was headlined by Ric Flair and Wahoo McDaniel for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
The Battle of the Belts concept returned the next year with a memorable championship match between Flair and Barry Windham and was awarded five stars by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Koff was exceptionally proud of these early accomplishments and often cited the Flair and Windham match when asked about this era.
He worked in various leadership roles at multiple stations and joined Sinclair Broadcasting in 2003 and would spend the rest of his career working for the syndicator.
Cary Silkin has never shied away from the fact that ROH never made money while he kept it in operation for nearly a decade and was finally ready to sell the operation in 2011. Gary Juster arranged a meeting with Koff which led to the purchase by Sinclair, which was announced in May of that year.
The programming would be syndicated across Sinclair’s various affiliates around the country and into Canada beginning in September 2011 while it promoted its largest events as iPPV events on Go Fight Live. The pay-per-view model was dicey as streaming issues hampered their development despite presenting strong wrestling and having an opening in the marketplace. It set them back significantly until they got their streaming issues under control and reliable for consumers.
The promotion hit its zenith from 2017-19 benefiting from the popularity of ‘Being the Elite’ and the rise to prominence of The Young Bucks and Cody Rhodes among others. Lavie Margolin tracked the company’s attendance, which shot up 19% in 2017 with an average of 1,100 per event and increased by another 28% in 2018 to 1,400 per event.
A seismic event occurred in September 2018 when ‘All In’ was staged at the Sears Center in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, and sold out the venue with 11,263 in attendance. Koff played a pivotal role as he controlled the U.S. promotional rights for Cody Rhodes, The Young Bucks, and several others and had the power to block them from staging the show. ROH contributed significantly to the production and involvement behind the scenes.
It was a risk because the success emboldened their core talent to strike out on their own as their deals were coming due that year with ROH and they would lose Rhodes, the Young Bucks, Hangman Page, and SCU.
The highlight of his professional career would have been in April 2019 when a combined show between ROH and New Japan Pro Wrestling sold out Madison Square Garden over the weekend of WrestleMania 35.
It was the first non-McMahon-run wrestling card at the famous arena since 1960 and was hardly an easy task to even book The Garden. There were forces at play to prevent the booking but Sinclair pushed through and got the date with a sellout in less than twenty minutes.
The show was a mixed bag as it came months after the departures of the core group involved in launching AEW and served as a swan song to the peak period for ROH.
It drew 16,534 featuring Kazuchika Okada regaining the IWGP Heavyweight Championship from Jay White, and Matt Taven winning the ROH Championship in a ladder match.
ROH struggled throughout the pandemic, as most did, but gained a lot of respect among talent for paying their employees and talent while also being among the most cautious of the wrestling promotions when it came to safety and not compromising health & safety for the sake of taping its television. In time, they engaged in empty arena tapings but were very cautious in returning to work. The pandemic would be extremely costly for the promotion and never fully recovered.
The company struggled after the pandemic and announced it would go on hiatus following its Final Battle pay-per-view in December 2021.
ROH was sold to Tony Khan in March 2022 and runs as its own brand on the Honor Club streaming service, first launched by the Sinclair ownership group.
Koff was well regarded among talent and media, who had a clear passion for the ROH brand and was constantly championing his talent and the company as it tried to maintain its position in a growing marketplace with the advent of AEW.
Many talents and colleagues shared their memories and condolences for Koff after the news of his death broke on Tuesday.
Jason Powell of ProWrestling.net reported that Koff was fighting cancer.
Our condolences and best wishes to the family and friends of Joe Koff.
