News broke on Wednesday night that there were sources confirming that WWE had been in talks to purchase Ring Of Honor since January.
The sources were saying that it was going to be a full buyout and that the WWE would air the weekly ROH show on the WWE Network.
This was met with equal amounts of unbridled excitement and nervous hand-wringing. There were lots of comments about this being "the death of the territories all over again." Others were eagerly anticipating an influx of top level talent into WWE.
Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Chuck Carroll of CBS Sports spoke with a two sources at ROH who has denied the buyout is in the works. One source, reportedly "high-ranking" said: "There is no story here,” categorically denying any deal between the companies.
Earlier this month, when asked about a possible sale, ROH COO Joe Koff told Carroll the same thing:
“No. No, no, no. It’s very flattering and humbling to us. It validates what we’ve done. A lot of their current performers and stars are ROH guys and we have their history. So maybe the content of the backstories of Kevin Steen before he became Kevin Owens or AJ Styles’ run in Ring of Honor, Tyler Black (aka Seth Rollins), Claudio (Castagnoli aka Cesaro) … all of the guys who have wrestled for us. We have their backstory and where it began… That’s our content. I’m always open to any conversation. We do business with them if they want to do a DVD or VOD if they need footage from early matches they do come to us. We are open to work with them on that basis because it doesn’t hurt us. It actually helps us.“
We'll keep you updated with all the latest on this story.
