Quinn McKay speaks about the transition to the rebooted Ring of Honor women's division as opposed to the former Women of Honor division.
Ring of Honor’s first foray into a women's division was a completely separate program called Women of Honor. Focused mainly on YouTube, the brand did not even have the Ring of Honor name in its championship.
Eventually, because of the pandemic and litigation with former Champion Kelly Klein, the Ring of Honor women's division was rebooted and one of the featured stars was Quinn McKay.
Acting as both a broadcast correspondent and a woman's wrestler, McKay was around firsthand where are the transition of the division and the eventual Ring of Honor Women's Championship tournament.
Speaking with Muscle Man Malcolm, Quinn spoke about how the brand changed over time and how, when it was time to reboot the division, it was very important to her and others that the one in the division be integrated into the Ring of Honor programming like any other championship.
"Yeah, so they're the Women of Honor division was very touch-and-go. We would have a match here in there, or we would bring someone in and they would leave. We had a really hard time with turnover. I think if not for the high turnover of people's contracts expiring or getting hired somewhere else, then the Women of Honor division probably would have done just fine. It wasn't that the creative was bad. It wasn't that the athletes weren't good. It was just that it was kind of an ever-revolving door, people coming in and leaving."
Quinn continued, "So whenever the pandemic happened, we had already been talking about rebooting the women's division anyway, with a clear directive and a clear goal and having people under a contract that were not going to leave and we were given the opportunity to actually do that and lay that foundation. But whenever we came back with the Ring of Honor Women's World Championship, we wanted to make a very clear distinction that it was different than Women of Honor. It was not a purple belt. It wasn't a separate show, because, for a while, the Women of Honor was just put up on YouTube. [The re-booted division] was part of the actual Ring of Honor locker room, and not some separate brand that we were trying to make work. That was something that, I think, I really pushed for that. That was something that Mandy Leon really pushed for. We wanted the new division to be taken very seriously and it seemed like one of the best first steps to take to do that was making sure that people knew that it was not Women of Honor, it was the Ring of Honor Women's Division, all one company, all one family."
Now, following Ring of Honor going on hiatus, the Women's Championship is held by Deonna Purrazzo, she defeated Rok-C for the gold on an episode of IMPACT on AXS. Ring of Honor is set to return during WrestleMania weekend with SuperCard of Honor. Learn more here.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit Fightful for the transcription by linking back to this article.
