10 Wrestlers You Didn't Know Worked For ROH

Ring of Honor has been around for over 20 years, having been founded in the aftermath of the collapse of World Championship Wrestling and ECW.

It is an incredible achievement for the promotion that pretty much started life as a vehicle to promote and sell wrestling DVDs. From humble beginnings, the company has grown and changed considerably over the years and Ring of Honor boasts a whole host of word-class performers who made their name and earned their reputations in the promotion.

Having been around for three decades, however, there are many other wrestlers of great renown who have appeared for Ring of Honor that you may not be aware of.

From awkward greenhorns who would go on to become big deals, to legends of the industry whose appearances were brief and have been somewhat lost to time, to the just plain weird, these are 10 wrestlers you didn’t know worked for ROH.

10. MVP

MVP’s pre-WWE life has been covered in detail, in particular his troubled youth which saw him get in and out of trouble, eventually resulting in him serving half of an 18-year sentence for armed robbery and kidnapping.

During his time behind bars, he got into wrestling, particularly the strong-style, Japanese version. Upon release he began training, before wrestling on the indies, including for promotions like Full Impact Pro.

FIP was a sister promotion of Ring of Honor, with the two companies regularly swapping talent and co-promoting matches and events. It was while on the FIP roster that MVP – then going by Antonio Banks – tangled with FIP Champion Homicide, challenging The Notorious 187 for the strap at Ring of Honor’s Do or Die 5 show.

Taking place in front of about 500 fans in New Jersey’s Rex Plex, the event was low on star power and seemed to be a showcase for hot prospects, rather than established ROH regulars.

Banks and Homicide’s title showdown actually main evented that night, even if it wasn’t an epic of anything, the champ retaining following a low blow and a lariat after about 13 minutes of solid but standard action.

He may not have looked all too impressive in his lone ROH appearance, but WWE were clearly interested since he ended up signing a developmental deal later that year.

9. The Great Muta

One of Ring of Honor’s main strengths in the 2000s was their ability to import some of the world’s best talent and book them in dream matches.

This is especially true of their knack for flying over some of Japan’s finest performers. The group managed to get everyone from Kenta Kobashi and Mitusharu Misawa to Jushin Liger and the Dragon Gate crew.

One puroresu legend who made the trip but whose efforts often get overlooked is Keiji Mutoh, AKA the Great Muta.

The mist master showed up for ROH’s Final Battle 2003, bringing members of the All Japan Pro-Wrestling roster along with him.

On the undercard, his colleagues Kazushi Miyamoto and Tomoaki Honma took on the Second City Saints, Kaz Hayashi fought AJ Styles and Satoshi Kojima put away Homicide. In the main event, Muta teamed with Arashi to beat The Prophecy.

The circumstances around Mutoh and All Japan’s involvement are interesting, since they saw the booking as a chance to take a vacation between tours in their own country, assuming they’d be working in front of 250 fans in some high school gym.

When they were greeted by 1,500 enthusiastic diehard fans who gave them a hero’s welcome, they changed their tunes and put their working boots on.

This was Muta’s only Ring of Honor appearance, until he popped up in the dark match rumble on a combined ROH/New Japan Madison Square Garden supercard in 2016.

8. Corey Graves

These days, Corey Graves is firmly established as one of the many voices of WWE, to the point where it’s hard to imagine the man with the handsome haircut and tattoos anywhere other than behind the broadcast table.

But, in a former life, Graves was a would-be wrestling superstar, on the cusp of a main roster call-up when he was forced to retire due to concussion issues while working in NXT.

Before NXT, Graves was known internationally as Sterling James Keenan and looked wonderfully mid-2000s emo with his long black hair, soul patch and pouty expression.

While paying his dues in the minor leagues, Graves worked here, there and everywhere, drawing CM Punk comparisons wherever he went. One of the places that provided a paycheque was Ring of Honor, which is where he worked from 2003 to 2009.

But what might sound like an impressive six-year run on paper was anything but in reality. Sterling James Keenan was not some Ring of Honor superpower or anything like that, rather someone who would occasionally be drafted in for the odd shot, more often than not to put someone else over.

So while he cropped up sporadically for a while, the most matches he worked in a calendar year was three (in 2005), and those were strictly by-the-numbers affairs.

7. Nunzio

When Extreme Championship Wrestling went under in early 2001, not everyone was lucky enough to get picked up by WWE for the Invasion storyline.

The Rob Van Dams and Rhynos of the world were safe, sure, but many of the lower-card talents that had bled and sweat for the ECW cause were suddenly without work and needed to hustle hard on the independent and international circuits.

Former Full Blooded Italian Little Guido would end up in WWE, but not until late 2002 so he, like many of his cohorts, began accepting indie bookings.

With his ECW name value and strong mat-based wrestling style, Guido was a perfect fit for a new upstart promotion like Ring of Honor and joined them for their second-ever show.

Choosing to go by his given name (James Maritato), he looked very impressive in bouts opposite the likes of Xavier, Jay Brisco and teaming with and later fighting against his former ECW tag team partner, Tony Mamaluke.

Indeed, it was his short feud with Mamaluke which was the highlight of Maritato’s run. The dispute ended on Maritato’s sendoff at Glory by Honor, where he did the favours for Mamaluke in a match where the winner got the rights to the FBI gimmick.

6. Dusty Rhodes

The American Dream may have been a good 15-or-so years past his prime by the time Ring of Honor entered into existence, but nostalgic fans still got a real kick out of seeing Dusty Rhodes do his thing.

Indeed, in the early 2000s it wasn’t uncommon to see the son of a plumber bleeding on a local indie show, whether it was for his own Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling promotion, or a new player in the market like MLW or ROH.

Dusty worked a match at Ring of Honor’s The Epic Encounter in April of 2003, though his bout wasn’t the epic encounter in question. That was a 40+ minute Two out of Three Falls classic between Bryan Danielson and Paul London.

Dusty’s participation was as the special attraction in the main event, a 10-person I Quit Bunkhouse Riot match. A very different sort of match than ROH typically put on, it offered a nice bit of variety for fans who had sat through hours of cutting-edge technical wrestling.

It actually started with a cute bit, as someone dressed as Dusty’s old ‘Midnight Rider’ gimmick made their entrance, only for Rhodes himself to use the distraction to jump his opponents.

Then it became anything but ‘cute’ as the kicking, punching and bleeding began, with Dusty’s crew getting the win with the old fork-in-the-mouth routine.

5. Justin Credible

In its early days, Ring of Honor built its tape-trading empire largely by showcasing incredibly talented young up-and-comers like Bryan Danielson, Low Ki, Samoa Joe, CM Punk and others.

Putting these skilled and hungry grapplers together, without many (if any) restrictions, resulted in pro-wrestling magic, but it didn’t hurt to have someone with name value on the bill either.

As a former ECW Champion and one of the company’s biggest stars in its dying days, Justin Credible was in demand on the indies following his January 2003 WWE release.

It took him a few months to make it to ROH, but when he did he became a regular for the promotion, aligning himself with the Carnage Crew stable in their war with Special K, which resulted in several stipulation bouts, such as Scramble Cage and Country Whipping contests.

He mostly worked multi-man tags, but did tangle with some of his former Extreme pals like Raven and Shane Douglas.

All told, Aldo Montoya worked 16 matches for Ring of Honor in 2003/04, but you might struggle to recall them as he was very much a bit-part, rather than impact, player.

4. The Hardy Boyz

While you may be familiar with the Hardy Boys’ 2017 Ring of Honor run, when they were all broken and having blistering matches with the Young Bucks, you may not remember – or even be aware of – their previous runs in the mid-2000s.

That may be because their appearances were fleeting and happened with Matt and Jeff working solo, as opposed to teaming.

The younger Hardy was the first to dip his toes in ROH waters, with disastrous results.

This wasn’t too long after The Charismatic Enigma had been released from WWE in 2003, with Jeff showing up at Death Before Dishonor, entering for his match as his old character Willow. He was immediately booed out of the building and proceeded to put in a rotten performance in a terrible match against OMEGA pal Joey Mercury and his own student Krazy K.

This was when Jeff was going through some obvious personal issues and clearly didn’t have any interest in wrestling. Conversely, two years later his brother Matt had a fire inside of him when wrestling for ROH after being let go by WWE following the whole Edge/Lita saga.

Matt probably would have been one of the organisation’s featured stars, had he not soon re-signed with WWE, but he honoured his commitments despite being back under contract, wrestling Christopher Daniels, Homicide and Roderick Strong in a trio of good matches.

3. Mikey Whipwreck

Though Mikey Whipwreck sort of faded away from the wrestling business after ECW went under, he didn’t disappear from it entirely.

As well as picking up the occasional independent booking, the former ECW World Heavyweight Champion turned his attention to training a bunch of East-Coast-based hopefuls that would go on to become some of the hot young things of the early 2000s indie scene.

Among his top products were The S.A.Ts – Joel & Jose Maximo and the Amazing Red. The trio of high-fliers made their names in Ring of Honor, with Red in particular having a series of absolute belters during the company’s early days.

After taking the whole of 2002 off and entering into semi-retirement (in large part due to various nagging injuries), Whipwreck returned to action a year later for ROH, where he would team with – and against – his students.

No longer the skinny little whipping boy of his mid-90s prime, Mikey was now the elder statesman of the squared circle, the glue holding together the frenetic multi-man matches he found himself in, like the 10 vs. 7 Handicap Scramble Match from ROH’s second-anniversary show.

He only made three stateside Ring of Honor appearances, along with one on a combined ROH/FWA card in London, but it sure was nice to see the Unholy Altar Boy for a minute there.

2. Daniel Puder

Daniel Puder may have retired from MMA competition with an impression 8-0 record, but his pro wrestling career was far, far less distinguished.

However, though it saw him wrestle just dozens of matches, the Tough Enough winner still managed to work for WWE, New Japan Pro-Wrestling and, yes, Ring of Honor.

His ROH run, such as it was, came three years after he was let go by WWE after failing to impress during his time in their developmental system. Reports at the time suggested the ROH deal was for three months and that Puder would be paid per appearance.

Though his WWE career was over before it really got a chance to start, he came to ROH with a rep on the back of his infamous shoot fight with Kurt Angle, which saw him nearly break the arm of the Olympic gold medallist.

Managed by the late, great Larry Sweeney, Puder got a quick win over Mike Bennett on January 11, 2008, then the next night competed in a series of ‘$1,000’ challenges, where the winner would get the winnings, if they could last a minute with Puder.

He beat Alex Payne and Rhett Titus before losing to Claudio Castagnoli, who ran down thirty seconds of time with a giant swing.

Then Puder was gone as quickly as he came, with budget cuts cited as the reason.

1. Christian Cage

When Christian got fed up of bashing his head on WWE’s glass ceiling and elected to let his contract expire at the close of 2005, he did so in the knowledge that he was betting on himself to prove his worth elsewhere.

He quickly settled in TNA but, like many others who were employed by Dixie Carter and co., Captain Charisma supplemented his income by working at the weekends for anyone who would meet his asking price.

One company willing to stump up the funds was Ring of Honor, who brought Christian in for a couple of shots in May and July of 2006.

In the first, he teamed with Colt Cabana to defeat Bryan Danielson and Christopher Daniels in the long main event of the How We Roll show, where he didn’t look out of place at all, despite being used to working shorter matches in a much different style.

Him hitting the Killswitch on the Fallen Angel set up a natural singles match with Daniels at the Generation Now event. He returned the favour, too, again putting a shift in and working hard to get his opponent and the match over, before getting pinned clean in the middle with the Angel’s Wings.