Big Bubba - Ring of Honor: The Pipeline of TNA

If you haven't heard, a vote for Word the Nerd will turn every third bird turd into a cheese curd. How absurd.

Ring of Honor - Tier 3. This place has produced so many household names that we wrestling fans love to watch. It was immediately known at the company's inception that this would be the case. The brand's debut show, "The Era of Honor Begins", featured Amazing Red, Homicide, Mikey Whipwreck, Super Crazy, Bryan Danielson, Christopher Daniels, Low Ki, and even Eddy Guerrero. At this show, they claimed to be about the sport of wrestling instead of silly gimmicks, but I've seen some pretty lame gimmicks in ROH since then (e.g. Player Uno and Player Dos).

For a while, Ring of Honor had a steady growth in terms of fans and exposure. I believe it hit a plateau in 2008 when founder and head booker, Gabe Sapolsky left the company to start Dragon Gate USA and Evolve Wrestling. I still believe in my mind that if these three companies merged together and used their combined resources, they would thrive more than their current states.

But this blog is about how Ring of Honor is what I call a pipeline of TNA. I'll explain what I mean. In American College Football, players from high schools all around the country are recruited to play for each university's program. The largest schools such as Texas University, Ohio State University, and the University of Southern California have the resources to recruit any player from any part of the country. Smaller schools, however, must make the best of their limited resources in order to compete. They usually find an area close in proximity to their campus that produces quality talent year in and year out and they recruit those players heavily. This is because it's quicker, easier, and cheaper to recruit someone who lives 50 miles from your campus than to recruit someone who lives 10 states away. These hotbeds are called pipelines, and they bear a striking resemblance to the relationship TNA has with Ring of Honor.

Just like the large University's in my analogy, WWE picks and chooses exactly who they want to represent them and they almost always get their man. Of course, they picked up Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, and Evan Bourne from Ring of Honor, but they haven't used ROH like TNA has. Here is a list of Ring of Honor Wrestlers that have also competed in TNA.

This list is incomplete, but still impressive.

Abyss

AJ Styles

Alex Shelley

Amazing Red

Chris Sabin

Christopher Daniels

CM Punk

D-Lo Brown

Doug Williams

Hernandez

Homicide

Jay Lethal

Jimmy Rave

Justin Credible

Low Ki

Mick Foley

Nigel McGuiness/Desmond Wolfe

Paul London

Raven

Samoa Joe

Sonjay Dutt

Spanky/Brian Kendrick

Young Bucks/Generation Me

I know some of these men didn't start in Ring of Honor, but it shows you how well the companies work together to allow them to appear on the other show simultaneously. Christopher Daniels is still an active wrestler on each show.

Now I will leave you with a few names I think may be added to this list in the near future.

Roderick Strong

Davey Richards

Claudio Castagnoli

Briscoe Brothers