10 ROH Stars Who Would Flourish In WWE
WWE's roster is packed with ex-ROH talent, so who are the next wrestlers likely to make the leap?
Kevin Owens, AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, Roderick Strong, Kassius Ohno, Cesaro... the list could go on. What do they all have in common? They are all WWE wrestlers who have spent at least part of their career in Ring Of Honor. NXT and the Performance Wrestler may be where WWE claims to train their talent, but the briefest look at the roster will tell you that a lot more of them spent time in ROH than there.
Your opinion on whether that is a good or a bad thing will likely come down to what you prefer as a wrestling fan. On the one hand, the quality of matches on WWE TV has risen and it’s great to see the likes of Kevin Owens being given the chance that they so richly deserve. On the other, ROH is stuck in a Catch 22 situation. They keep producing talent and WWE keeps stealing it.
Whatever we think, that’s a reality of life. The bigger company is always going to win and the odds are that there is more than one person currently working in ROH who will pop up in WWE in the future. So, the question, is who? Not every wrestler who steps into Ring Of Honor is suited to WWE, while there are others who you can’t help but think would flourish on the big stage.
10. Punishment Martinez
Take Baron Corbin, add a few inches, some scary looking makeup, a hell of a lot more agility and you’ve got Punishment Martinez. Having appeared in Ring Of Honor’s Top Prospect Tournament in 2016, Martinez went out in the semi-finals to the eventual winner, Lio Rush. However, the big man did more than enough to impress ROH officials and was given a contract anyway.
Since then Martinez has been built into ROH’s monster. He stands out on a roster that is on the smaller size by towering over them and chucking the likes of Jay White about the ring. It’s his agility that makes the real difference, however, as he can keep up with these faster wrestlers and hold his own working the ROH style.
Martinez is far from the finished product. He can still look a bit clunky in the ring, and he lacks that sheen of polish that we have come to expect from WWE talent. However, with a little bit of time in NXT, you could easily see him slotting onto Raw or SmackDown. He has the size that Vince McMahon loves but is good enough to get in the ring with wrestlers of the calibre of AJ Styles and Sami Zayn and not stink the place out.