10 Wrestlers Who Saved Promotions From Ruin

10. The Young Bucks

To measure the impact that the Young Bucks made on Ring Of Honor, one need only look at the before and after.

Before the Bucks popped the territory in the mid-2010s, that territory had relinquished its cool underground vibe. In a strange and hypocritical trend, given his scathing assessment of WWE's hyper over-production, Jim Cornette went full Bill Watts with his antiquated edicts over the ring style. He banned the piledriver years and years after its deadly stigma had faded, which was omni-pointless. It in theory deprived the base of the action they bought tickets for, but the ban didn't inform a purer, stripped-back big match approach. The long matches of the early 2010s were indulgent to a parodic extent.

After the Bucks left, in 2018, ROH suffered badly. Inexplicable, piss-poor decisions saw a strapped-up Matt Taven preside over a promotion that became a meme for blue dots on the pre-sale seat maps.

One can also of course cite the truth of the numbers.

The Bucks drew what was, at the time, ROH's record gate at Supercard of Honor XI in 2017 (3,500), after which, buoyed by peak era Being The Elite's elegant storytelling, the company routinely sold out buildings it had outgrown.

The Bucks' demented in-ring approach proved exactly why the piledriver ban was such a passé gimmick: the fans wanted delirious, twisting all-action, and Matt and Nick Jackson popped their t*ts off in every town.