6 Ways Gabe Sapolsky's ROH Followed Paul Heyman's ECW Legacy

3. Cross-Promotional Shows

ECW did two big cross-promotional things during their time. The most well known one being the "Invasion" of WWE (not to be confused with 'The Invasion' angle and stable that occurred in 2001 after ECW were owned by the McMahons). Influenced by Philadelphia fans chants for the promotion during WWE shows, in 1997 ECW invaded an episode of Raw in the Manhattan Center to promote their first ever pay-per-view. This also led to a long-running angle with United States Wrestling Association, as its owner Jerry Lawler recruited ECW's Sabu and Rob Van Dam on an anti-ECW crusade. The program saw talents from both companies appear on each others shows while ECW were also used as a development territory of sorts for some WWE talents. It could be argued that Ring of Honor simply continued the trend, but they embraced a wider working relationship with other companies and it is that that sets them apart from ECW. They shared talents with TNA for long periods of time (although this was temporarily halted after the Feinstein controversy and later stopped altogether due to ROH growing in size and hosting pay-per-view events). Ring of Honor also had two sister promotions in Full Impact Pro and women's wrestling promotion SHIMMER. Their first international presence actually came in Britain where they co-promoted a show in London with Frontier Wrestling Alliance. ROH had a lot of cross-promotion in Japan with big companies such as Pro Wrestling NOAH, Dragon Gate, Pro Wrestling Zero1 and All Japan Pro Wrestling. In 2007, a Japanese tour in collaboration with NOAH and Dragon Gate resulted in ROH making history by being the first American promotion to have all its championships held by non-American wrestlers. These talent exchanges also resulted in two of the companies four Five-Star rated matches (by the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer) as Samoa Joe clashed with the legendary Kenta Kobashi and a six-man clash between Do FIXER and Blood Generation. Furthermore ROH also went a step further in the tactics of ECW, taking part in a promotional war with hardcore based promotion Combat Zone Wrestling. Kicking off with CZW's Chris Hero answering the open challenge from Bryan Danielson for his ROH World Championship, the six month rivalry saw a focus on the clash of styles, with ROH's pure wrestling a stark contrast to the extreme fighting of CZW. The memorable feud, which was won by ROH, was well received in the wrestling world and was one of the best inter-promotional rivalries in wrestling history.