Eddie Kingston Details How ROH Paved The Road To AEW

AEW star Eddie Kingston is a man who never forgets where he came from. No matter how much money he makes working for All Elite Wrestling, he will always hold a special place in his heart for those he worked with on the independent scene, especially Ring of Honor. While Kingston has found a lot of success in the Tony Khan version of ROH, including winning the ROH World Championship in 2023, he had a number of notable moments in the company before Khan bought it, such as rekindling his feud with Chris Hero, tagging with Homicide, and working against Kevin Steen. 

Kingston was a recent guest on Tony Schiavone's "What Happened When?" podcast where he watched some classic ROH matches with the AEW announcer, and given how influential the company has turned out to be, Kingston believes that without ROH, there would be no AEW. "I like to tell people that Ring of Honor was the nice little prelude to what we have here today in AEW." Ring of Honor helped produce the inaugural All In event in 2018, which in turn led to Tony Khan seeing potential in creating a new wrestling company that became AEW, meaning that Ring Of Honor is in the very DNA of All Elite Wrestling.

Schiavone also noted that the success of ROH and the wider independent scene during the 2000s, a time where he wasn't in wrestling, has allowed him to watch wrestlers he was never exposed to, and even becoming friends with them. The stars Schiavone named were Kingston, Jon Moxley, Samoa Joe, and two men who he now shares a commentary desk with on Wednesday and Saturday nights, Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness.

Please credit "What Happened When?" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.