Dan Maff On Why He Decided To Sign With ROH Over Impact Wrestling

Radio host and WWE personality Sam Roberts recently welcomed Ring Of Honor's Dan Maff to the Notsam Wrestling podcast. Among many other things, Maff talked about his return to ROH for the first time since 2005.

With respect to Maff's return to ROH, the two-time ROH World Tag Team Champion was thinking about quitting pro wrestling again before getting the call about wrestling at ROH Unauthorized. Apparently, independent pro wrestling star Colt Cabana, who recently finished up with ROH, actually booked the show and asked if Maff would be interested in wrestling PCO.

"[KM] calls me. He says, 'hey, Scott D'Amore wants to talk to you.' I said, 'really?' He said, 'yeah, man, they want to talk. Something is on the table. They're ready to roll.' I go, 'cool.' So we're all set. We're ready to go. Right, we're ready to go. We're ready to go with this. Here we go. This was going to happen and we were two weeks away. My phone rings and it's Colt Cabana. [Imitating Cabana] 'Hey buddy!' I say, 'what's up, Colt? What are you doing?' 'Oh, I'm talking to you! Are you available on such-and-such date?' I said, 'yeah, as a matter of fact, I am.' He says, 'good, good. Would you be interested in working PCO?' I said, 'oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've done that before. Cool.' I said, 'for who?' Yeah, I said, 'for who, if you don't mind me asking?' He said, 'ah, Ring Of Honor.' I said, 'what?' He said, 'yeah, man, Ring Of Honor. They're letting me book the show called Uncensored, Unscripted or Uncensored. And I've got 100% of the book and that's the match I want.'" Maff continued, "[Cabana] said, 'well, the office signed off on it, so here I am.' I said, 'okay.' He said, 'my people are going to call you' because I have no people."

On the subject of Maff's match against PCO at Unauthorized, 'The Bayonne Badass' says 'The French-Canadian Frankenstein' is not human, yet a great person.

"I had the match with PCO. [PCO] is incredible. He's not human. He's not human. There's no way he's human. It's amazing. It's literally amazing," Maff recalled. "Yeah, yeah, [PCO will do anything] to hurt you. We're like the perfect opponents for each other. Yeah, I love [PCO] though. [PCO] is a good guy and getting to know him a little more now is even more of a blessing. He's one of those people that I'm actually happy that I've gotten to know like [Roberts] in a way, so I had the match with [PCO]. God bless [PCO]. He did whatever he could do for me and it was awesome."

According to Maff, he was offered a ROH deal after the locker room started chanting for it during their post-show team meeting after Unauthorized. The four-time JAPW Heavyweight Champion said it was one of the most special moments of his pro wrestling career.

"And I came back from the match. Everybody was clapping and everything, which was great and we had a meeting right after. So I'm still pulling tacks out of my head, and we're at a team meeting, and after the team meeting, the team leader says, 'Dan Maff, what can I say? You came in here after 15 years, 20 years, whatever it is, you main evented both nights, and you totally knocked it out of the park. You absolutely killed it. I can't say enough about you, so hat's off to you.' Somebody from the back of the room – to this day, I have no idea who it is – says, 'well, give him an effing job!' So the rest of the locker room starts chanting, 'yes!' Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, yeah, that was one of the most humbling moments of my life, man." Maff cried, "to have that locker room? sorry? yeah, right, but the team leader stopped and said, 'okay, I don't do this type of thing normally, and this isn't a thing, these are things that are done in private,' but he's like, 'let's just do it out in public. Do you guys think Dan Maff deserves a job here?' And they just started chanting, 'yes!' even louder. And then, he says, 'Dan, if you want the job, the job is yours.' We got up. He got up. I walked across the room to shake his hand. I shook his hand and the place, the locker room, just erupted. Yeah, he said, 'we're a family here and you've become part of the family.' That was one of the most special moments of my career and I'll never forget it."

Maff went on to elaborate on signing with ROH instead of Impact.  

"Impact reached back out to me and said, 'hey, I hope everything went well over there, but are we still good for Thursday?' I said, 'yeah, things went really, really well. They said, 'well, was there any offer?' So I shared what was said and to Impact's [credit], respect to Impact because they didn't BS me. They were like, 'well, we can't do that. We can't even come to that ballpark.'" Maff added, "Impact said to me, 'we can't do that.' Right, so, to me it was a no-brainer. To me, I had already felt, I already felt the rush and Ring Of Honor is where I wanted to be. And I had no problem calling [Impact] back and saying, 'listen, I'm not even showing up. This is where I want to be.'"

Check out the podcast here or via the embedded player below. If you use any of the quotations that appear in this article, please credit Notsam Wrestling with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.