By Sean Radican, PWTorch columnist

It has been a rough week for ROH. The company cancelled two house shows in the Carolinas due to poor ticket sales. Tonight, Kenny King, who is one half of the ROH World Tag Team Champions along with Rhett Titus, will appear in the X Division tournament on Impact.

King, whose contract with ROH has expired, could be the first in a long line of dominoes to fall in the company depending on when other ROH contracted talent has their contracts expire. TNA has been freshening up Impact recently with talent for their X Division tournament, but King is by far the most high profile independent name to appear to date. If TNA management likes what they see out of a rejuvenated X Division, who’s to say they wouldn’t sign more talent from ROH.

It won’t be a surprise if a lot of ROH talent thinks twice about re-signing with the company once their contracts expire. The company is running a scaled-down house show schedule in addition to TV and iPPV tapings. The original plans to run regular house shows in all of the new TV markets has clearly been scrapped in favor of cost-cutting with scaled-back house show rosters and a lighter schedule.

Instead of expanding, the company is reducing costs and that’s never a good sign. The company has a lot of good talent, but with Sinclair tightening the budget and scaling down the touring schedule which really never got out of the gates as was anticipated when TV launched last September, the future of the company will depend heavily on whether or not talent re-signs with ROH or looks into TNA and WWE options once their contracts run out.

The interest in ROH talent on the WWE side would likely depend on whether or not WWE is still looking to stockpile talent for the cruiserweight show on the network WWE is trying to launch. WWE sent out feelers to several members of the ROH roster earlier in the year, but stepped back once they found out the talent was under contract.

If King ends up singing with TNA, he could be the first in a long line of dominoes to fall on the ROH talent roster. Hopefully the company can right the ship and convince talent to resign. ROH offers wrestlers a large platform to perform on with television exposure on Sinclair and regular iPPVs, but clearly the television hasn’t brought in a large number of new fans and given the decreasing attendance figures coming out of recent shows in Chicago and New York, some of their hardcore fan base has been turned off by the product.

In order for the Sinclair purchase of the company to work, the company needed to bring in an entirely new audience to replace their hardcore fans that were barely keeping the company alive when Cary Silkin still owned it. To date, that hasn’t happened. What the future holds for the company is unknown, but it hasn’t been a great week for ROH given the cancellation of the house shows in the Carolinas and King popping up on Impact tonight.

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