UPDATE: PWInsider reports that Sapolsky received the cease and desist letter from ROH in regard to his Facebook comments on May 15th. There has been bad blood between the two sides since Sapolsky was dismissed from the company, which led to DG:USA's creation. As previously reported, Sapolsky signed an agreement saying that he wouldn't talk poorly about ROH, but Sapolsky believes that ROH is a different company now that Sinclair bought them and reorganized them under an LLC.
Asked about the issue during a media conference call, ROH COO Joe Koff said, "I'm not going to respond to his comments specifically because I'm going to consider the source of his comments. I can't refute or dispute perception. I can refute and dispute credible sources. I'm not going to get into that conversation about that. He makes a good point...I will tell you that this company is well financed and work with people we rely on for their expertise....and I think this was something that was unanticipated from our own analytics and our own analysis of what it was. The load was tested. Ee thought that we should be fine with what the normal number of buys are and how they come in through course of a day. And Mike, we were fooled, and I'm going to say that positively, even though it ended up negatively, at the positive response to this product and we did not anticipate that. And shame on us for not anticipating that. It's not a money issue at all. It really isn't a money issue. It just happened to be an unfortunate call on our part thinking [the server was] strong enough to carry the show. That's the way it happened."
Sapolsky declined comment, but responded on his Facebook page saying, "You stop yourself from saying something 1000 times, but the one time you take 30 seconds and write something out of anger it blows up beyond your imagination. If you are reading this the bottom line is all you really care about is great wrestling, good storylines and something compelling. We had two awesome EVOLVE shows last weekend....Our staff of Ivan, Bryan, Sean and Brandon among others, led by Sal, worked tirelessly to put on those two memorable events and great iPPV streams. I took the attention away from all that by losing my cool for a moment and lashing out with profanity. I can't make any promises in the future, but I'll remember this lesson. I ended up doing the last thing I wanted to do- take the attention off the wrestling that we all care about."
ORIGINAL: Ring of Honor has fired off a cease and desist letter to former ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky. Sapolsky made comments on his Facebook on Monday slamming ROH for their latest round of iPPV issues that took place during the Border Wars show over the weekend.
ROH is trying to enforce an agreement Sapolsky signed in October 2008 he left ROH agreeing not to disparage the company. Sapolsky is likely to contend that the agreement was signed before ROH was reorganized under Sinclair Broadcasting.
ROH has not responded to requests for comment.
Credit: Ring of Honor
