Angelina Love will have a chance to reign supreme if she can beat Rok-C in the semifinals of the Ring of Honor Women’s Championship Tournament.
With a victory, Love will advance to the tournament finals, which will crown the first ROH Women’s World Champion, at ROH Death Before Dishonor.
Win or lose, though, Love believes that it’s “awesome” to see ROH building its women’s division back from the ground up.
In an interview with Liam Alexander-Stewart of Inside The Ropes, Love contrasted this division to that of TNA and WWE, and she spoke highly of the way the company has brought in new talent and evaluated it throughout this process of building up the roster. She acknowleged the way that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the plans to relaunch the division, but she assessed the company’s efforts this time around as “so far, so good.”
“Um, well, it’s, it’s awesome, because like Ring of Honor is different from like your TNA,” said Love. “WWE… to me, like the fan base is different, they’ve always just had a different style, which I think is great, because you can’t have the same everything in wrestling. So it’s good, you know, we were doing good stuff with the girls, but then like 2020 happened, right? So that kind of screwed everybody, you know, but we didn’t have like a huge roster. So I feel like the way that we’ve been going about it by you know, just the way that we’ve kind of had to block off our taping so far with restrictions and all that kind of stuff.
“The only way to build the division, because so many people are already signed to the only way to build a division is just bring in people for tryouts, you know, and just see how they go. Um, and that’s essentially what we did and how we got like this women’s tournament going, which is what you know, is airing right now. So I was asked, like, you know, ‘Do you feel like we’re going about this the right way?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely, I feel like this is the only way to be honest. We can’t just like hire people without seeing them first or you know, seeing them in the ring or seeing how they are just professionally and etiquette and stuff like that.’ So I feel like we’ve gone about that the right way. And so far, so good, I’d say.”
As a 21-year veteran and a seven-time champion, Love is arguably the most accomplished member of ROH’s resurgent women’s division. Naturally, the company leaned on her expertise in its efforts to identity new talents, and Love described how she also offered up some names that the company should bring in. The former champion then expressed her love for ROH and made it clear that sh wants to see it “explode” in the best way possible.
“Yes, I was [involved in the talent identification process],” said Love. “And I, you know, I suggested a couple of girls that were brought in too, so that was really good. And they performed very well, like the company was very happy for them. So, um, yeah, I know. Plus, you know what I mean, like, I’ve been doing this for over two decades.
“So I appreciate that they respect my opinion, and I can speak up because, you know, I do want the best for the product because I really do love Ring of Honor, I really wanted to see it just do just explode again, you know, to me, because it’s like Wrestling’s like ebb and flow. It’s like a roller coaster ride, just depending on society, and you know, whatever. So yeah, I do appreciate that they appreciate, you know, my input.”
Love’s semifinal match against Rok-C will air this weekend on ROH Wrestling.
