It seems no matter what I write in this article that in my heart in won't be nearly enough. How do sum up something that has been apart of your daily life for five years in a mere five paragraphs? RRO, Rasslin Riot Online, is by far the most viewed, most popular, most controversial and most influential entity in this area. In the RRO Top 50 of 5 years, if Dustin Starr is #3, yours truly is #2 and Derrick King is #1 then in my humble opinion then RRO is #1-A.
When it comes to RRO then you are on either one of two teams, you love it or you hate it. There isn't an in between. Although some people swap teams depending on what review BT gave them. I myself have always loved the site. I didn't agree with everything that was said or done but I agreed with purpose of the site. No matter how you feel about RRO, Brian Tramel or the rest of the RRO staff.. the website benefited us all. For five years we had someone in our corner, fighting for us to succeed and putting over everything we tried to do. Our own, in house publicist. Weaving ways to make our names synonymous with pro wrestling's premiere athletes.
I encouraged BT from the very beginning to be the sole voice of RRO. I knew that people would be far more interested in his insight rather than just a bland result of weekly shows. There isn't a single person that BT reported on for this site that he didn't say something positive about but by the same token he shined light on what he felt was negative to. BT at times had questioned my matches and my booking, I'm glad he did so. We all should be glad that he did so, because that meant we were getting genuine feedback. If I whole hearted disagreed with his opinion then I called him directly to talk about it, sometimes he changed his mind but most of the time we agreed to disagree. I personally valued BT's opinion not because he ran a website but because he was my friend.
There are only a handful of guys in this business that I can call and talk to about things other than wrestling and BT is close to top on their very short list. We've known each other for a decade now from when he saw something special in me from the very beginning as he did with other guys that worked in his CCW (Chaotic Champion Wrestling) company. His passion is unmatched. If any of us found out today that we couldn't step through those ropes anymore would we still have the "want to" to spend as much time and energy as BT did on this site. Even for a week, let alone five years?
I don't begrudge Brian for wanting to start something new. Selfishly I still don't want the site to end. I think about some of the guys who broke into the business after the site who started that maybe wanted to achieve some level of notoriety thought the RRO Awards Race. Some great young talent that won't benefit from the opportunities that RRO has provided over the last half-decade. Almost 4 million hits in 5 years, the only word that comes to mind is ...wow! What an accomplishment, for all of us. The fact that this circus of life known as pro wrestling would draw this so much much attention and fan fare. Let's not forget all of the performers that attributed to this, especially those who aren't with us anymore and our ring leader... Brian Tramel, who put us center stage for the world to see. Thank you BT and thank you all. This experience has been as good as gold.
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