WWE reportedly looked into buying Ring of Honor before Tony Khan stepped in

As previously noted, AEW President Tony Khan announced during the March 2nd 2022 edition of Dynamite that he is the new Ring of Honor owner.

According to Mike Johnson of PWInsider.com, WWE had shown interest in purchasing ROH when it was announced that the company was going on hiatus last year. Johnson noted that there were discussions between the two sides but the talks ended without any deal being made and then Khan stepped in.

During Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com talked about how there were prior discussions about WWE possibly buying ROH that involved Triple H…

“I think this would be, I’m going to say, 2018. Early part of the year. WWE made a pitch. Paul Levesque [Triple H] wanted to buy Ring of Honor and there was some smoke to that, even though Ring of Honor obviously denied it at the time, because you always do. But there was something there. There were talks there and they ended up going nowhere. From what I gather, Vince wanted to buy somebody bigger, not realizing that the ‘bigger’ which was New Japan Pro Wrestling, he couldn’t buy. WWE tried to buy New Japan. They tried to buy Stardom. They tried to buy NOAH. They tried to buy AAA. Nobody would sell to them from foreign countries for the price that they were willing to pay, so none of these deals ever got going, but this is one, obviously, that was in play, and you know, whatever.

They were not willing to sell then. But now, Sinclair, again, the regional sports network deals were such a big loser when Sinclair bought them from Fox. So now, they can’t keep on… They could, but they didn’t want to keep on a company that was not making them money, so that’s what led to all this.” (quote courtesy of RingsideNews.com)