Maria is officially back with the Ring of Honor promotion and is front and center to provide an announcement for them. She announces an open forum called The Experience where they want the fans to say what they want to see. They want the fans to #ChooseYourHonor.
The full statement about this is listed on their website and says the following:
Ring of Honor has always strived to give the best wrestling fans on the planet what they want. Now the fans will have an open forum to tell us directly what they want.
In January, ROH takes The Experience to the next level of fan engagement by empowering the members of Honor Nation to make their voices heard.
The Experience is not a singular event. It’s a movement.
Fans are encouraged to join the ROH The Experience Facebook group to share their thoughts and opinions about all things ROH.
Which outside talents do you want to see in ROH? Which ROH stars should be getting title shots? What match stipulations do you want to see?
ROH wants you to #ChooseYourHonor.
Maria Kanellis Bennett is leading the charge for The Experience. She made the announcement about the groundbreaking concept on ROH’s social media platforms.
“Ring of Honor has cultivated an environment where the wrestlers and the fans are the experience,” Kanellis Bennett said. “I want wrestlers to thrive and I want to give you the fans what you truly desire.
“I want Ring of Honor to be yours. No … I want Ring of Honor to be ours.”
Maria joins her husband, Mike Bennett, who has already reappeared for the promotion. Prior to this announcement of The Experience, Mike was recently interviewed by Wrestling Inc. about his thoughts on if Maria would return to ROH.
He had the following to say on if Maria would return:
“Maria, I’ll never say no because she’s my wife, so if she ever wants to come back, she’s always more than willing to. The Kingdom’s just as much her as it was me, and Matt and [Adam] Cole,” Bennett noted. “The door’s always open for her. I will say this about Maria though, she’s very, as most people know, she’s very methodical. She’s very methodical in her decisions.
“When Maria comes back, she’ll come back when she wants to come back on her terms, doing what she wants to do because that’s how she’s always done it, and I’m sure as hell not going to tell her any other way. I will never say never, Maria back to the Kingdom, but where Maria’s mind is at now, I would definitely say when she returns to wrestling, it’ll be her decision [and] her choice doing what she wants to do. She’s been doing this a long time, and she’s done a lot in this industry. So she’s deserved a rest, and she deserves to come back when she wants to.”
Maria and Mike both stood alongside each other in the ROH promotion from 2011 to 2015. They both were recently released from WWE in April as part of the cutbacks from the pandemic.
As far as the women’s roster in ROH, they had planned to crown a new champion with a new lineage to their women’s belt. This was to take place at the time that the pandemic had shut everything down back in April.
What do you make of Maria being back with ROH? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.