ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The Lehigh Valley has been a hotbed for pro wrestling for nearly a century, and a promotion coming through for the first time in June will make it even hotter.
All Elite Wrestling, or AEW, will take over the PPL Center on June 20.
Allentown native and Salisbury Township resident Ian Riccaboni will undoubtedly be ringside as a play-by-play announcer for Ring of Honor, or ROH, a wrestling outfit that got its start in Philadelphia and is now considered a sister promotion to AEW.
Both will be heavily featured in Allentown, with live-to-tape episodes of AEW Collision and AEW Rampage (both airing on TNT) and Ring of Honor TV planned.
LehighValleyNews.com sat down with Riccaboni to talk about the event, which could bring the largest crowd for pro wrestling the area has seen in years. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: For people who don’t know your story, tell us a little bit about your connection to the area and how you got here.
IR: “I was born in Allentown, right down the street at 19th and Hamilton at the old osteopathic hospital, which is St. Luke's now, and I've been a professional wrestling fan all my life.
When we lived closer to the east side of Allentown and I was at the babysitter's, she would put on wrestling tapes. Her name was Pat and her husband was Bob. And I’d get walked across the trailer park to their trailer, and we'd go in, and I would have terrible separation anxiety. And the way they got me to calm down was to put on wrestling. And over time, I just continued to gravitate toward professional wrestling.
As I grew up, I started to go to every wrestling event in the area I could go to, but it started out with kind of a false start. My mom tried to take me and my brother to one of the Fairgrounds events, and I just was overwhelmed by the sound and the noise and sort of the enormity of it. It was one of the outdoor August or September shows they used to have.
But over time, we would go to just about every Stabler Arena event. We went to an ECW event over at Ag Hall, went to WCW over at Stabler and to pretty much anything that came through the area. My love of wrestling continued through high school, I had a couple teachers nurture that, and then I went to college for media communications. And I just tried to get involved in broadcasting and media and just kind of kept working toward it, and didn't know what it would lead to. But I always had in the back of my head that I wanted to be a wrestling announcer.
So everything I did, whether it was public access, whether it was writing for blogs, whether it was anything, it continued to bring me back to wrestling. And then in 2014 I got my shot with Ring of Honor.”
Q: So you went to The Monster Factory in New Jersey and you were the only student for broadcasting. What was that like in terms of it being your first real experience behind the scenes of wrestling?
IR: “Yeah. [Former wrestler] Danny Cage had just purchased it from Larry Sharpe. And Larry Sharpe has got a lot of ties downtown as well and he wrestled quite a bit at the old Ag Hall. And Danny was looking to take advantage of the digital situation of YouTube of everything, and he was looking to get his wrestlers experience on camera, and just being themselves and learning that part, the showmanship of wrestling as well.
So I kind of walked in right at the right time, because I had the training, I went to NYU, I had cut my teeth with Phillies Nation, which started on Service Electric and then got picked up by Comcast SportsNet. So I had some experience coming in. I wasn't coming in fresh, and all I really had to do — and that's a big all and doing a lot of heavy lifting — was kind of learn the professional wrestling side of things.
Danny was great. He was patient. He had a vision of where things want to go. I mean, he's been doing it now for 11 years. He just trained [Philadelphia Eagles] Lane Johnson and Jason Kelce to be in WrestleMania. He’s got Damian Priest, the WWE champion, so his track record as a trainer speaks for itself.
But the fun part was, I was like a pig on a farm. I was around wrestling hour after hour. And I was just getting to learn and practice and get reps and that was a ton of fun. It was a safe place to learn how to fail and to learn how to lose your words and how to come back from that.”
Q: People who watch wrestling understand the announcers are sometimes heavily involved and those wrestlers are targeting them, or targeting the announce table to use during a match. How do you prepare for that?
IR: “It’s funny you mentioned that because I was the target of Chris Jericho in AEW because Chris Jericho had won the Ring of Honor championship and decided he was too good for it. And, as that played out, Claudio Castagnoli, who had ties to Allentown as well through a wrestling organization called Chikara, he came in and he was the big hero and won the title back but Jericho slapped me in the face and there were other things too.
So in addition to having to remember, ‘Okay, we're gonna have to promote the next three shows, the on-sale for tickets and describe the moves and banter with my partner, it was also, ‘Oh God, Chris Jericho has been calling me out for weeks, what's going to happen?’ And there’s part of that that’s a lot of just reading and reacting, and a lot of it is just getting ready and staying ready."
Q: So you get through the Monster Factory. How long before you were like, “I’m ready to get out and get going?”
IR: “It was about a year and a half, which is kind of a short time. But again, coming into the wrestling world with the broadcast experience, normally folks with the broadcast experience would kind of skip to the head of the line.
So historically, if you look at broadcasters, they're usually more kind of seasoned. Before they come into wrestling like (WWE commentator) Michael Cole, he was an Iraqi war correspondent. And so he didn't even do the independent [wrestling scene]. He was ready for prime time kind of out of the gate.
So I had the advantage of kind of doing a little bit of background broadcasting, but then also getting the rest of the piece. So it was about a year with the Monster Factory. And we had kind of named talent come through, and because of the proximity to the training center for Ring of Honor, I was able to meet those folks and make friends with those folks. And so July 22, 2014, was my first event as part of Ring of Honor, which is coming up on 10 years.
I wasn't the lead broadcaster right away, I was brought on board to do something that was called Future of Honor, which was going to highlight the young stars. And so it was pretty wild. It was quick. It was quicker than I expected. I kind of had a five-year plan when I started. And I told my wife, ‘Hey, if I'm not doing this regularly in five years, or if I'm not on TV in five years, I tried. I did my best. And that's it.’ And now we're here 10 years later.”
Q: Tell me about your job outside of wrestling.
IR: “I'm in inpatient services. So, I help with financial assistance for patients, for a major plasma-based manufacturer, and that's what I do during the week. And that's really fulfilling because I get to talk to patients about what they need. I get to help change people's lives. We have a gene therapy right now that the FDA has approved to replace weekly infusions. So it's more of a one-time infusion versus every week for the rest of your life infusion. So it's kind of incredible to see the spaces and frontiers we’re going in the pharma world. It’s tough to give that up. But I also do Ring of Honor every week.
I’m really lucky that over the years I've had different opportunities in pharma and different opportunities in wrestling, and everything keeps being centered around my children, Zach and Nora, and my wife Sarah. It continues to feel like the right decision because there always seems to be a way to continue to fit everything. One day I might have to choose and that day is going to be tough, but for now, everything fits.”
Q: What is it like to be in this business working next to legendary announcers like Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone?
IR: “The first time I ever met J.R., I introduced myself and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Ross, my name is Ian,’ and he goes, ‘You can call me J.R., kid.’ And it was really interesting, because Mickey Mantle, sort of, for all intents and purposes, replaced Joe DiMaggio. And they didn't play together much. It was a brief overlap. There were, you know, brief periods where there's been kind of a passing of the torch, but I don't see myself anywhere near the level or stature of Jim Ross, please don't get me wrong. But you'd never expect coming into your industry to be able to work with a number one, or a consensus greatest of all time.
For someone I was working with at 34 or 35, it blew my mind. Because here's a man that has been calling wrestling as long as I’d been alive. Prior to that he was a referee and did commentary before that also. And just, there's never been a moment where he hasn't been good. Or he hasn't been the Jim Ross that we were used to every day of the week.
Working with him, I realize there's so much that I do that I've either kind of pulled from Jim Ross or pulled from Tony Schiavone, who I work with on a more regular basis now. That it's like, ‘Wow, that's where I got it from.’ It’s just unbelievable and the time and graciousness both of them have given and shown.
We had a really tragic situation where Jay Briscoe passed away in January 2023. And they brought myself and Caprice Coleman in to call a match with Mark Briscoe, Jay’s brother, against Jay Lethal, one of Jay Briscoe’s most notable opponents. And Jim pulled us aside and he said, “I was there the night Owen Hart passed, and the show had to go on. And the folks are dependent on you to give Jay life tonight and to remember Jay.’ And he goes, ‘That's a heavy responsibility. But I trust you guys to be out there and clearly everybody here trusts you guys.’ And that was really inspiring. That's what we needed to hear, but also, we never expected in a million years to hear it.”
Q: Tell me about the connection between Ring of Honor and AEW.
IR: “For 10 years I've been with Ring of Honor, and for a long time it was actually the second biggest company in the United States. It was a distant second, you know, to be fair, but some of our highest highs were some of the biggest of any organization.
We sold out Madison Square Garden, working with our partners, New Japan Pro Wrestling, I got to call that event in front of almost 19,000 people. We would go to Japan, we would go to the UK. It was unbelievable. It was a ton of fun. And the key was, we were a distant second, we had international syndication. We were seen as cheap programming, but along the way, we got some incredibly talented wrestlers, and suddenly we had folks who had more of an expanded vision.
It got to be like, ‘We were getting all these talented wrestlers who were seeing this as a great place to wrestle, and wrestle other great wrestlers and sort of a stepping stone. Why don’t we try to become a destination?’
So the calculus kind of changed in 2017. We got Cody Rhodes. We got the Hardys. We got the Young Bucks starting to really take off, and they’re now executive vice presidents of AEW. So, we really started to get mainstream coverage in Rolling Stone, ESPN, USA Today. And it was wild, because suddenly I was thrust into the lead announcer position in 2017 and I’m getting called to talk to folks about, ‘What is Ring of Honor?’
We began to sell out, you know, we went from 1,000 seat arenas to 2,000 seat arenas and then we had this big event called All In and I was the lead voice for that. That’s where I met Excalibur, who is now the lead voice for AEW. And suddenly you start to see things moving around, and suddenly, you know, you start to hear some whispers that there might be this other organization starting up.
We got to December 2018 and that's when Cody started to say goodbye and I’m like, ‘Where are you going?’ The Young Bucks started to say goodbye. ‘Where are you going?’ Adam Page gave me a big hug. ‘Where are you going?’
It was like that scene in Fresh Prince where Will Smith is kind of standing there looking around like, ‘Alright, where is everybody?’ as his family moves out of their Bel Air mansion. So Ring of Honor took that hard.
Q: And it seemed like Ring of Honor was done?
IR: “So from the highest of highs, we'd have that one big last big Madison Square Garden kind of blow out. And then from there, we struggled in 2019, and in 2020 the pandemic happens. And we started to get great TV ratings during the pandemic. So even though we weren't running live events, we were doing these bubble tapings, our ratings were up, our hits to our website had never been higher, and Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, everything was the highest it had ever been. So there's still some viability, we start to get some confidence, but AEW launches on TNT at that point and so they clearly quickly become the number two.
Unfortunately, with the pandemic, Sinclair realizes, you know, this isn't quite viable for us if we can't do the live touring as much, or maybe the interest isn't there. And I just remembered December 2021, thinking it was my last time I was ever going to call wrestling. I was loose and I was just saying things I would have never said on a broadcast again. Not curse words or anything vulgar, but kind of acknowledging this might be the end of the road. And thank goodness, but I think it was March 5 or March 10 of 2022 that Tony Kahn bought the company from AEW.
So now the clear number two, where the gap is much smaller, is AEW to WWE, in terms of international reach, in terms of attendance. But I think our product is the best just in terms of metrics the public can measure.”
Q: Is it fair to say Ring of Honor is almost to AEW what NXT is to WWE? Or is the talent level for Ring of Honor elevated above what the NXT kids are doing?
IR: “With due respect to NXT, I think we're looking for different athletes. We are looking for more experienced athletes. They in the recent past have started to start from scratch, where in the past NXT would take at the time he was Kevin Steen in Ring of Honor, he was the world champ. And then they took him and he’s Kevin Owens. Sort of in previous schools of thought they would take some of the top Ring of Honor talent and put them through NXT get them ready, and then have them on Raw or Smackdown. I think right now the folks on Ring of Honor are intentionally a little bit more well developed, more experienced.
What's really neat to see as the Ring of Honor announcer is that you'll see something start to work or click. We had a Women's Championship be the main event of our pay-per-view in July of 2023. And you could tell something was special with a woman named Willow. And now she's the featured act on AEW, she's the TBS champ, she's going to be facing Mercedes Mone. And it was that kind of confidence that she built and the connection with the crowd she built in Ring of Honor, that I think proved to management folks that she could be someone to bank on.
And so I think Ring of Honor serves a lot of great purposes. I think we're looking for folks that are a little bit more established. I think we're looking for folks that don't need to be molded that are more experienced professional wrestlers. So I think it's more maybe what NXT used to be. I think right now, they're looking for just athletes. It’s just two different approaches.”
Q: We’re going to go a little deeper into the conversation beyond the casual wrestling fan, but tell me about All In and how that came together. Because having an independent show in a sold out, 10,000 seat arena and bringing in talent from all over the place had some naysayers believing this thing was never going to happen, let alone pack the place.
IR: “The canary in the coal mine for me at All In was the fact that we had wrestlers who were under contract to CMLL (a promotion based in Mexico City) and to AAA in Mexico. And anybody who knows those two organizations knows that would be like a Republican and Democrat unity ticket running at the top of it, it would never happen anytime. But there we were with CMLL stars Rocky Romero, and then we had Ray Fenix and the main event. And we had an unknown in Bandido, who had kind of decided not to go with either organization at the time, and that can be seen in some sort of political way, but he just decided that wasn't his journey.
So to me, that was kind of the canary in the coal mine there that yeah, this is changing. And then Impact Pro Wrestling and Ring of Honor previous to All In have had a rocky relationship. And suddenly, I'm on commentary with Excalibur who's independent at that time, and Don Callis, who's from Impact at that time. So those were the two big ‘something is changing’ to me moments, and just a regular fan who watched it and enjoyed it might not have picked up on that or might not have noticed, but I noticed that some of the really super hardcore fans thought, ‘Well, wait a minute, in Mexico you never have a CMLL guy or AAA guy on the same card. In the US you'd never have Ring of Honor and Impact. What's going on?’”
Q: Tell me if you disagree, but I think a lot of what’s changed in wrestling compared to what we saw years ago is that there’s this appreciation for wrestling now we didn’t quite see before, specifically for the athleticism of these wrestlers, along with the storytelling and for who these wrestlers are as people. When fans of Cody Rhodes hear him say that he “finished the story” he’s not talking about something scripted. This was literally his story. And you flip the channel show to show and you hear the fans chanting “This is awesome!” during these matches.
IR: “I think people see it as these wrestlers are still characters, but I feel like there's a much higher level of appreciation for just yeah, the athleticism. Absolutely, and the combination of talent.
The embodiment of that is Orange Cassidy. He is a character through and through. And he's a guy that is on the Allentown card at the PPL Center, he has some connections to the area (as a Phillipsburg High School graduate). He is a character. And he at first was seen as always the guy who wears denim, the guy who puts his hands in his pockets.
He now has moved some of the most merchandise and he’s made an emotional connection. He’s relatable and draws sympathy. Everything he does, everybody's had a best friend that's gone astray. Everybody's had to mediate between two best friends. Everybody's felt like the underdog at some point. He checks off all of those boxes and is so versatile, and he's also one of the most athletic wrestlers there are. And so I think you're right, there's a lot of if you can meet in the middle and you have that presentation the storytelling is going to get you extra investments.
It also helps that there's a lot of great announcers out there right now. And this is no slight to the announcers that kind of came before. But to your point, Jim Ross would be one of the first to say, ‘Well, yeah, in Georgia four years ago, these two met and they've known each other ever since and that's why this match is going to be. It’s just bringing to light things that were almost a little taboo in some ways of recalling past history.
Now, that's the kind of thing that's made me better, that's made Excalibur better, and I love Tom Hannafin and Impact. You know, he's become a friend of mine. There's recalling that and weaving that into the storytelling where previously that was kind of not something we’d do.”
Q: What was it like to hear you’re going to be bringing Ring of Honor and AEW here to Allentown and the Lehigh Valley, where so much wrestling history is woven through the area?
IR: “It's incredible. Professional wrestling has had a strong history since 1938 here, and probably longer, but that's the first that I'm aware of. Orville Brown, the first NWA champion, wrestled right down the street in 1938 at Mealey’s Auditorium.
What's really neat about Allentown is that a lot of folks know its history with the Fairgrounds; it was kind of the international launching point for the WWF. But even before that, the WWWF made a concerted effort to get here to the Little Palestra and run monthly, sometimes every two weeks, and they catered to the local market.
It was awesome because they’d bring in Pedro Morales, and he’s from Puerto Rico with strong ties in the Puerto Rican community. It would be loud, rowdy, it would be exciting and the hero saved the day.
They also had Victor Rivera at the top of the card again, another wrestler from Puerto Rico, and Mac Rivera, a star that came up in the late 70s, rather than the 60s like Victor did. So Allentown was always this really interesting place where they took stars that matched the local geography, and got these incredible crowds, these fired up fans, you know, and they just knew that Allentown was a great market.
Q: And they were doing a lot of TV here, giving the area a ton of exposure.
IR: “When they became more of a TV product they went from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia and Atlantic City from the 60s to the 70s. They started to realize they could syndicate their TV instead of just broadcasting more locally. And then (the Lehigh Valley’s) Mike Mittman was with the WWWF as a fill-in announcer, as a timekeeper and all that, and he overheard a conversation — and he tells the story much better than I do. But essentially, Vince McMahon Sr. said, ‘Well, geez, we can't use Philly this week. We need a building.’ And Mike said, ‘Well, I know the owner of this building up in Allentown, it's next to the fairgrounds, I think all the equipment would fit in there.’
They asked if the building had a shower, and it doesn’t have a shower. And Mike essentially says, ‘I thought to myself ‘it will now.’ So they called the owner of the building, they got a shower and bathroom put in and they’re off to the races. I think it was ‘77 they had moved in. So every third Tuesday they would tape three weeks of TV there, and this area from 1977-84 was the home of the WWWF into the WWF.”
Q: How critical was that time period?
IR: “In that time period, they did their first syndicated deal to Los Angeles. So then they had the New York market, Philadelphia market, the DC market and Los Angeles.
That should have been a red flag for all the other promoters because they had both coasts. They started to pick up steam and started to get all kinds of other markets and by the time they moved on to Poughkeepsie in 1984, and then doing the TVs across the country. They had a foothold in just about every market. So with that saw the rise of Superstar Billy Graham and Bob Backlund. Then late ‘83 Hulk Hogan returns, and they're off to the races and there wasn't any looking back from there.
People forget they had smaller events at Ag Hall from '85 all the way through ‘94. And then they started going to Stabler Arena in ‘94. And so in the area, they continue to have this presence year after year. So the WWF conditions fans in this area to be into it and involved and you're going to Ringer's Roost (in Allentown) and seeing the things there and hearing stories that they'll tell about Andre the Giant coming in and drinking dozens of beers. It's just part of the local fabric and we’d have The Nasty Boys and Billy Kidman. Obviously The Rock grew up in Bethlehem or spent high school there, but David Bautista trained here at the Wild Samoan Training Center, which was a result of the WWF being here for so long.
So there's this rabid fan base who loves wrestling, who would commute to go see Ring of Honor when they started in Philly, who supported Chikara when they started, which helped launch the careers of guys like CM Punk, Claudio Castagnoli, all those folks in ways that Ring of Honor either complimented or supplemented. So, the fans here love wrestling. It's the first time we've been here. I never thought that Ring of Honor would have a shot here."
Q: And fans are going to get to see folks from ROH and a ton of big name talent from AEW.
IR: “The rising star power that the AEW folks like the Young Bucks have — you know they have a shoe with Reebok just announced, like who would’ve thought? Ten years ago they famously told their story that they overdrew their bank account by $6 and couldn’t get a hamburger at the airport. Now they’re multimillionaires and have Reebok indoor shoes that are going to be sold worldwide.
To have that kind of star power come to Allentown is incredible. And the fans here deserve it because they were so faithful every third Tuesday at Ag Hall for almost seven years.
And to have that tradition kind of start here and the history of fans showing up at the Fairgrounds and at Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, it just really makes me happy that these fans are going to get something as high quality as that.”
Q: I have a couple of fun questions for you. Favorite wrestler growing up?
IR: "Geez. I really like Flyin’ Brian Pillman. When I was little, I liked the high fliers. I really liked Jushin Liger when he’d come over from Japan and wrestle Brian Pillman."
Q: Favorite today?
IR: "Bryan Danielson."
Q: Favorite finisher?
IR: "The Sharpshooter or the Scorpion Deathlock."
Q: Let’s do Lehigh Valley questions. You’re leaving here and going to lunch. Where are you going? Where’s your favorite place to eat?
IR: "I really like Cali Burrito."
Q: Top places you go to have fun, for a little entertainment. I know you’re a baseball fan.
IR: "Definitely the IronPigs. I still can’t believe we have something as nice as Coca-Cola Park operating at such a high quality, with the ‘Pigs in particular being the number one most attended team in minor league baseball for the duration.”
Sundays are for the Mamajuana! Go Pigs! pic.twitter.com/DD6DmhxSKi
— Ian Riccaboni (@IanRiccaboni) April 28, 2024
Q: I know you’re training for a marathon. Where are your favorite places to run?
IR: "I love the parks here, so I love to run at the Rose Garden and I run at Trexler Park."
Q: Give me a final selling point for folks to come out and see AEW.
IR: “If you love professional wrestling, you're gonna want to be here. It's authentic. It's fast paced. It's hard hitting. There's folks you know, and you're gonna leave with a new favorite wrestler because you're gonna come and see the folks that you know on the poster who are still the best in the world like Bryan Danielson.
You're gonna leave being a fan of Willow or Orange Cassidy or someone that if you're not already an AW fan and you're seeing for the first time you're gonna fall in love, and it’s gonna be a great night. It's a way to support Allentown if you want more wrestling to come back. It'll show evidence that competition really breeds success and the WWE has done well here recently as well. So if two companies are doing well, everybody’s going to continue to come back here and really give Allentown what it deserves as a wrestling city.”
