The former ROH World Television Champions speaks candidly.
Silas Young is in the 21st year of his pro wrestling career. 14 of those years were spent working dates for Ring of Honor and being under contract to the company.
Before Young began working with ROH, he competed for AAW, Gabe Sapolsky in EVOLVE and other independent promotions. Young guest appeared on Developmentally Speaking and dove into the story of how he fell out with Sapolsky over an ROH booking. Young believes Sapolsky still hates him.
According to Silas, Gabe wanted him to come to Florida for a weekend of EVOLVE shows. That would’ve required Silas to leave his family and take off from his non-wrestling job. Silas was having flight troubles and Sapolsky told Silas that he could pay him $50-$100 for the show or shows he could make that weekend. The former ROH World Television Champion turned that down and opted to stay home and work his non-wrestling job.
Prior to this, Young had been approached by Michael Elgin about coming to Ring of Honor, but Young turned the opportunity down because he was aware that because he was working with EVOLVE, he could not work with ROH and vice versa. Once Young and Sapolsky had their miscommunication, he assumed he would not be booked for EVOLVE again so he got connected with ROH.
Silas shared that he received a ‘nasty message’ from Sapolsky once he found out that Silas was working with ROH. Gabe thought he lied about the flight issues so he could go work dates for ROH, seeing as how time gap when this all happened was small.
So me and Gabe (Sapolsky) end up having a bit of a falling out and I think to this day, he still hates my guts actually. It was a weird thing. So at the time, I had been working AAW like every month. I’ve worked AAW forever. I’ve been, like I said, fortunate enough to be able to work there for so long over the years and at that time, Danny (Daniels) was bringing in Michael Elgin a lot and I was doing stuff with Elgin and every month, Elgin would be like, ‘Hey man, why don’t you come to Ring of Honor? Why don’t you do some stuff there?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m doing stuff with EVOLVE and I know they kind of have a thing where if you work for one, you can’t work for the other,’ and then at the time, Gabe had asked me about doing, I think, some shows in Florida. Somewhere that required a flight and I was like, ‘I’m married. I got a kid, got a wife, I got a house. I can’t drive down there for that. I’ll miss too much work and stuff.’ I said, ‘But I do have a buddy who has some connections with the airline so they could probably get me a cheap flight and I’ll even come in a day early’ because a lot of times when you do these flights through an airline employer or whatever, you’re not guaranteed a seat. It’s kind of like, if there’s an open seat, you’ll get on-on standby. So, the day came of the show or the day before came and I was supposed to leave, all the flights were full, I couldn’t get on. So I hit him up and I was like, ‘Hey man, just to let you know, I can’t make it down today. The flights are full but I’m gonna still try and get on tomorrow’ and I believe there was like three shows that weekend and so, next day came, same thing. All the flights are full. So I hit him up and I was like, ‘Hey man. I don’t think I’m gonna be able to make it this weekend’ and I think he responded with something like, ‘Hey, look, we’ll get you a flight but we can only give you –’ I don’t know. It was like 50 or 100 bucks for the three shows and like I said, I have a family, I have bills and I was like, ‘I really appreciate this opportunity. I can’t come down for three days and wrestle for like $100.’ I’m going to spend way more than that in three days just on eating and drinking beverages. Not even alcohol, just water, food, stuff like that. Just basic living needs and he said, ‘Well if you can’t make the sacrifice, we don’t have a spot for you’ and I was like, ‘Alright man.’ He’s like, ‘So we’ll book you a ticket.’ I was like, ‘No bro. I have to stay. I guess I’ll just instead work those few days and make money.’ It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be able to be there but at the same time, you’re an adult, you got a family, you gotta take care of your responsibilities. So then, about, I think that following weekend was AAW — maybe two weeks, whatever. It was really close afterwards and I ran into Elgin again and same thing he would say is, ‘Hey man, why don’t you come to Ring of Honor?’ And blah, blah, blah and I was like, ‘Actually man, I kind of just had this falling out with Gabe and I’m pretty sure he’s never gonna book me again.’ I said, ‘So yeah man, if you wanna put my name out there, I’d more than appreciate it’ and then it happened, maybe two weeks later. Ring of Honor was going to be in Milwaukee for the first time in years. So I ended up getting booked, Elgin helped me get booked. I think I worked Elgin on that show and then, they might even have announced it beforehand or something then I got a nasty message from Gabe. Something along the lines of, ‘You motherf*cker. You f*cked me’ or whatever the message was. Basically, he thought that I made up this whole story about the flight thing because I wanted to go work for Ring of Honor when the fact is everything I said was the truth. It was just sh*tty timing.
Young has competed for ROH/AEW on a semi-regular basis in 2023. His match against Tony Nese for ROH on HonorClub aired on September 7th.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Developmentally Speaking with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
