Several industry insiders are reporting that people within WWE were caught off guard with Tony Khan’s announcement that he purchased Ring of Honor and thought the surprise was going to be the streaming deal with WarnerMedia-owned HBO Max.

According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, WWE was given the opportunity to purchase the assets of Ring of Honor and they didn’t know Sinclair turned them down until the announcement by Khan was made. WWE already explored the idea of buying out the indie promotion a few years ago but the deal never transpired.

Meltzer also added that if Triple H was spearheading the deal, the result would have certainly been different and this was one case of WWE missing Triple H and not pushing hard enough to get it over the line.

Andrew Zarian of the Mat Men Podcast also added that sources told him the effort to get it done by WWE wasn’t there on the same level this would have been in the years before.

The deal between Khan and Sinclair Broadcast Group was not finalized until this week although in mid-February, negotiations between the two parties were already locked and Khan was confident that he would be the one getting the win over his rivals in securing the indie promotion and its video library.