This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can view the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHlbGjOWoa8
On March 21st 2009 Ring of Honor presented its Seventh anniversary show. In the main event on that night, the dominant world champion Nigel McGuinness, who had at that point held the championship for five hundred and thirty two days, defended against an international star on the rise known as KENTA.
Nigel first won the Ring of Honor championship on October 6th 2007 at Undeniable. becoming the tenth man to hold the title by besting Takeshi Morishima. Over the next seventeen months he would defend the title thirty eight times, which puts him at tied first for most ROH World title defences ever, the other man to achieve this record being Bryan Danielson.
Nigel would defend against many, many future stars. Future ROH champions like Jay Briscoe and Claudio Castagnoli, future Impact world champions like Austin Aries, and even against future WWE champions such as Bryan Danielson and Seth Rollins amongst many others. Throughout his long reign as champion, the story being told was that Nigel seemed to only get better and stronger in each and every defence, but one day that would have to come to an end.
On March 20th 2009, one day before the defence against KENTA, Nigel would compete in a main event tag team match, in which he would team with Davey Richards who at this point was working his way up the card, to take on KENTA and El Generico. What happened to him exactly I'm not sure, but this wasn't Nigel's night at all, as not only was he pinned by KENTA following a Go To Sleep, but by the end of the match it was clear that he was struggling to get through it. That night the Wrestling Observer would report that Nigel had suffered an injury serious enough to require surgery, with the Figure Four newsletter and other sources claiming that he had torn both of his biceps. Despite these injuries Nigel had two scheduled World title defences booked, the following night against KENTA and another two weeks later against Jerry Lynn, and he was hell bent on making it through both of those defences. This was a very risky decision for Nigel, as not only does a bicep tear cause excruciating pain, but it also reduces your strength by about thirty to forty percent (thanks Dr. Google...) Add to this, that most of Nigel's key offence heavily relied on the use of his arms. Multiple variations of uppercuts and lariats, the Tower of London and his London Dungeon submission. All of these moves would put even more pressure on his already injured arms.
Lets take a look at where KENTA was in his career at the time. Having debuted in 2000 initially for All Japan Pro Wrestling, KENTA would soon switch over to Pro Wrestling NOAH when it was formed one month later. From here Kenta would rise up the ranks and gain international attention. At the time of the match with Nigel he had recently won his third GHC Junior Heavyweight championship, and had already won awards for his team with another future star Naomichi Marafuji, and had twice won the Observers move of the year award for a famous move he invented, the Go To Sleep, which he's not at all bitter about anyone else using, nope, not at all...
In the future KENTA would go on to win the GHC heavyweight title and would hold it for almost a year. To win that title he would also beat Takeshi Morishima, the same man Nigel beat for his World title. He would also win various tournaments in NOAH before signing with WWE in July of 2014. Weirdly, KENTA would sign his contract inside a WWE ring at an event in Osaka Japan, in a segment hosted by of all people Hulk Hogan and Jimmy Hart. Maybe it's not so strange given that Hogan did had a history of wrestling in Japan and so was known in the country, but the visual is still weird looking. KENTA would debut at NXT in September of 2014, adopting the name Hideo Itami. According to KENTA himself he chose the name and it means 'hero of pain'. After leaving WWE in February 2019, he would describe his WWE tenure as the most 'frustrating days of his life'. In June 2019 he would join New Japan Pro Wrestling where he still wrestles to this day as a member of the Bullet Club, and at the time of me writing this is the current Strong Openweight champion.
On the night of KENTA's challenge for the Ring of Honor World championship, he would be greeted by the Hammerstein Ballroom crowd with respect. As was common in ROH at the time, the fans would throw streamers into the ring to show respect to their favourite wrestlers. The tradition of fans throwing streamers at the wrestlers actually began in Japan, and I went into more detail about this custom in my last video if you're interested. As a direct opposition to this respect, Nigel would enter cocky as ever, wearing the Ring of Honor world title backwards as he often did. Why did Nigel do this? Well in his own words, "so you know who the champion is when you kiss my arse." Nigel also received a few streamers having earned the respect of some of the fans during his reign, but clearly there cracks in his armour to be seen when he took off his ring jacket revealing bandages and tape on both of this arms, and the grimace on his face as he raises his jacket over the top rope. It was clear that this wasn't going to be the same unstoppable McGuinness we had seen for so long. Right after the opening bell the commentators Dave Prazak and Lenny Leonard make us aware right away that Nigel is hurt, with Prazak going as far as to call his "a man without arms". They go on to note that he tore his left bicep the previous night but tore the right some time ago, so he had been working though injuries for a while.
When KENTA was in WWE, they would often use the phrase 'his style is kick' to describe his offence, and this meant horrible news for Nigel as minutes into the match Kenta delivers brutal looking kicks right to Nigel's bandaged arm. The arrogant Nigel we were used to seeing had quickly gone away as the injured champion began was showing something he never had in his previous thirty-seven defences, weakness. In fact its rare to ever see a world champion show so much weakness in a title defence, which Nigel audibly whining in pain and even begging 'please no' at some points. KENTA has complete control for the first several minutes until Nigel manages to hit the Tower of London to the floor outside the ring. This gave McGuinness an opening, and the match becomes more back and forth from there, but KENTA continues to focus on Nigel's left arm, with Nigel even hurting himself to do some of his trademark moves, such as his upwards kick into a downward lariat. Notably as the match progresses Nigel goes for many of his signature lariats but misses every time, maybe so the crowd can see them but he doesn't risk further injury. Astonishingly, despite Nigel's injuries this match lasts 25 minutes, and somehow wins with a variation of the London Dungeon with his knees digging into KENTA's back. It would have been easy for KENTA to lose this match to such a prone champion and look weaker by the end of it, but Nigel takes enough from KENTA to make him look good, but also takes enough like multiple Tower of London's that the match is also a struggle for KENTA too. Nigel McGuinness had survived another day as Ring of Honor champion, but what toll did it take?
Thirteen days later at Supercard of Honor 4, Nigel would finally be dethroned by former ECW World champion Jerry Lynn. Nigel had actually beaten Lynn twice in ROH title matches, once in December 2008 and the second being a four way match including Jimmy Jacobs and Tyler Black, the future Seth Rollins. I'm not saying this was the entire reason Lynn won the ROH title at this time, but many ROH fans that I remember seeing in their message board at the time had begun to link Jerry, who seemed to be at the latter end of his career with Mickey Rourke's character in The Wrestler, which was released in January of 2009 and is a fairly harrowing film by director Darren Aronofsky, about a former star seeking one last shot at glory. Not just from an aesthetic view, but scenes for that film were actually filmed at ROH shows, and Ring of Honor wrestlers were shown in the background of backstage shots. I'd love to go into further detail about that film another time. Whether you believed any of that or not, Nigel simply couldn't go on any further as champion without surgery, and so lost to Lynn that night.
Around this time Ring of Honor had launched its first weekly television show, ROH on HDNet. I might be biased, but back in those days ROH on HDNet was the show I most looked forward to every week. In the very unlikely event that anything I say here makes it's way to anyone at Ring of Honor, please put these shows on Honor Club, they deserve to be rewatched. In the early days of that show, Nigel would appear while recovering from his injuries as an antagonist, and would wrestle a few matches, most notably his where he would lose to Colt Cabana. In his final appearance on the show, he would apparently quit the company in a promo, leaving the ring and literally walking out of the front door and walking off into the night.
Remember how I said earlier that Nigel held the tied record for most world title defences ever, well Nigel's real final Ring of Honor appearance as an active wrestler would be the final match of his biggest rival, as on September 26th 2009 at Glory by Honor eight, Nigel McGuinness and Bryan Danielson would have one final battle. Both were heading off to greater pastures with Bryan heading to WWE, and Nigel, almost making it there. In a documentary that aired on the WWE Network in January 2019, Nigel notes that he failed his medical examination though being honest about his medical history, thus wasn't hired. Bryan Danielson reveals in the same documentary that he lied to the WWE doctors about his history of concussions to get passed by them, which both launched and eventually hurt his career given that for years he was forced to retire due to head injuries.
Nigel as a result went to TNA, and was repackaged under the name Desmond Wolfe, and was popular with the fans for some stellar matches he had with Kurt Angle, but for some reason not with management. Around this time TNA implemented a weekly fan voted poll to see who the number one contender would be, and every week Desmond Wolfe would win, despite whatever TNA booked to sway the fans into voting for anyone else. By the end of 2011, Nigel had retired as an in ring competitor. He spent the next few years of his career as a commentator and authority figure in Ring of Honor, initially met with criticism because of his English accent, but eventually becoming respected in that role. Respected enough that WWE would hire him as a commentator. He would make his debut alongside Michael Cole at the first United Kingdom Championship weekend, and the two had immediate chemistry that was sadly never revisited.
When I started writing this video, Nigel was to my knowlege unemployed, having been released by WWE last October. In the time since he returned to Ring of Honor as a commentator at the recent Supercard of Honor, and a few days later was declared to be All Elite. I understand how some fans will see Nigel as a never man, having not wrestled for WWE, but I hope what you take away from this video is respect for the man who showed his capability to battle through agony, and whose in ring legacy deserves to be remembered.
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