We’ve got a guy named Nigel joining Marquette men’s basketball this fall, so let’s celebrate with a tour through the best Nigel McGuinness matches from Ring of Honor.
I haven’t been particularly shy about the fact that I enjoy watching professional wrestling on this website. I don’t post about it much, but there’s a reference or two that drops in here and there. So, much like when Sandy Cohen and Dawson Garcia joined Marquette men’s basketball, the addition of Nigel James in the 2025 recruiting class tripped a wire in my brain. “Hey, Nigel! Just like former Ring Of Honor champion Nigel McGuinness!”
I had a very good idea for a silly summer series: Check out Nigel’s page on Cage Match, find the top rated ROH matches on ROH Honor Club, subscribe to Honor Club, watch them, write about them.
And then I found THIS:
Shouts to All Elite Wrestling, ROH’s current parent company, for posting a NEARLY TWELVE HOUR LONG compilation of what they’re calling The Best Of Nigel McGuinness. 25 Nigel matches, just sitting there for free on YouTube.
Yeah, I’m doing that.
We’ll go a match at a time, and they’re all in chronological order in the video, which is neat.
A CELEBRATION OF GUYS NAMED NIGEL: PART 10
Nigel McGuinness vs Naomichi Marufuji
GHC Heavyweight Championship
September 16, 2006
ROH Glory By Honor V (Night 2)
Manhattan Center
New York, New York
Last time out, we saw Nigel McGuinness go to a time limit draw in a best of three falls match with Bryan Danielson for the Ring of Honor World title. One of the stipulations in that match was that if McGuinness failed in his attempt to win the ROH title there, he could never challenge Danielson again while he holds the belt. And so, that moves McGuinness on to other pastures, and three weeks later, he finds himself at the second night of Glory By Honor to challenge Naomichi Marufuji for the GHC Heavyweight Championship, one night after defeating Christopher Daniels.
The GHC Heavyweight Championship is the primary title for Pro Wrestling NOAH, which formed in 2000 when Mitsuharu Misawa led a splinter group away from All Japan Pro Wrestling in the wake of the death of Giant Baba, AJPW’s founder. GHC stands for Global Honored Crown, and Misawa himself was the first GHC Heavyweight champion after defeating Yoshihiro Takayama in the finals of a 16 man tournament in 2001. Marufuji had just begun his title reign here after defeating Jun Akiyama on September 9th in Tokyo, and this would be his first title defense. Marufuji and his tag team parter KENTA had been successful in the main event at the first night of Glory By Honor, defeating The Briscoes in a 20+ minute match.
Three things to note as the match gets started. First: The crowd had just seen The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli) defeat Austin Aries and Roderick Strong to win the ROH Tag Team titles. Second: This match is second from the top, with an ROH title match between Bryan Danielson and KENTA standing as the main event. Third: Nigel looks a little bit rough. He’s always appeared to be clean shaven in this series, and here he looks like he’s got a little bit of a facial hair growth going. Almost makes him look like he’s not handling the loss to Danielson particularly well.
Referee Paul Turner calls for the Code Of Honor, which is followed, he calls for the bell, and the announcing crew advises us that this is the first time that the GHC Heavyweight Championship will be contested in the United States. Bit of grappling to get started, and Marufuji does a headstand flip to escape from a headscissors, so perhaps Nigel might be at a disadvantage in terms of athleticism and agility here. I’ll be honest with you: I’m not particularly familiar with Marufuji as a wrestler, so this will be a fun time as I figure out what his deal is as I watch. The announcing crew mentions that a criticism of Marufuji as a wrestler is that he might have a bit of a hard time competing against larger wrestlers, and McGuinness does seem to have a size advantage on him.
Marufuji scores with a dragonscrew legwhip in the ropes, and he follows up with a series of kicks to McGuinness’ leg and then starts whipping it around the post while he’s outside and McGuinness is on the mat on the inside. 20 count on the outside, so Marufuji’s dealing a little bit of McGuinness’ medicine to him, as we’ve seen Nigel if not bend the rules than at least take full advantage of what they can do for him in his run as ROH Pure champion.
The attack on McGuinness’ leg continues up until Nigel dodges a charge into the corner and uses Marufuji’s momentum to hurl him through the ropes, into the post, and to the outside. With that shoulder impact on the way out, Nigel shakes off his leg a bit, heads outside to do some damage on Marufuji’s arm with the barricade, and then takes it back inside to keep attacking that arm with the familiar assault of wristlock and hammerlock throws to the mat.
Marufuji gets a little bit of a hole to escape from McGuinness’ assault, tweaks the leg a little bit to get Nigel limping, and then he starts using his speed advantage to start outdueling McGuinness. Big impacts thanks to his speed coming off the ropes, but eventually McGuinness counters with a big counter lariat, and the kick out of the headstand in the corner gets a two count.
McGuinness tries to set Marufuji up for that crotched over the rope lariat, but he dodges it, and as Nigel follows him outside, the GHC champ connects with a Sliced Bread #2 ON THE OUTSIDE RUNNING UP THE POST OUT TO THE FLOOR. WHAT IS HAPPENING.
Nigel staggers back to his feet and heads back inside, where Marufuji is waiting. The champ from Japan tries to get something going off the top rope, but McGuinness gets a couple of punches in, knocks him onto the ropes, and scores with that lariat he tried earlier. That gets two, so he hits the Tower of London in the corner, but Marufuji POPS RIGHT UP and hits the Sliced Bread, which he calls a Shiranui. This one looks much more athletic than the one to the outside, but that one looked way more devastating to McGuinness.
Both guys are down and Paul Turner starts counting. Both men reach their feet at nine, and they start trading slightly tired strikes. Nigel gets an advantage, goes for a charge in the corner, gets turned away, but he goes right into the seesaw lariat and connects….. for two.
TOWER OF LONDON ON THE APRON. AGAIN, WHAT IS HAPPENING. Paul Turner starts counting them out, GHC title match rules say they have a 20 count. Nigel gets back in right after 14, oh, and by the way, the GHC title does change hands on a countout… but Marufuji is back in at 16, where Nigel pounces on him for a two count. Standing strikes turns into trading superkicks, and Marufuji gets two off a kick onto a kneeling McGuinness. He scores with a superkick into Nigel’s headstand in the corner, pushes McGuinness into the tree of woe, and SCORES WITH THE VAN TERMINATOR SPRINGBOARD DROPKICK ACROSS THE RING. I REPEAT, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY.
TOP ROPE SHIRANUI. MY GOODNESS. That pins McGuinness for three in 23:52. Holy cow, what a match. Wildly different than the contests we saw against Danielson, but a super fun time with a bunch of wild stuff from both guys, and Marufuji’s a hell of a wrestler. Cage Match users give that one a rating of 8.63 out of 10, and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter gave it four stars.
Marufuji goes for a walk outside with his belt to celebrate with the fans, and comes back inside as Turner calls for a postmatch Code Of Honor. That’s followed, all the way through to an embrace between the two combatants.
NEXT TIME: We get our first tag match in this series, as we jump forward to May of 2007. Nigel McGuinness will be teaming up with KENTA to take on Bryan Danielson and Takeshi Morishima in the main event of ROH Respect Is Earned.