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 16
Nigel McGuinness vs Bryan Danielson
October 19, 2007
ROH Survival Of The Fittest 2007
Empire Ballroom Nightclub
Las Vegas, Nevada
This is Nigel McGuinness’ very first match for Ring of Honor since beating Takeshi Morishima for the ROH World Championship, which is more about the company not running another show in between then and now than it is about anything else. It’s also not a World Championship match, so I do have a question as to whether or not ROH had set the participants and opening matches for Survival of the Fittest before Nigel won the title or not.
I could be convinced either way on that one because if I were booking ROH’s shows, duh, of course I put Nigel McGuinness against long time rival Bryan Danielson in the first round of Survival of the Fittest three weeks ahead of time. If the matches weren’t set until after Nigel won the title, then again, DUH, you put Nigel against his nemesis in the first round after they just had a conflict in the wake of McGuinness’ victory.
In any case, this isn’t just a match between McGuinness and Danielson, it is the first round of the yearly Survival of the Fittest show for Ring of Honor. The idea behind SotF is simple: There are six qualifying matches, and the six winners face off later in the night in an elimination match where slowly but surely the match is whittled down to just one guy left standing. The winner of SotF earns a future ROH World Championship match. This would be the fourth iteration of SotF, with Bryan Danielson winning the first one, and Roderick Strong and Delirious winning in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
Specifically for this show, McGuinness/Danielson would be the sixth and final qualifying match of the night. Earlier in the night, Roderick Strong, Chris Hero, Rocky Romero, Austin Aries, and Claudio Castagnoli had all picked up victories to advance, with only the Aries match against Delirious going past the 10 minute mark. That’s notable, because there is a 20 minute time limit on these opening round matches, and for good reason. In each of the first three years of SotF, the eliminator match had gone over the 30 minute mark and the first two went sailing past the 40 minute mark. In fact, the only reason 2006 was under 40 minutes was because when Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan in WWE, by the way) and Samoa Joe went to a draw, neither man advanced, so the eliminator became a five-way. The point is: The last match of the night is going long because there has to be five eliminations, so you put the time limit on the qualifiers to keep the show moving and to give an extra oomph to the wrestlers to get the match done quickly to keep themselves fresh for the eliminator.
That sets the stage for McGuinness/Danielson, and for those of you scoring at home, this is the sixth match between these two that we’ve covered here, and SPOILERS: It won’t be the last. In any case, most of their matches have landed on something of an indecisive conclusion even if there was a final victor, whether that’s Nigel winning by countout or Danielson winning by stoppage when McGuinness never submitted or a variety of other things.
It seems we joined the match in progress, at least a little bit, as the two men circle each other and we don’t hear the opening bell. It’s kind of a weird set up here in Las Vegas, as the ring isn’t particularly well lit when they take the wide angle from the balcony in the ballroom, but things are nice and bright when they go to the ringside camera. As you’d expect from the first five McGuinness/Danielson matches that we’ve watched, it starts with grappling. Nigel gets a kind of goofy hold on American Dragon, and he spins and spins on the mat until Nigel loses control of the hold. Danielson pops up to his feet, and proudly announces to the crowd, “NO ROPE BREAK NEEDED,” clearly continuing the feud with Nigel over who is the best pure wrestler in the world…… from a year and a half ago.
The grappling continues and eventually Danielson gets McGuinness into a leglock, keeping Nigel relatively immobilized. That forces McGuinness into a rope break to get out of this hold with the 20 minute time limit off in the distance, which was clearly a choice by the Dragon to prove that he is in fact the better pure wrestler. Danielson kicks McGuinness in the back of the knee he was just working on as the two fight over a wristlock, and the former champ starts attacking the current champ’s leg with ferocity, making use of the ropes to create leverage, and making sure to remind referee Todd Sinclair that he has until five to release holds in the ropes. It wouldn’t be a Bryan Danielson match if he didn’t, after all.
McGuinness eventually slows Danielson’s assault down by getting an armwringer takedown, hurling his opponent not just to the mat onto his shoulder, but onto the shoulder that Danielson needed to have surgically repaired after his ROH championship run was over. It would be irresponsible of Nigel as a competitor to ignore that, and so he goes after Bryan’s arm for a while. At one point, McGuinness is holding down one arm with his legs, and going to town on the other arm, too. He tries to bridge backwards to increase the pressure as Danielson screams in pain, but Nigel gave up a little bit of control to do that, and that lets Danielson swing things around to a single leg Boston crab and take over.
That eventually becomes a leglock, and Danielson tries a variety of ways to accentuate McGuinness’ pain, including taking liberties with grabbing at his ears and nose, and then bridging backwards as well. However, that leads to McGuinness getting underhooks on Danielson’s arms, reapplying pressure to those shoulders. He is stuck in that hold unless he frees himself from the leg lock, and even then, Danielson has to escape to the ropes, something he was seemingly insistent on not doing earlier in the match.
By the way: This match started at 6:08:38 on the AEW YouTube compilation, and we’ve now crossed the 6:22:00 mark. That’s coming up on 14 minutes into the 20 minute time limit as Danielson gets a few kicks to the chest in and then grabs a Figure Four leglock on McGuinness. He avoids some pinfall attempts while in the hold, and eventually rolls the leglock over to 1) reverse the pressure on the hold and 2) once again force Danielson to get the ropes to break the hold. Nigel knows that he’s in a bit of trouble here between the damage to his leg and the time elapsed, so he goes hard with strikes, but his knee is clearly slowing him down as he tries to use speed and momentum to add power to the strikes. An attempt at the Jawbreaker lariat isn’t quite as fast as Nigel would want, and a low dropkick by Danielson sends McGuinness crashing face first to the mat.
American Dragon goes to the top rope as we hit the 17 minute mark of the match as shown on YouTube here and the announcers note that time is of the essence. He goes for the diving headbutt, but Nigel gets his boot up to block……. and it was the bad leg. He avoided the headbutt, but not so much with the chance to take over and do anything. Danielson recovers first and just goes for a simple leglock, bending that knee in the wrong direction. McGuinness fights for the ropes, but can’t get there, and ultimately finds a way to get a backdrop suplex to break away from his opponent.
The headstand in the corner lets Nigel score with the boots to the face, but he’s cut off by a boot as he charges the other way. He turns around to try again, and catches a terrific flying kick from Danielson. It’s not the busaiku kneestrike that he’s favored in later years, he gets a leg swing in midair in there instead of just colliding with McGuinness, and both men are down.
The announcement in the building: One minute remaining.
After they exchange some strikes, Danielson dodges a lariat attempt and hooks McGuinness to go for his Cattle Mutilation submission hold. McGuinness rolls out of that but straight into the hammer and anvil elbows, but Nigel’s legs are in the ropes and Danielson has to break. Dragon demands a time call from the referee and then throws McGuinness onto the top turnbuckle, perhaps for a top rope backdrop suplex? But he’s not fast enough, and McGuinness slips out, dropping Danielson crotch first onto the rope, and as McGuinness sets up for the Tower of London, the bell rings.
Time limit draw at 20:00, and both men are thus eliminated from Survival of the Fittest. The crowd has been to a pro wrestling show before, and immediately start chanting for FIVE MORE MINUTES. Nigel goes to the time keeper’s table, grabs the mic: These people didn’t come here for a time limit draw, I want five more minutes, I know you want five more minutes, Danielson. Sinclair passes the mic to Danielson: Do you people want five more minutes? They are obviously in favor of it. Danielson talks to Sinclair, then charges McGuinness, who rebuffs him, hooks his arm, then sits down, yanking that shoulder backwards. Danielson FRANTICALLY taps out as the announcers note that Todd Sinclair did not actually call for the bell to restart the match, and he gets McGuinness to break the hold. To the surprise of no one, Danielson bails, holding his arm, shouting “he couldn’t beat me in the time limit” to no one in particular as he leaves.
Have I seen better Nigel/Bryan matches? Yes I have. Was this fun and good? Absolutely. A little disappointing on the finish, of course, but given their long history of never quite getting one over on another, of course this situation between the two men is still unsettled. Cage Match users give this one a rating of 7.76 out of 10.
NEXT TIME: We jump forward to February 2008 where Nigel McGuinness defends the ROH World Championship at the Sixth Anniversary Show…….. against Bryan Danielson.