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 21
Nigel McGuinness vs Bryan Danielson vs Tyler Black vs Claudio Castagnoli
ROH World Championship
August 2, 2008
ROH Death Before Dishonor VI
Hammerstein Ballroom
New York, New York
I presume the long and short of how this match came together is A) Death Before Dishonor is a big show for Ring of Honor and 2) There’s not a clear #1 contender for Nigel McGuinness about a week after the Claudio Castagnoli defense we saw in our last entry in this series. Shake all that together, and you get Nigel forced into defending his title against three men at once under elimination rules. Black comes in as one half of the ROH Tag Team Championship, teaming with Age of the Fall partner Jimmy Jacobs to win the vacant titles in early June after The Briscoes had to relinquish the titles due to an injury to Mark Briscoe.
Bobby Cruise does ring introductions, closing with the champ, which is answered by F*** YOU NIGEL chants, and that transitions into YOU’RE GONNA GET YOUR F***** HEAD KICKED IN chants, which is a pro-Danielson sentiment. Referee Paul Turner calls for the Code of Honor for Nigel, prompting him to shake hands with all three opponents. Danielson and Castagnoli follow policy, while Black just gives a brooding stare and retreats into his corner. This gets a “what am I supposed to do?” look from McGuinness to Turner, which is fun. The three challengers start closing in on McGuinness as Turner tries to settle who is going to start this match. It’s not a scramble match, it’s tag rules, where we start with two men in the ring and two men holding the tag ropes on the outside. It’s elimination rules, so you can only be eliminated if you’re in the ring. As you can guess, Nigel scurries outside and grabs one of the ropes in the corner, making it clear that he has no intention of starting. Seems fair, honestly. He’s the champ, he shouldn’t be exposed to being eliminated first. Black ducks outside to leave Castagnoli and Danielson as the opening combatants.
We get our first tag of the match when McGuinness gets Claudio with a blind tag as he and Danielson go into the ropes, and he dumps Danielson outside. Black just comes into the ring and hits Nigel with a drop kick. This leads to Black and Castagnoli hitting big dives to the outside, and Black vs Nigel once things get back in the ring. Yeah, uh, Paul Turner’s wrong here. Nigel’s tag clearly hits Claudio, leaving Danielson as the legal man, and even if he thought he got Danielson with it, Black never touches Claudio either. I know, right? Pro wrestling refs missing things? What a time to be alive.
ANYWAY, Nigel bails out to a tag to the Dragon quickly, so it’s Seth Rollins vs Daniel Bryan in the ring for a bit. Danielson stomps Black down in the corner, Nigel runs over for the tag — Danielson’s trying to figure out how that’s allowed since he’s nowhere near the tag ropes — gets overwhelmed by Black, and tags out to Claudio. So now it’s Seth Rollins vs Cesaro in the ring, as McGuinness is the only guy who doesn’t have an in-ring career with WWE in his future. Black gets an advantage but isn’t paying attention to his surroundings and backs into a blind tag by Nigel as he seizes the advantage that Black earned. Claudio counters with a springboard European uppercut, and McGuinness bails to the floor. Oh, I see. My apologies to Paul Turner earlier. Apparently we’re using lucha rules if you go out to the floor, you’re abandoning your spot in the ring and anyone can claim it, as Danielson climbs in and Turner orders McGuinness to the corner.
Black tags himself in to replace Danielson, and then loses track of where he is in the ring again to let Nigel find his way into the match. The champ pauses in the middle of holding the advantage on Claudio to cheap shot first Danielson, then Black to make sure there’s no one for Claudio to fight towards for a tag. You will never guess what happens: Claudio tilts the tables in his favor, and now there’s no one for Nigel to tag because yeah, those guys who caught elbows from him aren’t his friends right now. Things get a little wild with Black illegally running in to dropkick Claudio to the outside and then hurled over the top ropes by Nigel on a charge into the corner, and this turns into everyone hitting moves in the ring and all four bodies laying on the mat. I thiiiiiiink this is supposed to be McGuinness/Danielson as the legal guys at the moment…. and eventually Danielson gets the flying kick and the Cattle Mutilation on Nigel and Turner looks for the submission. Black jumps OVER the submission attempt to hit Claudio with a big splash…. and Turner leaves to go count a pin.
Okay, I give up on figuring out who may or may not be the legal man here, Paul Turner doesn’t know. Guys are just In The Ring and Doing Stuff now, leaning much more towards the All Four Legal At All Times type of match. Eventually, all of the moves lead to Claudio and Black going to the outside, so we settle into Danielson/McGuinness….. at least until a running clothesline sends Nigel outside. Running kicks through the ropes topples Nigel backwards over the barricade and DANIELSON HITS THE FLYING SPRINGBOARD INTO THE CROWD.
I wouldn’t want to be Nigel right now, but relative to retaining his ROH title, it’s a pretty safe spot. Danielson and Claudio back on the inside, and they trade things back and forth as the offense remains heated in this match, but Mr. Small Package is Danielson’s nickname for a reason, and he hooks Claudio with that rollup for the 1-2-3 to eliminate the big man from Switzerland in 16:16 for the first of the three falls in the match. If this was one fall to a finish, Danielson is the new ROH World Champion….. but it’s not, and I presume Nigel’s not exactly upset about an elimination happening while he’s still scraping himself off the Hammerstein floor.
A HEY HEY GOOD BYE singing drifts into a GET THE F*** OUT chant as Claudio won’t leave. Danielson offers a handshake, and Claudio accepts…. and then drifts to the corner, and SMASHES Bryan with a running boot when he turns around. Ricola Bomb, ground and pound strikes, and ROH officials and other wrestlers fly into the ring to try to restore order. Nigel is, of course, thrilled.
Claudio does get escorted out….. but then finds a chair, swings it to clear some space, gets back inside, drops it on Danielson’s head as he lays on the mat, and then STOMPS it into the back of Dragon’s skull. Claudio is overwhelmed and dragged out. Nigel pulls Danielson off the mat, hits a lariat, and pins Danielson in 19:55 to eliminate the former ROH champ from the match. McGuinness could not possibly be more pleased with himself.
He does, however, forget that the match isn’t over as he taunts Danielson’s unmoving form on the apron, and Black crushes him with a springboard forearm as he turns around. It’s all Black all the time, and a neckbreaker gets a two count. He takes too much time following up, and McGuinness rolls away from a frogsplash and takes over. Naomichi Marafuji wanders out to watch from the entry way, as his victory over Go Shiozaki ended about an hour earlier at this point. Black fights off a Tower of London and gets two off a splash. McGuinness counters Black’s offense into a Divorce Court as the champ knows this is a one-on-one match now, and it’s a good plan to start working over the arm. Tower of London gets two. We’re well past the 20 minute mark of the match, and the announcers remind us that Tyler Black just wouldn’t go quietly when he faced Nigel for the title as we saw back in Part 18 of this series.
Black counters a Jawbreaker attempt into a bucklebomb, and then what looks an awful lot like Brock Lesnar’s F5, and that gets two. Tyler Black is shocked that did not work to pin the champ. Nigel baits the contender into a charge into the corner and boots him, but as he climbs up, Black chases him and scores with a superplex and rolls through into Paroxysm. Yes, I went back to Part 18 to get the spelling correct. This is Tyler’s problem, not mine, much like Nigel kicking out is also his problem. He nails Nigel with a superkick while the champ is on his knees, which Black calls — and this is not a joke — Avada Kedavra. NERD ALERT.
Also a stupid name, as technically speaking, this means that Nigel has kicked out of The Killing Curse.
Counters and so on continue, and Black shifts a Jawbreaker attempt into God’s Last Gift, and that gets two. The New York crowd is stunned that it didn’t get the win. Black heads up top for the Phoenix Splash, but Nigel’s gone. HUGE lariat gets two. The crowd is firmly on Black’s side, just straight up chanting his name. Tower of London, charging European uppercut, lariat….. TWO.
The corner kick/lariat combo sets up the crotched lariat, but Black dodges and goes for a springboard something or other and gets lariated to death out of mid-air. Good night everybody HE KICKS OUT AT TWO. Nigel’s shocked, but not shocked enough to let this slip away from him, and he grabs Black in the London Dungeon. A PLEASE DON’T TAP chant erupts, Black counters into a pin, then a Pele kick after Nigel kicks out, but the champ dodges another attack and explodes into another lariat. And another one, following a whip into the ropes, and THAT is enough, 1-2-3, Nigel McGuinness retains in 30:45. Paul Turner retrieves the belt and the Hammerstein Ballroom crowd decorates the ring with trash.
Nigel talks about how great he is for beating everyone that’s been thrown at him, and he’s going to be ROH champion forever and no one can do anything about it. The crowd remembers Marafuji has been in the entryway for a while now, and they chant his name as McGuinness finally realizes that the Pro Wrestling NOAH star is there. SPOILER ALERT: We won’t be watching that match on this series.
All in all, a pretty fun entry into the series, and it was nice to get a change of pace from straight forward one-on-one encounters. Perhaps not quite as great of a match as it could have been given that the second fall was just fallout of Castagnoli’s meltdown, but 15 minutes of Nigel avoiding conflict and 10 minutes of McGuinness/Black was a pretty good match all smashed together. Cage Match users give this match a rating of 8.68 out of 10.
NEXT TIME: 13 days later, Nigel has to defend the ROH title again, this time against the masked man known as El Generico.
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