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 22
Nigel McGuinness vs El Generico
ROH World Championship
August 15, 2008
ROH Age Of Insanity
Cleveland Gray’s Armory
Cleveland, Ohio
This contest is Nigel McGuinness’ very next match after the Elimination match we watched last time, so we’ll swing our attention over to El Generico’s path to a title match here. Generico’s 2008 had mostly been spent in tag team matches with his usual partner of Kevin Steen. The tag titles had eluded them, although they reached the final of a tournament to crown new champs in early June after The Briscoes had to vacate the belts. They were inching closer to the belts after matches against The Age of The Fall, just not against the pairing of Jimmy Jacobs and Tyler Black, the co-holders of the championship. Apparently, if you watched all of Death Before Dishonor, you got to see Kevin Steen fired up about pursuing gold after a win over the Motor City Machine Guns, and that was Generico’s most recent match before this encounter.
Why did Generico (who is definitely not WWE wrestler Sami Zayn, because El Generico retired from wrestling in 2013 and works with orphans in Mexico now) get this title shot? Ehhhh, other than ROH needed a main event on the show and Nigel just beat three guys at once two weeks ago? I got nothing for you here. I will say that McGuinness does hold three wins over Kevein Steen since April alone, all in title defenses, while this is his first singles match ever against Generico.
We open with both men in the ring and the ROH crowd in Cleveland firmly on Generico’s side, singing his OLE song already. The announcers tell us that McGuinness actually wanted this match because of his wins over Steen, as he is looking to prove that he’s better than both halves of the Steen/Generico team. Nigel gets the grappling advantage to start out, and his size and strength edge allows him to start working in the direction of putting some damage on Generico’s arm and shoulder to set up all sorts of future offense. The announcers note that McGuinness is now the fourth longest reigning ROH champion out of the 10 men who have held the belt, trailing only Samoa Joe, Bryan Danielson, and Takeshi Morishima.
Nigel starts to get a little too arrogant and cocky, just straight up taunting Generico. That fires the luchador up, who rains down strikes and dumps the champion outside to the floor with a clothesline over the top rope. A couple of flippy dives from the ring to the floor help Generico maintain control of the match, and he’s still on top of McGuinness back inside, right up until a counter gives Nigel a Divorce Court, and now it’s time to wreck that shoulder and arm. He gets a little careless again, and that gives Generico an opening, at least until McGuinness heads back out to the floor to regroup.
Nigel leads Generico on a chase around the ring, and then pulls the timekeeper’s table in front of his challenger to cut him off. That’s followed up with a shoulder into the post, and the ROH champ is sure to let the fans, both in person and watching via video that he’s the best. Back inside, a few pinfall attempts show that Generico’s nowhere close to staying down, but Nigel’s got a few more tricks for attacking the shoulder. Generico’s showing spirit as he’s taking this beating, sometimes literally, as McGuinness is directing knife edge chops not to his opponent’s chest, but to the damaged shoulder for extra impact.
The fans start singing Generico’s OLE to try to encourage him, and it seems it works. After he ends up the corner, he fends off McGuinness, and then scores with a flying headscissors, which either shoots Nigel out of the ring or at least lands him nearby so he decides to take another break. Generico tracks the champ’s movements, and when he gets the space, he flies with a springboard moonsault to the floor. Nigel’s back inside, and Generico follows with a flying crossbody….. but that gets just a two count, same for a counter into a Blue Thunder Bomb. Generico tries for the running boot in the corner, but McGuinness dodges, gets the kick/lariat combo, and then the double kick out of the headstand in the opposite corner, too. That still only gets a two count, so McGuinness has some work left to do.
Generico elbows out of a Tower of London inside, and so Nigel says “okay, your funeral,” and changes it up to the Tower to the apron instead. That’s the hardest part of the ring, after all. After a two count, McGuinness sets up for the crotched lariat, but Generico gets a boot up, and then when the champ goes for the headstand in the corner again, the masked man gets that Yakuza Kick running in! Only a two count, though. Generico gets another two count by countering the Jawbreaker with a big boot before Nigel can get close.
Nigel’s pretty astute though, and when Generico heads to the ropes for a head of steam, McGuinness follows in with a nasty lariat. Tower of London, running European uppercut, monster lariat…… TWO. McGuinness isn’t surprised by the kickout, but he’s in a bad mood now. He grabs the London Dungeon to try to take advantage of that bad arm, and Kevin Steen comes flying out of the locker room to encourage his partner. That helps, it seems, and Generico gets a boot onto the ropes. As Nigel keeps an eye on Steen on the outside, Generico takes advantage of the split attention and scores with a running…. was it supposed to the the Yakuza Kick again or a running dropkick while Nigel was climbing the turnbuckles? Anyway, this is Generico’s biggest opening of the match, and he hits a flying forward flip kick, going from post to post as the champion dangles off the turnbuckles, and then he gets THE BRAINBUSTAAAAAH
and Nigel gets his foot on the ropes.
Generico calls for the BRAINBUSTAAAAAH on the turnbuckles, but McGuinness starts fighting him off. Generico gets crotched on the ropes, Nigel wrecks him with the lariat, TWO. The crowd is delirious (but not Delirious), Steen is thrilled, Nigel keeps smashing with lariats, and he can’t get that three count. McGuinness goes back to the London Dungeon, but Generico counters into a pinfall attempt for two. Generico big boot, but Nigel gets the Jawbreaker, and hooks the London Dungeon in the middle of the ring. Generico’s got nowhere to go, and no amount of encouragement from Steen is going to help. He taps out, and Nigel McGuinness retains by submission in 25:46.
A fun match, not entirely unlike the contest with Tyler Black, where the challenger’s got a lot of fight and a bunch of big moves in their arsenal to stay in the thing, but ultimately, Nigel being a bit of a mean guy is enough for him to push through all of that and keep on winning and showing himself to be one of the best ROH champions ever. Cage Match users give this match a rating of 8.20 out of 10.
NEXT TIME: We skip forward a month as Ring of Honor goes to Japan again. Nigel McGuinness’ opponent there in a non-title match? The American Dragon, Bryan Danielson.