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 McGuiness 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 McGuiness!”
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 4
Nigel McGuiness vs Colt Cabana
Soccer Riot Match
August 20, 2005
ROH Night Of The Grudges
Mennen Sports Arena
Morristown, New Jersey
We already covered the history of Nigel McGuinness and Colt Cabana in the first installment of this series, but their series/rivalry had continued through June and July. McGuinness had defeated Cabana again after that May 7th match to officially push himself into that Pure title match with Samoa Joe, then the two were on opposite sides in early June when Nigel teamed with Chad Collyer against The Second City Saints, which was Colt Cabana and fellow Chicagoan CM Punk. In July, McGuinness picked up a 2-1 victory over Cabana in a European Rounds match, and that led to this contest on a whole show full of grudge matches.
What’s a Soccer Riot Match, you say? Great question. In fact, Nigel has to ask Colt exactly what’s going on here before the match, as he doesn’t know. Cabana is wearing what I believe is a Liverpool jersey and tossing a soccer ball back and forth in his hands as Nigel demands to know what the match is. His answer? A headbutt.
A soccer riot match is, apparently, a match where kicking your opponent in the groin is legal. Lots of other things are legal as Colt Cabana just keeps doing a thing and then telling the crowd it’s legal, so it seems it’s just a No Disqualification match. He really just wanted to get that “ball shots are legal” joke in, as you play soccer by kicking a ball.
Colt wraps up his discussion of what’s legal way out in the crowd by throwing Nigel into the hockey boards in the arena and then hurling chair after chair after chair at him. Oh, it’s Falls Count Anywhere apparently, as Colt goes for a pin and gets a two count up against the hockey boards.
They go up the stairs, Nigel gets a punch or two in, but Colt takes over and racks him groin first onto the railings. The crowd started pushing for Colt to go for a dive, but Nigel took off, and that led to Colt chasing after him and clotheslining him back over the hockey boards and out to the floor again.
Cabana enlists the help of some of the fans as they hold up chairs and he drags Nigel back and forth, banging him over and over head first into the chairs. By the way: These are plastic folding chairs, not the much more deadly STEEL folding chairs. Somehow, Nigel got enough of his faculties around him to remember that ball shots are legal, and that’s how he grabs control of this brawl.
Unsurprisingly, the much more technical McGuiness sends this back towards and then into the ring where it’s time for some soccer kicks to a seated Cabana. Nigel sets up for a free kick to send that soccer ball that Cabana had at the start of the match directly into Cabana’s face, but his kick misses wide. Cabana takes over as Nigel’s distracted by frustration over his miss, and for a second, he sets up for a free kick….. and then remembers that this actually isn’t a soccer match….. and he just overhand throws it into McGuinness’ groin. That stuns him long enough for Cabana to set Nigel up in the corner for Goldust’s Shattered Dreams, and his success there sends him into a GOOOOOOOOOOOAL celebration.
Nigel falls to the outside, Cabana misses a dive of some sort off the top, Nigel punts him low, and sets up a folding table at the ringside area. The two guys trade strikes and counters and so on, teasing who is going to send whom crashing through the table.
Things get turned away from the table for a while as the announcers tell us that the winner of this match will get to pick a title to challenge for at next week’s show in Williamsville, New York. McGuinness cuts Cabana off up on top of the turnbuckles, and so he goes for — and this is not a joke — his trademark Union Jack branded iron, smashes Cabana in the head, and that sends Colt flipping ass over teakettle through the table on the outside.
Somehow, the ensuing pinfall only gets a two count.
While Cabana is flailing outside after kicking out, he manages to find a completely separate iron and bashes McGuinness in the head. Both men are slightly dazed, so it’s just a slugfest in the ring. Nigel gets sent into the ropes, tries for his seesaw lariat, but Colt Cabana beats him to the lariat and folds him in half for the 1-2-3 pinfall and the win in 17:32.
Colt gives a speech afterwards, praising McGuinness for the hellacious battles that the two have had over the past few months, and extends his hand for a post-match Code of Honor handshake of respect. Nigel shakes, the two men embrace, and raise each other’s hands. That’s nice.
Easily the wildest of the four Nigel McGuiness matches that we’ve watched in this series so far. Not much in the way of the mat wrestling style that McGuinness favors, but a bit of a spectacle to say the least. Cage Match users rate this one 7.22 out of 10.
NEXT TIME: Colt Cabana uses his victory to get himself a shot at the Ring of Honor World title in one week’s time, but for whatever reason, Nigel McGuinness also earns a title shot out of this match. His opportunity? Another try against ROH Pure champion, Samoa Joe.