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 7
Nigel McGuinness vs Bryan Danielson
ROH World Championship
July 29, 2006
ROH Generation Now
Cleveland Grays Armory
Cleveland, Ohio
Since Nigel McGuinness retained the ROH Pure title by maybe (probably) intentionally cracking Bryan Danielson in the face with a chair as the American Dragon dove to the outside in our last outing, McGuinness defended his belt against Jay Lethal and Conrad Kennedy, and then retained it via count out three times as well. He used the 20 count on the outside to get past Homicide, Roderick Strong, and Colt Cabana, with the last one coming just one night before the focus of today’s outing.
Over in the ROH World title picture, Bryan Danielson — the future Daniel Bryan, if you’re a WWE fan — continued to defend the belt. He picked up wins over Delirious, Colt Cabana, and Sonjay Dutt, getting the last one by referee’s decision. He also outlasted BJ Whitmer and Jimmy Jacobs in a three-way elimination match to retain the belt as well. With both McGuinness and Danielson holding onto their titles and a little bit of things left undecided from their first match, you can see how ROH put the two of them back in the ring at this event to see if things could get settled. This time around, it’s just Danielson’s World title on the line, and as coincidence would have it, they’re back in the same building with what I would imagine is many of the same fans who saw the April match go to a count out.
A “YOU’RE GONNA GET YOUR HEAD KICKED IN!” chant erupts from the crowd in Cleveland as the Code Of Honor handshake seems to be a little bit tense. That’s a pro-Danielson chant, for the record, although from the pre-match introductions, it seems like maybe the crowd isn’t 100% for either man. With the previous match having a tone of answering the question of who is actually the best wrestler, it’s unsurprising that the two men start off with some mat grappling. Danielson gets a calf slicer as the first sign of an actual advantage in the match and continues to go after McGuinness’ leg in the early going.
Nigel gets a reversal and he starts going after Bryan’s arm and wrist, as he tends to do, no matter the opponent. In this case, given Danielson’s technical proficiency, there’s a clear advantage to trying to cut down on his ability to cause damage by way of holds by injuring the parts of his body that he uses for holds.
The pride of these two men is clearly on display, and they continue to grapple on the mat, as both would like to make a point about that Best Wrestler nomenclature. We see Nigel reach for and get the ropes as Danielson has him in a leglock, and I wonder if there’s difficulty for McGuinness in that regard here. By instinct, he has to avoid reaching for the ropes in his Pure title matches, but there’s no harm in going for the ropes as fast as possible in this match, which is not contested in Pure rules. Danielson is more than happy to try to inflict damage with a hold, so getting out of a hold in a hurry is a pretty solid plan.
An armwringer takedown from Nigel gets him into an advantageous position, and he’s starting to use holds to cause Danielson’s shoulders to hit the mat and start pinfall attempts. The holds themselves are maybe perhaps not that damaging, but it’s forcing Danielson to work over and over and over to shift his positioning and weight to avoid losing the belt by pinfall.
Danielson eventually works himself into a reversal situation and starts to go to town on Nigel’s legs, first with a bow and arrow, and then a more traditional leg lock. McGuinness eventually works it into a break, but a dropkick from Dragon keeps him in control, at least until Nigel reverses and punts Danielson in the spine to even things out a bit. A headbutt in the corner from McGuinness pisses off Danielson and he launches into some furious strikes, but the lack of composure allows Nigel to cut him off and take control with some power moves. Of course, he gets a little greedy and goes for the Tower Of London elevated cutter, and Danielson reverses that into the crossface chickenwing and he has the advantage now.
A few suplexes and a missile dropkick off the top turnbuckle leads Nigel to decide to take a break on the outside. A tope suicida from Danielson allows him to send McGuinness back into the ring, and a flying European uppercut leads directly into a few tries at Danielson’s signature Cattle Mutilation hold. Nigel rolls through it a few times, but Danielson keeps after it and forces McGuinness to break it by getting to the ropes.
Danielson stays on top of him, even after an attempt to dodge in the corner, and he capitalizes with a superplex with both men standing on the top rope when Danielson pulls McGuinness over. He goes high risk and goes back up top for a flying headbutt, but McGuinness gets the knees up to slow him down. That lets Nigel get some offense in, and a big lariat gets two.
McGuinness sets Danielson up in the corner, gets shoved off, comes back to hit the ropes to knock the Dragon crotch first in the corner, and that leads to a Tower of London…. but Danielson puts his leg on the ropes because they’re still in the corner. A quick Kimura armlock leads to hammer elbows…. but Danielson slips out, fires some elbows of his own, and the World champ shifts that into the crossface chicken wing dead in the center of the ring…… but Nigel fights out.
What do they do from there? They just start trading standing headbutts. Clonk. Clonk. Clonk. It’s the traditional Fighting Spirit bit that you see so often, but it’s just headbutts. Eventually Danielson goes running for momentum into a headbutt, but McGuinness scores with his seesaw lariat out of the ropes, and a halfhearted one arm pinfall gets two.
McGuinness drags himself under the ropes to the apron, and the two start climbing into the corner. Strikes from Danielson, a big slap from McGuinness, and that gives him space to hit a flying lariat off the turnbuckles onto Danielson as he straddles the ropes. Massive impact, it seems like maybe McGuinness has this won…. but Danielson’s impact leads him to bounce under the ropes and out to the floor.
McGuinness follows over to the ropes, but Danielson is gone when he gets there. He’s gone under the ring. Danielson scampers under the ring to the far side, slide back into the ring, charges McGuinness, and pulls him down into a small package, 1, 2, 3. Danielson gets the pinfall victory in 24:27 and retains the ROH World Championship.
Very good match, I like the ending. There was a question as the validity of Nigel McGuinness’ victory from the first match given the chair on the outside, and now there’s at least a shadow of a question on this one since Danielson disappeared from view. There’s no rule saying he can’t do what he did, but it’s not exactly on the up and up either, y’know?
NEXT TIME: We head to England for an ROH event two weeks later in Liverpool. It’ll be home country advantage for Nigel McGuinness as he takes on Bryan Danielson in a ROH World Championship/ROH Pure Championship unification match.
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