At AEW All In 2024, the landscape of wrestling shifted. No, not with that pasty clamdigger Danielson winning the world title. It shifted with the return of Nigel McGuinness in the Casino Gauntlet match. You may know him as a commentator from his work over the past decade in ROH, WWE, and AEW. You may know him from his award winning podcast about life, parenting, and polyamory. However you may not know him as one of the coolest, hardest hitting, badass bastards from the peak years of Ring of Honor. It’s been 13 years since Nigel last wrestled, so I’ve gone back into the archives and selected 5 matches to get your feet wet as you learn about the best Britain has to offer.

Nigel vs Joe (Dragon Gate Invasion)

A match that I feel deserves a lot more praise. It’s not the flashiest, it’s not the most grandiose, and it has a muted crowd who were probably there more for the imports doing high flying than to see mat technicians. Despite it all, though, this match rocks. Total nerd shit, playing around all the rules of the Pure division. Perfectly plotted out to get Nigel over as a high-level schemer and start off the most legendary Pure title reign. There’s a lot of discussion around Nigel’s physicality as a wrestler and how his injuries really took him down a notch in that department, but he is, and always has been, an exceptionally clever wrestler. Not in the obnoxious ways that would define the British scene after his time, but in the simple things: hiding closed fist punches from the referee, goading Joe into getting mad to burn his rope breaks, using all the rules to his advantage. Samoa Joe is a wrestler you have to be perfect to beat, so the best way around that is to stack the deck as much as possible. He completely understands what his role is and finds creative and impactful ways to play it to perfection. 

Nigel vs. Roddy (Death Before Dishonor 4)

A match perhaps understandably forgotten. A great one, but one that lives in the shadow of the most iconic match of this era, the ROH vs CZW Cage of Death. What that means, though, is that this match is in front of a molten hot crowd. Both sides of the great indy war are here and Nigel does a great job riling up the CZW fans at the start of the match, demanding they show respect to the Pure wrestling rules. Dueling chants of This Is Awful and Shut The Fuck Up explode out as they get into the meat of the match, CZW fans wanting no part of this technical wrestling shit. Nigel is brilliant here, the heel he plays is a lost art these days. He hits hard, he has some cool moves, but all of his control comes from skullduggery. In a fair fight, Roddy has him totally beat, so he makes sure he only manages to find his way on top through pure trickery. The greatness of this match is that once again, the best way to win is not to play. Nigel can’t get any sort of momentum against a young explosive athlete like Roddy, so he just bends the rules and plays for the count out. It’s a move which riles the crowd up even more and has them at a total fever pitch once the final bell rings. 

Nigel vs Rave (Fifth Year Festival Finale)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Going into this match, Jimmy Rave has been a real prick. After getting toilet paper thrown in his face by Nigel, Jimmy Rave made him tap out 3 times to the Heel Hook over the past few months. A month before this match, they had an I Quit match that ended with Nigel refusing to tap out a 4th time to the Heel Hook. It ends in a referee stoppage when Nigel is willing to let Jimmy break his ankle. All this to say: by the time we get here, these dudes hate each other more than ever before. There’s only one place left for them to go, a Fight Without Honor. Nigel completes his transformation here from a dastardly heel to a heroic babyface; and there’s no better man to make him than the ultimate scumbag in Jimmy Rave. No better place than his hometown of Liverpool, where he began his turn all those months ago with a valiant defeat against Bryan Danielson. Righteous in all the punishment he dishes out to this greasy little prick, no matter how gruesome it gets, this is Our Hero doing what’s right.

Nigel vs. Claudio (Final Battle 2005)

Not a high level great match so much as it is a charming one. Claudio, rough around the edges at this point, is a charming offensive dynamo babyface. Meanwhile, Nigel is completely relishing being a smug bastard heel: openly mocking the fans, the referees, and his opponent. That’s the other thing about this match. Two months previous, Nigel managed to win by pretending he got hit with an iron, Eddie Guerrero-style. To make sure nothing like that happens here, there’s a referee in and out of the ring to have eyes on any and all funny business. Nigel excels here whining and throwing a fit cause he can’t get away with anything, becoming even more of a bastard as he desperately finds ways to get around this new obstacle. Technically sound, great bullshit angle, just pure pro wrestling.

Nigel vs Bryan (Unified)

I saved this one for last cause it’s a big one. Probably THE big one. Everyone knows about this match, about the ringpost spot, about the crazy Liverpool crowd. A crowning achievement in the career of both men involved, but even then, arguably not their best match together. It’s a title unification bout for the Ring of Honor World and Pure championships, contested on Nigel’s turf under Pure rules. There’s a lot of superlative praise for Bryan’s 2006 as a career year for him, and he is great in this, but I’ll be damned if this is not Nigel’s match. The fieriest of fiery babyfaces, beating the absolute shit out of Bryan whenever he gets his openings. He has to be perfect to beat Dragon on this sort of tear and he never even considers giving up. When the wrestling isn’t enough, he gives his body and blood. And for that, Liverpool makes him their messiah. 

This is a match that literally changed everything about my perception of wrestling when I first saw it. There’s nothing more I could say describing it to get across those emotions to you. All I can ask is that you watch it, along with the other 4 matches in this list. When it comes to wrestling, seeing is believing. And if you see, you will believe in Nigel McGuinness.