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Nigel won the ROH World Title on October 6th, 2007 when he defeated Takeshi Morishima for the title in Edison, New Jersey. I was in attendance and had a few thoughts at the time he won the title. The first was that even though everybody pretty much expected Nigel to be the guy to beat Morishima, I felt like the title win came too late, and it would have been better to do it two or three months earlier than they did. The second thing was that the match wasn’t as good as their previous two encounters, especially the awesome match in Japan in July of 2007. In fact, I would have put the title on him there, because Nigel was really hot at the beginning of 2007, and by holding out on the win as long as they did he cooled off a bit, and fans weren’t as high on him as they were just months earlier, and I think the fans losing confidence in him after the two previous losses to Morishima led to some of the difficulties he would face later.
So Nigel’s now the champion, and after his first title defense against Jay Briscoe during ROH’s swing out west, he suffered a bicep injury that would keep him out of the ring for several months. Here is where Nigel’s problems started, because Nigel did the smart thing a lot of wrestlers won’t do by taking time out of the ring rather than continuing to wrestle and make the injury worse. The problem was that the ROH fans had gotten used to wrestlers continuing to come out and put on a show no matter how badly banged up they were, probably in large part due to the example Bryan Danielson had set in late 2006 when he continued to wrestle for another four months after suffering torn ligaments in his shoulder and chest. Because of this, a large portion of fans felt an unreasonable sense of entitlement and started to turn on Nigel for putting his health before his career.
The fans first started turning on him at Death Before Dishonor VI in Philadelphia, and in fact they had Chris Hero cash in the title shot he earned by winning Survival Of The Fittest that night, and it really seemed like to me at the time like they were going to put the title on Hero because of the injury, but they kept the belt on Nigel in the end. After another two months of recovery, Nigel was finally healthy enough to wrestle again, but in his first match back, he suffered a concussion during a title defense against Austin Aries, and consequently was forced to miss his match the following evening at Final Battle. This definitely turned off the fans because for the second time in as many months, Nigel was skipping a title defense in New York City. The situation was only exacerbated further when a week or so after Final Battle, he left to do a tour of Japan for Pro Wrestling NOAH, and the feeling was that if he was healthy enough to work the NOAH tour, he ought to have been healthy enough to work Final Battle.
The timing of the two injuries, one right after the other, was unfortunate, and I have no doubt that the injuries were legitimate, but they cause a very large part of the fanbase to turn on Nigel, and over the first couple months of 2008, he was getting booed as much as he was getting cheered. The seeds had been planted, though, and Nigel turned full-blown heel at the 6th Anniversary Show in New York City. Nigel came out claiming that he had suffered a minor head injury the night before and was worried about injuring himself further against Danielson, and would only defend the title against Danielson if he promised not to hit Nigel in the head. Danielson agreed and had a couple of chances to knock Nigel out with headshots during the match, but stuck to his word and didn’t hit him in the head. However, at a critical point in the match, Nigel caught Danielson with a surprise headbutt, then continued to batter him about the head before winning the match as a result of a knockout. Danielson was a solid favorite with the New York fans, who were already mostly turned on Nigel anyway, and when Nigel’s treachery led to him beating Danielson, the heel turn was complete.
Following the 6th Anniversary Show, Nigel went on a streak beating several more crowd favorites, starting with a great match against Tyler Black that was taped for PPV that helped Black’s stock rise and begin to get him over as a future main eventer. From there, he followed that up with a second victory over Austin Aries, a win over Erick Stevens, and a pair of cheap wins over Kevin Steen during which Nigel cheated to beat Steen on both occasions. In his first appearance in New York since turning heel and defeating Bryan Danielson, Nigel cleanly defeated Claudio Castagnoli in the main event of ROH’s debut in the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Throughout the summer, Nigel continued on his tear, including pinning NWA World Champion Adam Pearce in a Title vs Title match, though the decision was overturned due to an over-the-top-rope disqualification. From there he defeated Steen a third time, this time cleanly, a second win over Claudio Castagnoli, and Ruckus (who earned a title shot by winning a battle royal in Detroit) in Virginia. Nigel wound up back in New York on August 2nd, and this time would defend the title in a four way elimination match as he had originally been scheduled to the previous December before he pulled out due to the injury. He defended against possibly his three toughest challengers in Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, and Tyler Black. Danielson defeated Castagnoli, but Claudio attacked Danielson after being eliminated and left him laying, allowing Nigel to pick up an easy pin to eliminate him, and then after another great exchange, Nigel defeated Black to win the match and retain.
In the months since, Nigel has rolled over El Generico twice, as well as Jimmy Jacobs and Roderick Strong. At this point he’s defeated almost every challenger one can think of, and there’s nobody really in a position to defeat him for the title. Having just passed the one year mark as ROH World Champion, he is fast approaching the 15 month mark set by Bryan Danielson in 2005-06, and then from there he’d only have another six months to go to surpass Samoa Joe’s legendary 21 month reign.
So where do I see Nigel’s run going from here? As I’ve said, he’s beaten nearly everybody in ROH, and there’s really nobody else in a position to stop him. Right now it looks like the two best bets are Bryan Danielson and Naomichi Marufuji. Despite two defeats at the hands of McGuinness earlier this year, Nigel has been unable to beat Danielson in any of their previous encounters, and with Danielson’s next title shot coming on PPV, it would be a major stage should a title change happen.
As for Marufuji, he’s one of the best in the business right now and has never failed to have a great match anytime he’s come over to work in ROH. He’s as smooth a worker as they come, and in addition to having a great record in ROH (suffering only three losses in as many years), he also holds a win over Nigel at Glory By Honor V Night Two. Even though it would probably not be a long reign, I can definitely see him getting a run with the title, but at this point even though the seeds have been planted for a McGuinness-Marufuji title match, we don’t know yet when the match will happen.
Then again, there’s also an outside chance that Tyler Black could be the one to defeat Nigel and springboard himself to stardom as the ROH World Champion. Only problem with that scenario is that he’s still playing Jimmy Jacobs’ lackey and even though they’re bound to split eventually, they would probably still have a feud against one another to go before Black can truly break out and take a dedicated run at the ROH World Title. But if they continue stretching out Nigel’s title reign, the timing could be right when Black is finally totally free of the Age Of The Fall gimmick.
Do I personally think either Black, Danielson or Marufuji will beat Nigel? As much as I’d love to see either of those guys with the ROH Title, I have to say no, I think that they’re getting so much mileage out of Nigel being the champion the fans can’t wait to see lose that they’ve still got a lot of gas in the tank before they have to pull the trigger and have him drop the strap. I definitely think he’ll pass Danielson’s 15 months, and as I’ve said in the past, I think the heat that would be generated by Nigel taking a shot at breaking Samoa Joe’s record run with the title would be huge and if you got strong enough challengers, could sell a lot of tickets to diehard ROH fans who desperately want Joe’s record to remain intact and want to be there to point and laugh when Nigel is finally defeated.
In the meantime, he’s having great matches and gets tons of heat from the crowd, and I don’t see any reason to take the title off of him anytime soon. In the meantime, as much of a mark as I am, I’m not too much of a mark to enjoy Nigel’s reign for what it is and while it lasts. I think Nigel is more entertaining as a heel anyway, so congratulations to Nigel on celebrating his one year anniversary with the ROH World Title that I think a lot of people forget that he worked his ass off to earn, and here’s to another year!
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back before too long with yet another edition of the pROHfile. In the meantime, I’m looking for some good feedback to do another mailbag column soon, so if you’ve got any thoughts on Nigel’s title reign, whether it’s lasted too long, who you want to see beat him for the title, or anything else ROH related, send it along to stupwinsider@yahoo.com and I’ll make sure to include it. Until then, thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon!
