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 did that.
25 matches in that compilation, plus a special detour into the match where Nigel McGuinness won the Ring of Honor World Championship, which is not in there for some reason. If you have missed any of those 26 parts of this silly summer series, they are all RIGHT HERE.
Today, we’re tacking on one more. All Elite Wrestling President/Head Honcho/Whatever Tony Khan booked a Technical Spectacle on AEW Collision on Saturday, August 16, 2025. Four men, one fall to a finish, the winner challenges IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Zach Sabre, Jr., at AEW Forbidden Door in London on Sunday, August 24th. ROH Pure Champion Lee Moriarty vs Hechicero vs Daniel Garcia vs OUR GUY~! Nigel McGuinness.
Nigel won. Of course Nigel won. Sabre’s English, McGuinness is English, show’s in England. Duh. Great match for Forbidden Door, so I’m giving you a recap of that match RIGHT NOW as a bonus to our summer series. No video embedded for you to watch along with, because this one was on Pay Per View. Sorry/not sorry.
A CELEBRATION OF GUYS NAMED NIGEL: THE BONUS EDITION
Nigel McGuinness vs Zach Sabre, Jr.
IWGP World Heavyweight Championship
August 24, 2025
AEW Forbidden Door
O2 Arena
London, England
Okay, let’s set the stage. Forbidden Door is All Elite Wrestling’s now-yearly event that is co-promoted with New Japan Pro Wrestling. The idea behind the show is right there in the name: Who knows who is going to come through the “forbidden door” and show up in AEW even though they work for another company? This started in 2022, and at the time, this was a tweak of the nose to WWE, as Vince McMahon historically pretended that other professional wrestling companies didn’t even exist. Today? NXT contract employee Trick Williams is the TNA World Heavyweight Champion. What a time to be alive.
In any case, that’s why the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, NJPW’s top title, is on the line on what is otherwise an AEW wrestling show. This one’s at the O2 Arena in London because AEW took All In, the show they ran for two years at Wembley Stadium in London, to Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, this year and they still wanted to have a major show in England.
Over the last decade or so, Zach Sabre, Jr., has built himself a reputation as one of the best if not the best technical wrestler on the planet. He dethroned Bryan Danielson’s nine year reign as Best Technical Wrestler in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter annual awards in 2014, and then won it himself every year through 2020. Danielson took back in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and the award went back to Sabre in 2024. He’s been wrestling since 2004, first breaking in with promotions in his native England, and his big breakthrough on the international scene is probably when he won the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles with Yoshinari Ogawa in 2013 and again in 2014. Sabre was RevPro British Heavyweight Champion four times between 2016 and 2020, along with a year-plus reign as Pro Wrestling Guerilla champion, and his first NJPW title came in December 2020 when he and Taichi beat the team of Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kota Ibushi to become IWGP Tag Team champions. He earned his first singles title with the company in January 2023, beating Ren Narita at Wrestle Kingdom 17 to become the first NJPW World Television Champion. In 2024, Sabre won the G1 Climax tournament and earned a shot at the IWGP World Heavyweight championship, which he cashed in at King of Pro Wrestling in October and defeated Tetsuya Naito to become NJPW’s top champion for the first time. He lost the title to Hirooki Goto in February 2025, then won it back from Goto in June. This match would be Sabre’s first title defense, but that has more to do with the fact that he spent late July and early August participating in this year’s G1 Climax tournament. He reached the finals, but ended up losing to AEW wrestler Konoske Takeshita, who earned a shot at Sabre’s belt with the victory.
Yes, that felt like I just did a foreshadowing. I did not.
As for our man, Nigel McGuinness? Well, he had been mostly retired since 2011. He had a two year run with TNA under the name Desmond Wolfe that wrapped up in September 2010. In late 2011, McGuinness embarked on what he himself called a retirement tour, as he wouldn’t be signing with WWE because of his previous medical history, he didn’t want to return to TNA, and at this point, he couldn’t physically go back to the style he wrestled in Ring of Honor. It seemed that his in-ring career was over as of that point, and he started working first with ROH as an on-screen authority figure, then moved on to WWE as a television announcer. After they released him following what I thought was a successful run on NXT, he turned up at ROH Supercard of Honor in March 2023 and was then added to the AEW Collision announcing team. He was doing a heck of a job at that, particularly when it came time to poke at his old foe, Bryan Danielson. McGuinness made a surprise (although not that surprising) return to the ring at All In in London in 2024, participating in the Casino Gauntlet match for a shot at the AEW World title. Needless to say, the Wembley Stadium crowd went NUTSO for him.
That wasn’t a return to full time wrestling for Nigel, though. He added a chapter to his rivalry with Bryan Danielson at Grand Slam 2024 in September of that year, lost a shot at the ROH Pure title in December, and then ended up on the losing side of a tag team match at Double or Nothing in May 2025, as he sided with Daniel Garcia as FTR was bullying him. In face, the four-way that McGuinness won to earn this title shot at Zach Sabre is McGuinness’ first win of any kind in a wrestling ring since defeating Martin Kirby in an SWE match in Nottingham in December 2011.
And so, the match. Or, perhaps, and so, the preamble. First, a video package setting up the match, including the stretch of that Casino Gauntlet where these two living legends of English pro wrestling squared off in the ring in London. Nigel himself says in the video that he once told Sabre that when it comes to the two of them wrestling “that ship has sailed,” meaning he’s still really retired…. but as evidenced by the Technical Spectacle, “that ship has come back to port.” After that video package, we go to the arena, where the fans are chanting for Nigel McGuinness, and Forbidden Door commentator Bryan Danielson notes that he saw Nigel speaking with British wrestling legend Johnny Saint earlier in the day…. which then leads to a video package of McGuinness and Saint playing chess in the park, and Saint noting that technical wrestling, the way he did it and the way Sabre does it, means thinking three moves ahead. A guy might be untouchable like Saint was when he was champion, but everybody’s vulnerable when you’re grappling, and all it takes is a moment to put them in checkmate.
Nigel’s music hits, and he embraces Johnny Saint and Marty Jones at ringside. It’s a co-promoted show, so we get ring announcements in both English and Japanese, and NJPW English language announcer Walker Stewart joins Excalibur and Danielson at the commentary desk. We’re underway with the call for the bell from referee Stephon Smith, and if you were expecting anything other than technical wrestling grappling, well, I don’t know what to tell you. The two fight over holds as Danielson promises to not return the favor to McGuinness and bury him for the entirety of his match for a major world championship the way McGuinness did to him….. although he did note that Nigel comes to the commentary desk with a prepared list of jokes as a way of pointing out his level of preparation, which draws a laugh from Excalibur.
Sabre gains an advantage and starts working towards McGuinness’ arms, both taking out the power of the London Dungeon but also his lariats including that Jawbreaker he used to win the ROH title back in the day. Danielson notes that keeping McGuinness grounded stops him from scoring with the lariats. Eventually this does work around to Sabre holding McGuinness in a wristlock, but Nigel fights his way to a standing position… and then treats his fist like a jack-in-the-box, and cranks up the middle finger and laughs at Sabre before taking over himself. What does Nigel do? He attacks the arms too, because you gotta take a level off of a grappler’s ability to both grab and keep a hold, of course.
Things go back to Sabre eventually, and he gets the “palm on mat, stomp on elbow” attack, which absolutely looks like zero fun. No thank you, sir. Nigel gets a couple of holes here and there — everyone’s vulnerable at some point — but things like trying to get an elbow drop affects that arm that Sabre attacked. McGuinness dodges a charge in the corner, gets that back kick/front lariat to the mat combo, hits a charging European uppercut, and then plays to the crowd. Oh, no, Nigel, don’t turn your back on Sabre… well, I guess it’s okay, because Nigel spins and CRUSHES Sabre with a lariat as he attacks from behind. Sabre goes ass over teakettle, to the point given the camera angle, it almost didn’t look like it was Nigel getting the offense in. That only gets two, but McGuinness is clearly in charge now. He goes for the London Dungeon, but Sabre gets the ropes. Nigel holds on to the hold as long as possible, and then goes over to the ropes to let Danielson know that he has until five to break the hold. Cheeky!
Sabre fends off McGuinness but that pushes him towards a Jawbreaker lariat, but that gets countered into a flying armbar. This is where Daniel Garcia in McGuinness’ corner gets involved, as he tries to push the ropes closer to Nigel, but Stephon Smith berates him for the cheating, and that sure seems like a foreshadowing…. but it’s not. Meanwhile, these two in the ring start getting into a striking battle, and based on physique, even with the time off, you’d think the advantage here is with McGuinness as Sabre’s a bit more lanky. Sabre’s nose gets popped open a little bit, and eventually it’s the IWGP champion that shifts this match back towards grappling because he can’t match McGuinness’ power. Still, that Jawbreaker can come out of anywhere, and it does! Just a two count. Nigel steals Kazuchika Okada’s Rainmaker ripcord lariat…. two.
McGuinness gets the London Dungeon, shifting to the lean back variant that won him the Technical Spectacle, but he doesn’t have full control over all of Sabre’s limbs, so he can flip out of it. McGuinness stays on him, and scores with the Tower of London! The risk on the Tower is always that it’s in the corner, and yep, Sabre gets out of it with his foot on the ropes. The match pivots to the two men countering quick pinfall/rollup attempts, and they flip back and forth and Stephon Smith is right there 1, 2… 1, 2… 1, 2… but Sabre lifts his hips just a liiiiitle bit further than you might normally see, and that’s juuuuust long enough for Sabre to hold McGuinness’ shoulders down for a three count. Zach Sabre retains the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship by pinfall in 17:01. The two men shake hands, and ZSJ even bows in respect to his elder on his way out of the ring. Sabre stops to embrace Saint and Jones at ringside, and the crowd perks up a little bit, as Daniel Garcia gets in the ring…. but just to hug Nigel right before Tony Schiavone makes the attendance announcement for the night. Like I said: No foreshadowing with something between Garcia and McGuinness.
I don’t watch a lot of New Japan, so I can’t speak to the match quality relative to what you might see on their shows. What I can tell you is that this was 100% the 17 minutes of wrestling I wanted to see from Nigel McGuinness and Zach Sabre, Jr., and it was a blast to watch these two go at it. Wrestling Observer Newsletter gave the match four and a half stars, and Cage Match users rated it 8.05 out of 10.
Thank you for indulging me on this very ridiculous summer series. It’s been a ton of fun to talk about the history of Ring of Honor, Bryan Danielson, and Nigel McGuinness for the last several months with y’all.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
