A thread in which we discuss Nigel McGuinness's woes

[Bix]

WARNING: VERY TL;DR

 

Since this has come up in two unrelated threads this week, I might as well devote a topic to it.

 

While I have plenty of sympathy for him, I've been surprised that the reaction to his documentary and the information he gives therein has been what it is.

 

I fully believe that WWE told him they weren't clearing him for the reasons he gave in the documentary, that they felt one of his bicep tears hadn't fully healed (his doctor disagreed) and wouldn't clear him to be hired unless he had it repaired surgically at his own expense. But I don't believe that's necessarily why WWE made the call.

 

We can say what we want about Ryback or The Rock or whoever having artificial looking physiques, or the stories of guys diagnosed with enlarged hearts still wrestling. Still, it's clear from both from anecdotes and the changes in the physiques of guys who are undergoing pre-hiring testing that they take both the drug and overall health aspects of the pre-hiring screening seriously.

 

On the drug side of the coin...Nigel was a guy coming off of two very obvious steroid injuries (one of which may not have healed completely) and he shrunk dramatically from a thickly built wrestler you could see fitting in as a WWE Superstar to an athletic looking, but very skinny indy tall guy.

 

As for his general health, Nigel was and is a wreck due to working a recklessly stupid style. I get why he felt the need to work a more "ROH main event" friendly style when he was stuck in the mid card doing the safer British style that got him noticed. Still, he went about it about as stupidly as possible:

 

- Shoot headbutting the ringpost.

- The "ram" headbutts where he and Danielson ran into each other head first at full force over and over.

- Taking Austin Aries' bullet tope blind, causing him to crash into the guardrail head first at a high speed.

- Throwing a zillion clotheslines in every single match as hard as humanly possibly while juiced to the gills.

 

And that's just the stuff we all remember.

 

When it became clear he wasn't acknowledging steroid use or taking any responsibility for the shape he's in, that's when I checked out of the already grating and repetitive (Nigel kvetches about not making big money, Nigel evades talking to a friend about having Hepatitis, insert extended clips of a match on Nigel's retirement tour, repeat cycle for two hours) documentary.

 

I made time to record a podcast with Nigel a little while back (and for now, let's set aside the jokes about how I haven't posted what I promised). After his last appearance on WOR, where he was eloquent and thoughtful, I was stunned with what I got: A bunch of short, one sentence answers (and he'd brush off follow-up questions) from a guy whose memory is completely shot.

 

I don't mean wrestlers forgetting small details or mixing a few stories into one. I mean he outright said he doesn't really remember his run in ROH, a several year run that was the creative peak of his career and got him noticed by WWE & TNA. On top of that, he was so outwardly bitter (a huge contrast to the "fans love me and sent me money so now I am happy yay" ending to the doc) that he was really off-putting. The interview was so bad I decided to just delete it. I understand I may have caught him on a bad day, but even if so, geez.

 

For some reason, aside from some weird anger (I feel bad for him, but if he KNOWS he can't remember stuff, he should tell people), the big takeaway I had was that it really put the documentary in perspective. He takes responsibility for nothing. He won't admit that he used steroids and that it led directly to WWE not hiring him, or that it's possible the whole "can't remember 5 years of his life" thing was a contributing factor. It almost seemed like he feels the injuries are Gabe's fault for only pushing him as a main eventer once he switched from a moderately safe style to a very dangerous one, even though that's not exactly how it happened. To be fair, maybe the memory issues are responsible for that.

 

More than anything else, he bitches about never making big money in wrestling. I'm sure everyone who deserved a big run but never got one feels that way, but the way he talks about it, it's like he was banking on it. That's the stupidest possible attitude you can have in wrestling. You should be driven. It should be your goal. You can be upset about it for both "dream" and financial reasons, but voicing his issues the way he does, he sounds like every muscle head who goes into wrestling solely because he thinks he can get fast tracked to WWE and become rich and famous.

[tigerpride]

Did you read the deadspin profile on Nigel? It's really good, but depressing. He was my favourite wrestler in ROH

[Blehschmidt]

There was a period of time that I considered Nigel McGuiness one of my favorite wrestlers. I enjoyed the stuff he was doing in Ring of Honor from almost the beginning, and I enjoyed the ride of being a fan while he moved toward the top of the card. I was happy when he took the title from Morishima, and I enjoyed his title run despite the injuries.

 

I own 2 Nigel t-shirts if it helps illustrate how much I enjoyed him.

 

I didn't see his TNA run, because it is a show I just can't get into, but I was glad to hear he was doing well there.

 

I was concerned with his health issues and the lack of information surrounding him, as much as I am with anyone I don't know.

 

I also made it a point to travel 2 hours to attend his last show in West Virginia, although the fact that my parents live twenty minutes from the venue helped.

 

 

 

Then I watched the documentary that is getting all kinds of ass kissing revues on twitter, went into it expecting something really special, and I pretty much lost most of the respect I had for the man.

 

I think of the countless thousands of wrestlers who didn't get half the opportunities he had, and while I am sure they are bitter, they didn't make a two hour "woe is me" documentary about it. At the start you feel kind of bad for him, but by the end when he is sitting in his car pounding on the steering wheel, I was just wishing for him to shut the fuck up.

[Bix]

In light of that I should add this: From the second he showed up in IWAMS having improved dramatically, I was a huge fan of Nigel. Even bought the "McGuinness" mock beer logo T-shirt at a ROH show. Adored the guy's work, especially once he found himself as a heel in ROH. When he took such a dramatic turn stylistically, while I did like the first match I saw (vs Marufuji in NYC), I soon tired of it, and it got very messed up as he did so much stupid shit.

[Indikator]

The first time I saw him live (Europe) was in February 2005 and he seemed to be not really there when I saw him after the show at the hotel we both were staying at, although back then I thought to myself he might just be jetlagged. Turns out he wrestled seven days earlier for All Star, so I fear he was already affected back then.

[Dylan Waco]

Bix knows how I feel about this but for the record I agree with everything he says. I thought the documentary was a piece of shit. I went in sympathetic to Nigel. Came out thinking he was an entitled prick, who took no responsibility for the fact that his juicehead habits are the real reason he wasn't hired by the WWE (to say nothing of the manipulative shit he pulled over the Hepatitis, which I think is about as low as you can go)

[Bix]

Bix knows how I feel about this but for the record I agree with everything he says. I thought the documentary was a piece of shit. I went in sympathetic to Nigel. Came out thinking he was an entitled prick, who took no responsibility for the fact that his juicehead habits are the real reason he wasn't hired by the WWE (to say nothing of the manipulative shit he pulled over the Hepatitis, which I think is about as low as you can go)

To be clear do you mean that he sold the doc on the basis of finally telling the Hepatitis story or that he was refusing to open up to friends who were practically begging him to let them support him emotionally? Or both?

 

With the latter, it was jaw dropping that Les Thatcher, his fucking trainer and mentor, tried to give him an opening with "You know, I had Hepatitis in the early '70s..." and he just stayed mum. Same goes for the conversation he has with one of the other HWA guys (I think it was Cody Hawk) about Andre Hart. The best parts of the documentary aren't Nigel's clearly staged "emotionally naked" monologues about not going to WWE that got all the praise, they're the parts where he's an asshole who:

 

- Shuts down emotionally around his friends when they try to help him and he pushes them away.

- Doesn't disclose, explain, and clarify his illness to friends and colleagues who were clearly worried that he could have infected them.

[Clayton Jones]

The Nigel using steroids stuff interests me because it's not something I've ever read about before. Is this based on heard from someone who heard from someone type knowledge, or just an educated guess based on his injuries and subsequent change of physique, or a combination of both? I know bicep tears are typical of steroid abuse but I never made that connection just because of how excessive Nigel's use and delivery of the lariats became. I can't say I'd ever describe his physique as "juiced to the gills," and I always assumed his leaner look later on was due to changing his training to compensate for the injuries.

 

In regards to Gabe's responsibility in Nigel's downfall, it's tough for me to agree conclusively that Nigel would not have gotten pushed as a main eventer without switching to the drastically different style. I think he was well on the way to being one of the top guys in ROH due to the Pure title run, and Gabe did put him over Joe (twice IIRC) to establish him with the belt. And Nigel was doing terrific with the way his character developed, finding the right balance for the British stuff but keeping the fans engaged, his mic work, and then the feud with Danielson which already had main evented at least one show previous to the UK match. Of course from that point on it's really hard to say where Nigel's career would have gone because he went and did that fucking idiotic, terrible looking, life shortening head posting spot and his star did continue to rise. But isn't there a good chance that if Nigel doesn't make that insanely awful decision and Danielson and he just delivered the great intelligent match they were already capable of, combined with the special factor of the UK crowd behind them, that Nigel still would have turned into the #1 guy in ROH?

 

I'm of the same opinion of most here, that I was a big fan of McGuinness leading up to that match, but slowly soured on his style as it progressed from there. I was still a fan but couldn't stand the UK match from the beginning, and really thought the Driven match with the repeated headbutts was too much "stuff for the sake of stuff" with the unnecessary violence to top it off. Then into the McLariat phase, I liked a lot of his matches but I would have liked them just as well if he didn't do so many damn lariats. I understand why Nigel continuously changed his style but I think he was really on the right path during the Pure title run and it's sad that he was so desperate to keep getting more and more of a response that he lost sight of what was best for his career. I do think he is one of the lost great wrestlers of his generation, but I also agree that he doesn't have anyone else to blame for it.

[Bix]

The Nigel using steroids stuff interests me because it's not something I've ever read about before. Is this based on heard from someone who heard from someone type knowledge, or just an educated guess based on his injuries and subsequent change of physique, or a combination of both? I know bicep tears are typical of steroid abuse but I never made that connection just because of how excessive Nigel's use and delivery of the lariats became. I can't say I'd ever describe his physique as "juiced to the gills," and I always assumed his leaner look later on was due to changing his training to compensate for the injuries.

Combination, but it was something I considered long before I ever heard any rumblings of it. While bicep tears can happen to guys who aren't on steroids, and he did throw more hard clotheslines per match than anyone else we've ever seen, if you combine the tears (remember, he tore the bicep in BOTH ARMS) with the drastic changes in size and curious WWE dispute and it's hard not to think he was gassed up for his whole workrate indy run.

 

No, normally I wouldn't call someone who looked like that (devoid of any other context, he'd just look realistically muscular, not like a walking pharmacy) as "juiced to the gills" but I think it's fair given the injuries and huge swings in size.

 

In regards to Gabe's responsibility in Nigel's downfall, it's tough for me to agree conclusively that Nigel would not have gotten pushed as a main eventer without switching to the drastically different style. I think he was well on the way to being one of the top guys in ROH due to the Pure title run, and Gabe did put him over Joe (twice IIRC) to establish him with the belt. And Nigel was doing terrific with the way his character developed, finding the right balance for the British stuff but keeping the fans engaged, his mic work, and then the feud with Danielson which already had main evented at least one show previous to the UK match. Of course from that point on it's really hard to say where Nigel's career would have gone because he went and did that fucking idiotic, terrible looking, life shortening head posting spot and his star did continue to rise. But isn't there a good chance that if Nigel doesn't make that insanely awful decision and Danielson and he just delivered the great intelligent match they were already capable of, combined with the special factor of the UK crowd behind them, that Nigel still would have turned into the #1 guy in ROH?

 

I'm of the same opinion of most here, that I was a big fan of McGuinness leading up to that match, but slowly soured on his style as it progressed from there. I was still a fan but couldn't stand the UK match from the beginning, and really thought the Driven match with the repeated headbutts was too much "stuff for the sake of stuff" with the unnecessary violence to top it off. Then into the McLariat phase, I liked a lot of his matches but I would have liked them just as well if he didn't do so many damn lariats. I understand why Nigel continuously changed his style but I think he was really on the right path during the Pure title run and it's sad that he was so desperate to keep getting more and more of a response that he lost sight of what was best for his career. I do think he is one of the lost great wrestlers of his generation, but I also agree that he doesn't have anyone else to blame for it.

To be clear, with no inside knowledge of what led to Nigel's ascent in ROH beyond the little he muttered to me about his mindset, I don't blame Gabe, I just get the feeling Nigel does. Was the main event style much harder than what Nigel was doing? Yes. Was it already full of injuries? Absolutely. This was in the ROH Newswire to sell a new DVD released a few days before "Unified," talking about a match I saw live from a month and a half earlier:

 

"In Your Face" has the most brutal three-way ever pitting Bryan Danielson vs. KENTA vs. Samoa Joe. This match saw Joe suffer a ruptured eardrum while KENTA and Danielson both suffered concussions.

Even then, though, this was just guys working way too stiff. It was bad, but it wasn't anything wrestling had never seen before like the barbaric garbage stunts that have destroyed Nigel's brain. Nigel was the constant in the worst stuff. All of it was him finding new ways to bash his head in. I've had pretty a low opinion at Gabe at certain points, but I honestly can't see him actively suggesting any of Nigel's stupider stunts.

 

And yes, if Unified was just a great match with that hot British crowd, Nigel probably would've been on the same path to the top of ROH. But since he made the switch in the match that launched him, it's really hard nail down how likely it was, and what he felt he needed to do is clear.

[caley]

I know nothing of McGuiness' work (Save a handful of TNA matches) or private life, haven't seen the documentary, but I read the Deadspin piece and something about it nagged at me, that the author was being worked, that the reader was being worked. I had meant to delve into this a little deeper, but forgot all about it until I saw this thread and Bix pretty much clarified some of my problems and some ideas I hadn't even considered. When the writer/McGuinness kept going on about WWE dropping him, I thought "Wait, you work your whole life to get to WWE? You get the chance to do it with the caveat that you get your bicep operated on and you turn it down?!" Like, the part where he said he couldn't afford to pay for his surgery and not be able to work for a while it just seemed like a BS excuse. Like, if I'd worked my whole life to be a WWE wrestler, I would make this one last sacrifice (get the surgery) and do whatever it takes (get a loan, borrow money from family, mooch off friends, work another job) to finally get some financial and career stability and accomplish my lifelong dream? I wouldn't just go "Well my doctor says I'm okay so I'm not going to do it, take it or leave it", I'd be going "You want me to wash your car with my one good arm after paying for the surgery? Sure thing, Vince!"

 

The steroids example makes a lot of sense, actually; that WWE wanted him to get surgery but had other misgivings (Steroids? concussions?). Because, as much as I can't imagine McGuinness refusing to get surgery to make the WWE, I also can't imagine WWE seeing a guy they wanted, offering him a deal then walking away from him because he won't get an operation, they'd probably do something (a loan? advance? job?) to make sure a guy they actually want doesn't get away.

 

Wasn't there something amiss when they signed Cesaro, too? I seem to remember he was definitely signing, then the deal was off, then it was back on again? What as that one about?

[Tim Evans]

So Bix was this worse than the interview you did with Bill Dundee where he didn't really want to talk much behind the scenes stuff and seemed angry when you brought it up?

 

Did Nigel say when he got the hep? I'm guessing it was before TNA cause he started looking like Christian towards the end there. I never saw that much of Nigel's ROH stuff but I remember the Danielson matches and those stupid headbutt. And his shitty rope assisted lariat.

[Indikator]

I wonder if the surgery thing might be comparable to Martin Stone

[goc]

Nigel said in the documentary that no one from WWE told him they would hire him if he got the surgery, and they wouldn't return his calls when he tried to find out if they would. Also only managed to watch an hour of the documentary before I stopped caring. There's nothing sympathetic about him at all in the movie.

[Guest Andrews]

Didn't he go to England and knock himself out by going head first, full force, into the ring post too?

 

I like Nigel - I like him a lot. But he isn't an exception. Foley is a wreck today - but fortunately he found money and fame before his body broke down. Still, arguments could be made to say Foley was ahead of the curve - Nigel had to step it up to wreckless levels to stand out from people.

 

Dynamite Kid is in a wheel chair. He took some mental bumps in his time. Look at Wrestlemania 2 - took a back bump from the second rope to the concrete at the conclusion of the match - and it was barely on camera - it wasn't the focal point of attention either - what was happening in the ring was. Simply reckless when something like that happens.

 

Look at Benoit - sure his body held up - but his brain was proven to be fucked. All those years of hard bumps, headbutts etc. I have a lot of love for Daniel Bryan - that's why I don't like seeing him use the headbutt, brings unsettling imagery every time.

[rovert]

When Nigel was describing the film I thought he was onto something thematically and obviously I wanted the scoop of want happened with WWE. But the aspects he left out have a lot to be desire as others have saud. Even if you weren't aware of the things not elaborated on it is hard to seamlessly tie together the story he is trying to tell. If you are aware of those things not elaborated on the more you think about his story the less it makes sense. Never even considered showing it to another casual/non-fan.

 

When he is telling his version of his story the film doesn't pass the threshold of sympathy on an intellectual basis. You feel sad for him in a "ah buddy" way as he is so distraught but ultimately he makes a career choice to leave a profession he knew had limited employment opportunities stepping into it after taking excessive risks. This is hardly a Jason Becker getting Lou Gehrig's disease type story:

 

The film came out around the same time as Nigel's. There's a deluded American Idol contestant vibe about him the film. What compelled him to go WWE seemed to go beyond what could be described as professional drive and onto something unhealthy and obsessive.

 

My impression from listening to interviews is that in part he doesn't want to blame Wrestling or embarrass/upset his family by laying the whole story out here.

 

Also I know Nigel didn't have his cosmetic advantages but if he had but if my life goal was WWE I take as less risks as possible never approaching it an extreme sport and I would work on my presentation and PR like Sheamus did. This is all coming from someone who SUFFERED through Sheamus's indy matches and attempted a million times to get off his manager's mailing list!

[Bix]

Nigel said in the documentary that no one from WWE told him they would hire him if he got the surgery, and they wouldn't return his calls when he tried to find out if they would.

Yes, he did. And I believe him when he says this is what happened, but I see it more as a way to "let him down easy" even though it comes off as a dick move.

[Bix]

Didn't he go to England and knock himself out by going head first, full force, into the ring post too?

 

I like Nigel - I like him a lot. But he isn't an exception. Foley is a wreck today - but fortunately he found money and fame before his body broke down. Still, arguments could be made to say Foley was ahead of the curve - Nigel had to step it up to wreckless levels to stand out from people.

Foley also has most of his long term memory intact (aside from a few noticeable slips like saying he never told the HIAC "smile" story before the HOF speech when it's in his first and most popular book, though that may have just been part of how he wanted to tell the story). Nigel doesn't. All things considered, I'd say Foley is doing well for a guy who's had ~100 concussions.

 

Nigel's an exception in the sense I've never seen another wrestler anything close to his memory issues, especially for a guy who's under 40.

[rovert]

Foley also has most of his long term memory intact (aside from a few noticeable slips like saying he never told the HIAC "smile" story before the HOF speech when it's in his first and most popular book, though that may have just been part of how he wanted to tell the story). Nigel doesn't. All things considered, I'd say Foley is doing well for a guy who's had ~100 concussions.

Yeah also Mick is doing stand up shows about his career and his brand new DVD opens with him saying "my story is happy story" while Nigel sold all his Wrestling DVDs in January.

[ButchReedMark]

That documenary really turned me off him. I hated his style in ROH anyway with throwing Braden Walker amounts of clotheslines, but he acted like he was owed a living, like he was owed being a big drawing main eventer. And he didn't want to work for it.

 

No sympathy.

[sek69]

I didn't watch the doc, but everything I've heard/seen about Nigel is that it appears someone got in his ear at some point and told him he needs to do X, Y, and Z to get to WWE and he comes off as bitter that it didn't happen. I can see how it comes off as him thinking he's owed a living, but it probably is more him pissed he wrecked his health doing what he thought it took and the door was slammed in his face.

[Bix]

Here's a MP3 of the relevant segment of the interview (about 3 minutes long, starting with "why did you change your style;" and one of his answers during the exchange includes the part about about not really remembering his ROH run): https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-NNkZSWAAY...dit?usp=sharing

 

It's pretty early in the interview and thus not quite as bleak as I remember, as the bitterness and anger came out later. He does say that he thinks ROH/Gabe may have had plans for him anyway, but he felt changing his style was something he needed at the time to become a bonafide main eventer. The overall point that he felt he needed to change his style to move up is the same, but he was more fair to the possibility he didn't need to than I remembered.

[Ditch]

Nigel was reasonably over in ROH with the more technical style, but he never would have had the big reign without the style change. His matches didn't have the bigness to them that the ROH main event style demanded. I think Nigel ended up going overboard and could have reigned it in a LOT without sacrificing 'bigness', though he probably would have gotten wrecked even if he dialed it back a notch or three.

 

I can understand why he was deeply frustrated by how his career went, but in this day and age to not grasp how long the odds are against going from indy darling to WWE star...

[kjh]

It's worth noting that the style change coincided with Nigel starting to work tours of Pro Wrestling NOAH, where you had Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi take insane risks on badly broken down bodies, so placing all the blame on Gabe and ROH would be unfair for that reason too.

[Ditch]

Nigel never became an every-tour guy and only had one bomb-throwing match in NOAH (July '07 vs Kotaro Suzuki). I don't know how much effect NOAH would have had on his thought process.

[Clayton Jones]

I didn't watch the doc, but everything I've heard/seen about Nigel is that it appears someone got in his ear at some point and told him he needs to do X, Y, and Z to get to WWE and he comes off as bitter that it didn't happen. I can see how it comes off as him thinking he's owed a living, but it probably is more him pissed he wrecked his health doing what he thought it took and the door was slammed in his face.

The thing that's particularly weird to me about this, and I could be mistaken on the details as it's been a while, but I seem to remember Nigel mentioning in multiple interviews how he was wrestling a more American style when he first came over, and Regal saw him on a show and told him to start wrestling like he was British if he expected to stand out. And it always struck me odd when Nigel would bring that up, because he obviously eventually came to the conclusion that minimizing his British style once again was the key to success. I mean if you're going to listen to any of the people that have given you advice over the years, I'd think Regal would be about the best candidate possible.