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Nigel McGuinness On Bryan Danielson, AEW Commentary & Mind-Blowing Magic
Nigel McGuinness (@McGuinnessNigel) is a professional wrestler and commentator currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss how likely one more match will be, his in-ring careers in ROH and TNA, being renamed Desmond Wolfe, the offer that got rescinded from WWE and what could have been, being in attendance at SummerSlam 1992 in Wembley Stadium, his thoughts on Bryan Danielson and more! Plus, Nigel wows Chris with some amazing magic tricks!
Quote I'm thinking about: “We are what we repeatedly do, therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit” - Will Durant
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“I even took classes to try to get rid of it. Yeah, I took a class to try to get an American accent because, you know, there was a time when I was looking about getting into acting and stuff. And there are a lot of great British actors who do incredible American accents.”
“For me, quite a lot. The week prior, I'm usually on social media a fair bit looking for little hot-button topics, things like that, things that are relevant. And then, the day of, I'll get in there early and as soon as we got the list of what the matches are I'll put them all together. It is a sort of very stringent routine that I go through every time to know the stories that I'm telling, the little bullet points as well. Then just little funny things as I said that I can sort of bring into the conversation. So that will usually take me most of the day as of late I've been getting in the ring as well and rolling around so between all of that it's a hectic rush till 8 o'clock when we shoot.”
“I was open to the suggestion, open to the idea. When I originally signed with AEW, I took a flight cross country with Tony and he said, I've got to swear you to secrecy, I’m telling you something you can't tell another soul. We're doing Wembley Stadium and I was like, Oh, my God. Then just the idea occurred to me. Could you, should you, because Wembley Stadium 1992. That was an epiphany for me. That was a moment. I went there with my friend and I sat back 50 rows back, and I just remember having this strange sensation, I talk about it during my magic show how I just have this weird feeling, this belief that somehow I knew I was going to be a professional wrestler. I think maybe you've had a similar idea yourself, but it stuck with me, certainly. So to go back to that venue and wrestle would just be off the charts. But the only thing that really made sense was Bryan, and he broke his arm because he's got osteoporosis.”
“I don't know. I mean, there's so much of it is out of my control, really is whether he wants to wrestle me. I always thought it was kind of funny. Someone asked him about that time if he'd ever wrestle me again and he said if I ever wrestled, Nigel, I'd break his neck. Then three weeks later he breaks his arm, which I thought was karma. I've always thought as well. Sometimes, you get couples and the girl is always jealous and blaming the guy for cheating. You're cheating on me. You are thinking of cheating. I mean, it always turns out, she was thinking of it. So I think maybe when Bryan said, if I wrestle him I’ll break his neck, he probably remembers those lariats and thinks, doesn't want that. Go back and watch that match at Liverpool where we had that incredible match. There was a time after he ran my head into the ring post. I rolled back in blood pouring looked him in the face and perhaps the only time I've ever seen true fear in his eyes. So yeah, I think he was having a flashback, PTSD from that. So I make jokes about it, don't think he's ever going to wrestle me to be perfectly honest.”
“It certainly feels like that. You know what I mean? It certainly feels like that. All roads to me, I think certainly aimed towards him. Because there's so much talent in AEW, so many young guys who deserve those spots. I’m very inspired by Christian Cage, obviously, and Adam Copeland as much as I'd hate to admit it. These guys can show that they haven't lost a step. They can still go and all the knowledge that they have, they can convey and pass on to the next generation by being in the ring with them as well. I've been like, wow. Getting back in the ring I felt like, wow, it is so strange realisation when you figure out that the only thing stopping you being a wrestler is you. Now, having said that I've certainly got no desire to step away from the announcing booth. I don't want to become a full-time wrestler. I don't really want to wrestle anymore, to be honest with you. Other than beating Bryan, obviously, because that’s our story. There's our history.”
“That’s definitely a possibility. I mean, you mentioned before we started filming that you watched the documentary, it was rather an ignominious end to my career. I was very grateful to all the independent promoters who booked me on my final retirement tour. But I certainly never imagined that my last match would be in a small volunteer fire department in West Virginia. But yeah, you just don't get to choose it sometimes.”
“I've always said actually, if this is what I know about doing commentary, this is what I learned in WWE about it. And that all goes down to Michael Cole and filtered down through Tom Phillips, both of them are so incredible in taking their time in explaining WWE’s view of commentary and how to do it and setting me up for success rather than failure. And Michael Cole, when he started there, people weren't quite so kind and understanding to him. Not even the fans, even the people behind the scenes, it was a very different atmosphere backstage when he started. Sometimes people pay that forward, I had to endure this, I had to pay my dues. He could have been very mean and [said] you got to be good, or else you're gonna be [fired]. But he didn't want that, he wanted it to be a success. That's why in my opinion he is such a valuable asset to that company.”
“I mean, ostensibly once I cleared Hep B, then I was clear to wrestle. [People don't even understand that you can clear the virus] Hepatitis is very confusing because there are four, maybe even five different variants of hepatitis. And I think because they're all called hepatitis, they're all similar, but they're not. They're only called hepatitis because they affect your liver, your hepatic function. So you have got Hep A which you get from eating bad food, which makes you very sick, very quickly. And then you get rid of it, pretty much. You've got Hep B, which is what I had, which is generally you get rid of it yourself within a few months. 10% of people don't get rid of it, which is what happened to me. And then Hep C, which generally speaking was considered lifelong but now I believe there's medication and get rid of it as well. Then there's hep D as well, which I am not too familiar with. But Hep B, which I had, I didn't clear it. So because of that, I had to take some medication and it took about a year for me to finally clear the virus. And then once you get rid of the virus, you have the antibodies to the virus, so the majority of people in the 90% of people who get Hep B, never know they have it. Because you only really have symptoms for it for a short period of time. And then you can get rid of it. And then you do a blood test and you will find the antibodies to it. And once we've got rid of it, you can't pass it on anymore, because there's no more virus. So that’s what happened to me.”
“Yeah, yeah, it's definitely difficult and it is sometimes a crisis of conscience for me. Oftentimes, I don't know if it's going to happen and sometimes it happens by accident. So it’s certainly something I've thought of, and I feel very comfortable in the sense that I don't feel I will ever be forced to do commentary in a match I didn't feel comfortable doing so. It's something that I think that maybe I will address moving forward. I'm not sure. Again, it's hard for me to say because pre getting it myself, I would have said it's no big deal. In the time since nobody else has tested positive so it's hard for me to say just because of me, one example.”
“I was on the beach in Florida, actually, when I got the phone call from the doctor. So Bryan and I were both signed at the same time, we both had a contract and it wasn't a developmental contract, it was an on-the-road contract. We both went to the physical at the same time and I passed and we had a few little niggling things that he managed to resolve. The doctor said to me in passing afterwards, you ever had any injuries? And I'd been wrestling for 10 years, who hadn’t? So I'd had an arm injury, which previously an orthopaedic surgeon who was highly recommended had looked at it and said it's partially torn, will scar in place, and it's no more likely to get re-injured than if it never been hurt in the first place. Even wrote me a letter saying that. So he said, well send me the MRI, I just want to take a look at it. So I sent an MRI. He said, You need surgery, I said, my guy said I didn't need surgery. And so long, and the short of it is he said I can't recommend that we hire you. And so what was I going to do at that point?”
“So I mean, my options were to get surgery. So first of all, I didn't have a lot of money. Second of all, I didn't believe I really needed surgery. I'd already wrestled on this for a year and a half since having the original injury and was perfectly okay. And third of all, just because I've had the surgery doesn't mean that they're going to hire me because I couldn't get that kind of assurance. They may not ever hire me again, and there was an offer on the table from TNA. I remember my last match in New York with Bryan and I remember getting a phone call from someone at TNA saying if it doesn't work out with WWE, give us a shout. So sure enough after I got that phone call, I gave him a call and I was totally honest. I said, this is what they've said, this is what I believe. So they said, Okay, we'll sign you up. I mean, it was for pennies on the dollar compared to what I would have made but I really truly believed in myself and my ability I was gonna go TNA, prove them wrong, have some great matches and before the hepatitis that was largely what happened.”
“I wish I could take credit for that one, Christopher. But unfortunately, no. [Who gets the credit?] The beauty of social media I think someone must have posted it on Twitter about a year or so ago. Something like that. Well, that sounds like a fun line. I wasn't sure whether I could use it because I've had a lot of lines that I always run everything by Bobby Crews before the show because he's a good sort of barometer of whether this is politically correct enough or not. That one got through the Crews-ometer [So you were talking about cheese right?] Talking about cheese. There were some upset people in France but can't please everyone.”
“My daughter, my girlfriend, my health and my job.”
