Nigel McGuinness Teases He Would Have Come Out Of Retirement For Match With Bryan Danielson At AEW All In

When All Elite Wrestling announced they were running All In at Wembley Stadium, the announcement was made by Tony Khan alongside Adam Cole, and then new AEW hire Nigel McGuinness, with McGuinness’ involvement setting off the fantasy booker alarm for many fans online.

Some had suggested that the former ROH World Champion could come out of retirement for All In for one last tangle with former rival Bryan Danielson. With Danielson on the injured list that match seems even more likely than it had before, and McGuinness himself has teased it could have happened, saying the following on the AEW Unrestricted podcast:

“The truth of the matter is, the only way I was going to come out of retirement was for a match against Bryan Danielson at Wembley Stadium. It was going to take something like that for me to come out of retirement, because I really value my job doing announcing and there are so many other guys on the card that are so much better than me and deserve those spots, but in the right situation, I'd be crazy to not be open to that possibility. Now, [Danielson] has gone and broken his arm. Let's be honest. We all saw the x-rays, and one of those bones was perfectly okay. I don't know how many bones are in the human body. He's got all of them apart from one, does he really need time off? He's sitting at home, taking a paycheque, digging those clams out of the sand. He could be in there wrestling me. To be perfectly honest, he's probably a bit scared.

“It's ironic isn't it? Someone asked him that question in a media scrum and he was like, 'I respect Nigel as a commentator, but if he gets in the ring with me, I'd break his neck,' and he's the one with a broken arm, and I never got a chance to wrestle him. That is karma. I'm not saying he'd be scared of wrestling me again, he's had a lot more experience than me, but I'm in as good of shape now as I've ever been. I'm in ring shape, I'm ready to go, but I can't see myself wrestling at this point in that sort of situation at this point. That's the truth of the matter. It made me think, I remember when he said that 'he'll break my neck,' I'm sure he can't feel threatened, but it took me back to the match we had in Liverpool where he ran my head into the ring post four times, knocked me out damn nearly, and left me on the outside to get counted out. I got back in the ring, and I will always remember the look on his face when I came up, covered in blood, ready to murder him. That look of fear. That's a look of fear that doesn't disappear in 12 years, that stays with him for the rest of his life. To me, that sounded like someone who didn't want the match to happen. You can understand why,” said McGuinness.

The Liverpool match in question is regarded as a classic of ROH’s golden period, with the two engaging in a violent title unification match pitting the ROH World Championship against the PURE Championship in 2006.

McGuinness hung up his boots in 2011.

H/T: Fightful