v2 Wrestling Podcast Special - Interview with Nigel McGuinness

On 12th August The v2 Wrestling Podcast caught up with former TNA star and Ring of Honor World Champion Nigel McGuinness (known to TNA fans as Desmond Wolfe!).

Nigel spoke with Adam and Gavin about a range of topics including the critically-acclaimed documentary of his retirement tour The Last of McGuinness, what went wrong for him in TNA, observations on the rise of his former colleagues Daniel Bryan and Magnus and the renaissance of Matt Hardy, what he's up to at the moment, and where he sees his future.

This is a fascinating and candid insight into Nigel's career, and it's heart-warming to hear Nigel talk with enthusiasm about the next stage of his life.

Many thanks to Nigel for giving up so much of his time to v2 Wrestling.

The interview can be downloaded from http://v2wrestling.podomatic.com/entry/2013-08-13T08_17_55-07_00

Make sure to follow the podomatic link to keep up to date with all podcasts and interviews!

Great interview with Nigel he actually sounded disappointed when you said that you had ran over

Great work guys, currently the top topic on eWrestling:

http://www.ewrestlingnews.com/news/19105/nigel-mcguinness-speaks-out-retirement-tna-hardy-bryan

woo hoo!

Its great that some of our stuff is getting picked up now by other sites.

http://www.prowrestling.net/artman/publish/ROH/article10032871.shtml

I've tweeted to both of them to also mention the phone call to Grado as that's just a fantastic moment.

Here are the highlights…

On the TNA Top Ten fan vote that would have given him a TNA World Championship shot: “If the fans want to get behind someone, then I think you should go in that direction. When you poll all your fans, and they overwhelmingly get behind one person, for you to ignore that is kind of a slap in the face to those fans, and just really speaks volumes for how legitimately they cared about what the fans thought at that point. When I saw that I’d won the poll, I was a little bit worried, because I knew instantly what would happen, which is exactly what did happen. And I talked to a couple of people in the company, and they were like ‘No, that’s crazy, don’t worry about that, you’ve just won, that’s ridiculous,’ and it wasn’t, and it’s what happened.”

On why he retired despite now being cured of Hepatitis B: “I made the decision that I wasn’t going to wrestle any more unless I was doing something that I hadn’t done before, which really only leaves WWE. I put out feelers (to WWE), and from everything I could surmise, there wasn’t interest. So at that point there was really no option for me other than to retire.”

On the resurgence of Matt Hardy: “You hear from a lot of those guys that had a great run on top and every time you meet them they’re ‘I’m straight now, I’m ok now, I’m getting my life in order,’ and then two weeks later you hear they drop off the edge of the earth again, but with Matt he seems to really have it all together; when he came into Ring of Honor, people were kind of cautious to see how he’d handle it, and everything, but he’s been nothing but great. He’s done his job well, and he’s really trying to reinvent himself to a new generation of wrestling fans, and I wholeheartedly applaud him for doing so.”

On blading: “I think in this day and age, knowing how dangerous it is, I think it’s unconscionable for people to still continue to intentionally bleed, certainly if they’re not going to get tested and vaccinated.”

On the rise of Daniel Bryan in WWE: “The bottom line is, once they’re over, they’ll (WWE) get behind it, and if you’re good then you can go with that. That’s the difference. You’ll get guys who’ll get over for a short time, the company will get behind them, they’ll get a bit of a push, but there’s no legs because they haven’t developed that sort of style. Whereas with guys like Punk and Dragon (Bryan), they’ve taken a decade of their lives to fine-tune the art form. They know who they are, they know exactly how they wrestle, and that’s why, when they bring those guys in, they’re ready to go.”
On Magnus: “I’m really happy for him. He’s earned ever

Good stuff, and good work with the write-ups Gav.

Excellent for the site, saw it by chance. Great work, great interview as well although I imagine Tart will have been holding back from arguing about how wrestling has moved away from good guys and bad guys.

Ha, yeah I didn't agree with him about that Crimey, but it was his platform, not mine.

http://www.gerweck.net/2013/08/15/nigel-mcguinness-on-why-he-retired-despite-now-being-cured-of-hepatitis-c/

Was reading this this morning, thinking this sounds very familiar! Ha!

Interesting to see they've changed the headline to Hepatitis B on that site (Im guessing after the hard work put in this morning to make sure it is reported as B) but not in the article.