For Nigel McGuinness, 13 years of doubt and questions were wiped away as he walked into Wembley Stadium and was greeted by the thunderous roar of shock and delight from some 50,000 fans.
The 48-year-old McGuinness made a surprise return to the ring for his first bout since retiring in 2011 and moving to commentary on August 25 at AEW All In's Casino Gauntlet in his hometown of London.
“After I retired, if I'd continued wrestling, would I have had a decent career? Would I have had the same success as Bryan Danielson? Or was I just not good enough?,” McGuinness said. “I always had all those doubts and this feeling that maybe I wasn't as good as I thought I was, but in a way, once I just walked out there, it all just went away. And the response was just so generous.”
He said he always gets nervous before a match and thought the 13 years away would make him even more nervous, but when he stepped onto the ring and heard the fans yelling his name, he didn't feel that way at all. Instead, he attended WWE's SummerSlam at the old Wembley Stadium in 1992 and left the venue determined to become a wrestler.
“I'm still excited about it and I feel like I've somehow entered another world,” McGuinness said of All In.
McGuinness, who made his name wrestling in Ring of Honor from 2003 to 2009, enjoyed “seeing how talented everyone was” going up against wrestlers like Orange Cassidy and Kazuchika Okada, who regularly serve as commentators on Saturday's AEW Collison (8 p.m., TNT), and thrilled the London crowd with a showdown with fellow British wrestler Zack Sabre Jr.
“It happened so quickly, we only had 30 seconds before everyone else joined in,” McGuinness said. “But it was amazing. It was fantastic.”
That night was the culmination of two years of potential.
McGuinness said the idea of coming out of retirement first emerged during a cross-country flight last year with AEW president Tony Khan, who revealed the company had plans to operate Wembley Stadium for the first time.
“I was joking,” McGuinness says, “and I said, 'If you sell out, maybe I'll dust off my boots' and he said, 'Are you interested?' and I said, 'Maybe'.”
If that were to happen, McGuinness would want it to be meaningful and not be added to the show just to come out of retirement.
The ideal plan would have been to rekindle his famous Ring of Honor World Championship rivalry with Danielson, with whom he fought 13 singles matches across multiple promotions from 2006-2009.
However, “The American Dragon” broke his arm in a classic match against Okada at The Forbidden Door in June 2023 and was not cleared to compete in London.
“There are 206 bones in the human body and 205 were fine, but he still found an excuse not to wrestle me at Wembley Stadium,” McGuinness said.
He said Khan hadn't initially talked to him about competing at this year's All In. McGuinness had been preparing by training at his local ring in California or every week before the collision.
A showdown with Danielson, who is in his final year as a full-time wrestler, wasn't an option as the former WWE star won the Owen Hart Cup tournament and ultimately defeated Swerve Strickland in the main event for the AEW World Championship, meaning McGaneys needed another all-in match this year.
The gauntlet match made sense because a win would have earned McGuinness an AEW World Championship match against Danielson. Christian Cage won instead.
“A lot of people reached out and said, 'You look so happy … you looked so peaceful and you really did,'” McGuinness said. “To be in the ring with all those guys was just incredible.”
His return to the ring was kept secret, with only Khan and a few members of the writing team knowing about it in the week before the show and the week of All In. McGuinness said he would not answer questions from other wrestlers about it; most people would find out on the day of the show.
Interestingly enough, it was apparently legendary announcer Jim Ross who first found out about McGuinness right before he was due to go out.
McGuinness returned to the announcer's room after announcing the first two games, and Ross asked him what else he had planned for the show before hastily getting changed to prepare for the match.
“I just take my clothes off and start putting on my wrestling gear,” McGuinness said. “And then [him] I was trying to figure this out and figure out what I was doing. Am I going to go train during the show? I said, half-jokingly, 'Yeah, maybe I'll be in the Casino Gauntlet match.' He said, 'Good luck.' So that day, little by little, people started seeing me in it.”
McGuinness keeps his next fight open and would love to see a tough showdown with Danielson, but knows his rival is struggling with a neck injury and only has a few months left in his full-time career.
“My goal was to fight Bryan,” McGuinness said, “and he was scared. I think he's still scared. I don't know if it's going to happen. He's not in the best of shape right now. He's got a really bad injury and he'll probably have to have surgery. He doesn't have many matches left and the last thing he wants is to get hit with a lariat by Nigel McGuinness and hasten his retirement from professional wrestling.”
McGuinness said several other matches would make sense for him, but they would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
“The reason I came back was to fight Bryan, and there was obviously a lot of jealousy, or maybe a better way to put it, envy, just story-wise, or to be honest, and the success he's had, it's not really a criticism of him, obviously not,” he said.
“But it's a hard thing to deal with sometimes, and it's not necessarily just Brian – a lot of the mates I brought up have gone on to great success so for a long time it was hard to accept, but going out there at Wembley Stadium and having that moment was a real closure in that respect.”
He “never wants to go back to wrestling full-time,” nor does he want to leave the commentary work he loves.
McGuinness, who also performs magic shows outside of wrestling, acknowledges he might never have been in the commentary booth if he hadn't retired and that the only thing stopping him from returning to the ring was himself.
“It's a weird feeling when you realize the only thing that was stopping me from wrestling was myself,” McGuinness said. “There was no reason why I couldn't keep wrestling all that time.”
It came about due to some circumstances and setbacks in 2011 where I felt like I no longer had a place to wrestle.
McGuinness left Ring of Honor and signed with WWE, but the WWE rescinded his contract, saying it would not be honored unless McGuinness, who had been wrestling for two years and received medical clearance, underwent surgery to repair a torn biceps.
After signing with TNA, he was diagnosed with Hepatitis B, which sidelined him for a year, and TNA released him just weeks before he was fully recovered from the virus and able to return to the ring.
He said he did not want to return to Ring of Honor and wrestle in their style for the amount of money they were paying him at the time, and instead filmed a retirement tour for the documentary, The Last of Nigel McGuinness, in the hope that WWE would see the story, be interested, and give him the opportunity to wrestle there.
That didn't happen, but Ring of Honor brought him back as a commentator and matchmaker, and he “gave up his dreams of being a wrestler.”
He's become one of the best and most entertaining color men in the business, with a penchant for praising heels and throwing jabs at babyfaces, and mixing his knowledge as a wrestler with his strong opinions. McGuinness also worked for WWE's NXT UK brand from 2016-22 before joining AEW in 2023, and he credits Khan for giving him the opportunity to thrive.
“Certainly in WWE, maybe not now, but certainly in previous regimes there were more restrictions on what you could say,” McGuinness said. “There were words and ideas and concepts that you wanted to avoid and steer clear of. And in some ways maybe expressing things in a different way made you a better commentator.”
“But I would say, if I can get the governor off my back and I don't have to worry about what I'm going to say or who I'm going to upset, I can really find my voice. And I think in AEW, I've definitely found my voice because of the freedom.”
He is now free to decide what to do next in the ring after his inspirational return.
So much of the jealousy, doubt and questioning that had dogged him for 13 years had evaporated and McGuinness entered the next stage of his career feeling different.
“I feel very peaceful, very content and very happy with whatever happens in life,” McGuinness said. “And it's kind of a scary state, because when you get to that peaceful state, you want it to last forever.”
