During a recent appearance on the “Shining Wizards” podcast, Vincent said that he was originally set to face Jay Lethal at last Saturday night’s ROH Final Battle pay-per-view event.
As many of you know by now, Lethal wound replacing Bandido in the main event after Bandido tested positive for COVID-19. Lethal wound up losing to Jonathan Gresham for the vacated ROH World title.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the Final Battle Experience: “It was crazy. At first, when I got to the building, it just felt like just a Ring of Honor day, but as it got closer and more people kind of filed in, and you’re just talking to everybody that you’ve been on the road with for the last, for me, six years, and even before that, I started doing dark matches in 2012 and 2011, so I’ve been around Ring of Honor a pretty long time, and contracted in 2016. As it got closer to the show, I was like, “wow, this could potentially be it, right here.” As far as Final Battle goes, and this era, this is it. Once my music comes on, this is it, so I think I’m gonna really enjoy this one and dance on the barricade and stuff, and I did. It was bittersweet, man. Being the first ever Ring of Honor six man tag team champions, and the last ever for this era is kind of a cool thing. And I’ll let this cat out of the bag now, because it doesn’t really matter now. It was supposed to be me versus Jay Lethal at Final Battle, and that’s kind of where that was headed. Unfortunately, with everything happening, it didn’t really go that way. Lethal and Gresham for the World title made the most sense, and I thought that was a good move as far as I’m concerned. Doing the six-man thing, I really liked it because now it’s almost because when I did it with The Kingdom with Taven at the forefront and then me and TK, and this time it was my crew winning the six-man tag titles. It was a cool full-circle kind of thing. Now, Dutch and Bateman being able to hold these things for the first time ever, it was kind of a cool thing for me because they’re my buddies. It was great to see them having that moment on Final Battle for those two guys. Bateman’s been around for so long and has worked hard, and Dutch the same thing. Dutch had already been fired once when he was in FCW so Dutch has been around wrestling for a very long time too, so it was a cool thing to share that moment with some really close friends again and see them get theirs. We would like to defend them on the indies. If we can bring the six-man tag titles and possibly make them mean something all over the place, that would be pretty cool.”
On Tony Khan giving ROH talent opportunities: “I think it’s great. It’s awesome how the Lethal and Gresham thing happened. It’s cool that they helped make that happen and let that happen, and kind of got a little bit involved in helping which was really cool, obviously. It was an exciting show and it’s cool to see guys like Josh Woods, who I think is very talented dude and I don’t think he sometimes realizes how talented he is, but he’s a very talented dude and I was happy to see that he was going to do that. I think it’s cool that they are very inviting and opened the door and give people opportunities that just want an opportunity that have been working hard and just trying to get themselves out there. I think it’s really cool. It’s given so many people opportunities on the independents and stuff, so it’s pretty cool.”
The backstage vibe at Final Battle: “Everybody was kind of jonesed up. Everybody wanted to do their best. They wanted to make this show a memorable thing on top of it being the last Final Battle and end of an era. We wanted to make sure it felt like that. I think everyone was tunnel vision-focused on making this one of the best shows in Ring of Honor history. Everybody was running around and trying to make sure we all see each other enough before, because who knows what’s going to happen in the future. But at the same time, a lot of people were just focused, making it one of the best shows in the history of Ring of Honor.”
On creating The Righteous: “All me. Everything from when I first did The Horror King stuff with the mask and the evolution of that time all the way through now, is all me. I like to bounce ideas off of certain people who understand what the vision is and what my ideas are. For example, Dalton Castle is somebody I could bounce ideas off of because he understood what I was trying to do and what I was doing. Certain people kind of understand it, ya know? Dalton’s a very creative guy so he understands that kind of thing. Also people who like similar stuff, like Dutch and Bateman, are very easy to bounce ideas off of because we all like similar stuff. We have very common interests, the three of us, so once Dutch came on, it made it… I just felt like he, at the time, was that last piece of the puzzle that I was looking for, for somebody in that group that works. He’s fantastic in the ring and he’s got a great personality on camera and stuff, so he was like the last piece of the puzzle. I was actually really excited that they made that happen because for a long time, Dutch was my pick long before Chuckle, and then that happened. And then Dutch debuted on the anniversary pay per view with the balcony thing. It was always me with the base idea, but I always like bouncing ideas off people. If someone has a good idea that I didn’t think of, that happens. There are plenty of creative people out there to bounce ideas off of that might think of something for you that actually worked really good for you. And then you just weed out the stuff that doesn’t.”
