Ring Of Honor star Vincent recently appeared on The Shining Wizards Podcast and described the backstage feeling during Final Battle, crediting everyone’s ‘laser focus’ for the show’s success.
Vincent then described the bitter-sweet feeling of Final Battle, mentioning that he didn’t quite feel like it was the end until he arrived at the arena on the day of the pay-per-view.
“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.”
He also shared how he was originally supposed to face off with Jay Lethal on the show, but plans changed and he ultimately challenged for the ROH Six-Man Tag Team Championship. Lethal initially left ROH for AEW when the company’s hiatus was announced, but Lethal returned as Gresham’s opponent due to Bandido being pulled from the show due to testing positive for COVID-19.
“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 has 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.”
When asked about AEW President Tony Khan potentially giving ROH talent an opportunity on AEW programming, Vincent pointed to Khan allowing new All Elite Wrestling-signee Jay Lethal to face Jonathan Gresham in the show’s main event as a potential opening of the door for the relationship between the two companies.
“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.”
Related: Vincent Reflects On ‘End Of An Era’ At ROH Final Battle
