Earlier today I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with ROH superstar and current reigning six-man tag team champion (along with Moses & Kaun) Shane Taylor, who talked with me in detail about ROH releasing all their talent for the recently announced rebuild in 2022. Taylor also touches on his upcoming showdown with JTG at VIP Wrestling on November 12th, and how important that match is to his career. Highlights, including the full video interview, can be found below.
On his match with JTG at VIP Wrestling in Dallas:
That is at VIP wrestling in Dallas, November 12. That match means a lot to me. Obviously, one of my goals at Ring of Honor was to become Ring of Honor world champion, there’s only been one man, one African-American male who’s been able to capture that championship in the 20 year history of the company… that was Jay Lethal. And I wanted very much to give him company at the top of that list. And I jumped over every obstacle, ran through every hurdle, checked every box and done and did everything in my power to be able to step up into that roll. That’s just not a role that, you know, certain individuals wanted me to be in, you know, I mean, so not having that opportunity, I feel a little bit unfulfilled in that. But at VIP, I was VIP champion before. And I got to take that championship overseas to the UK, and make it a world championship. So now I kind of get to go back and reclaim what’s mine, and go back and sit back in my throne and become a world champion and lead a company and sort of get that feeling back and gain that confidence. And when I’m able to do that JTG unfortunately has to be the example that gets used to show the rest of the world exactly what I’m capable of.
Calls out other world champions like Moose, Omega, Takagi, and Murdoch:
And once I do that, I’m going to go back to capturing other championships that I want not only in Texas, but around the country. And any platform that we all decide to go to whoever the world champion is, whether it’s Moose, whether it’s Omega, whether it’s Ospreay, whether it’s Shingo…It doesn’t matter who it is, whether it’s you know, Murdoch, you know what I mean? Like the second we walk in your door it’s not “Hey, how are you? It’s we’re coming for your neck.” You know, we’re not here to be your friend. We’re here to take what you got.
Whether he would return to ROH:
In this sport it’s smart to never say no. So I have no idea. But I know my focus going into next year will be to not only make sure my guys are in a great spot, but I myself am in a great spot. And if we are with another company at that time, then that company is going to take precedence and it’s going to take priority over anything else that may be coming down the line. But that’s simply just how business works…that’s how it should work. So we’ll see. I feel as though we have done everything on our end that we needed to do to make things work. So if they don’t nobody can look at that and say, “You know what, STP didn’t do this because we did. So we will see come April, we will see what’s going on, but I don’t think people are gonna have to wait until April to see us on their TV screens.