Former ROH world champion Matt Taven recently appeared on Wrestling Inside The Ropes to discuss a number of different subjects, including how Taven reacted when he found out he was added to the triple-threat ladder match at the now legendary 2019 G1 Supercard event from Madison Square Garden. Highlights are below.
How he reacted when he found out he’d be competing for the ROH world title at the G1 Supercard at Madison Square Garden:
Honestly, I was on cloud — because, there’s maybe a rough outline but nothing set in stone clearly and honestly, I didn’t know I was gonna be at MSG [G1 Supercard] really until that day [ROH 17th Anniversary] and when we come to the back and I realize like, ‘I’m going to Madison Square Garden,’ you’re like, ‘How does this happen?’ You wanna share that with everyone.
His thoughts on putting over Vincent during their Steel Cage showdown at ROH Glory By Honor night two:
[It was important to make sure Vincent got that win] because that’s what other people did for me. You know, that’s what Jay Lethal did for me and I’ll never forget it and when it was time to do that for someone else, I thought that that’s how we do things in Ring of Honor. That’s what made this place so special was that there wasn’t these egos of like, ‘Well oh, I still gotta stay strong.’ It was like, ‘No, we –’ who am I if my opponents aren’t on my level, you know what I mean? Then what am I doing? I’m just kind of patting myself on the back but, I’ll never forget the things that people did for me and I would be nowhere without those things and so, obviously me and Vinny, Vincent, have a past together and I saw him come up and I said this before of like I used to go with Mike [Bennett] to shows when he first got signed to Ring of Honor and I was just trying to get in and then when I was established in Ring of Honor, Vinny would come and try to show his face and get noticed and talk to people and we all come from the same school, from Spike Dudley’s ‘Lock Up’ and it was just one of those things where we had been in the trenches with one another and we knew how good each other were and how much we fought and deserved these spots and it was like, ‘This is how this happens. This is what makes the wrestling world continue to go.’ If you stop that tradition, well then you’re kind of stopping the tradition of this business and it was Vinny’s time. You know, I had-had my moments obviously in the sun and as much as maybe people think I still needed that, ‘Oh, you need to get back on the horse and get back to where you were.’ I was like, ‘I can do that while doing this at the same time.’ You know, I always think of Jeff Hardy saying how, ‘I shine when I sell. When I sell for people, I look good as well because of the way I do it’ and I always kind of have that in my head is like, ‘I can shine in my losses as well.’
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling
)