10 Best Wrestlers Who Never Held The ROH World Title

2. Alex Shelley

Alex Shelley Ring Of Honor
rohwrestling.com

It might seem strange to some fans to see Alex Shelley's name so high in the list and above current WWE stars like Cesaro, Sami Zayn and Hideo Itami, but for a brief period in 2005 it seemed for all the world as though it would be Alex Shelley who would dethrone Austin Aries as ROH World Champion. It was CM Punk who eventually got the nod in rather ironic circumstances.

In early 2005 Ring of Honor crowds were going wild for Alex Shelley and the stars seemed to be aligning for the man from Detroit, but when Shelley decided to sign with TNA the plug was pulled on his ROH World Championship ambitions. The irony comes from Punk being the man who defeated Aries when news had already broke about Punk signing with WWE.

Shelley and Aries had a heated feud to start off 2005 after A Double and Roderick Strong kicked Shelley out of Generation Next, and all of a sudden Baby Bear found himself in the position of being one of the top babyfaces on the entire roster. By the time the year had ended Shelley had turned heel again and the boat on an Alex Shelly ROH World Championship run had been missed.

Sometimes everything falls into place for a wrestling company yet they still decide against pulling the trigger.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.