Okay, this is a bit of a weird one. Ring of Honor's biggest even of the year, Final Battle, took place in Manhattan in 2007. Unfortunately, World Champion Nigel McGuinness was unable to make his scheduled defense due to a concussion he suffered the previous night. That night's show was also in NYC, and as I was at both, I saw how dangerous the first bout was. When the second night's match was cancelled, I was annoyed that the champion would take such risks with his body - especially after the same thing happened the previous month at a Manhattan show, with Nigel forced to miss a title defense. I wrote an anonymous letter to the Wrestling Observer stating that, after all the community learned from the Benoit tragedy, I couldn't support a champion who would take such risks with his body and with the company's shows. Was I being presumptuous? Maybe. McGuinness thought so - he responded with a commentary on the site firing back at me and my assertions. The whole incident drew a lot of chatter on the ROH message board. Personally, I was just scared that a wrestler was mad at me - anonymous or not, I wasn't even in the business yet and I was already burning bridges!
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013