Coming off the heels of ROH Final Battle, Shane Taylor looks back at the event.
Of the eight matches on Ring of Honor’s Final Battle 2022 pay-per-view card, two of those were non-title bouts, one of which saw Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland take on Shane Taylor and J.D. Griffey.
Lee and Strickland got the victory, but Lee was left to fend for himself after Strickland walked out on him.
The match was discussed by Shane Taylor when he joined Ron Funches on his ‘One Fall’ show. Shane reiterated the history between himself and Lee and expressed that he would like to have a one-on-one match with his former tag partner. He added that it would be wise for Strickland not to get involved because then Swerve would have both him and Keith coming after him.
Listen, the loss [at ROH Final Battle], even though I didn’t take the pin, as the captain of the team, we share the glory and I shoulder the blame. So that’s on me. My team lost, that is an L for me, gotta take that, right? Can’t throw him [J.D. Griffey] underneath the bus. It is what it is but, you are absolutely right. Keith Lee’s been best friend, big brother to me and if anybody’s had a big brother, you know what it’s like to compete against them and to be able to show — when he left and went to WWE, our accolades are similar. The number of championships that we’ve won is two apiece and so now, I never thought that I would get the chance to compete against him. I thought that he was gonna be there forever and so now that I’ve gotten the opportunity to compete against him on this stage, I only wanna do it again and a one-on-one match is definitely the one that I want because then it’s, look, there’s no other variables, there’s no other people in this equation… Swerve [Strickland] is a very smart guy. He’s not as successful as he is not being intelligent. I would hope he’d be smart enough to stay out of that because the last thing you’d want is Keith and me after you. But definitely, definitely want the opportunity to face Keith one-on-one and really bring that level of competition that we both know that we could bring.
Taylor was asked how he feels about his performance at Final Battle. He described it as being a perfectionist in an imperfect game. He stated that it was great to be back ‘home’ and it felt like a good reintroduction.
I think for a lot of us, especially for those who are successful, we are perfectionists in imperfect games and I think for me — anytime you take a loss too, there’s always something you could have done better because you would have won… That was an unnecessary point [to bring up that Keith Lee still won at Final Battle without his partner] but yeah, it was cool, no shade. I get it but it does sting, and that moment right there, that’s leadership. That’s on me to be able to have the focus, bring the team together. Keith ducked the kick, I didn’t duck and got caught with it and unfortunately, that led to our loss but, yeah, I feel like it was a good reintroduction. A year on the sideline, a year off of TV, a year away from that level of competition, to walk back in there into the fire against the former tag champs, I feel like we did a great job. Two out of three, I feel like we could take those. Just gotta sharpen up some things here and there but it was great man. It was great to feel like I was back home.
There were five title changes at Final Battle and the show was reviewed here on POST Wrestling. To watch that review, head over to the POST YouTube channel.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘One Fall with Ron Funches’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
