Ring of Honor’s Matt Taven recently spoke with Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling. “The Trend” talked about his decision to re-sign with ROH in 2019, working with The Elite and sticking around after they left, potentially reuniting with Mike Bennett and more. Highlights and the full interview are below:
Matt Taven on his decision to re-sign with ROH in 2019:
“Well we talked about the fact that they were so good to me, the last time I had surgery. They had such faith in me and also, I’m not deaf or blind, I knew that Ring of Honor had hit that hard time that we knew was coming when The Elite and S.C.U. and the roster was really gonna split with the creation of AEW and so I had this sense of pride to me. I was like, ‘I don’t want to leave now. I don’t want to leave when I know we’re gonna come back up and I wanna be a part of that resurgence.’ I have so much pride in Ring of Honor. I’ve been here since our first — the first time we were on iPPV, real pay-per-view. I’ve been around for all of that so, there’s definitely a part of it that feels like it’s kind of my baby or I’m part of this pillar of this company and I love that. I appreciate the amount of faith Ring of Honor’s had in me over the years and again, with wrestling, they are always talking about, ‘What about this? What about that?’ So it’s always just up in the air, but when I sat down with ROH, really, the loyalty that they’ve shown me over the years was the biggest factor and they told me they want Matt Taven to be a big part of the future here, and I knew going in to probably the last meeting of negotiations, I already kind of in my heart wanted to stay. So they made it very easy for me by just saying, ‘We want you to be here and we see you as a big part of the future’ and so, to have that stability at home, to know that this place will always have my back and I will always have it and I don’t kind of have to question what might happen to Matt Taven if I go here or there is something I don’t really think you can put a price tag on or anything like that and granted, Ring of Honor has really built a great group of people and have taken care of them during the pandemic like I said and really just built this loyalty around the office and just a groundswell from the talent of like, ‘Yeah, they’ve done so much for us, we’re loyal to them and now we need to really amp up this momentum that Ring of Honor’s rebuilding.’”
Working with The Elite/Bullet Club in ROH/credits The Young Bucks for their help:
“Some fantastic times with wrestling The Elite or The Bucks or Bullet Club or whatever version of the trio there was. Two stand out in particular and honestly, it was a good two years of us headlining every show with The Bucks and not to sound — to complain about it at all and I’m not, but I feel like maybe The Kingdom didn’t get their just due. We understand that everyone loves The Young Bucks, but they’re out there dancing with someone and for two years, we were out there killing it with The Bucks and wrestling today, and I’ve told The Young Bucks this in person but wrestling today is completely different because of them. They legit changed the world. As much as that’s on a t-shirt, it’s so true and I personally owe so much to them. They were great guys, helped us out tremendously in Ring of Honor.”
Matt is hoping to team with Mike Bennett again:
“It’s one of those things I feel like has been talked about every month since five years ago, and mostly talked about via text message between me and Mike. Contracts come up and things get talked about and you’re like, ‘Oh, we could do this, we could do that’ and it’s always in the back of our minds of getting the band back together and I think there’s so much more that goes into it. Not just as a team but Mike was one of the first guys in wrestling in general, in my wrestling life that I kinda really latched onto and became friends with. Me and Mike are the same age but I started wrestling when I was 23 and Mike started wrestling when he was 15, so he had an eight-year advantage on me and so I kind of always looked up to him and needed him for advice and to show me the way. At the same time, we’re peas in a pod because we’re the same age so, I have this weird friendship but to another level because he was definitely my big brother growing up in the wrestling world for the first couple of years so, whenever anyone says, ‘Would you wanna get back together with Mike Bennett?’ It’s like of course I’d wanna hang out with my best friend all the time and go around the world so, it’s one of those things where… the stars need to align obviously, but we’re hoping one day they do. Unfortunately, the pandemic has not helped any of these things but, with the amount of protocols that you have to go through at Ring of Honor, it’s kinda a tough time to [be] bringing talent back in and it’s so many…”
“Of course [it could conflict with Mike Bennett’s other dates] and obviously me and Bennett could do something internationally because I’m under an exclusive contract here in the States but, you can’t go anywhere internationally in the middle of a pandemic. To me, it will always be something I think both of us think about and I think we’re always kinda waiting on the time to be right. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like it will happen immediately like I would like it to but hopefully one day, we can make sure that our last match together isn’t the one where I blow out my ACL.”
