By Mike DeRosenroll, Torch ROH specialist

In my last column, I promised to rebut Bruce Mitchell's claim that character development was not a strength of former ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky by highlighting classic ROH feuds featuring great character development in my next three columns. I previously wrote a column on arguably the best ROH feud with strong character development, the C.M. Punk-Ricky Steamboat feud of 2004, but there are many others to choose from.

Feud Context

This week, let's look back at the 2005 mid-card feud between Colt Cabana and Nigel McGuinness. McGuinness is now a top ROH star, and held the ROH World Title for 18 months from October 2007 to April 2009, but back in 2005 he was only starting to receive a push. He worked his way into ROH in the summer of 2003 and spent his first year working occasional shows on the undercard. In mid-2004, McGuinness began getting a push and getting some wins over name talent to move him up the card. However, his persona during this initial push was just that of a generic babyface. It was during the Cabana feud that McGuinness began to display his great charisma and personality.

Meanwhile, Cabana had been with ROH since late 2002 and had been established as an upper-mid-card act who could rotate in and out of the main event picture since early 2004. He had a ROH Tag Team title run with C.M. Punk in mid-2004, got a rare pinfall on Samoa Joe during Joe's 20-month ROH World Title reign (he pinned Joe to eliminate him from the 2004 Survival of the Fittest tournament), and was just coming off a short, but great World Title feud with Austin Aries. (I reviewed the Aries-Cabana feud in this column.)

First a Friendly Rivalry

Cabana and McGuinness first faced each other on the midcard of the Third Anniversary Celebration Part 2, in Dayton, Ohio. Since both were babyfaces, they did a lot of comedy and exchanged a lot of European-style holds and counters until Cabana finally caught McGuiness with a leverage pin. After the show, Cabana hosted McGuinness on his "Good Times Great Memories" talk show segment. McGuinness said he would beat Cabana if they had a re-match, but Cabana instead proposed that they form a tag team and McGuinness accepted.

The next night, at Third Anniversary Celebration Part 3 in Chicago, Cabana and McGuinness defeated ROH Tag Team Champions Dan Maff and B.J. Whitmer in an impromptu non-title match with Bobby Heenan in Cabana and McGuinness's corner and Jim Cornette in Maff and Whitmer's corner. This earned Cabana and McGuinness a title shot against Maff & Whitmer at Back to Basics in Woodbridge, Conn. To McGuinness's dismay, Cabana booked himself in a singles match earlier the same night to climb the singles rankings. Cabana won the show-opening singles match against Delirious, but took the pin in the tag title match later in the show. After the show, McGuinness interrupted "Good Times, Great Memories" to complain that Cabana was not taking their team seriously and end the partnership.

Bad Feelings Build

A month later, Cabana and McGuinness were two of the four participants in a Double Stakes Four Corner Survival Match at Stalemate in Boston (the other two competitors were Samoa Joe and Alex Shelley - the Double Stakes stipulation meant there would be two falls with the winner of the first fall earning a Pure Title shot and the winner of the second fall earning a World Title shot). Before the match, McGuinness cut a promo on Cabana saying he was going to do a lot better than Cabana in singles competition because he was more serious about wrestling than the goofy Cabana. During the match, Cabana saved McGuinness from Joe's rear naked choke. Later, Joe got Cabana in the STF submission. McGuinness took a while to think about it before finally returning the earlier favor and saving Cabana. However, McGuinness immediately nailed Cabana with a modified divorce court, which led to Joe finishing Cabana off with a rear naked choke (Shelley later won the second fall).

Cabana and McGuinness were then booked to face each other on the undercard of Manhattan Mayhem in May. It was another European-style back-and-forth affair. McGuinness eventually hit Cabana with a low blow, though it was unclear whether it was intentional. The referee gave McGuinness the benefit of the doubt, and McGuinness used the advantage to pin Cabana with the same leverage move Cabana used to pin him in their first match. After the match, McGuinness apologized to Cabana and claimed the low blow was accidental.

The next weekend, at The Final Showdown in Dayton, Cabana teamed up with Doug Williams to take on McGuinness and Chad Collyer in a tag match. Cabana got the better of McGuinness and pinned him clean. The next night, at Nowhere to Run in Chicago, Cabana and McGuinness faced each other one-on-one. It was another back-and-forth European-style match until Cabana accidentally hit McGuinness with a low blow. Unlike McGuinness at Manhattan Mayhem, Cabana backed off to give McGuinness time to recover. However, McGuinness was enraged and head butted Cabana, busting him open. This enraged Cabana and the match degenerated into a slugfest. McGuinness won with an intentional low blow when the referee wasn't looking and ran to the back while Cabana was writhing in pain.

Anger Boils Over

At New Frontiers in Buffalo, New York, Cabana reunited with C.M. Punk to face McGuinness and Collyer in a tag match. The show featured a great pre-match segment with Punk and Cabana that highlighted how Cabana's anger at McGuinness had made the normally easygoing Cabana more serious. In contrast to the earlier Cabana-McGuinness matches, they brawled with each other every time they were in the ring together. McGuinness and Collyer used heel tactics to win the match and continue the feud.

Cabana and McGuinness' next confrontation was European Rules Match at Escape From New York. This was a two-out-of-three falls match divided into rounds where closed fists could get you disqualified. The closed fist stipulation forced them back to European-style wrestling. McGuinness won this match clean, his first clean victory of the feud. Losing cleanly discouraged Cabana, and he announced that he was going to Europe to improve himself and learn how to beat McGuinness at his own game. This provided a storyline explanation for Cabana to miss the next couple of shows while he was legitimately on a European tour.

The blow-off to the feud came at Night of the Grudges II in Morristown, New Jersey, after Cabana had returned from Europe. It was called a Soccer Riot Match, which meant everything was legal. This wasn't the greatest hardcore match ever, but the way Cabana and McGuinness executed the match fit their characters and this feud's mid-card status while providing a fun and satisfying conclusion to the feud.

Character Development in This Feud

Good character development gives you a better understanding of a character, making them more well-rounded and believable, while remaining consistent with what the audience already knows about the character. This feud developed both Cabana and McGuinness nicely.

In Cabana's case, the fans began the feud knowing that Cabana was C.M. Punk's goofy fun-loving sidekick. Cabana stayed true to his easygoing ways, even as McGuinness' provocations escalated. Finally, however, we saw another side of Cabana when McGuinness head butted him at Nowhere to Run, establishing that Cabana could find that intensity within him when sufficiently provoked. Cabana's interactions with Punk after McGuinness has finally set Cabana off also added an interesting new wrinkle to the Cabana-Punk dynamic, showing that Cabana was more than just a lackey to Punk and that Punk really did consider him a friend. Cabana's intense side would later be explored more deeply in this feud with Homicide spanning the latter half of 2005 and the first few months of 2006.

Meanwhile, McGuinness had been pretty bland prior to this feud (this is not a criticism, one of ROH's strengths in the Sapolsky era was that many of the undercard wrestlers were bland in order to make the more colorful wrestlers higher up the card stand out more.) Now that McGuinness was getting a push, this feud began developing his personality. We learned that, while McGuinness had seemed like an honorable wrestler, he was prone to getting frustrated when things did not go his way and, when frustrated, would resort to dirty tactics (a classic heel character flaw). We also learned that he was intelligent and cunning, but was vulnerable to making mistakes when angry (like the headbutt that set off Cabana). McGuinness would continue to develop this heel persona through the rest of 2005 and into 2006, including a long Pure title reign. Ultimately, during his mid-2006 feud with Bryan Danielson over unification of the World and Pure titles, McGuinness would find a new level of confidence within himself that would lead him back into the babyface ranks.

This feud demonstrated how these character developments could be advanced primarily through in-ring storytelling. While neither of these characters was particularly new in the history of wrestling, they had the benefits of being developed believably and organically, rather than seem forced like so many one-dimensional gimmicks are.

PWTorch VIP members have first-look access to all of Torch ROH specialist Mike DeRosenroll's ROH-related blogs in the VIP Forum. His blogs are posted under the M2_Jay screenname.

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