Original Plans For Jay Lethal At ROH Final Battle: End Of An Era Revealed

The road to ROH Final Battle 2021 was a bumpy one, first with the announcement that ROH’s hiatus meant that the PPV would be ‘the end of an era’ and secondly because ROH talent were free to negotiate with other companies, with former two-time ROH World Champion Jay Lethal jumping ship to AEW.

Lethal came back to ROH at the last minute to fill in for Bandido in Final Battle’s main event against Jonathan Gresham, but according to Vincent on an appearance on The Shining Wizards Wrestling podcast, Lethal’s plans were originally much different:

“As it got close to the show [ROH Final Battle], I was kind of like, you know, like, ‘Wow. This could be potentially it right here,’ as far as Final Battle goes and this era, this is it," said Vincent. "You know, once my music comes on, this is it so, ‘I think I’m gonna really enjoy this one and dance on the barricade and stuff’ and I did. But it was, you know - it was bittersweet man and the first-ever Ring of Honor Six-Man Tag Team Champion and then the last ever for this era is just kind of a cool thing and I’m really - and I’ll kind of let this cat out of the bag. It doesn’t really matter now but it was supposed to be me versus Jay Lethal at Final Battle and that’s kind of where that was headed. You know, unfortunately with everything happening, you know, it didn’t really go that way which is, you know, I think Lethal and [Jonathan] Gresham for the world title was very - made the most sense and I thought that was a good move as far as I’m concerned but, doing the six-man thing with - I really liked it because now it’s almost like when I did it with The Kingdom, it was like [Matt] Taven at the forefront and then me and TK [O’Ryan] and this time it was me with my crew now winning the Six-Man Tag Titles. It was just kind of like a cool full-circle kind of thing but like, now, Dutch and BATEMAN being able to hold these things for the first time ever for those guys, it was kind of a cool thing for me, you know what I mean? Because they’re my buddies and you know, it was cool, it was great.”

Before Lethal left, he had several exchanges with Vincent’s group The Righteous on ROH TV, with Vincent confirming that Lethal would join up with the crew eventually:

“Yeah [story with Jay Lethal was leading to him joining The Righteous] and it’s a bummer man because I really — I put some thought into that and we did the purity, the white [clothing] and stuff and it was kind of — it was gonna be really fun. There was actually a promo that we did that actually never saw the light of day that’s still out there. Maybe I could eventually get it and just put it up there for fun or something as a memory. But, it was good man and that was the promo that I felt like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be fun. This has something to it. This is different,’ you know what I mean? It was just different and I was looking forward to it but you know, who knows? You know what I mean? Maybe eventually down the road, you never know. Like I said, wrestling’s crazy like that.”

H/T: POST Wrestling