On the pre-show, Gordon won a Battle Royal to secure the title shot.
The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson), Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega presented ALL IN in September of 2018 at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Fast forward to present day, All Elite Wrestling is running the All In event from Wembley Stadium in London, England.
At the 2018 installment of the event, Flip Gordon, disguised as ‘Chico El Luchador’, won a Battle Rattle to secure an ROH World Championship match later in the night against Jay Lethal. Flip was not victorious in his attempt to become champion.
He told Piers Austin that he thought he was going to win the title and feels it would’ve been biggest payoff personally. He said if there was a time to put the title on him, it was there.
Me too (Gordon thought he was going to win ROH World Title at ALL IN)… Honestly, not to go into business for myself, but I thought that would have been the biggest payoff personally but that’s just me because my goal is to be ROH World Champion, you know? But to me, I’m like, oh, we’ve had just this big pop winning the Over The Top Battle Royal. Oh, and now we’ve just lost. It was like that was my moment. If there was any time to put a strap on me, that was the time I had thought. But, I’m fine with whatever, you know what I mean? My bag was a little bit lighter going home (he laughed). That’s a heavy belt. That’s a very heavy championship belt.
When asked why he did not land in AEW, Flip clarified that he had a longer contract than others who were departing Ring of Honor at the time. He re-signed with ROH and admitted that he did not have the best understanding of how contracts worked, but just wanted a steady paycheck.
When that deal came up, Gordon said ROH offered him the best deal out of the other options and in addition to that, his goal was always to become World Champion in the company.
I had a longer contract than everybody else (in The Elite) and so I was at Best of the Super Juniors with Marty (Scurll) and my contract had just come up while I was in Japan and it being my first deal, well technically my second deal, I didn’t understand how contracts worked, I didn’t understand that it would go month-to-month. In my head, I’m like I need to re-sign so I have a guaranteed paycheck, you know what I mean? Every month going forward and so I kind of rushed into re-signing that before talking to the boys and so I ended up signing a multi-year deal and that kept me there well past like an extra year-and-a-half or so past when The Elite left and so once that contract came up and I renegotiated, Ring of Honor gave me the best bid out of all three companies, or four companies, and so I stuck with Ring of Honor. I wanted to be Ring of Honor World Champion. That was my goal. I told myself I wasn’t leaving until I became world champion. Unfortunately, they got rid of me before I could do it so that was kind of my out but that’s still a goal of mine. I have lots of goals in wrestling, I’m in no rush to go anywhere. I’m telling my own story and I have my own ideas and things I wanna do in this business and I’m in no rush to go anywhere and I just want to accomplish the goals that I set up for myself.
Ring of Honor is owned by AEW President Tony Khan and the next pay-per-view on the docket for ROH is Death Before Dishonor on July 21st in Trenton, New Jersey.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Piers Austin with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
