It has been over 21 years since Ring of Honor crowned its first World Champion. Low Ki was the one to get that distinction, winning a fatal four-way match at the appropriately titled ‘Crowning a Champion’ event to win the title.
Since then, there have been 37 more reigns with the prestigious title. With ROH currently operating at a diminished capacity, title changes and defenses have been few and far between, with current champion Claudio Castagnoli only defending the title twice during his 240-day run.
The likes of Samoa Joe and Jay Lethal are synonymous with the ROH belt with Joe holding the record for the longest reign and Lethal keeping the record for the most defenses. This list, however, looks at five ROH World Champions whose title wins came out of left field.
Chris Jericho
Chris Jericho is one of the most prestigious wrestlers to hold the ROH World Championship, but his title run was a surprise because the former Y2J was widely regarded as too good for the ROH belt.
Having won all there is to win in the WWE, Jericho spearheaded the rise of AEW when he became the inaugural champion in Tony Khan’s company. Even after losing the belt to Jon Moxley, Jericho was a featured player on AEW and he was hardly expected to have anything to do with ROH when Khan announced that he had purchased it.
At a stage in his wrestling career where he didn’t really need championships to solidify his legacy, Jericho defeated ROH Champion Claudio Castagnoli at the 2022 AEW Grand Slam to win the title. Having one of the greatest wrestlers of all time holding the belt did get more eyeballs on the belt, but hearing Jericho being announced as the ROH World Champion gave a sense of incredulity to the casual fan.
Jamie Noble
Wrestling fans hardly remember current WWE producer and former Cruiserweight champion Jamie Noble wrestling for ROH, let alone winning the company’s world championship. Back in 2004, Noble had wrapped up a run in the WWE where he was one the mainstays of a fantastic Cruiserweight division comprising of the likes of Rey Mysterio, Tajiri, Billy Kidman, Chavo Guerrero, and for a short while, Matt Hardy.
After a short stint with NJPW, Noble wrestled a few shows for ROH under his real name James Gibson. In August of 2005, Noble surprisingly defeated CM Punk, Samoa Joe, and Christopher Daniels in a four-way to become the ROH World Champion. The company seemed to put the belt on Noble just because of his WWE name value, but it came back to bite them when Noble left ROH within 2 months of winning the title to rejoin the WWE.
Xavier
The list of ROH World Champions constitutes a who’s who of professional wrestling, with most of the ROH World Champions going on to achieve greater fame with bigger wrestling promotions. One exception is the second-ever ROH Champion, Xavier.
It is unfair to throw dirt at Xavier as he came up at the same time that the likes of Bryan Danielson, CM Punk, and Samoa Joe were also progressing, but, unfortunately, the ROH World title reign remains Xavier’s career highlight.
Back in 2002, Xavier beat Low Ki to win the title after interference from Christopher Daniels’ stable The Prophecy. Xavier did have a commendable run with the belt, successfully defending his title against Jay Briscoe, AJ Styles, and Paul London. He would later lose the belt to Samoa Joe which kicked off Joe’s record 645-day run as ROH Champion.
Xavier would have multiple stints in the WWE as an enhancement talent and would also have a TNA dark match, but his ROH career remains his pinnacle in professional wrestling.
Takeshi Morishima
Takeshi Morishima’s 230-day run on top of ROH is nothing to be scoffed at and he was involved in classic matches with the likes of Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness.
However, his championship victory was unexpected as Homicide had just started his own world title run after overcoming multiple obstacles en route to the belt. Morishima was expected to be just another successful title defense for Homicide and until then, ROH had never had a non-American champion.
Morishima wasn’t really famous in the US either, having primarily wrestled for Pro Wrestling NOAH before coming to the States where he was scheduled to wrestle just four matches before returning to Japan. Despite ROH fans expecting that he would be a foreign heel that Homicide would overcome, Morishima won the belt in his second match for ROH.
He would wrestle two more matches in the US, before going back to Japan for nearly two months while still holding the ROH gold. Also, he did have several title defenses on his return, but his original title victory shocked the ROH fans.
Kyle O’Reilly
Kyle O’Reilly was primarily a tag team wrestler during his eight-year stint at ROH. As part of reDRagon with Bobby Fish, he became a three-time ROH tag team champion and had great matches with the likes of The Briscoes and The Young Bucks. O’Reilly was surprisingly thrust into a World title program with Adam Cole in 2016 and got an opportunity to headline ROH’s main PPV Final Battle.
It was a time when a lot of major ROH stars were leaving the promotion and even O’Reilly had his contract coming up for renewal. Despite ROH fans expecting that Cole would retain the belt against the tag team specialist, O’Reilly won the title from his future Undisputed Era stablemate.
The title change came to naught as O’Reilly opted not to re-sign with ROH and he lost the title back to Cole at NJPW’s WrestleKingdom 11 show at the Tokyo Dome a month later. O’Reilly still holds the record for the shortest world title reign in ROH history.
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