Simply put, Rhett Titus is on the run of his career to this point.

That’s nothing against previous work with the likes of Kenny King or his multitude of championships acquired on the independent scene, of course. However, as one-half of the current Ring of Honor Tag Team Champions and a vital part of the promotion’s stable The Foundation, Titus is finally beginning to earn the level of recognition many Ring of Honor fans have felt he’s deserved for years.

However, it almost didn’t come to pass. As we discussed as part of our recent chat for Love Wrestling, his joining The Foundation wasn’t something that ROH themselves had planned, but was, in fact, current PURE Champion Jonathan Gresham.

“Obviously, I don’t have any idea where you were headed prior to the pandemic coming and any of that sort of stuff,” I began my question. “You don’t want to say a benefit of everything that’s happened in the world, but, you’ve become a part of what is one of the coolest factions, not just in Ring of Honor but in professional wrestling, in my opinion.”

“Just give me a little bit of background on how it came to be and how you started to team with guys like Jon Gresham and Jay Lethal and a guy who’s got, by my money, the best name in pro wrestling, Hot Sauce Tracy Williams. How did that end up happening?”

Titus chuckled before beginning. “Well, to be honest, prior to the pandemic, I really had no idea of the direction that I was going either,” he said half-jokingly. “The pandemic gave everybody time to think and kinda come up with new stuff and that sort of thing.

But, you know, I still wasn’t really sure on what I was going to be doing. It was the first TV taping back in August, the first bubble that we had, and I got there and there wasn’t really anything for me. I was just kind of like, ‘alright,’ you know. Here I am, and there’s nothing to do.”

However, he continued, it was then that Gresham floated the idea of becoming a part of the Foundation.

“Jonathan Gresham pulled me aside and you know, me and Gresham have wrestled before, and we had a lot of cool talks about wrestling before, and we had a lot of similarities and mindsets about wrestling. He pulled me aside and he’s like, ‘hey, man, like, I had this idea.’ And, basically, he laid it all on me right there. I was like, ‘wow, this sounds amazing to me. This is something I want to be a part of, of course!’ Too many times have I seen people come into Ring of Honor and use Ring of Honor for their own benefit, and not really think about, you know, what Ring of Honor was built upon and people that want to be in Ring of Honor to be IN Ring of Honor. We’re four like-minded individuals, myself, Jon, Hot Sauce, and Jay Lethal, where we’re all about bringing the company back to its glory days and making sure the Code of Honor is adhered to and restoring honor. It’s not just a gimmick or an angle. This is how we all really feel and personally if you don’t feel the same way, you know, the door’s right there.”

Hot Sauce Tracy Williams

We both laughed as Titus zoomed his camera in on the door adjacent to us. Ironically, his door reference provided me the perfect opening to ask him about his current tag team partner, Tracy Williams. While Titus has had the opportunity to team with a number of notable ROH talents in the past, he and Williams simply seem to have a chemistry that maybe wasn’t there with previous partners.

“I have to ask on Tracy Williams, though, what makes him a particularly great tag team partner? I know that you’re a great wrestler. He’s a great wrestler, you’ve sort of been a tag team specialist, even in your own words, but there’s just something – and again, it might just be my personal bias coming in – but that just makes you guys work. You know what I mean?”

Titus agreed.

“You know, it’s one of those things where – I always had really good chemistry with Kenny King as a tag team, and once we stopped teaming, I was kind of searching for another tag partner. I just never found that same chemistry, like I had with Kenny, and Tracy Williams, he has had a lot of different types of partners as well. A few different ones in Ring of Honor, and also other ones on the indies. But, with all those different partners, you kind of learn how to work with different people and that sort of thing. You kind of learn how to adjust. With the experience of having all these other partners, when we came together, it was just kind of like it fit like a glove. [We’ve] both kind of been deemed tag team specialists over the years, so to put the two of us together, it was right from the start.”

“We made history at Final Battle, in the first-ever pure rules tag team match, which I’m very proud of and we wrestled two really, really good pure wrestlers in Fred Yehi and Wheeler YUTA. But, from there, we kind of went on a roll, and now we’re the Ring of Honor World Tag Team Champions. So, hey, man, we’ve only had four or five tag team matches together as a team, but we’re the champs now and we can only get better from here.

”

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any of the above quotations used.

From April 6, 2019 to September 27 of the same year, Matt Taven reigned supreme as the Ring of Honor Heavyweight Champion. Whether it be initially winning the championship at the joint Ring of Honor/NJPW G1 Supercard at Madison Square Garden or defences against the likes of Volador Jr. and PCO, nearly every professional wrestling fan can find a personal highlight or two from Taven’s run on top of the company.

Now, just over a year-and-a-half removed from the end of his championship reign, Taven is in the midst of an OGK reunion with best friend Mike Bennett rather than pursuing the ROH Championship himself. I felt it was the perfect time to ask Taven about his feelings on his title run and what he feels should be looked back on from his time on top.

“It’s been about a year, or a real year, since you carried the Heavyweight Championship” I began. “I don’t like using the word legacy, especially when I would have to guess sooner rather than later, you would want to be going after that Championship again.”

“But, when you look back at your Ring of Honor title reign, what would you say your legacy or what would you say people looking back on your reign would say about Matt Taven’s reign as World Heavyweight Champion?”

“Well, I guess it would have to depend on who you ask” Taven began half-jokingly. “I’ve never been loved by the internet community, which it is what it is at this point. But I always felt like – you know, I joke to other people in the locker room I’m the Rodney Dangerfield of wrestling: ‘I get no respect!’ And I feel like a great artist, those people that go back and watch it now, it’s hard to see any holes in it.

“I took a lot of pride being the champion at that time,” Taven continued. “I mean, we knew what was coming. You know, half the roster had left on the last day of the year before, and there’s only a couple of people that really would want to have that spot because it’s not the best one to have knowing what’s coming down the pipe.

But that’s why I’m – that’s what drives me as a competitor, you know what I mean? Not only have I been a wrestling fan my entire life, but I’ve been an athlete, someone who’s been involved in some sort of sport my entire life, and someone who’s just has a competitive nature. If we’re gonna play Monopoly, I will go all 16 hours until I win.”

“Or I’m flipping the board when I lose!” I laughed

“You’re the banker, you’ve been cheating this entire time!” Taven retorted. “One or the other is going to happen. That competitive spirit in me is like, ‘let’s do this.

‘ I’ll take the heat, I’ll throw it on my shoulders. Let’s go forward and I’ll take the punches. And, when you go back and you watch, you know, I think me and Volador Jr, me and Tracy Williams, me and Flip, me, Jay Lethal and Kenny King in New York. I’m sure I’m missing a bunch. Even I like the Alex Shelley match. There’s so many. I mean, there was just match after match after match. And, you know, every single month I’m putting out these videos, this new promo, having a new match with another person. Maybe I’m biased, maybe it’s me. I don’t know. But I daresay anyone wants to go back and watch it, it’s something that I’m very proud of, and I truly believe will be looked back at fondly.

When we get to look back at it with a little clearer heads with retrospect.”

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used.

Whether it’s running 70 kilometre super-marathons or taking flip bumps to the floor from the top rope, no one would argue that PCO certainly goes above and beyond in trying to reach his goals.

That was something we chatted about as part of our upcoming conversation for Love Wrestling, and especially as it pertained to a certain Canadian MMA legend.

“You mentioned that you were training with George St. Pierre a while back,” I commented near the start of our recent chat. “Just take me through how he inspired you and continued to motivate you, because, you know, they’re very similar worlds between the UFC and professional wrestling, but obviously very different as well.”

“Yeah, I think George was one of the most disciplined athletes that I’ve seen around me,” replied the French Canadian Frankenstein. “When I trained with him, it was just training from morning to night, basically. We had done the workout training in the gym, bodybuilding type of deal where everything (was) for the strengths, and then we would go to his house, and then we’d run some sprints, and then we would run like – basically a bunch of sprints. I remember it was during December, it was super cold, and [there was] a lot of ice and snow. We would go like every day. And after that, you know, I would do my own thing. So he was going to striking coaches, and then he had his jujitsu course, and then – he had like four or five [training sessions] per day. [He] was non-stop.”

“I trained with him for maybe three months, and I learned so much. I learned so much,” continued the former Ring of Honor Champion.

“When I saw him having all the success that he had, to me, it was no fluke, no luck.

A lot of people, sometimes they think someone is lucky to have like great skills or anything like that. He worked for everything that he had. Even on his days off, he would reinvest this money. Let’s say he had a big fight and he could have two, three months off. He would just go on a trip [to] Thailand and just find a place to train there. Or, if he would fly to Japan for conferences and things like that, he would find the time to train.”

“He just loves it, though. I mean, [he’s] still got to be disciplined, but he’s very passionate about what he does. When you got the passion [for] what you’re doing, that helps a little bit. But, sometimes I’ve seen other pros that didn’t train hard. I’ve sometimes had the feeling that a lot of guys trained because they had to train. But, George, I felt like he trained because he liked to train. It was just the way he was built, just the way he built himself because it’s all about habits. It has to become a habit.”

Of course, there are a multitude of comparables between St. Pierre and PCO when it comes to work ethic, something I I noted to the Canadian star as we chatted. “I think a lot of people would look at yourself as someone in Ring of Honor who would be an example of that,” I commented to him. “[Someone] who’s constantly pushing [and] constantly trying to better himself. Who are some people that you look to in the promotion as motivators or locker room leaders to steal another cliche.”

“You see a lot of them but we don’t really – it’s hard for me to see someone in a dressing locker room or meeting or just [the] roster getting all together and to pinpoint the leaders. That’s not hard during a meeting, but I don’t have the chance to see them at home, how they go and what they do. Like, no one knows really what I do and what – you know, pretty much everybody’s on their own once you go back home. You can go to the gym on the road, but it’s not gonna show. I think the real question is what we do when there’s nobody watching us. I think that’s where the real challenge is. It’s not when someone is watching you and says, ‘okay, there’s people watching. I’m gonna step in the ring and I’m gonna show them that I work hard all the time.’ If you don’t do nothing at home, it’s not going to – I don’t think it’s gonna work. I think it’s all what you do when there’s nobody watching you. I like guys like Jay Lethal. He’s a good leade for Ring of Honor. I believe he’s very passionate about what he does and he knows what he’s talking about. So I really like Jay Lethal as a leader. I think he’s a cool guy, [with] good knowledge of the business and things like that. Matt Taven’s another one who takes a lot of lead in Ring of Honor. There’s plenty. Jay Briscoe was another leader. Both Briscoes, but Jay’s a little bit more verbal. There’s plenty of good leaders. I mean, Dalton Castle, there’s so many.

It’s hard to just – I don’t like to mention names like that because sometimes I forget one name and someone messages me!”

Please credit Spencer Love with any of the above transcriptions used.