Matt Taven wants to win all of the gold with Mike Bennett.
Taven and Bennett, collectively known as The OGK, reunited in ROH in 2020 and won the ROH World Tag Team Championship for the second time at Honor For All 2021. They later dropped the gold to The Briscoe Brothers at Final Battle, and they have been competing for IMPACT Wrestling, NWA, and other companies ever since.
Speaking with Steve Fall of NBC Sports Boston, Taven recalled how he and Bennett hit their stride with their reunion, but they wound up in an unpredictable situation when ROH announced its hiatus at the end of 2021.
"I think Mike and I, we waited for five years to really kinda be back together as a team because I think in 2015, when I blow my knee out and he goes to TNA, we were just kind of really hitting out stride as a team, and in their five years that we were both doing different things, we were both doing great stuff, but at the same time, we would be side-texting like, ‘Hey, the day we get back together, let’s do X, Y, Z,’ and you just grow so much as people that you’re excited for what, if you ever got back together, what that would look like. Then we did, we end up winning the tag titles again at Ring of Honor, and then it’s kind of like, phew, you’re thrown out in the wind again. So just when I thought we had our footing to, as a team again, the ground changes underneath you," he said.
Taven went on to describe how he wants to win the IMPACT World Tag Team Championship, among other titles, so The OGK can prove that they are one of the best duos on the planet.
"So now that we’re at IMPACT, and now that we’re kind of finding our place there, we need a shot at the IMPACT Tag Titles. It’s been six months, we haven’t gotten one. We’re clearly the best team in IMPACT and there’s no doubt about that. NWA as well, we’ve been all over that television since last October, we haven’t had a tag team title shot there, you know what I mean. What are these people scared of? I mean I got all these belts behind me, I need to get more replica belts and more bookshelves to fill up. So I need more shots at these titles because it’s the whole reason why we got back together, to show people that we are one of the best tag teams, if not the best tag team in the world. Anytime we’re in there with a top team, we prove that time and time again," Taven said.
The former ROH World Champion concluded emphasizing his goal to win the gold in IMPACT and NWA because, as far as he knows, that would be an unprecedented feat, given his previous reigns in ROH and NJPW.
"We have this weekend, we’re going out to Pro Wrestling Revolver, wrestling for their tag titles, so I’m hoping that this kind of starts a snowball. We’ll win those, and then we’ll just win every single one along the way. But there’s no doubt that the IMPACT Tag Team Titles is something that is on my extremely short list. People have five-year goals, ten-year goals. Five weeks, I wanna be the IMPACT Tag Team Champions. I want it sooner than later, and the NWA one as well because to me, I’m a stat nerd. I love like, ‘Oh, who had the most rebounds that season? Let’s look them up and argue about it as I look it up on Wikipedia real quick.’ So I look at the stuff that I’ve done, and if I could say that I’m the only person, I can’t think of anyone else that has done it, but if I could become the only person that’s won the New Japan, Ring of Honor, IMPACT Wrestling and NWA tag team titles, I think I could be pretty happy with that. So that is the goal, not on the horizon, on the right now," Taven said.
Bennett and Taven won the Pro Wrestling REVOLVER Tag Team Championship by defeating the Prisoners of Society at the company's Cage of Horrors event on July 9.
Aside from his quest for tag team gold, Taven and Honor No More will battle Bullet Club at IMPACT Wrestling Emergence. More information is available here.
