Rhett Titus talks about his history with Ring of Honor

Rhett Titus is one half of the current Ring of Honor Tag Team Champions. Alongside his tag team partner, Tracey Williams, they currently make up half of The Foundation. The other members are Jay Lethal and Jonathan Gresham.

The Beginning of Rhett Titus

“From my earliest memories as a kid, they all involved professional wrestling,” Titus said. He recalls playing with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures and pretending that one was Ric Flair and the other was Sting. In kindergarten, he decided he wanted to be a professional wrestler.

“As I got older, I always went to wrestling shows,” says Titus. One show he went to with his brother-in-law, which featured Eddie Guerrero and Steve Corino, proved to be a formative one for Titus. “It turned out to be the first-ever Ring of Honor show.” That was the beginning of his love for Ring of Honor. At 17 years old, he tried out for Ring of Honor and worked closely with CM Punk and Samoa Joe. When the try-out concluded, he was signed to the promotion.

“Six months after training I had my first match on Ring of Honor dark. I had the opportunity to learn from the entire ROH locker room,” Titus stated. Some of the guys who he learned a lot from and took interest in his matches were Austin Aries, Samoa Joe, Bryan Danielson, and Christopher Daniels.

Going into his first match he felt a lot of pressure, “the fans of Ring of Honor are some of the smartest fans in the world.” It was very intimidating to him, but he recalls talking to Les Thatcher before his match. Something he learned from Thatcher is that if you’re not nervous, it’s time to get out of wrestling. “I remember coming back from my first match and Austin Aries told me it went a lot better than he thought it was going to.”

Rhett Titus talks Early Days of Ring of Honor

“ROH born, ROH bred, ROH until I’m dead.” When Rhett Titus first signed with Ring of Honor, they weren’t even doing contracts yet. “My thought at the time was to just keep getting consistently booked on the main show.” In May of 2008, this is when things started for Titus.

When Ring of Honor debuted at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Gabe Sapolsky came over and told Rhett he was going to be on the main card, “it caught me by surprise but I was ready.” Titus recalled a funny rib Adam Pearce pulled on him. “Adam, who was doing ring announcing at the time, decided it would be funny to call me the sexiest man alive, so I went out there and just did my best Michael Hayes impression.”

“After that match, everyone was shocked. I ran with it and it kind of morphed into my debut at Hammerstein which was the ‘Addicted To Love’ character.” There were a lot of incredible wrestlers in Ring of Honor at the time and Titus felt the way to make him stand out the best would be to make a memorable character.

All Night Express with Kenny King

“The first time I actually met Kenny [King] I was doing push-ups to get ready for a match, and I was with Gabe Sapolsky. Kenny walked up and said he didn’t need to do push-ups before a match to be ready,” Rhett said. “I always had a bad taste in my mouth after that from him.”

When Rhett was approached about doing the tag team, he was a little hesitant in the beginning because he was always a singles wrestler prior. “Shortly after we started teaming we began building great chemistry together and never looked back.”

Titus and Kenny King, known collectively as the All Night Express, worked with a lot of great tag teams. Futureshock’s (Adam Cole and Kyle O’Reilly) and the Young Bucks’ respective debut matches in New York City came against ANX, “we made them both look very good, and that was our job, to help make the next team.”

Then, all of a sudden, Ring of Honor decided to go with Rhett Titus and Kenny King as the top team in the company. “They told us we were going to get our shot against Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin, where we won the tag team championships.” Unfortunately, two weeks later Kenny King went to Impact and this all came crashing down pretty quick.

Rhett Titus Singles Run

After splitting from King, Titus had a pretty notable singles run. One of the matches he had was an ROH World Championship match against Kevin Steen. This was his first and only shot’s at ROH’s top prize. “It was cool and something I worked very hard for,” Titus said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself because as a fan I watched so man ROH World Championship matches and I wanted to live up to the hype.” Rhett also hopes people look back on it fondly.

Shortly after this, Rhett Titus created another character called The Romantic Touch. “It was a very fun character to play,” Titus said. Titus also said this was supposed to be a short thing but turned into a much longer than envisioned character. “The Romantic Touch was a way for me to go back to playing a character.”

Rhett Titus Joins The Foundation

“I wrestled all the guys in the group and we all had really good matches together,” Titus said of his Foundation stablemates. He also recalls always talking to Jonathan Gresham about what others are doing. Also, they had similar ideas on what wrestling and professional wrestling as a whole should be.

When Ring of Honor returned after COVID-19 paused operations, Titus found out there was nothing for him to do. “Gresham pulled me aside and told me the idea of The Foundation and I loved it. We are four like-minded individuals who just want to see Ring of Honor be the best that it could be and bring back the glory days with pure wrestling,” said Titus. “It isn’t a stunt show or a comedy show, it’s professional wrestling.”

“There’s a lot of rule-breakers around these days and we need to respect the rules of professional wrestling.” Rhett Titus and Tracy Williams won the Ring of Honor World Tag Team Championships at the 19th Anniversary Show last month. “So many times I’ve been counted out, and to come back nine years later and win gold again was just incredible.”

Rhett Titus’ current character has two sides to it. On one side, is the family man who cares about his friends and family and will do anything to help them. However, don’t mistake that kindness for weakness because on the other side is a “hired killer” of sorts, who is not afraid to handle what needs to be handled.

What’s Next for Rhett Titus?

“Right now, I’m in the top two rankings for the Pure Championship, which is held by fellow Foundation member Jonathan Gresham,” says Titus. “As long as the Foundation holds on to the championship it’s cool with all of us.”

“A lot of my career I’ve been known as a tag team specialist and I take pride in that. Just like I take pride in being one half of the current Ring of Honor Tag Team Champions,” Titus said. “I would like to incorporate the pure rules in tag matches going forward.”