Awesome / William Regal

• Bringing in the brass knuckles in late 2001 to early 2002 during his feud with Edge and using them to win Edge's Intercontinental Championship at the 2002 Royal Rumble (January 20, 2002). This was Regal's first Intercontinental title win and the highest-level title belt he has ever held in WWE to date.
• April 21, 2008: Winning the 2008 King of the Ring (KotR) tournament, shortly before his 40th birthday. (Granted it was on Raw (not on pay-per-view) and he seemingly rigged the tournament in his favor as Raw General Manager.) This not only made him literally "regal" but also made him both the first UK-born winner and the first KotR winner born outside of North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico), both in Kayfabe and Real Life.
• His speech in defense of Eugene is a reminder that he is far from an aging Joke Character, and he has a lot of bile and venom he is not afraid of unleashing, no matter how big his opponent nor how clear it is he's going to lose. To cap it all off, that speech is to Triple freakin' H who was still somewhat in his Reign of Terror era.
• May 10, 2011 (his 43rd birthday): After a weeks-long feud with rookie Jacob Novak on WWE NXT (NXT Redemption, to be exact), in which Novak taunts Regal by calling him things like "old" and "washed up", Regal finally defeats Novak by submission with the Regal Stretch. (Regal had to wait a week to get his hands on Novak because of Novak's pro JTG interfering, but it was worth it.) Shortly after, Novak got eliminated from NXT on May 17th (once again the first rookie eliminated from NXT, having been the first elimination on the previous season) and released from WWE in Real Life on June 13th of that same year.
• ANY match with Chris Benoit. WCW Nitro, The 2000 Brian Pillman tribute, 2005-2006 on Smackdown and Velocity, each one testimony to the mens' amazing technical prowess and crowd psychology, as well as essential viewing aids for "any up-and-coming professional wrestler", as Dr. Tom Pritchard put it.
• His final retirement match against Antonio Cesaro on NXT, and the promo he did before the match. A glorious way to go out.
  • You should watch Regal analyse the match on his podcast 9 years later. So many little details covered, from the way Cesaro blocks Regal from getting his knee next to his opponent's head during the roll-up attempt, to the psychology of Regal turning his back on his opponent for one of the few times in his career out of sheer despairing frustration after Cesaro fights out of the Regal Stretch. Indeed, Regal claims that his aim in his career was to be the greatest "details wrestler" in the world, and it's quite possible he accomplished that goal.
• His debut at AEW Revolution 2022, storming down to the ring at the end of Jon Moxley's win over Bryan Danielson when Sore Loser Danielson continued to brawl with Moxley after being outwrestled and pinned. Separating the two men, he pushed Moxley back then slapped him, getting right up into his face and causing Moxley's blood to smear onto his own forehead, then turned around and smacked Danielson as well right as the American Dragon was getting smug, before sternly forcing the two men to shake hands. The fans went bananas as not only will the dream prospect of a Moxley and Danielson-led stable apparently be coming to fruition, but one of the great minds of the business will apparently be helping them oversee it.
• October 18, 2022, AEW Dynamite: Title Tuesday: After MJF chews him out in a scathing promo about how Regal's email telling him when he was 19 that the recruiting methods had changed and WWE was no longer interested in him almost drove him to suicide, Regal serves him a no less scathing rebuttal:
  Job done. You mentioned being 19 and being a child. At 16, I left home and went to work on a carnival and was having to fight grown men to get into this industry. I wasn't trying to cast you aside, Max; I saw exactly, in you, what I'm seeing now and it's making me happy. I saw somebody who was going to be a big, big star. I wanted a light to fire under your backside, because we live in a day and age where you can't have grown men smashing your face in when you're 16! And when you're 17! And when you're crying every single night that you go to bed and there's blood running out of every hole in your body! And you want to quit, but you won't let yourself because, I'm 17, I said no, I will not quit! I will keep going because I am going to be a professional wrestler! And if a bloody email is what it took to get you to this place and you've held on to that for seven years...! you've had it easy, sunshine.