Various: AEW & Impact Sending Talent for ROH Final Battle, Eddie Kingston on CM Punk Feud, Indies

Dec 11, 2021

ROH Final Battle 2021 News & Notes – AEW & Impact Sending Talent, Ticket Sales

As noted before, Ring of Honor announced that they have pulled Bandido from his scheduled match at tonight’s Final Battle 2021 event due to him recently testing positive for COVID-19. AEW talent Jay Lethal was recently announced to be Bandido’s replacement for his scheduled match against Jonathan Gresham at the event.

Fightful Select reported that their sources in ROH stated that the current belief is that AEW will be sending “multiple people” besides Lethal for ROH’s upcoming event. It was also reported that Impact Wrestling has also lent at least one of their contracted talent for ROH to use at tonight’s event.

ROH reportedly has sold around 1,564 tickets for tonight’s Final Battle 2021 event at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena in Baltimore, Maryland as of Saturday afternoon, according to WrestleTix.

Eddie Kingston Comments on Talks with Jon Moxley & Feud with CM Punk

News 12 New York held a recent interview with Eddie Kingston. One of the topics discussed included Kingston revealing the conversation he had with Jon Moxley prior to Moxley entering alcoholism treatment rehab.

“I told [Jon] Moxley before he went, you know and did what he had to do, I told him, ‘Man, none of this matters. Only thing that matters is your wife and your kid. I don’t even matter. You have to do this for them and I got your back regardless whether you go or not. I’m here,’ and he was like, ‘Okay man.’ He’s very one-word answer with everybody so, yeah, for someone like Mox, you gotta be able to read between the lines so when he says, ‘Okay man. Yeah, right,’ it’s not just that. It’s the other things he’s saying to you but no, I’m proud of him and he’s showing — he’s showing everybody, ‘Look man, we’re all flawed.’ Men can be flawed. We’re allowed to be. But what we’re not allowed to be is flawed and not changing, not trying to work on it. That’s not right, you know what I mean? So, I’m proud of him, he’s taking the right healthy steps so he can be around — me, I’m big into this — so that he can be around for his daughter. When it comes to kids, you know what I mean? Trust me, we’ll make money regardless, you know?”

Kingston also discussed his thoughts on his recent feud with CM Punk in AEW.

“First off, I didn’t see the thing with him [CM Punk] and MJF, because I don’t like either guy so I won’t watch. I’m not gonna lie to you. Plus I’m not gonna learn anything from it so I’d rather watch [Toshiaki] Kawada and [Kenta] Kobashi from 1998 for the 50th time. Anyway, that’s enough of me throwing shots at people. The thing with Punk, I guess you could say the ‘promo’ and I’m using quotations, it wasn’t a promo. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him and we’ve had a lot of things to say to each other that we never had the chance to say to each other. We’ve either said to friends, mutual friends of each other or we just decided to ignore each other or whatever. There’s a lot of other things I’m not gonna get too inside baseball on it, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of stuff that went on behind the scenes that no one really needs to know but, yeah, that wasn’t a promo. That was something we both wanted to say to each other for 15 years. That was 15 years of build up for both of us. So then you think, ‘How do you follow that up with a match?’ It wasn’t a match, we actually fought. I hit him, he hit me, you know what I mean? And whatever, it was over. It was over, we didn’t shake each other’s hands after the match like people do. We didn’t go on Twitter and say how great and lucky we were to face each other. Punk don’t like me, I don’t like Punk, that’s it. That’s the end of it, there’s no promo, there’s no let’s make this up. This is reality and that’s it. When we have to get in the ring, we’ll be professional but you know for a fact we’re gonna take a lot of shots at each other and that’s it. If the fans enjoy it, they enjoy it. At that point, with someone like him who I don’t like, I don’t care if people like it or not at that point. It could’ve been zero people in the audience, I was gonna hit him. That’s really it.
No, it’s the same thing with like, there’s people in wrestling I do not like. Punk is one, Cesaro’s another one. The big Swiss idiot at WWE, whatever, Cesaro. I know him as Claudio. I don’t like him, I don’t respect him, you know what I mean? He ever comes here, we’re gonna have a problem or whenever his contract’s up. I don’t even pay attention to what he does. But guys like that, I just don’t like, don’t respect.”

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

AEW talent Jack Evans recently stated on Twitter that he is currently dealing with an extortion scam by two police officers from the Del Valle Police Department in Mexico City. Evans also stated that he recently filed an official complaint and has put together all of his witnesses over the matter.

Game Changer Wrestling recently announced that Kevin Nash will be making an appearance for the company at their Most Notorious event on January 14, 2022 in Detroit, Michigan.

While responding to a recent fan question on Twitter, Rocky Romero announced that Trent’s mom Sue from AEW has been made into an official member of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s CHAOS stable.

As noted before, NJPW recently ended their working partnership with Major League Wrestling due to issues involving MLW’s current partnership with NJPW’s rival All Japan Pro Wrestling. NJPW also pulled Will Ospreay from all of his scheduled bookings with MLW as a result. Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that another reason for Ospreay being pulled from MLW’s upcoming events was due to MLW also having a working partnership with Lucha Libre AAA, which is also a rival of NJPW’s Mexican partner CMLL, and MLW wanting Ospreay to debut at their co-promoted event in Mexico this past weekend that featured AAA talent. Meltzer also reported that travel-related issues involving Ospreay returning to Japan for NJPW’s upcoming Wrestle Kingdom 16 event was another factor in the decision to pull him out of his upcoming MLW bookings.

PWInsider reported that the National Wrestling Alliance held tapings this past weekend in Atlanta, Georgia for a new television series called NWA USA. Mike Johnson reported that this new series is currently planned to debut on January 8, 2022 on NWA’s official YouTube channel.

PWInsider also reported that the NWA currently do not have any plans to hold more tapings and events at the GPB Studios in Atlanta due to the current COVID-19 restrictions for live attendance for events at the venue.

Pro Wrestling Guerilla recently announced that Black Taurus is the next official competitor for their upcoming Battle of Los Angeles 2022 tournament, which takes place on January 29-30, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.