AEW: Nick Wayne Signing Made Official, Jim Ross Health Update, Reby Hardy on Firm Deletion Match

Jul 13, 2023

Nick Wayne Signs Official AEW Contract

Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite show in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada featured Nick Wayne making his official in-ring debut for AEW. Prior to his debut, Wayne has been under a provisional type contract with AEW that required him to turn 18 years old and graduate from high school in order to turn into an official deal.

Following Wednesday’s show, AEW CEO Tony Khan announced on Twitter that Wayne recently signed an official contract with the company.

Congratulations! What a great debut tonight on Wednesday Night #AEWDynamite, and now it's official: @thenickwayne is All Elite! pic.twitter.com/3NJPBtqCPR
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) July 13, 2023

Jim Ross Health & AEW Return Status Update

As noted before, Jim Ross has been away from AEW’s commentary team since this past June due to a black eye injury following a fall incident and vocal cord-related issues.

A recent episode of the Grillin JR podcast featured co-host Jim Ross providing an update on his current health status.

“I had a rough week on my leg. I’m not changing doctors, I’m just adding to doctors. I went to one doctor and he said, ‘I have to get you to a specialist that can give you an antibiotic shot.’ ‘Why can’t you do it?’ ‘That’s not what I do.’ They recommend me to this guy. It’s been a challenging week. I think we’ve made some improvements. We have a good game plan, I just need a break. I need a break in the action and move on. It will happen. I have good doctors, good care. If I don’t get the results that we’re looking for, I’ll go to the Mayo clinic and start over and see where it takes us. I’m okay, it’s going to be alright. It’s just frustrating as heck to have to deal with this every day …
My sciatic, I didn’t realize how crippling that is. It’s been driving me crazy. It was three days where I had a hard time even walking to the bathroom. It’s not been good the last week or two, but I see improvement, I see the direction, and I have hope that it’s going to be fine. That’s where we are. It’s just one of those deals. I don’t have any timetable on returning to work. I have to get better. I can’t start traveling again. They’re worried about infection and being on an airplane or at an airport with an open wound is not ideal. It will work out. I’m positive, I’m optimistic. I want to get back at the booth doing something. I don’t know if I’m going back on Collision. My debut on Collision was not very auspicious because of my voice, which I still don’t get. It’s interesting, the doctor said it might be stress induced. I said, ‘that’s a weird analogy.’ Stress being because of my illness. I have a lot to be thankful for and it’s all going to be good, I just have to make it good.”

Ross also gave his thoughts about his current goal of being able to make his return to AEW by next month’s All In event at Wembley Stadium.

“I really want to make Wembley. Right now, I don’t know if I can. I hope so. I don’t want to say I have a target date, but you have to have some kind of goal. Wembley is my goal. I hope I’m back before then, but certainly Wembley is something I want to be part of.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Reby Hardy Comments on AEW’s The Firm Deletion Match & Not Wanting to be Involved Initially

A recent episode of the Drinks With Johnny podcast had Reby Hardy as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Hardy’s thoughts about her cameo appearance during AEW’s The Firm Deletion match on the May 5th episode of AEW Rampage.

“Probably absolutely not (Hardy responded when asked if she’ll be making a comeback to wrestling).
I am in no in-ring shape. I have no business being near a ring. Up until the last second, literally they’re setting up the lights (for The Firm Deletion) and I’m telling Matt (Hardy), ‘You know, it’s cool if we don’t. I’m cool with not doing it. If you want to just do something else.’ He’s like, ‘No! No! We need you and we want you in it’ and it’s so funny because the feedback from people, of course people online again love to complain, ‘Oh my God, she has to insert herself in everything. Why is she in this?’ And I’m like, I literally wanted zero to do with this. I was not really particularly comfortable. I haven’t done dick in a ring for seven years so I was freaking out.
A lot of people said that (they enjoyed my Twist of Fate on Stokely Hathaway) and that was nice to hear because that was not the reception that I was expecting. I thought everyone was gonna be the majority of like, what the hell is this f*cking fat momma doing in there right now? (She laughed) But, it was cool, it was fine. The whole thing is ridiculous, right? So what, if I’m the part that needs to make sense then they’re really messing up somewhere else along in the story so… I swear to God, I feel like the director had it out for this guy (Stokely), because there’s the part that aired on TV which was about 16, 17 minutes and then there was like a 22 final version which is like the director’s cut. But even more than what was shown in the director’s cut which was still about 30 seconds more of just my children wailing on this man. It kept going. I kept waiting for him to yell cut and he’s just there — it was a good three minutes straight of my kids beating the sh*t out of this guy. Who did you piss off? What did you do? Because yeah, it was fun though. What an incredible night there and to have everybody involved just like the good old times, you know? When we did it in TNA, it was just us and the one baby which of course back then, I thought was hectic enough but now we’re wrangling four kids and my dad’s out there tasing people, Señor Benjamin so yeah, it was a family affair. It was a lot of fun though.”

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com