Various: Eric Young Impact Contract Update, Kazuchika Okada on Hoping for Another Match with Kota Ibushi, Indies

Aug 9, 2023

Eric Young Currently Under a Working Agreement with Impact

As noted before, Eric Young made his return to Impact Wrestling at this past July’s Slammiversary 2023 event. Young was granted his release from WWE this past April due to issues related to Vince McMahon’s return to the company.

A recent episode of The Wrestling Perspective podcast had Young as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Young revealing that he is currently under a working agreement type contract with Impact.

“I think it’s something that we could cross that bridge as far as contracts go. I’m under an agreement with Scott right now, and we’re working on it. There’s actually some really cool stuff that will probably come out in October/November. An opportunity I have with Anthem and with Access. So the deal is really complicated, and that’s why it’s kind of taking so long, but I will definitely be there up until the Emergence Pay-Per-View in Toronto and hope to be past that as well. I would be very surprised if we didn’t work something out.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Kazuchika Okada Comments on Hopeful of Another Match with Kota Ibushu in Future, Ibushi Responds

Following this past Sunday’s G1 Climax 2023 event for NJPW in Osaka, Japan, Kazuchika Okada gave his thoughts in a post-match press conference about him being hopeful that he will be able to have another match with Kota Ibushi in the future.

“I hope he can wrestle like (Kota) Ibushi again without injury, and I would like to fight him again somewhere. Of course, I would like to continue the story. I hope we can do it somewhere.”

Ibushi recently responded on Twitter to Okada’s comments stating:

“There is more. There is definitely. somewhere someday! I haven’t forgotten that promise I made back then.”

English translation via PostWrestling.com

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Mega Cat Studios and publisher Skybound Games recently announced that they have delayed their upcoming WrestleQuest video game that was scheduled to be released on August 8th to a new date of August 22nd. The official reason given was due to them needing more time to fix a bug that was discovered that would cause players to lose their save files if they played the game on multiple devices.

Starrcast announced that Japanese wrestling legend Toshiaki Kawada will be making an appearance for the company at their Starrcast VI convention on September 1-3 in Chicago, Illinois.

This past Tuesday’s G1 Climax 2023 show for New Japan Pro Wrestling in Yokohama featured David Finlay and EVIL advancing from C Block to the Quarterfinals Round of this year’s tournament. Wednesday’s G1 Climax 2023 show in Hamamatsu, Japan featured Tetsuya Naito and Zack Sabre Jr. advancing from D Block to the Quarterfinals Round of this year’s tournament.

NJPW recently released a video on their official YouTube channel featuring Eddie Kingston meeting his wrestling idol Toshiaki Kawada during Kingston’s current stint in Japan.

NJPW also recently announced a new match for the card of their All Star Junior Festival USA 2023 event on August 19th in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

All Star Junior USA Tournament First Round match – Francesco Akira vs. “Speedball” Mike Bailey

Game Changer Wrestling recently announced that Killer Kelly will be making an appearance for the company at their Crushed Up event on September 10th in Brooklyn, New York.

GCW also recently announced a new match for the card of their No Signal in the Hills Pt. 3 event on August 11th in Los Angeles, California:

EFFY vs. Jacob Fatu

Impact Wrestling recently announced two new matches for the card of their co-promoted Impact x NJPW Multiverse United 2 event on August 20th in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: