Various: Two New Matches & Updated Match Announced for TNA Slammiversary 2024, Athena Ankle Injury Update, Indies

Jun 28, 2024

TNA Knockouts World Title & TNA X-Division Title Matches Announced for Slammiversary 2024

TNA Wrestling announced two new matches and one updated match for the card of their Slammiversary 2024 event, which takes place on July 20th at the Verdun Auditorium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

In regards to the new matches, the first new match announced was a TNA Knockouts World Championship match of Ash By Elegance vs. Jordynne Grace (c).

BREAKING: @JordynneGrace will defend the TNA Knockouts World Championship against @Ashamae_Sebera at #TNASlammiversary on July 20! Streaming LIVE on TNA+ from the Verdun Auditorium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada!

Be there LIVE: https://t.co/yL6sSRpKP5 pic.twitter.com/HTFbuN22IV
— TNA Wrestling (@ThisIsTNA) June 28, 2024

The second new match announced was a TNA X-Division Championship match of “Speedball” Mike Bailey vs. Mustafa Ali (c).

BREAKING: @MustafaAli_X will defend the TNA X Division Championship against @SpeedballBailey at #TNASlammiversary on July 20! Streaming LIVE on TNA+ from the Verdun Auditorium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada!

Be there LIVE: https://t.co/yL6sSRqiED pic.twitter.com/j1Rty7OrUJ
— TNA Wrestling (@ThisIsTNA) June 28, 2024

In regards to the newly updated match, this is a TNA World Championship Six-Way Elimination match of Josh Alexander vs. Steve Maclin vs. Nic Nemeth vs. TBD vs. TBD vs. Moose (c). Maclin qualified after defeating Sami Callihan and Nemeth qualified after defeating Rich Swann.

BREAKING: @NicTNemeth joins @Walking_Weapon and @SteveMaclin in the 6-Way Elimination Match at #TNASlammiversary on July 20! Streaming LIVE on TNA+ from the Verdun Auditorium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada!

Get tickets NOW: https://t.co/yL6sSRpKP5 pic.twitter.com/7Od84Y5CeK
— TNA Wrestling (@ThisIsTNA) June 28, 2024

Current card for July 20th TNA Slammiversary 2024 event:

TNA World Championship Six-Way Elimination match – Josh Alexander vs. Steve Maclin vs. Nic Nemeth vs. TBD vs. TBD vs. Moose (c)
TNA Knockouts World Championship match – Ash By Elegance vs. Jordynne Grace (c)
TNA X-Division Championship match – “Speedball” Mike Bailey vs. Mustafa Ali (c)

Athena Leg Injury Status Update -Athena Claims She Will Be Out of Action for 8-12 Months Over Ankle Injury

As noted before, AEW and Ring of Honor talent Athena suffered a leg injury at ROH’s ROH TV tapings this past May in Portland, Oregon.

Thursday’s ROH TV show for Ring of Honor featured Athena providing an update on the status of her injury. During the show, Athena held an emergency “Minion Empowerment Meeting” and claimed that due to the incident with Queen Aminata and Red Velvet on last week’s show, she will now be out of action for the next eight to twelve months due to her ankle injury.

Details regarding Athena’s injury situation is still currently not known nor is it known if her current injury is legitimate or just for storyline purposes.

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Major League Wrestling announced that they recently added actor Paul Walter Hausen to their official roster page. Hausen responded on Twitter stating “Very excited to be a part of the MLW roster!“

As noted before, MLW talent Salina De La Renta revealed this past weekend that she is currently pregnant and expecting the birth of her first child. MLW recently announced that their Blood & Thunder 2024 event on July 12th in St. Petersburg, Florida will feature De La Renta officially revealing her “baby daddy” at the event.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that WWE Hall of Famer Jimmy Hart will be inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame on September 27th as a member of The Gentrys. Hart was the lead singer of the group prior to his wrestling career.

Former WWE and WCW wrestler Lex Luger filed trademarks for “Lex Luger,” “The Total Package,” and “Total Package 2.0” on June 25th for wrestling and merchandise-related purposes to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

New Texas Pro Wrestling recently announced that Vix Crow, former Alicia Fox in WWE, will be making an appearance for the company at their Already Platinum event on August 25th in Pasadena, Texas.

TNA Wrestling reportedly is currently expected to officially announce the location for this year’s Bound For Glory event soon, according to PWInsider.

In a recent interview with Tokyo Sports, Tetsuya Naito gave his thoughts about his upcoming match against Jon Moxley at AEW and NJPW’s Forbidden Door 2024 and him willing to give up his spot in this year’s NJPW G1 Climax tournament if he loses to Moxley. Naito stated “I wonder if they didn’t offer him the tournament, or if they did and he turned them down. I don’t know if Moxley will have the schedule open, or if New Japan will approve it. However, there have been cases in the past where it was approved (when Satoshi Kojima handed it over to Hiroyoshi Tenzan before the 2016 tournament). If I don’t get the belt back, the IWGP World Champion who has beaten me consecutively will be a much more deserving opponent than me. After all, it’s a Grade 1 fight.” (English translation via Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW wrestler Hulk Hogan gave his thoughts about who were the people responsible for killing off WCW. Hogan stated “It’s not the flashiest story, but I can tell you what killed WCW. There was no way WCW was going to survive, not under those circumstances. So many people knock Eric, but there was an opposition he was dealing with from the higher-ups in the company. He just wasn’t going to win that battle. These were executives who had no idea what wrestling was all about, and they had no interest in learning. They wanted more traditional programming. They didn’t want rasslin’ in their high-brow portfolio. They weren’t interested, and nothing else mattered.“

In a recent interview with Fightful, Who Killed WCW? series producer Evan Husney gave his thoughts about the online criticisms about the series and the skepticism about the subject being covered again in the future. Husney stated “There definitely was a lot of skepticism I think from the Internet wrestling circle going into this, and rightly so. This is a subject that has been discussed a lot in the past. I think The Rock and Seven Bucks’ involvement created some more skepticism, where people were like, ‘Is this a WWE project where it’s gonna have another WWE perspective on it?’ Like I said, this came together last year, so this was before I even knew or anybody knew that The Rock was gonna be a part of the board of TKO. So no, the whole idea going into this project was that we wanted to, sort of off the heels of [Guy Evans’] book, really tell this story from the WCW perspective, to get a fresh take on this. This isn’t the story of WWE killing WCW, it’s the story of all the elements from within that sort of took down this company. That was what we wanted to examine. Obviously, you see some of the, for lack of a better term, dirt sheet response to the show, and I think there is a lot of dissecting of fact or fiction. It’s very hard with a story like this, 25 years later, to pick apart the facts and everything. But I think the emotions are true still, of everything that went down. When you look at episode two, in terms of Eric Bischoff’s exit, and you look at the Bret Hart/Bill Goldberg fiasco and you look at everything that happened in episode three, I think a lot of the things that went down, there’s varying degrees of opinions and everybody had their take, but we tried to represent them as best we could.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

Deadlock Pro Wrestling recently announced one new match for the card of their Tag Festival 2024 event on July 7th in Raleigh, North Carolina:

DPW Tag Festival 2024 Tournament Finals Qualifying match – The Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin) vs. The Grizzled Young Veterans (James Drake & Zack Gibson)

Alpha-1 Wrestling recently announced one new match for the card of their Another Day In Paradise event on July 14th in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada:

Ace Austin vs. Alec Price