Various: Claudio Castagnoli Wins 2024 CMLL Men’s Grand Prix, KUSHIDA vs. Frankie Kazarian Set for TNA Emergence 2024, Indies

Aug 24, 2024

Claudio Castagnoli Wins 2024 CMLL Men’s Grand Prix

Friday’s Viernes Espectacular event for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre at the Arena Mexico in Mexico City, Mexico featured Claudio Castagnoli becoming the winner of this year’s Men’s Grand Prix tournament.

This one-night tournament featured a 20-Man Elimination match between Team Mexico (Máscara Dorada, Volador Jr, Esfinge, Euforia, El Valiente, Templario, Místico, Titán, Ultimo Guerrero, & Atlantis Jr.) and Team World (Claudio Castagnoli, Yota Tsuji, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Mansoor, Ikuro Kwon, Flip Gordon, Robbie X, AKIRA, Rocky Romero, & Kyle Fletcher).

After a series of eliminations, the match was down to the final two of Castagnoli and Volador Jr., which was won by Castagnoli to claim the victory for Team World.

¡El triunfo es para Suiza! Claudio Castagnoli derrota a Volador Jr. y se convierte en el ganador del #GrandPrixCMLL 2024. #ViernesEspectacularCMLL |
EN VIVO → https://t.co/boa1cwihUG @ClaudioCSRO @AEW pic.twitter.com/z8JuZRVdDc
— Lucha Libre CMLL (@CMLL_OFICIAL) August 24, 2024

KUSHIDA vs. Frankie Kazarain Match Announced for TNA Emergence 2024

TNA Wrestling recently announced one new match for the card of their TNA Emergence 2024 event, which takes place on August 30th at the Old Forester’s Paristown Hall in Louisville, Kentucky.

This new match announced was a singles match of KUSHIDA vs. Frankie Kazarian. It was also announced that this match will be taking place on Emergence 2024’s pre-show.

#KUSHIDA clashes with @FrankieKazarian on the Countdown to #TNAEmergence LIVE & FREE Friday, August 30 at 7:30 PM ET on TNA+!

TICKETS: https://t.co/LoHD9Rg8B1 pic.twitter.com/lY3dEtSXUQ
— TNA Wrestling (@ThisIsTNA) August 23, 2024

Current card for August 30th TNA Emergence 2024:

TNA World Championship 60 Minute Iron Man match – Josh Alexander vs. Nic Nemeth (c)
TNA X-Division Championship Ultimate X match – Zachary Wentz vs. Riley Osborne vs. Jason Hotch vs. Hammerstone vs. Laredo Kid vs. “Speedball” Mike Bailey (c)
Eight-Man Tag Team match – The System (JDC, Brian Myers, Eddie Edwards, & Moose) vs. The Hardys (Matt & Jeff Hardy), Joe Hendry, & Mike Santana
Knockouts Six-Women Tag Team match – Jordynne Grace & Spitfire (Jody Threat & Dani Luna) vs. Ash By Elegance & The Malisha (Masha Slamovich & Alisha Edwards)
Matt Cardona vs. PCO
Steve Maclin vs. Eric Young
Pre-show: KUSHIDA vs. Frankie Kazarian

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Saturday’s 12 Year Anniversary Show for Revolution Pro Wrestling in London, England featured Mina Shirakawa defeating Dani Luna to become the new RevPro Undisputed British Women’s Champion.

Saturday’s RevPro 12 Year Anniversary Show in London also featured Saraya making a surprise appearance. During the show, Saraya made a surprise appearance coming out to ring alongside her brother Ricky Knight Jr. for his match against Zozaya.

The National Wrestling Alliance recently announced that they will be holding a new set of NWA Powerrr tapings on October 5-6 in Tampa, Florida.

New Japan Pro Wrestling reportedly drew a paid attendance of 8,056 for their Aug. 18th NJPW G1 Climax 2024 Finals in Tokyo, Japan, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

NJPW reportedly drew a total paid attendance of 48,683 for this year’s G1 Climax tournament events, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Dave Meltzer reported that NJPW’s average paid attendance for this year’s tournament was 2,562 per event. Meltzer reported that the total paid attendance was down 8.6% compared to last year’s G1 Climax’s total attendance.

As noted before, Matt Cardona has been out of action for TNA Wrestling and the indies since this past April due to a torn pectoral injury and surgery. In a recent interview with The Ringer’s Masked Man Show podcast, Cardona provided an update on his recovery from his injury ahead of his in-ring return at Game Changer Wrestling’s upcoming Homecoming 2024 event. Cardona stated “I feel pretty good. Am I 100%, I guess we’ll find out at GCW Homecoming. There’s only one way to test if I’m ready to go in the ring, that’s by having a real match. It was four months ago that I unfortunately tore my pec in the middle of the ring. There’s no good time in wrestling to get injured, but this certainly was not a good time. I had just celebrated, if you will, my four years of being released from WWE. I put out this video of all this stuff I accomplished. As I’m posting, I’m like, oh my god, I also have to tell the world that I’m hurt. The doctors told me six to eight months, I said no way. I took my Chelsea Green calendar and I circled GCW Homecoming weekend and I said, ‘I will be back by this.’” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

As noted before, current MLW Featherweight Champion Janai Kai recently signed a new contract with Major League Wrestling to remain in the company for the foreseeable future. In a recent interview with Fightful, Kai gave her thoughts about her talks with MLW for a new deal. Kai stated “It happened about a month ago where Court [Bauer] hit me up and said that he wanted to talk. I’ve already been with MLW for nine months. So I was thinking, ‘Okay, this conversation may be the conversation I’m thinking.’ So he gave me a call and Salina de la Renta was also on the call. They were just talking to me about how much they appreciated me so far with MLW, and they brought up like the question of like having me come on like officially under contract. So after that, like we just spoke about the agreements and all of that and then we came to a full-on agreement and signed. But overall, I feel good. They’ve taken care of me very, very well since I’ve been with them. I appreciate the opportunities already, the opponents I already had, the experience already that I’m taking, like all of the knowledge I’m taking in. I feel like I’m already getting more experience off of that. For example, Jesus Rodriguez, he works a lot backstage and works a lot with me. He’s known me since I basically first started. So he knows exactly what my style is, what the vibe I want to go for and everything and he’s been providing so much knowledge to me and helping me out.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

Pro Wrestling Revolver recently announced one new match for the card of their Taste Of Truth event on August 24th in Dayton, Ohio:

Matt Riddle vs. Myron Reed