Various: LIJ vs. United Empire Tag Match Added to NJPW Strong Style Evolved 2024, Kevin Nash Herniated Discs Injury & Health Update, Backstage Update on Matt Riddle’s TNA Debut Appearance

Dec 3, 2024

LIJ vs. United Empire Tag Match Announced for NJPW Strong Style Evolved 2024

New Japan Pro Wrestling announced one new match for the card of their Strong Style Evolved 2024 event, which takes place on December 15th at the Walter Pyramid in Long Beach, California.

This new match announced was a tag team match of Los Ingobernables de Japon (Hiromu Takahashi & Titan) vs. United Empire (HENARE & Jakob Austin Young).

Current card for NJPW Strong Style Evolved 2024:

Pre-show: Strong Style Evolved match – Matt Vandagriff vs. Zane Jay
Mina Shirakawa vs. Johnnie Robbie
Lio Rush vs. Hechicero
4-Way match – Clark Connors vs. KUSHIDA vs. Kosei Fujita vs. TJP
Los Ingobernables de Japon (Yota Tsuji & Shingo Takagi) vs. Konosuke Takeshita & Jack Perry
NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Championship – West Coast Wrecking Crew (Jorel Nelson & Royce Isaacs) vs. Grizzled Young Veterans (James Drake & Zack Gibson) (c)
NJPW Strong Openweight Championship – Ryohei Oiwa vs. Gabe Kidd (c)
NJPW Strong Women’s Championship – Hazuki vs. Mercedes Mone (c)
Los Ingobernables de Japon (Hiromu Takahashi & Titan) vs. United Empire (HENARE & Jakob Austin Young)

Kevin Nash Herniated Discs Injury & Health Status Update

As noted before, WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash recently suffered a herniated discs injury.

A recent episode of the Kliq This podcast featured co-host Nash providing an update on his injury and health status and revealed that he also recently suffered a torn biceps injury.

“I think last episode, I was saying I felt this snap, I heard this pop in my left shoulder when I was training back. It was actually on Election Day. It took me five days to get the MRI, so I didn’t train for five days. I got the MRI, my orthopedic looked at it, and he said, ‘There’s not a tear. I don’t see a tear in your bicep.’ So when the radiologist said it, there was no tears in any of my rotator cuffs. So I trained chest on Monday of last week. I took Tuesday off, trained back on Wednesday, took Thursday off, and trained biceps/triceps last Friday. I did a curl machine, nothing, didn’t feel anything. So it’s like okay, I’m gonna be okay. Then I went over, and they’ve got an old flex machine that’s a single-arm bicep curl. I did it, and at about nine reps, I could just feel my left bicep cramping. I was just like ugh, fuck me because when you tear a bicep, it cramps. I’m thinking to myself, I had to have had a slap labrum tear, I had to have had something, and not to blame the MRI, but I’ve got so much hardware in my shoulder that’s holding everything together that when they take an MRI, you get a lot of artifact. So you don’t get really true readings as you would. But the bicep was, when I went to talk to the back surgeon, I stopped by and I saw my orthopedist. We sat down, and he went through slide by slide of both my bicep tendons, and they were both intact. I saw both of them. You can take your finger and put it in your groove and make a bicep, and then you rub your finger across that groove, and you can feel your bicep tendon, and I did that. So when I got home that night, I just put ice on it. I said I’m gonna fuck with it, I’m not gonna touch it, so I talked to my doc, he said, ‘Well, if it bleeds out,’ and I’m thinking, I’ve torn so many fucking things, and my shit never bleeds out. It isn’t an indicator. So got up the next morning, and I take my t-shirt off, nothing. Put my arm up, make a bicep, and you can see a little dent up here [points to his arm], where it’s gonna start the Popeye arm. I’m like, fuck. So I go on YouTube, and basically watch every fucking video possible to see what the procedures are and everything else. Yeah [I tore my bicep]. I tore the bicep. If I [flex my arm], it’s starting to dent right there.”

Nash also stated that he will need to undergo tendinosis surgery to repair his bicep.

“The procedure’s called, there’s two different procedures you can do. I need the tendinosis [surgery]. So what they’ll do is, they’ll go in, and they’ll make an incision here, and then they’ll weave sutures into the tendon that’s there, hoping that it hasn’t fucking already retracted all the way, because I’m not fucking around with this thing. I’m not picking anything up. I’m not going to the gym, so hoping that it doesn’t retract too far into my, where they gotta go find the fucking thing. Yeah [this is a surgery]. My doc’s really good. I think he’ll be able to do it, probably through two scope holes. We talked today, because when I looked at the MRI, I could see that there’s a pretty decent bone spur on the head of my humerus, and there’s some other things. So I’m not gonna have the alternator changed and not have them go through the whole engine and fix every belt. If you’re gonna put me and fix the motherfucker, you might as well fix everything because I can’t move that arm, once they put that tendon through that bone, it’s six weeks before you can even fuck with it. So it’s gonna be six weeks…”

Nash also stated that his surgery will mean that he will have to delay his stem cell treatment for his spine as a result.

“The problem I have now is that I was gonna go down to get stem cells. Well, I’m gonna have my fucking arm like this in a sling, and you can’t put me fucking face down and inject it into my spine with arm there, you can’t fucking move my arm anywhere, so that’s gonna set me back. So it looks like I’m not gonna be in the PGA circuit probably until fucking June.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Matt Riddle TNA Debut Appearance Update

As noted before, this past Friday’s TNA Turning Point 2024 event in Winston-Salem, North Carolina featured former WWE talent Matt Riddle making his official debut appearance for TNA. Riddle was revealed to be the replacement tag team partner for KUSHIDA & Zachary Wentz’s match at the event due to Trey Miguel being pulled due to travel-related issues.

Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp reported that his sources stated that Riddle only found out not long before TNA’s show started about being brought it and working the event.

Those spoken to within TNA reportedly stated that while the situation was not ideal, they were not too worried because plenty of potential replacements were nearby due to their event taking place at WrestleCade and many wrestlers were already there.

Those spoken to within TNA reportedly also stated that they were happy about the live crowd’s reception to Riddle’s debut. Those same sources reportedly also stated that they currently would not commit to using him again in the future.