Various: Zack Sabre Jr. on Wanting to Face Will Ospreay at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2025, Stardom Announces Full List of Winners for 2024 Stardom Awards, Indies/Misc.

Jan 26, 2025

Zack Sabre Jr. Comments on Wanting to Face Will Ospreay at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2025

New Japan Pro Wrestling’s NJPW1972 website held a recent interview with current IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Zack Sabre Jr. One of the topics discussed included Sabre Jr.’s thoughts about Will Ospreay being his choice of an opponent for this year’s AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door event in London.

“There’s a lot (of AEW talents I’d like to wrestle). The laziest names to say would be (Kazuchika) Okada and (Will) Ospreay, so I won’t say them. I’d like to wrestle people that haven’t been to Japan yet, like Swerve Strickland or MJF. I’ve wrestled Daniel Garcia and Orange Cassidy before, but the AEW wrestlers that haven’t really had notoriety in WWE are appealing to me. There’s also a lot of people I know from my independent career. Myself and Darby Allin have had a lot of matches on the independents. When it comes to a Forbidden Door in England this year, obviously me and Ospreay would be a fantastic match but I think it would be good to do something different.”

Stardom Announces Full List of Winners for 2024 Stardom Awards

Stardom held their annual Stardom Awards ceremony event on Sunday in Japan to announce the winners of their 2024 Stardom Awards.

Among the winners included Maika taking Stardom’s top award as their MVP of 2024.

Full list of 2024 Stardom Awards winners:

Technique (Skill) – Mei Seira
Fighting Spirit – Momo Watanabe
Outstanding Performance – Saori Anou
SHINING – Starlight Kid
Best Unit – Cosmic Angels
Best Tag Team – wing★gori
Best Match – Mayu Iwatani vs. Momo Watanabe for IWGP Women’s Championship at NJPW x Stardom Historic X-Over II
Special Recognition – Saya Kamitani & Mina Shirakawa
MVP – Maika

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Saturday’s 10th Anniversary event for AML Wrestling featured WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield making a surprise appearance.

TNA Wrestling reportedly drew an attendance of 4,032 for their Jan. 19th Genesis 2025 event in San Antonio, Texas, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Dave Meltzer reported that one key reason for TNA’s high attendance was due to them pricing tickets for as low as $25.

Josh Barnett and Game Changer Wrestling announced that they will be holding a new Bloodsport event, Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport London, on September 28th in London, England.

GCW reportedly drew an attendance of 1,761 for their Jan. 19th The People vs. GCW event at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, New York, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Dave Meltzer reported that GCW is currently rumored to have papers their attendance number which would mean that the real ticket sales and attendance was lower than given.

Westside Xtrene Wrestling recently announced that Leon Slater is the next official competitor for this year’s 16 Carat Gold tournament on March 7-9 in Obserhausen, Germany.

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources stated that the reason why Lucha Libra AAA recently lost their television deal with Unimas for the United States was due to budget cut reasons from Unimas. Meltzer reported that due to ratings for AAA’s shows on the network were never released, it was very likely that AAA’s viewership and ratings were not that impressive enough for Unimas to continue carrying their weekly Origenes shows.

ICHIBAN Puroresu Igirisu announced one new match for the card of their FINAL STING: The Last of Satomura event on February 24th in Kingston, England: