Various: New IWGP Tag Champions to Be Crowned at NJPW Wrestling Redzone Event, Former Lucha Underground Executive Confirms LU was Cancelled Due to High Costs Issues, Indies/Misc

Apr 15, 2025

NJPW Announces New IWGP Tag Champions to Be Crowned at Wrestling Redzone Event

As noted before, Jeff Cobb will be leaving New Japan Pro Wrestling after this weekend. Cobb and Callum Newman were recently stripped of the IWGP Tag Team Championship due to Cobb’s upcoming departure.

New Japan Pro Wrestling provided an update on Monday announcing that they will be crowning new IWGP Tag Team Champions at their Wrestling Redzone event on April 26th in Hiroshima, Japan.

It was announced that Bishamon (YOSHI-HASHI & Hirooki Goto) will be facing off against United Empire (Callum Newman & Great-O-Khan) for the vacant titles at the event.

April 26, brand new IWGP Tag Team Champions will be crowned at Wrestling Redzone!

Plus, Taichi and Tomohiro Ishii team for the first time ever and more!https://t.co/OJla8C6tDf #njpw #njredzone pic.twitter.com/BQzYy3Dzhu
— NJPW Global (@njpwglobal) April 14, 2025

Former Lucha Underground Executive Confirms LU was Cancelled Due to High Costs Issues

The premiere episode of the Goin’ Underground with Marty Elias & Jonah podcast featured former Lucha Underground Co-Executive Producer Anthony Jensen as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Jensen confirming that the main reason for Lucha Underground’s television series cancellation was due to high costs issues.

“Cost (was the reason Lucha Underground was canceled). We shot season four… February and March if I remember right… And I can tell you probably the backbreaker was the workers’ comp, our state workers’ comp. Because of the risk factor of wrestling, we couldn’t get workers’ comp through the payroll company like you normally do. So we had to get a separate policy through the state and they literally sent me a letter saying, ‘Hey, we’re doubling your policy’ so it went from like 100,000 bucks to like $200,000 and that was just the backbreaker, that was just that moment of like, we can’t keep going. We can’t keep sustaining this.”

Jensen also gave his thoughts about the potential of Lucha Underground returning for a one-off special and why it is very unlikely to happen due to very high costs needed to produce the potential event.

“The problem with a one-off is they’re really, really expensive. You’re gonna do a million dollars out the door for one episode and we were 300 and some thousand dollars an episode when we did it. So if you’re gonna do a one-off, do a limited series. If you’re gonna do a reunion, do a limited series of 12 episodes that culminates into the big finale. Like a big live show and I think broadcast the finale live. Episode 13 is literally a live pay-per-view event.”

Jensen also gave his thoughts about the old rumor about the Young Bucks had turned down an offer to work for Lucha Underground due to the low monetary amount per match being offered. This rumor originated from Konnan who had stated that the Young Bucks had rejected a potential deal that would have paid them $250 per match.

“Because I have the emails. I have the negotiated emails and most of the wrestlers were making — we’re talking about people that they knew who they were. People knew who they were. Were making roughly 750 or so an episode and you could potentially in a weekend do four or five episodes making a decent amount of money on the weekend. So my offer to them was $1,500 for the team or 750 if they did their own individual thing per episode and I made it clear, if I remember right, that they can either work as a team in an episode and get their 1,500 or also in an episode, work as an individual if that’s how the match went as well. It just kind of depended on how it worked. They ended up going sort of radio silent on me and then I found out later on, they were saying that I had offered them $250 a match or something like that, and as recently as about a year ago, one of them and I forgot which one it was, had made the comment on some post on Instagram and of course I stepped in and said, ‘You know that’s not right. That’s absolute horsesh*t,’ and it was. It was just total bologna but, that’s just sort of the business I guess. That’s the entertainment business. That generated them some talk for a little while.
Not accepting the deal, no big deal to me. I get it. Do what you feel is best for you. But don’t go out in the real world and lie about it. That just pisses me off. You know, be honest. You didn’t wanna do it for that rate? Great. So then don’t do it for that rate. But then don’t change the terms. Don’t lie about it, and there were several people on there in recent years that I know have gone live and just blatantly lied about things and it’s the people you expect.”

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com 1 & 2

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Former WWE ring announcer Samantha Irvin recently released a new song and music video titled “Shawty Wanna.”

WrestleCon announced that Allie Katch will be making an appearance for the company at their WrestleCon Las Vegas convention on April 18-20 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

PROGRESS Wrestling recently announced that Kid Lykos II is the next official competitor for this year’s Super Strong Style 16 tournament on May 4-5 in London, England.

Joey Janela recently announced that Doug Gilbert and Tommy Rich have been pulled from Game Changer Wrestling’s Joey Janela’s Spring Break 9 event on April 18th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Janela announced that Robert Gibson and Damian 666 will be replacing Gilbert and Rich for the Senior Scramble match at the event.

Create-A Pro Wrestling recently announced that The Big LG, former Luke Gallows in WWE, will be making an appearance for the company at their May 31st event in Melville, New York.

In a recent interview with Fightful, David Finlay gave his thoughts about how the locker room in New Japan Pro Wrestling has been hungry and ready to make names for themselves by becoming the next class of superstars for the company. Finlay stated “Well, the company’s been around since 1972. This isn’t even the first generation that people have left. They have always been fine and it’s new stars have always been made because I think just the caliber that everybody can wrestle at is very, very high. Everyone’s hungry for opportunity there. So you get an opportunity and then you’re going to bring your A game. So it’s the nature of the business. There’s going to be people that are constantly leaving at any point in time and it’s just going to open up more opportunities for the young hungry guys to come up and show that they were ready all along.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

TNA Wrestling announced one new match for the card of this week’s Impact! show on April 17th on AXS TV and Sportsnet 360:

Heather By Elegance & Maggie Lee vs. Gigi Dolin & Tatum Paxley

The MGM Music Hall at Fenway recently announced one new match for the card of Ring of Honor’s ROH TV taping on April 16th at their venue in Boston, Massachusetts:

ROH Women’s Television Championship – La Catalina vs. Red Velvet (c)