Our latest round-up of tidbits that may have flown under your radars…
ICYMI: Seriously, if you’ve missed this… HOW?!
Next weekend, at the National Basketball Arena at Tallaght: OTT Homecoming 2. Starr vs. Devlin. Goosebumps.
NEWS: Fight Club Pro have finally launched an unlimited VOD platform! After what feels like an eternity of their product being only available by buying individual shows (a proposition that quickly adds up when you’re looking at £7.50 a show (particularly for Project Mayhem and Dream Tag Team Invitational weekends), this has been a long time coming. At less than £6 a month, the platform could well tempt back distant fans who stopped watching because of mounting shows. You can sign up through Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fightclubprounlimited – at time of writing, only the Project Tokyo show from the start of the year is up, but the promotion’s back catalogue will slowly move over in due course.
NEWS: Kris Wolf announced that she’ll be retiring from wrestling “at the end of her tour” in April. Wolf, who made her wrestling debut in STARDOM in August 2014, became a bit of a mainstay in Europe last year, appearing regularly for Pro Wrestling EVE, where she made the finals of last year’s SHE-1 Series, while also touring with wXw last autumn. During the YouTube video announcing her decision, Kris mentioned that she’d been experiencing issues that stemmed from concussions – so as gut-wrenching as the news is, it’s the best move you could have made in the circumstances.
NEWS: The inaugural WOS Wrestling tour wrapped up last weekend at York Hall in London. The hot potato that was the promotion’s women’s title changed hands yet again, with Chardonnay winning the belt on her debut – under real name Katie Lees. Kay Lee Ray had lost the title to Viper at the start of the tour in Southampton, before Viper lost it to Bea Priestley the next night in Newport. A week later in Blackpool, Viper regained the title, before losing it to Chardonnay in a three-way that also involved Bea Priestley. Considering that Viper and Kay Lee Ray are reportedly WWE-bound, and on top of additional interest in Bea Priestley, the switch makes sense even if there’s only a minimal chance of a second season, since it’d avoid having to explain away vacating the belt (or at worse, retiring the entire division).
NEWS: New Japan announced on Tuesday that Katsuya Kitamura had left the company. Kitamura, who hadn’t wrestled since March 2018, had been out of action with injuries that were originally reported as concussion with later news reports suggesting he’d been in a scooter accident. The last time we saw Kitamura would have been almost a year ago, on the opening night of the 2018 Honor Rising tour, where he tagged with Toa Henare in a loss to Bad Luck Fale & Yujiro Takahashi. Kitamura, who won the 2017 Young Lion Cup, had been in the middle of a trial series before his injury, but had gone 0-6 with losses to Jay White, Michael Elgin, Juice Robinson, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Manabu Nakanishi and Yuji Nagata before he was forced away from the ring.
SIGNINGS: Jimmy Havoc has been signed to All Elite Wrestling. The fledgling promotion confirmed the news in a video hyping up May’s “Double or Nothing” show…
Add in Kenny Omega, who was confirmed as an executive vice president with the promotion… oh, and a new slew of signings announced at Thursday night’s ticket sale party for May’s Double or Nothing. Chuckie T and Beretta (formerly of New Japan, who finished with the promotion last week), Kylie Rae, Nyla Rose (who’s worked for Sendai Girls in Japan in the past, and is the first trans woman to get such a high profile offer on the US scene). In addition, there were also talent announcements for the Double or Nothing show, with Sammy Guevara, Sonny Kiss, Tokyo Joshi Pro’s Yuka Sakazaki and joshi legend Aja Kong also appearing. AEW’s also added a deal with Mexico’s AAA to their existing agreement with OWE, so yeah, this roster is filling out.
On a side-note, can folks cool it with the click-bait “high profile wrestler is set to sign with AEW”? As much as naming them would harm negotiations, surely the social media game of Guess Who serves to be much more problematic. Especially if those folks are under contracts elsewhere…
ICYMI: If you have IndependentWrestling.tv – the former Powerbomb.tv – give the last C*4 Wrestling show a try. Watching it in the background during the week, our eye was caught by Matt Angel bumping like a lunatic for Josh Alexander in the main event there…
ICYMI: Another show we’d kinda stopped even background watching, but ROH TV #385 from this past week had a hell of a fun match between Mark Haskins and Bandido. You can watch it for free on Fite.tv at https://www.fite.tv/watch/roh-385/2ohab/