Wrestling News & Rumours Thread ***NO CHAT***

They should bring back the European Title!.. D-Lo browns claim to fame!

I find the whole contract tampering thing in wrestling odd.

Like in the case of AEW, who are meant to be all about them being independent contracters, doesn't them reinforcing the terms of their contract from outside interest fly in the face of that? Sounds weirdly possessive from a company that usually isn't.

Like I know WWE would absolutely be the type even if these contracts were iron clad to see if they could poach someone but wrestling doesn't have a union so there is no such thing as contract tampering really is my understanding.

On that note, didn't Jeff Hardy reveal he'd signed to AEW when he was still technically under contract with WWE. Are we to believe everyone that shows up in AEW immediately once their WWE contract is up hasn't had some assurance they have a job from Tony?

I wonder if there ever was any legal battle would either side come away totally clean.

Definitely some people here that have to eat some humble pie with that being true.

More reports emerging now too on the Aleister Black situation and it seems there is some fire to the smoke. Gonna try be as objective as possible but about 3 different sites including Meltzer, Fightful and PWInsider have weighed in on the rumour, will try do a round-up here.

XeroNews which seems like a very questionable source seemed to get the ball rolling by saying Black had asked and been GRANTED his release. He also mentioned that 4 others had been give their release. Pretty much roundly dismissed and at best it seems like if their is some truth to the Black stuff, no one has said he was granted his release and no mention of others. RajGiri who has some degree of a track record but often wrong (from what I've read, don't know for sure) tweeted this: "I heard an AEW star requested their release, and follow up sources indicate it was Malakai Black. He reportedly has repeatedly shown concerns about his mental health due to personal life and demoralization due to the booking and handling of his character."

The three sources mentioned above have some different slants on what happened but they all so far are saying that Black did ask for his release and that it Has Not Been Granted. Black according to Meltzer has a lot of time left on his deal, it also seemed to indicate (from what I saw on Reddit) that he was someone contacted by WWE. PWInsider have seemingly spoken to 'sources close to Black' and said that he has been dealing with some personal situations and has talked about taking a break (possibly a permanent break) from wrestling to deal with them. He does mention what Raj said about presentation issues but doesn't seem to confirm or deny that as a factor. Should also be mentioned that Fightful has indicated that things have been smoothed over to a certain degree.

So based on this it seems like the general story is Black has asked for his release due to personal issues and possibly how he's being presented, he's not been given it but cooler heads may have prevailed since.

The only thing I wonder out of this is, should Black continue to want his release, will the same level of hostility be lobbed at AEW that is lobbed at WWE when they sit on a talent who wants to leave.