AEW Star’s Departure Confirmed, Injury During Blood & Guts, New WWE Signing Revealed – Audio News Bulletin – June 30, 2022

AEW

An AEW star’s departure from the promotion has been confirmed, there was an injury during last night’s Blood & Guts match, a new WWE signing has been revealed, and more.

It’s Thursday morning which means the weekend is getting closer, but before we get there it’s time to get you all up to speed on all the latest wrestling news. I’m Liam Winnard for WrestleTalk.com, and this is our audio news bulletin for June 30, 2022.

Listen to this morning’s round-up here:

AEW Star Alan Angels Confirms Departure

Yesterday, we discussed the situation with several AEW contracts potentially expiring, and we specifically speculated about Alan Angels and Chuck Taylor based on their social media activity.

Well there’s an update on both of those, and we’ll start with Alan Angels who has officially confirmed his AEW contract has expired, and the company has opted not to re-sign him.

Angels told Fightful that AEW informed him of the decision to not re-sign him a month-and-a-half ago. He said he was offered a pay-per-appearance deal, but he decided not to take it because he feels like it’s best for his career to evolve on the indies instead.

He said he believes fans perceive him as the “bottom guy” in the Dark Order, but feels like he can get the chance to change that on the indies faster than he would be able to within AEW.

Angels’ full interview with Fightful will be available to watch on the Fightful YouTube channel later today.

The other name we talked about yesterday was Chuck Taylor who had deleted his entire Twitter history including references to AEW. Taylor actually made his first AEW Dynamite appearance in several months on last night’s show, accompanying Orange Cassidy to the ring alongside Trent Beretta.

Taylor and Beretta also had their first tag team match together since March last night in a match taped for next week’s episode of Elevation, with them picking up a win over GPA and Isaiah Broner.

It’s worth mentioning that this doesn’t actually confirm anything – he may have been signed to a pay-per-appearance deal, or maybe his contract hasn’t expired at all. But what we do know is that he was on the show last night.

Santana Injured During Blood & Guts

AEW held its second ever Blood & Guts match last night, but it didn’t go off without an issue, as Santana picked up an injury.

Ironically, it wasn’t one of the several violent, risky or dangerous spots in the match that led to an injury, but rather an attempted Uranage on Daniel Garcia which led to Santana’s knee buckling underneath him and him falling to the mat.

He had to sit out the rest of the match, but there’s been no official word or diagnosis as of yet, so we will of course keep you updated.

It was still the Blackpool Combat Club team that picked up the win, with Claudio Castagnoli making Matt Menard tap out on top of the cage at the same time that Kingston was trying to make Chris Jericho tap.

The storyline is that Kingston specifically wanted to beat Jericho, but Castagnoli beat Menard before Kingston could do so, kind of stealing his spotlight and leaving Kingston not fully satisfied with the outcome even though his team did win.

Valerie Loureda Signs With WWE

It has been officially announced that Bellator MMA fighter Valerie Loureda has signed with WWE.

Loureda will be joining the NXT developmental roster, and will report to the WWE Performance Center on July 19.

Before the confirmation came out yesterday, it had been reported in recent months that WWE was interested in Loureda after she impressed officials at a tryout during WrestleMania week.

July 19, the date she reports to the Performance Center, will actually be her 24th birthday. She has a pro MMA record of 4-1-0, and has been affiliated with American Top Team, which of course has a major presence on AEW TV with Dan Lambert and Paige VanZant.

Loureda was actually asked if she’d been in talks with AEW, to which she said no, because nothing compares to WWE.

Loureda acknowledged that she might end up having her name changed in WWE, but said she’d like to keep the Loureda part or at least something Cuban or Latina.

Other Stuff

In other little bits of news…

In other notes from last night’s AEW Dynamite not Blood & Guts match related, Orange Cassidy debuted a new theme song in the form of Jane by Jefferson Starship, the same theme he used on the indies. Luchasaurus looks to now officially be a heel with new black gear after being manipulated by Christian Cage. And after Jade Cargill beat Leila Grey, there was a tease that Grey could be joining The Baddies since they need a replacement for the injured Red Velvet. There was also a tease of a split between the Gunn Club and the Acclaimed with Billy Gunn actually siding with the Acclaimed rather than his own sons.

Announced for Friday’s AEW Rampage is the first ever ‘Royal Rampage’ which will be some kind of 20-man match to determine Jon Moxley’s first challenger for the AEW Interim World Championship, the Young Bucks vs Yoshi-Hashi & Hirooki Goto, and Toni Storm vs Nyla Rose. Scorpio Sky defending the TNT Championship against Wardlow was announced for next week’s Dynamite.

Staying on the topic of AEW, in a story that could become a very big one, Kenny Omega said on Twitch that if he suffers another major setback, he’s concerned that his career could be over.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Undertaker said that Stephanie McMahon is the quote “right person for the job” when it comes to taking over as WWE CEO from Vince McMahon. Taker didn’t directly address the allegations or investigations going on regarding Vince but did praise Stephanie.

Also in an interview with Sports Illustrated, Bianca Belair was about to mention her history-making WrestleMania 37 main event match with Sasha Banks, but immediately stopped herself from mentioning Banks’ name. You’d obviously presume this is something to do with Banks’ current status within the company, which is uncertain to say the least.

MMAFighting.com has reported that Cain Velasquez’ hearing date for attempted murder has been pushed back to August 19, with motion hearings to take place two weeks earlier on August 5.

Despite Stu Grayson and Alan Angels’ recent departures from AEW, Evil Uno tweeted: “Dark Order is not dead”.

John Silver, another Dark Order member, said he doesn’t believe MJF deserves a payrise from AEW, joking that actually MJF should be the one paying AEW to put him on TV.

POST Wrestling is reporting that, despite Triple H’s recent return to the Performance Center to tell everyone that he’s back, he wasn’t backstage at NXT 2.0 this week.

After last night’s AEW show finished, Tony Khan told Detroit that he wants to hold a pay-per-view there.

And on the topic of Detroit, Eddie Kingston said in an interview with WXYZ Detroit that Tony Khan gave a list of potential locations to hold the Blood & Guts match, and Kingston specifically chose Detroit because he knew it was the right place for it.

Be sure to stay tuned to WrestleTalk.com throughout the day to keep up with all the news from the world of pro-wrestling, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning for another round-up.

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• Valerie Loureda
• Alan Angels
• audio news bulletin
• Santana

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