AEW Star Quits Wrestling, Ric Flair WWE Opponent Revealed, CM Punk Return Update – News Bulletin – July 19, 2022

AEW

An AEW star has quit wrestling, Ric Flair’s opponent from WWE for his ‘final match’ has been revealed, an update on CM Punk’s return, and more.

It’s Tuesday morning, and what better way to start the day than getting caught up on all the latest wrestling news – I’m Liam Winnard for WrestleTalk.com, and this is our news bulletin for July 19, 2022.

Unfortunately I’m still ill, so I can’t record audio and you’ll just have to read this morning’s round-up again. SORRY.

AEW Star Quits Wrestling

AQA, who signed with AEW this past February, has taken to Twitter to announce she is taking time away from wrestling “for the immediate future”.

She was only used very rarely after her debut, which was a TBS Championship match against Jade Cargill.

AQA wrote:

I want to take this time to say thank you to anyone who has ever cheered for me, supported me, bought merch, had me on your podcast or wrote an article about me. Those who sent loving messages, made fan art, gave me a hug during a meet & greet, or a high-five on my way to and from the ring. Promoters who booked me, opponents that stood across from me, and my trainers for teaching me everything I know for I wouldn’t have made it this far without all of you.

At this time, I have decided to step away from professional wrestling for the immediate future. For the past few years, both mentally and physically, I have not been in a great place with wrestling, and silly me, I kept pushing through because I didn’t want to be seen as weak, but it only sucked the fun out of every opportunity I had. I hope during this time I’ll be able to reflect deeply and see what path is best for me.

Thank you AEW for granting me this time.

Until I see you all again, much love.

AQA previously worked as Zayda Ramier in NXT, being released three months before her AEW debut. She was trained by Booker T at his Reality of Wrestling school and promotion.

We wish her all the best going forward.

Ric Flair’s Last Match Ever Revealed

The announcement of Ric Flair’s opponent for his last match ever came yesterday, and it’s kinda sorta opened the most Forbidden of Forbidden Doors – that between AEW and WWE.

The match with actually be a tag team match, with Flair teaming up with son-in-law Andrade El Idolo to take on Jay Lethal and WWE’s Jeff Jarrett.

Flair had used the hashtag #WWERaw in a tweet to promote the announcement, which led to some people believing it could be an active Raw wrestler like AJ Styles, but I guess Jarrett was a close enough tie-in.

Jarrett is WWE’s Senior Vice President of Live Events Booking after being hired for the position in May 2022.

He’ll have a busy SummerSlam weekend as before the Flair match at Starrcast on July 31, he’ll be the special guest referee at SummerSlam itself for the Usos vs the Street Profits as the show is in Nashville on July 30.

CM Punk Return Update

A new update has been provided on CM Punk’s return after being out since June 1 due to a broken foot.

Dave Meltzer reported on Wrestling Observer Radio that it “should not be long” until Punk returns, either for All Out on September 4 or Full Gear, which hasn’t been announced yet but is usually early November.

AEW has stayed quiet about Punk’s exact injury and his status, but it became known pretty quickly that it was a broken foot, and in the grand scheme of things, a broken foot doesn’t actually take that long to recover from.

Whenever Punk is back, he’s set for an AEW World Championship unification match against whoever the interim champion is, which looks like it’ll be Jon Moxley.

Other Stuff

In other little bits of news…

Meltzer said on Observer Radio that Tony Khan is “very excited” about the new faction formed at the latest AEW Dark tapings with Ari Daivari, Slim J and Parker Boudreaux (Harland from NXT). There’s no decision made yet as to whether they’ll be on AEW or ROH programming.

WWE announced it has surpassed a total of 70 billion views on its official YouTube channel, only the seventh channel ever to do so.

Fightful Select reported that WWE is planning to bring Edge in for next week’s episode of WWE Raw in Madison Square Garden, the final episode before SummerSlam. The belief is the mysterious dark vignettes that have been airing recently are for Edge.

Speaking of Raw, a new matches were confirmed for SummerSlam last night in the form of Riddle vs Seth Rollins, Bianca Belair defending the Raw Women’s Championship against Becky Lynch, and The Miz vs Logan Paul.

Before Raw started, WWE taped Main Event as usual – this week, Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali teamed together, so we may have seen the formation of a new tag team.

And set for tonight’s episode of NXT 2.0 is a 20-woman battle royal to determine Mandy Rose’s next challenger for the NXT Women’s Championship, the ‘debut’ of Axiom (A-Kid’s new masked gimmick), JD McDonagh (Jordan Devlin) vs Cameron Grimes, Brooks Jensen & Josh Briggs defending the NXT UK Tag Team Title against Pretty Deadly, Roderick Strong vs Damon Kemp, and Joe Gacy’s Dyad revealing their identities.

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.

To make sure you stay updated with all the latest wrestling news, add WrestleTalk.com to your Google Discover feed and follow us on Twitter!

• aqa
• audio news bulletin
• cm punk
• Ric Flair

Share this article with friends