Punishment Martinez Officially Signs With WWE

4 years ago by Liam Winnard

Punishment Martinez Officially Signs With WWE

It was reported a couple of weeks back that former Ring of Honor World Television Champion Punishment Martinez had finished his run with ROH and was headed to WWE.

PWInsider has confirmed that Martinez has now officially signed with Vince McMahon’s promotion, and will start at the Performance Center and in NXT later this month.

Martinez opted to reject ROH‘s contract extension offer, taking the decision to leave the company and sign with WWE instead. He dropped the ROH TV Title at the most recent set of TV tapings to current champ Jeff Cobb.

The tapings took place on September 29, though Martinez’ contract actually expired back in August, with the Puerto Rican electing to continue to wrestle for the company as a free agent until he dropped the strap.

As well as being a former ROH TV Champion. Martinez also won the 2017 Survival of the Fittest tournament held by the promotion, defeating Flip Gordon, Silas Young, Jonathan Gresham, Shane Taylor and Matt Taven in a six-way elimination match.

He was thus rewarded with a ROH World Championship shot, but came up short to then-champion Dalton Castle this past January.

Martinez also competed at Honor Rising: Japan 2017, which included talent from both ROH and New Japan. Interestingly, it now seems some of those very New Japan stars may be following him to the WWE Performance Center in the near future.