AEW: Backstage Update on Undisputed Kingdom’s Name Change to “Paragon”, Brody King on Interested in Kris Statlander Joining Hounds of Hell & AEW’s Tag Line of “Where The Best Wrestlers Wrestle”, More News

May 4, 2025

Backstage Update on Undisputed Kingdom’s Name Change to “Paragon”

As noted before, the April 9th episode of AEW Dynamite featured Adam Cole revealing that the Undisputed Kingdom will be going by the new name of Paragon for their group of him, Kyle O’Reilly, and Roderick Strong.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that the reason for the group’s name change was due to AEW’s internal creative plans for the group and potential legal concerns over name similarities with WWE’s trademarks for “Undisputed Era.”

In regards to Matt Taven and Mike Bennett’s abscense from the group, It was reported that those spoken to stated that AEW officials initially did not have any plans for Taven and Bennett to be part of Cole’s reunited group. It was also reported that the name change for the group was done to substantiate the move to keep Taven and Bennett separate from it.

Brody King Comments on Being Interested in Kris Statlander Joining Hounds of Hell & AEW’s Tag Line of “Where The Best Wrestlers Wrestle”

Fightful’s Grapsody held a recent interview with Brody King. One of the topics discussed included King’s interest in wanting Kris Statlander to join his Hounds of Hell group.

“Whether it’s singles success, trios, tag, we kind of have all bases covered. Julia is a former singles champion. I’d love to see her with another girl. Her and Kris Statlander just won their match. They’d be a great tag team. Bring Kris Statlander into the Hounds of Hell.”

King also gave his thoughts about AEW’s tag line of “Where The Best Wrestlers Wrestle” for their official company motto.

“I have nothing but good things to say about AEW. We’re constantly pushing the envelope and constantly bringing our style of wrestling and what we love about wrestling to mainstream, whether that be Japanese wrestling or crazy hardcore wrestling. AEW kind of brings back a lot of what brought people my age into wrestling; the blood, the violence, the more hard-hitting stuff. We also have an incredible women’s division. Across the board, we’re nailing the in-ring talent and ability to the highest level. When you see a match like Takeshita vs. Will Ospreay on free TV, that’s a treat in itself and we kind of do that all the time …
When you have guys like Takeshita, Ospreay, Kenny Omega, you have guys who are constantly in the picture of ‘best wrestler ever’ and ‘best wrestler currently.’ You always want to challenge yourself, ‘What’s it look like if I’m in the ring with them? How do I match up with that?’ I got to wrestle Takeshita recently. I got to wrestle Will Ospreay recently. I would love to have a match with Kenny Omega and really push myself that. ‘Where the best wrestlers wrestle’ is the perfect tagline for AEW.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2

AEW News & Notes

Saturday’s AEW Collision show in Atlantic City, New Jersey featured Daniel Garcia challenging either member of FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) to a match at a future show. Garcia issued the challange after coming out following FTR’s victory over Paragon in a Best 2-out-of-3 Falls match, Garcia stated that he was going to beat the answers out of them for why they had recently attacked him.

Former WWE wrestler Maven reportedly was in attendance backstage at Saturday’s AEW Collision show in Atlantic City, according to PWInsider.

Fozzy recently cancelled their concert event for Saturday, May 3rd at the Royal Grove in Lincoln, Nebraska. The host venue announced on Instagram that lead singer Chris Jericho “had chosen to prioritize a wrestling match and despite our efforts to keep the show as agreed, they have ultimately declined to perform.” This quickly led to online speculation of Jericho making an appearance on Saturday’s AEW Collision show but this did not take place in the end. The Learning Tree’s Big Bill & Bryan Keith did appear on the show and engaged in a parking lot brawl with the Gates of Agony.

Indie wrestlers Emily Hale and Brittany Jade reportedly were in attendance backstage at this past Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite show in Norfolk, Virginia, according to Fightful Select.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that the reason why Saturday’s AEW Collision show was moved over to TBS was due to TNT’s scheduling for that week was already put in order in the event that the NBA Playoffs went to a Game 7 for that night. It was reported that TNT officials had put a movie marathon as a placeholder for that night and because Collision had already been scheduled for TBS, the decision was made to not move Collision back to TNT for last night’s show. It was reported that Collision being moved to TBS is likely to happen with the on-goining NHL Playoffs as well for this year.

Wardlow filed a new trademark for his ring name of “Wardlow” on May 1st for wrestling and entertainment-related purposes to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

In a recent response to a fan on Twitter, Ricochet gave his thoughts about how AEW had reignited his passion for wrestling. This fan stated “Dude has won 0 world titles since he’s arrived The Main Reason he jumped ship 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.” Ricochet responded back stating “No, the main reason was that the WWE ruined my love and passion for the sport that I grew up loving. AEW helped me find that love again.“

In a recent interview with the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast, MVP gave his thoughts about the Hurt Syndicate’s current plans for their careers in AEW. MVP stated “Look, I’m spoiling it for you. I’m telling you what’s going to happen. We are going to hold these Tag Team Titles until we’re done, until we decide as a group that okay, we’re now ready to move on to that next level and then we are coming for singles championship gold. No tag teams, that’ll be done, but we gotta beat a few more people first and imprint The Hurt Syndicate label on these tag team titles so people will know we were here. They will remember. Then it’s on to the next phase, and that’s singles championships for these two gentlemen.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)