Various: Rocky Romero on Not Being Worried for NJPW Despite Recent Talent Departures, NOAH Announces Full Tournament Schedule for N-1 Victory 2025, Indies/Misc.

May 18, 2025

Rocky Romero Comments on Not Being Worried for NJPW Despite Recent Talent Departures

A recent episode of the Busted Open Radio After Dark podcast featured New Japan Pro Wrestling Vice President of Talent Rocky Romero as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Romero’s thoughts about his reason why he is currently not being worried for NJPW despite the recent departures of Jeff Cobb, BUSHI, and Tetsuya Naito.

“Absolutely (I feel that hunger in NJPW), and that’s why I never worry about New Japan. I think a lot of it, there’s a lot of criticism out there. There’s a lot of people saying, ‘With the departures, New Japan is shot.’ Let me tell you something, this is the company who creates stars so easily. They’ve got the best training system in all of professional wrestling. Maybe in professional sports. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. You can see who they’ve turned out over the last, you know, fifty-odd years that they’ve been around and so, I don’t worry. I think the future looks very good, very bright. I mean, you look at Yota Tsuji, you talk about Shota Umino. Gabe Kidd is another one. There’s four or five guys that are just ready to rock, loaded into the chamber. They just need the opportunity and the funny thing is like you said is they’re all hungry and they’re all ready to go and now that those spots have opened up and some of the older veterans have moved on, I mean, I think it’s up to them to take the company into the future and like I said, the future looks bright.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

NOAH Announces Full Tournament Schedule for N-1 Victory 2025

Pro Wrestling NOAH recently announced the full schedule for this year’s N-1 Victory tournament.

This year’s tournament will be taking place from September 8th to September 23rd in Japan.

Full schedule for NOAH N-1 Victory 2025:

Monday, September 8 – Tokyo, japan
Thursday, September 11 – Okayama
Saturday, September 13 – Hiroshima
Sunday, September 14 – Fukuoka
Monday, September 15 – Kumamoto
Wednesday, September 17 – Osaka
Saturday, September 20 – Hamamatsu
Sunday, September 21 – Tochigi
Tuesday, September 23 – Korakuen Hall in Tokyo

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Sunday’s Star Navigation 2025 event for Pro Wrestling NOAH in Tokyo, Japan featured Ozawa defeating Kaito Kiyomiya to retain the GHC Heavyweight Championship. As per match stipulation, Kiyomiya will be “leaving” NOAH and joining Ozawa’s Team 2000X stable.

WrestleCon recently announced that WWE Hall of Famers Abullah the Butcher and Rikishi and WWE ID talents Ricky Smokes, Sean Legacy, Jackson Drake, and Brad Baylor will be making an appearance at their WrestleCon Destination Newark event on August 1-2 in Newark, New Jersey.

Saturday’s Crockett Cut 2025 event for the National Wrestling Alliance featured Kenzie Paige defeating Natalya to retain the NWA World Women’s Championship. Following the match, Natalya was involved in a physical altercation with a fan at ringside. It is currently not known if this was a legitimate incident or just something storyline related with a “plant.”

Friday’s event for Combat Night MMA in Jacksonville, Florida featured TNA talent Lei Ying Lee defeating Myriame Essalki in a split decision in her MMA career debut fight.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that Pro Wrestling Eve are currently targeting to hold a new European record breaking all-women’s event for this November. It was reported that EVE officials are currently looking at potential venues for this planned event.

This past Friday’s Super Viernes show for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre at the Arena Mexico in Mexico City, Mexico featured Rocky Romero being revealed as the newest member of Los Infernales (Averno, Mephisto, & Euforia). Following Sky Team’s (Místico, Neón, & Máscara Dorada) victory over Los Infernales to become the new CMLL World Trios Champions, Romero came out and helped Los Infernales attack Sky Team laying them all out. Volador Jr. grabbed the microphone and told Romero that he owed him a favor after Romero asked him to team with him at the Homenaje a Dos Leyendas 2025 event. Volador Jr. then revealed that this favor was Romero joining his group, which Romero accepted.

Figthful Select’s Corey Brennan reported that his sources stated that PROGRESS Wrestling officials recently made changes to their creative team. Those spoken to reportedly stated that PROGRESS had parted ways with Andre Bowers who had been working as the Head of Creative for the company since early 2024. Brennan reported that major events to occur in PROGRESS in recent months including Rhio regaining the PROGRESS Women’s World Championship from Nina Samuels, Man Like DeReiss being the winner of this year’s Super Strong Style 16 tournament, and the announcement of a new Women’s Super Strong Style 16 tournament in 2026 were decisions that had been in place since at least this past February. Brennan also reported that these decisions had possibly been decided upon in late 2024.

As noted before, Bea Priestley, former Blair Davenport in WWE, made her surprise debut for New Japan Pro Wrestling at their Resurgence 2025 event earlier this month in Ontario, California. In a recent Sign-It-Live virtual fan signing event for Highspots, Priestley gave her thoughts about her recent debut appearance in NJPW. Priestley stated “I sure did (make my return to wrestling at NJPW Resurgence)… It was in Ontario, California. Yeah, but initially when they told me, I was like, ‘Wait, that’s not in Canada is it?’ (She laughed) Yeah, but that was awesome and I feel like it was really cool seeing all the New Japan boys again because I’d see them all the time in Japan. So, it was great to be back. Loved it.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with The Insiders w/ Conrad Thompson podcast, former AEW, WWE, and WCW seamstress Sandra Gray stated that she is currently planning to release a book focusing on her seamstress career and wrestling gear she has created. Gray stated “I’m going to. I can tell you it’s not ready. I’ve been working on it for a while. There are a lot of pictures. I’m telling about how I got into the business. It’s got some special things like QR codes that you’re able to scan into some behind the scenes stuff that I haven’t put on social media. I’m hoping the first few books that I get to hold and see, I want to put real fabric swatches in it of the gear that I made. I don’t throw away anything. I learned to keep everything. I have swatches of things that are related to pictures in the book. Someone told me, when I told them that idea, they said, ‘You don’t have to put the real thing in there. Nobody is going to know.’ I said, ‘They won’t, but I know.’ I can’t wait to get to that part. I’m going to take the first (number) of books and cut swatches and put them right by where the gear is. This goes through my whole career from WCW, WWE, and AEW.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

Former Ring of Honor wrestler Erick Stevens, real name Eric Koenreich, recently reflected on Twitter about a funny past incident he had with Bryan Danielson and Tyler Black (Seth Rollins in WWE) in Germany in 2009. Koenerich stated “It was my first time at wXw and my first time overseas for the 16 Carat. Luckily the tournament field featured of few of my ROH cohorts, namely Bryan and Tyler Black. Since neither of us drank or liked to go out after shows, Tyler and I often found ourselves as roommates on the road. This trip was no different. We were hostel mates and had just turned out the lights. We got a few minutes of shut eye before the lights turned on. I sat up in bed to see Bryan in our room. “Get up! We’re going to the club!” he said with a giggle. Tyler and I immediately declined. Bryan pulled his vet card and made it clear that it wasn’t an invitation – It was a demand. So we got dressed and headed out. We get to the club and as we’re going in, Tyler and I are stopped by the bouncer. We don’t speak German so we have to wait for one of the wXw guys to translate. “They think he’s a terrorist and you’re a hooligan. They’re afraid you’re going to start trouble!” I guess Tyler’s Armenian blood and my mohawk were giving bad vibes. But eventually, we got in. I don’t remember much after that other than Bryan forcing me to drink champagne and the awful music. Tyler and I sat on the wall the entire time, completely miserable. Every time I saw Bryan, he’d look at me with that shit eating grin of his. He was reveling in our misery. So much so that he demanded he use my digital camera to take a picture of us.“

Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling recently announced one new match for the card of their Spring Tour 2025 in Shinagawa vol.2 event on June 7th in Tokyo, Japan:

MLW World Women’s Featherweight Championship – Kaya Toribami vs. Shoko Nakajima