Various: ROH Announces This Week’s ROH TV Show to Air on Friday, May 23rd, Natalya on Her Match Against Kenzie Paige at NWA Crockett Cup 2025 & Giving Paige the “Nattie Rub”, Indies/Misc.

May 20, 2025

ROH Announces This Week’s ROH TV Show to Air on Friday, May 23rd

Ring of Honor announced that this week’s ROH TV show will be airing at a special date of Friday, May 23rd starting at 7PM EST.

It was also announced that this week’s show will be airing on both HonorClub and their official YouTube channel.

🚨 SPECIAL PROGRAMING NOTE 🚨

▶️ ROH TV will air on Friday, May 23rd at 7/6c!
▶️ On Honor Club AND the ROH YouTube channel! pic.twitter.com/OEiJ3sHXgg
— ROH – Ring of Honor Wrestling (@ringofhonor) May 20, 2025

The reason for this week’s show being preempted to a Friday date is due to AEW will be airing this week’s AEW Collision show on Thursday, May 22nd due to TNT not wanting Collision to go head-to-head against WWE’s Saturday Night’s Main Event show on Saturday, May 24th.

Natalya Comments on Her Match Against Kenzie Paige at NWA Crockett Cup 2025

This past Saturday’s Crockett Cup 2025 event for the National Wrestling Alliance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania featured Kenzie Paige defeating Natalya to retain her NWA World Women’s Championship.

A recent episode of the Busted Open Radio podcast featured Natalya as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Natalya’s thoughts about her match against Paige and her belief that she gave Paige the “Nattie Rub” in terms of bringing something out of Paige that she will be chasing throughout her career.

“I did for Kenzie what I’ve done for many in the industry. If I’m going to talk the talk, I’m going to remind you of the walk that I’ve walked. Look at Charlotte Flair. Charlotte wasn’t able to be Charlotte until I brought out a different side of her. I was able to do that. I gave Charlotte the Nattie Rub. Charlotte is a very close friend of mine, and I love her and respect the shit out of Charlotte, but she talks about it all the time. When I had that match with her at TakeOver in 2014, I brought out a different side of her, a side of her that she didn’t know existed. I did the same thing for Kenzie. Kenzie is in her early 20s and she got to understand about who the fuck I am. I got to run circles around Kenzie. I’m 42, running circles around a 20-year-old. When you train at the Dungeon, you learn how to fight for your life. Kenzie didn’t realize that when she was wrestling me, I love the taste of blood in my mouth. I love bruises under my clothes. I fucking live for this. That’s what I love and what turns me on. She didn’t realize that I love that feeling. When she worked with me, we had a great match, I can safely say it was the match of the night and had everybody in the ECW Arena on their feet. She got to understand the Nattie Rub. She’s going to spend the rest of her career chasing the dragon to have a match like that. Just like Charlotte has spent her career chasing to find a match like she had with me in 2014.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Prestige Wrestling recently announced that Bea Priestley, former Blair Davenport in WWE, and Elayna Black, former Cora Jade in WWE, will be making their official debut appearances for the company at their Combat Clash 2025 event on July 13th in Portland, Oregon.

As noted before, former WWE talent Shotzi is currently scheduled to make her official debut appearance for Major League Wrestling at their Summer of the Beasts 2025 event on June 26th in New York City, New York. Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp reported that his sources stated that despite MLW teasing her upcoming debut for the company, Shotzi is still currently under contract with WWE as of this past weekend.

Spark Joshi Puroresu recently announced that AEW and ROH talent Yuka Sakazaki will be making her official debut appearance for the company at their Ignite Texas event on June 29th in Baytown, Texas.

Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling recently announced that Matt Cardona, MLP Canadian Champion Josh Alexander, and MLP Women’s Canadian Champion Gisele Shaw will be making an appearance at their Resurrection event on July 5th in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling also recently announced that they will be launching a new digital series called “Beyond the Ring” on Tuesday on their official YouTube channel. This new series was stated to feature “a raw, unfiltered docuseries that pulls back the curtain on MAPLE LEAF PRO Wrestling. From backstage moments to personal triumphs and sacrifices, this is the side of wrestling fans rarely get to witness. Before the bell. After the bell. And everything inbetween.”

Pro Wrestling Revolver recently announced that they will be holding a new event called the Jerry Lynn Invitational on August 9th in Dayton, Ohio. It was also announced that Jerry Lynn will be the special guest referee for the Finals of their upcoming Jerry Lynn Invitational tournament at the event.

In a recent interview with the AEW Close Up with Renee Paquette show, Nick Wayne gave his thoughts at his recent ROH World Television Championship victory over Komander and his goal of wanting to become the longest reigning ROH TV Champion. Wayne stated “Definitely so like saying again, just like following the footsteps of people that I idolize, you know, a lot of people that I idolize went through Ring of Honor once upon a time and a lot of people have like held this championship, so to be able to hold it now and represent something that is like so special, and like feel like it’s a very like big placeholder in this business is a very big honor to me. To win it so young, I believe the youngest to win the title is another just huge honor to me. I want to hold it for as long as I can, maybe become the longest reigning. I know it’s a long time that I have to beat, but… What is the… God, do you know what the number is? (It’s Jay Lethal. I believe it’s like a year or a little over a year.) Okay. I’m willing to beat it.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with Fightful’s In The Weeds podcast, Steve Maclin gave his thoughts about his goal of wanting to introduce journaling with mental health and PTSD advocacy into professional wrestling. Maclin stated “For the B-Rabbit comments, I was laughing hysterically. I saw some of the outtakes on those. I wanted to try to introduce journaling with mental health and PTSD, how do I bring that into my story and kind of show people that. Maybe people are thinking I’m B-Rabbiting the hell out of it, full on 8 Mile, but it’s something I’ve done and I know others do as well. If you can’t get it out there verbally, you have to put it on paper so it’s like speaking to someone. A lot of the times, I would have conversations with friends that aren’t here or a loved one that I want to reach or talk to, just to get something off my chest or off my mind. That’s something I thought I could incorporate. It was Eric Tompkins who originally had the idea of, ‘Do you journal in real life?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Let’s bring this into the story and see how it goes.’ It was another way of sprinkling a little bit of me in there and getting more detail into it. We’re working down that path and elaborating more. We’ll get there.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

OZ Academy recently announced one new match for the card of their Jaguar Yokota 50th Anniversary event on July 29th in Tokyo, Japan: