Matt Riddle No-Showed Charity Wrestling Event in U.K. & Not Returning Deposit Update – Riddle Claims GWK Knew He Was Not Appearing But Still Advertised Him, GWK Issues Statement Saying Riddle Returned Deposit & Their Issues Working With Him

Riddle Claims GWK Knew He Was Not Appearing But Still Advertised Him For Their Event

As noted before, former WWE talent and current MLW and indies talent Matt Riddle was involved in an incident over him no showing a charity wrestling event for Global Wrestling Kingdom in the United Kingdom this past Sunday. Riddle issued a statement blaming the promotion for the issues that led to him no-showing the event and claimed he never said he would keep the deposit.

A recent episode of TMZ’s Inside The Ring podcast featured Riddle as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Riddle’s thoughts about the situation and stated that he has received death threats over it.

“My girlfriend had an arrangement with this company, G.W.K., Global Wrestling Kingdom, and I’ll be honest dude, I see companies like this in the U.K. all the time. These guys rented an arena, they didn’t sell 150 tickets… I’m not knocking ‘em. They’re trying. They’re trying to do their thing. But, this is garbage dude, and if they actually asked me for the money, which, they didn’t until later yesterday? And then I woke up this morning to a bunch of death threats… Death threats. ‘How dare you f*cking scam a charity’ and I’m like, dawg, four months ago, this wasn’t a charity event. Three months ago, it wasn’t a charity event. This week was the first time I got a message saying, ‘What? You’re gonna do this to a charity event?’ I’m doing Make-A-Wish in a couple weeks. I do charity events. Dude, I do multiple charity events, but I don’t get paid a dime. But I’ll tell you this, I’m not flying to London in a middle seat with no meal, with no checked bag. I don’t know why they thought that was a good idea. Dude, I don’t even know how it’s legal.”

Riddle also gave his thoughts about his issues about doing nothing for two days in London before the event and claimed that the promotion knew he was not coming in but still advertised him for their show.

“Well, I never decided I wasn’t going. I was still gonna go Saturday. So, this is what the deal was: When they told me two weeks out that there’s nothing there, I was like, ‘They’re gonna keep trying.’ I’m like, ‘Okay,’ and then, it was probably Tuesday of last week, and I go, ‘Any word?’ And they go, ‘I haven’t heard anything back’ and I’m like, ‘That means nothing’s happening,’ and I go, ‘Dude, I can’t sit in a hotel room for two days.’ You know, my friends told me not to say this, but man, I got idle hands. If these things aren’t doing something, I get into trouble. If I didn’t have five kids, wrestle all over the world, fight people and do this, I get in — I just do. It’s just what it is. I party. It’s whatever. I have a problem, right? So I keep myself busy. I knew if I sat in a hotel in London for two days, damn, I might not even make the show Sunday, and maybe that’s bad to say, but you know what? I think it’s very responsible to say and it’s true. So, that’s just what it is.

So they knew this (that I would not be coming). Do you know what they kept doing? They kept promoting me, like I was still coming. It’s a scumbag move. I’ve had other promoters do this and I’m like, dude, you sold tickets and obviously, let’s be honest, no disrespect to everybody else on the card, I’m the King of Bros.”

Riddle also gave his thoughts about his belief that it was the promotion who leaked the news to Cultaholic about the situation.

“Yeah, yeah, it was (the promotion that leaked our situation). They did it and you know what? I guarantee you when they first did it, they were probably like, oh my God, wish we would have had this before the match. You know, more people would have showed up, and let’s say this, it’s probably what they should have done.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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GWK Issues Official Statement Over Situation & Saying Riddle Returned The Deposit

Global Wrestling Kingdom issued an official statement earlier today stating that Riddle has returned the deposit and promised he will reimburse them for travel expenses. GWK also stated that both Riddle and his manager were difficult to work with in regards to their lack of responses when asked about issues that arose in the lead-up to Riddle’s planned appearance.

“**update** Mr Riddle has now paid back his deposit and has given us his word that he will reimburse his expenses too.

We have not made any public statement on this unfortunate situation, but we think it’s important to set the record clear on Mr Riddle’s claims.

His flights were booked and approved by his manager back in April. No issue was raised at the time.

We originally planned to coincidence his appearance with some seminars but his manager asked if we could share his weekend with a promoter in Paris who wanted to book him on the Saturday which we agreed to.

Unfortunately, they decided that they couldn’t work with him. We did make efforts to see if we could help get him booked elsewhere but to no avail. We simply can’t force promotions or gyms to work with him if they don’t wish to.

After months of chasing his manager for a promised promo hyping up the event, he eventually sent us one the Wednesday prior to the show.
We wished him a safe flight on Thursday but got not response. No issue of the flight was raised.

We informed him the name of his driver on Friday morning but got no response.

Again, no issue was raised regarding his flight, nor did he let us know that he was planning on not showing up.

After his driver waited several hours at the airport for him, we asked him where he was but didn’t get a reply back until Friday evening. Only then did he tell us he was unhappy with his flight and decided to take other bookings instead.

We implored him to try and get a flight over as fans had paid to see him. He was reminded again, that this was a charity event (for ‘Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide’ and ‘help 4 homeless veterans’) which was announced on our social media pages back in July.

We received no response from Mr Riddle whatsoever until yesterday afternoon – 3 days after the event.

In his many videos, he’s stated that his flights didn’t include meals. Screenshots clearly show that 2 meals were included in his flight and these screenshots were sent to him on Friday night. No seats were allocated because this is done once you check in online which Mr Riddle hadn’t done. Any issues with luggage could have been quickly sorted out by a quick message or phone call.

It is incredibly disappointing that this happened, but we would like to focus on the positive and heap massive praise on all the talent and fans who showed up on Sunday. All the fans and talent backstage were incredibly positive, and the reaction of the crowd when Grado’s music hit nearly knocked us out of our chairs. Grado truly is… the man!